Toluu

Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog

Nothing brings about pessimism like a recessionYesterday

This recession thing is pretty confusing. The government has officially declared that we’re in a recession (I called it in August). The market tanks one day and skyrockets the next. The so-called “Black Friday” was supposed to be bad, but it wasn’t. The National Retail Federation (NRF) said the average shopper spent $372.57, up 7.2% from a year ago. And despite stories of concern last week, the so-called “Cyber Monday” likewise showed sales up spectacularly. During the first 12 hours of Cyber Monday, consumers spent 27% more this year according to Seattle-based Mercent, an online marketing company that serves the retail industry (via Online Media Daily).

But a CNN Money report today signals caution, something the press is very good at doing.

Shoppers came out in droves over the weekend, motivated by pent-up demand and deep discounts, but the surge is not expected to last.

The report notes that holiday shopping is “only” supposed to be up 2.2 percent this year.

I think that the evidence from shopping this weekend is good news, and that we ought not to be tainting it with omnipresent caveats. For crying out loud, we’ve been in a recession for the

Embracing the DisruptionDecember 1

Here is the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

This essay is entitled “Embracing the Disruption,” and it focuses on the need for local media companies to ease away from dependence on our legacy brands to compete in the online world. There is no question that having an incumbent player in the market is a competitive advantage, but I think media companies need to reexamine this, for if our online competition is only the other legacy media companies in the market, it’s no advantage whatsoever. The real advantage incumbent media players have is in sales, but that advantage can and is being overcome, and I think we ought to be thinking differently about how we use the power of our brands. If a local internet company had a television station at its disposal, for example, it would use that station differently than the way television stations currently use themselves to promote the Web. For legacy media, it’s all about extending our brands to the Web, but for companies with roots in the Web, it’s the opposite. It’s about building new brands and new offerings based on the wants and needs of users, including advertisers.

Embracing the Disruption

The First Law of Social MediaNovember 28

Here is the latest in the ongoing series about reinventing local media, “Local Media in a Postmodern World.”

Social media is foreign to traditional media, but it’s increasingly the playing field in the quest for eyeball attention among the citizens of the Web. We need to know the rules of the game here, because we risk irrelevance otherwise. This essay is called “The First Law of Social Media,” which is to respect the invitation you’ve been given. This is counterintuitive to most in the media world, because we’re so used to having a stage with everybody looking at us. We set the concert rules, not the concert-goers. But life on the Web is a different animal, and we must be prepared to learn and adopt new skills and new ways of thinking, if we’re going to be successful downstream.

The First Law of Social Media

Welcome to the 21st Century, Defense MinisterNovember 28

Robin Waulters has an excellent post over at TechCrunch this morning about the troubles of Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem, who ran into a blogger at a Belgian pub in New York on Monday. De Crem and several aides came to New York, even though the U.N. conference for which the trip was planned had been cancelled. He ended up getting completely soused at the pub.

Following his visit, bartender Nathalie Lubbe Bakker blogged about their visit (in Dutch), talking about how disgusted she was of how drunk De Crem was and how embarrased she was about his behavior. Worst part, she wrote, was the fact that one of the politician’s advisors admitted to her that the meetings they were there for on taxpayer’s money were in fact cancelled because the UN was meeting in Geneva (which is about 330 miles from Brussels). He reportedly told her they had decided to come to NY anyway despite being aware of the cancellation because the policital situation here was ‘calm’ and that he’d ‘never visited the city anyway’.

Somebody from De Crem’s office called the pub later and Bakker was fired, which didn’t go over very well with the Belgian blogosphere (and it shouldn’t go over very well here, either). De Crem then made a complete ass of himself in Parliament by playing the victim.

I wan

Thanksgiving in a time of fear and uncertaintyNovember 26

Tomorrow is Turkey Day and the beginning of the “most wonderful time of the year.” But this year, the economy’s in the tank; media company stocks (and company valuations) are bumping the bottom; and layoffs, buy-outs, and early retirements are everywhere. Uncertainty is the word of the day, which is actually a four-syllable word for fear.

The day after the holiday, many believe, will be telling. We’ll “learn” how consumers really feel based on what they spend. That news will propel us forward or cause us to slide deeper into the funk of 2008. That’s the way we are, or so the experts say. This is the “group think” of modernity. Study it. Categorize it. Label it. Shift it. Drive it. Manipulate it. And so it goes. Logic and reason can do no better, for they live within the world of the known. “If it exists, it can be measured,” is the first rule of science.

The brilliant mind of Kevin Kelly wrote about the origins of science a few weeks ago (The Origins of Progress, Anachronistic Science). If you want to expand your mind, read Kevin Kelly, for his is one of the most significant voices of contemporary culture. But Kel