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Behind a Pop-Culture Icon Is a White House That Figures Selling the Man Will Help Sell His Policies
By AMY CHOZICK
In the past 100 days Americans have watched Barack Obama drink a beer at a Washington Wizards game. They have seen him give the queen of England an iPod and thank Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie for her rendition of the national anthem. They've laughed (or groaned) at the jokes he cracked with late-night talk-show host Jay Leno.
All these may seem like the usual personal tidbits that the public demands from its pop-culture icons. But Mr. Obama's stardom is no chance obsession. It's part of a White House media strategy to pitch the president as a person ... and then sell his policies. The idea evolved from the campaign, when chief strategist David Axelrod led an effort to get voters comfortable with a little-known, biracial candidate who spent his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia.
The White House press team has worked to familiarize the country with Barack Obama -- how he meddles in the first lady's fashion choices; treats himself to "some mean waffles and grits" for breakfast, according to Mrs. Obama; and enjoys watching his young daughters feast on a supply of Starburst candy on board the Marine One helicopter.
To get this message across, the White House has granted wide access to nontraditional media outlets that include celebrity publications, entertainment television shows, and publications and radio programs targeted at African-American or Hispanic audiences. The stories that appear in these outlets quickly filter up to the mainstream press and often drive the news -- or at least the water-cooler chatter of the day.
To Read The Rest Of The Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124096378406566133.html
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Building Your Brand - Show You Can Do the Job - How Are You Perceived?
By ALEXANDRA LEVIT
It used to be enough to walk into a job search with an impressive résumé. If you were really enterprising, maybe you'd have a portfolio to showcase your best work. Now, though, people want a better way to stand out, and that has resulted in the very 21st-century concept of personal branding.
If you've been in the workplace longer than 10 years, you might be thinking that personal branding was actually born in 1997, when management guru Tom Peters wrote about "the brand called you."
But never before has personal branding been so mainstream. The Internet makes it possible for everyone to establish a brand, and if you don't know what yours is, now is the time to find out.
Experts such as Dan Schawbel, the author of "Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success," define personal branding as how we market ourselves to other people. Your brand should be strong and memorable enough to set you apart and to make a positive impression on people you don't know.
Show You Can Do the Job
"Personal branding serves as career protection in uncertain times," says Mr. Schawbel. "It's also a critical tool for reinventing yourself because you can leverage the reputation and skill set you already have to prove you have the ability to do the job you want."
A veteran of the recruitment research field, 41-year-old Jim Stroud developed an early interest in social media. Hoping to launch a new career in the field, Mr. Stroud built an online brand as "The Searchologist."
"A searchologist is … someone who is proficient in searching the Internet" for people who aren't actively seeking new jobs, he explains. His presence in search engines and networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as a podcast series and blog, led Mr. Stroud to his job as social-media development manager for EnglishCafe, an English learning community for global professionals.
So how do you create a personal brand? Start by understanding where you are in your career and where you're going.
Read The Full Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124071225561256493.html
It used to be enough to walk into a job search with an impressive résumé. If you were really enterprising, maybe you'd have a portfolio to showcase your best work. Now, though, people want a better way to stand out, and that has resulted in the very 21st-century concept of personal branding.
If you've been in the workplace longer than 10 years, you might be thinking that personal branding was actually born in 1997, when management guru Tom Peters wrote about "the brand called you."
But never before has personal branding been so mainstream. The Internet makes it possible for everyone to establish a brand, and if you don't know what yours is, now is the time to find out.
Experts such as Dan Schawbel, the author of "Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success," define personal branding as how we market ourselves to other people. Your brand should be strong and memorable enough to set you apart and to make a positive impression on people you don't know.
Show You Can Do the Job
"Personal branding serves as career protection in uncertain times," says Mr. Schawbel. "It's also a critical tool for reinventing yourself because you can leverage the reputation and skill set you already have to prove you have the ability to do the job you want."
A veteran of the recruitment research field, 41-year-old Jim Stroud developed an early interest in social media. Hoping to launch a new career in the field, Mr. Stroud built an online brand as "The Searchologist."
"A searchologist is … someone who is proficient in searching the Internet" for people who aren't actively seeking new jobs, he explains. His presence in search engines and networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as a podcast series and blog, led Mr. Stroud to his job as social-media development manager for EnglishCafe, an English learning community for global professionals.
So how do you create a personal brand? Start by understanding where you are in your career and where you're going.
Read The Full Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124071225561256493.html
Monday, April 20, 2009
Pizza Hut searches for Twittering Intern
Pizza Hut searches for Twittering Intern
by Chris Matyszczyk
As Domino's Pizza proved last week, it is not easy to find youth of today who will perform their jobs without putting cheese up their nose and then down onto a sandwich.
So how can one not admire rival restaurant chain Pizza Hut? Unbowed and uncowed by the social media difficulties Domino's experienced with their booger video, Pizza Hut is looking for a Twittering intern.
Yes, someone who can take those 140 characters and turn them into a positive pizza life force.
If you wander with purpose to the Pizza Hut home page, you will discover these magic words of hope: "Apply to be the first Pizza Hut Twintern."
To Read The Full Article - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10223100-71.html
by Chris Matyszczyk
As Domino's Pizza proved last week, it is not easy to find youth of today who will perform their jobs without putting cheese up their nose and then down onto a sandwich.
So how can one not admire rival restaurant chain Pizza Hut? Unbowed and uncowed by the social media difficulties Domino's experienced with their booger video, Pizza Hut is looking for a Twittering intern.
Yes, someone who can take those 140 characters and turn them into a positive pizza life force.
If you wander with purpose to the Pizza Hut home page, you will discover these magic words of hope: "Apply to be the first Pizza Hut Twintern."
To Read The Full Article - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10223100-71.html
Sunday, April 19, 2009
How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write
Author Steven Johnson outlines a future with more books, more distractions -- and the end of reading alone
Every genuinely revolutionary technology implants some kind of "aha" moment in your memory -- the moment where you flip a switch and something magical happens, something that tells you in an instant that the rules have changed forever.
I still have vivid memories of many such moments: clicking on my first Web hyperlink in 1994 and instantly transporting to a page hosted on a server in Australia; using Google Earth to zoom in from space directly to the satellite image of my house; watching my 14-month-old master the page-flipping gesture on the iPhone's touch interface.
The latest such moment came courtesy of the Kindle, Amazon.com Inc.'s e-book reader. A few weeks after I bought the device, I was sitting alone in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I'd bought and downloaded Zadie Smith's novel "On Beauty." By the time the check arrived, I'd finished the first chapter.
Aha.
I knew then that the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways. It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.
In our always-connected, everything-linked world, we sometimes forget that books are the dark matter of the information universe. While we now possess terabytes of data at our fingertips, we have nonetheless drifted further and further away from mankind's most valuable archive of knowledge: the tens of millions of books that have been published since Gutenberg's day.
Read The Full Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html
Every genuinely revolutionary technology implants some kind of "aha" moment in your memory -- the moment where you flip a switch and something magical happens, something that tells you in an instant that the rules have changed forever.
I still have vivid memories of many such moments: clicking on my first Web hyperlink in 1994 and instantly transporting to a page hosted on a server in Australia; using Google Earth to zoom in from space directly to the satellite image of my house; watching my 14-month-old master the page-flipping gesture on the iPhone's touch interface.
The latest such moment came courtesy of the Kindle, Amazon.com Inc.'s e-book reader. A few weeks after I bought the device, I was sitting alone in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I'd bought and downloaded Zadie Smith's novel "On Beauty." By the time the check arrived, I'd finished the first chapter.
Aha.
I knew then that the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound ways. It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.
There is great promise and opportunity in the digital-books revolution. The question is: Will we recognize the book itself when that revolution has run its course?
In our always-connected, everything-linked world, we sometimes forget that books are the dark matter of the information universe. While we now possess terabytes of data at our fingertips, we have nonetheless drifted further and further away from mankind's most valuable archive of knowledge: the tens of millions of books that have been published since Gutenberg's day.
That's because the modern infosphere is both organized and navigated through hyperlinked pages of digital text, with the most-linked pages rising to the top of Google Inc.'s all-powerful search-results page. This has led us toward some traditional forms of information, such as newspapers and magazines, as well as toward new forms, such as blogs and Wikipedia. But because books have largely been excluded from Google's index -- distant planets of unlinked analog text -- that vast trove of knowledge can't compete with its hyperlinked rivals.
Read The Full Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Is Shaq trying to seduce Mark Cuban via Twitter?
by Chris Matyszczyk
Shaquille O'Neal and Mark Cuban are deeply confirmed Twitterers.
They have different styles but their fingers seem rarely to leave their keyboards. Perhaps one can even blame sore Twitter-finger for Shaq's poor free-throw percentage.
However, I have been following a bizarre Twitter exchange between the two NBA personalities, one that has now blossomed into strong rumors that Shaq wants to be traded to Cuban's Dallas Mavericks.
It all began on Saturday when Shaq, who has almost 600,000 followers, tweeted: "I'm lookin foor u mark cuban".
The Dallas Mavericks owner replied: "you know where i live.." Which he then followed up with: "And make sure to wear your best ShaqAlbert outfit to the arena tomorrow".
Read The Complete Article - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10215867-71.html
Shaquille O'Neal and Mark Cuban are deeply confirmed Twitterers.
They have different styles but their fingers seem rarely to leave their keyboards. Perhaps one can even blame sore Twitter-finger for Shaq's poor free-throw percentage.
However, I have been following a bizarre Twitter exchange between the two NBA personalities, one that has now blossomed into strong rumors that Shaq wants to be traded to Cuban's Dallas Mavericks.
It all began on Saturday when Shaq, who has almost 600,000 followers, tweeted: "I'm lookin foor u mark cuban".
The Dallas Mavericks owner replied: "you know where i live.." Which he then followed up with: "And make sure to wear your best ShaqAlbert outfit to the arena tomorrow".
Read The Complete Article - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10215867-71.html
Evan Williams and Biz Stone The Twitter Revolution The brains behind the Web's hottest networking tool.
By MICHAEL S. MALONE
San Francisco
"Twitter is the side project that took," says company co-founder Biz Stone, 35. "Now it's our chance to do something transformative."
[The Weekend Interview] Ismael Roldan
When I arrive at Twitter's headquarters on a recent morning, Jerry Brown is waiting in the lobby -- just another day at the world's hottest high-tech company. "It's pretty bizarre," says co-founder Evan Williams, 37. "At least once per day we look at each and say, 'What the hell?' It's like we're living out the script of the ultimate start-up company story."
But other than the familiar face of California's attorney general standing near the steel front door, you would hardly know that this little company of about 30 employees is the epicenter of the Web, used by an estimated 20 million Americans on a daily -- even minute-by-minute -- basis. Just how fast Twitter is growing is a company secret, but its traffic appears to be more than doubling every month.
The company itself seems calm and casual. The employees drift in, grab some free food and eventually make their way to their desks. It's located in an anonymous warehouse just a couple blocks from South Park, the once-frenzied environs of the dot-com companies of the first Internet boom. In his sports shirt and slacks, sipping a bottle of apple juice, Mr. Williams exhibits indifference to the trappings of success. So does Mr. Stone, who last year won an Oxford Union debate wearing a borrowed bow tie and a pair of black sneakers.
The company is hiring like crazy -- it expects to double its size in the next month or two -- and is also adding a senior management, notably new vice-president of global operations Santosh Jayaram, hired away from Google. "We've never had a company that grew past 15 to 20 people," says Mr. Stone, "We're kind of excited about that."
Read The Entire Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124000817787330413.html
San Francisco
"Twitter is the side project that took," says company co-founder Biz Stone, 35. "Now it's our chance to do something transformative."
[The Weekend Interview] Ismael Roldan
When I arrive at Twitter's headquarters on a recent morning, Jerry Brown is waiting in the lobby -- just another day at the world's hottest high-tech company. "It's pretty bizarre," says co-founder Evan Williams, 37. "At least once per day we look at each and say, 'What the hell?' It's like we're living out the script of the ultimate start-up company story."
But other than the familiar face of California's attorney general standing near the steel front door, you would hardly know that this little company of about 30 employees is the epicenter of the Web, used by an estimated 20 million Americans on a daily -- even minute-by-minute -- basis. Just how fast Twitter is growing is a company secret, but its traffic appears to be more than doubling every month.
The company itself seems calm and casual. The employees drift in, grab some free food and eventually make their way to their desks. It's located in an anonymous warehouse just a couple blocks from South Park, the once-frenzied environs of the dot-com companies of the first Internet boom. In his sports shirt and slacks, sipping a bottle of apple juice, Mr. Williams exhibits indifference to the trappings of success. So does Mr. Stone, who last year won an Oxford Union debate wearing a borrowed bow tie and a pair of black sneakers.
The company is hiring like crazy -- it expects to double its size in the next month or two -- and is also adding a senior management, notably new vice-president of global operations Santosh Jayaram, hired away from Google. "We've never had a company that grew past 15 to 20 people," says Mr. Stone, "We're kind of excited about that."
Read The Entire Article - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124000817787330413.html
Monday, April 13, 2009
Twitter's Top 10 Celebrities Include Obama, Armstrong
Lance Armstrong
Followers: 550,543
Armstrong "tweets" on a variety of subjects ranging from a stolen bike to what song he’s currently listening to. For those convinced that the seven-time Tour de France winner is a humorless, goal-driven machine, some of his missives toy with that image: "Just took a shower. Got it down under 10 mins. Whew."
John Cleese
Followers: 134,283
The former Monty Python comedian updates his Twitter site frequently and actually seems to respond to his followers. While Twitter’s 140-character limit allows little room for one of his iconic rants, he does manage to place the occasional zinger.
Al Gore
Followers: 523,035
Former vice president and Nobel-winning environmental crusader Al Gore updates fairly infrequently, but when he does, it’s generally to provide his followers with a micro-dose of climate crisis.
John Hodgman
Followers: 56,131
The PC guy in Apple's "I’m a Mac" ads, Hodgman's comments range from what’s going on backstage at the Daily Show to wishing his audience a "Happy Canadian April Fool’s Day."
David Lynch
Followers: 52,170
The storied filmmaker and the crown prince of weird updates his followers regularly on art exhibits, the weather in Los Angeles and whatever idea happens to be ambling through his brain at that particular moment. "Thought of the day: 42 seconds is a long time."
To See 6 - 10 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Twitters-Top-10-Celebrities-Include-Obama-Armstrong-690840/1/
Followers: 550,543
Armstrong "tweets" on a variety of subjects ranging from a stolen bike to what song he’s currently listening to. For those convinced that the seven-time Tour de France winner is a humorless, goal-driven machine, some of his missives toy with that image: "Just took a shower. Got it down under 10 mins. Whew."
John Cleese
Followers: 134,283
The former Monty Python comedian updates his Twitter site frequently and actually seems to respond to his followers. While Twitter’s 140-character limit allows little room for one of his iconic rants, he does manage to place the occasional zinger.
Al Gore
Followers: 523,035
Former vice president and Nobel-winning environmental crusader Al Gore updates fairly infrequently, but when he does, it’s generally to provide his followers with a micro-dose of climate crisis.
John Hodgman
Followers: 56,131
The PC guy in Apple's "I’m a Mac" ads, Hodgman's comments range from what’s going on backstage at the Daily Show to wishing his audience a "Happy Canadian April Fool’s Day."
David Lynch
Followers: 52,170
The storied filmmaker and the crown prince of weird updates his followers regularly on art exhibits, the weather in Los Angeles and whatever idea happens to be ambling through his brain at that particular moment. "Thought of the day: 42 seconds is a long time."
To See 6 - 10 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Twitters-Top-10-Celebrities-Include-Obama-Armstrong-690840/1/
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Best job in the world' has 16 happy finalists
A DJ from India, a journalist from Canada and a German actress were among 16 finalists announced Friday for what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World" -- a $108,000 contract to serve as the caretaker of a tropical Australian island.
Some of the finalists screamed, a few swore and one man from Ireland downed a Victoria Bitter, a popular Australian beer, upon learning they were one step closer to snagging the dream gig -- a six-month assignment to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef while writing a blog to promote the area.
"The Europeans have been partying all night," Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes said of the finalists from France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom who received the good news.
Nearly 35,000 people from around the world applied for the job, and officials initially planned to select 10 finalists, in addition to a "wild card" candidate previously chosen by the public. But Hayes decided to expand the short list to 15 "mostly to stop my staff from killing each other," he said with a laugh. "We just couldn't get to 10."
All 16 hopefuls will be flown to Hamilton Island in early May for formal interviews.
Read Full Article - http://www.startribune.com/world/42482122.html
Some of the finalists screamed, a few swore and one man from Ireland downed a Victoria Bitter, a popular Australian beer, upon learning they were one step closer to snagging the dream gig -- a six-month assignment to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef while writing a blog to promote the area.
"The Europeans have been partying all night," Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes said of the finalists from France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom who received the good news.
Nearly 35,000 people from around the world applied for the job, and officials initially planned to select 10 finalists, in addition to a "wild card" candidate previously chosen by the public. But Hayes decided to expand the short list to 15 "mostly to stop my staff from killing each other," he said with a laugh. "We just couldn't get to 10."
All 16 hopefuls will be flown to Hamilton Island in early May for formal interviews.
Read Full Article - http://www.startribune.com/world/42482122.html
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