Chris Messina grew up in New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state. As a high-schooler in the early 90's he held his school's website hostage after being suspended for running an ad on it for a controversial gay rights group. Now Chris is nearing 30, today was his 29th birthday, and he just announced that he's taken a job at one of the biggest, most powerful corporations in the world.

The latest chapter in the fascinating story of Chris Messina's life ends with one of the most high-profile young proponents of an Open and Distributed Web joining Google, a company that aims to organize all the information in the world and a behemoth that many free spirits online eye with ambivalence. What will the future bring for Messina and his work? A look at how he got to Google might offer some clues. It isn't all pretty, some people worry about what the move will mean for the web, but the announcement is definitely important for all of us.

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Where Chris Messina Comes From

Chris Messina grew up in a well-to-do suburb in New Hampshire. As a teenager he railed vocally against a middle class culture that he says he now realizes he was very much a part of. One of his biggest influences, though, was a grandmother with strong Libertarian tendencies.

When Chris entered high school, the web was in its earliest days. He became the school's web master, setting up and running its first web site. A group of students at the school wanted to start a Gay/Straight Alliance support group and were facing some resistance from parents and school officials. Messina took it upon himself to post a free b/> [...]

Thu Jan 07, 2010 18:30 pm

A new study from Retrevo (over 1,000 non-Retrevo users) looks at interest in the iPad ahead of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week. The company emailed WebProNews with a round-up of significant findings.

So without beating around the bush, let's just get to them.

Study Highlights:

- 52% of people surveyed say they "don't need" an iPad
- 38% of people say the iPad is "too expensive"
- 10% of people are "waiting for a good excuse" to buy an iPad

Obviously competition for the iPad is on the way, and it has been widely speculated that Google's Android will play a major role in that. Retrevo asked people interested in buying a tablet, "What would make you buy an Android-based tablet over an iPad?"

- 53% say they'd get the Android-based tablet, "If it was less expensive than the iPad."

- 33% say they'd get the Android-based tablet, "If Verizon was the carrier."

- 28% say they'd get the Android-based tablet, "If it was discounted as part of a subscription service (like a cell phone contract)."

- 22% say they'd get the Android-based tablet, "for other reasons."

- 16% say they would still buy an iPad, regardless.

This week Apple announced that it sold 2 million iPads in less than 60 days. Last Friday, the company began the iPad's international push. It will be quite interesting to see how iPad sales/> [...]

Fri Jun 04, 2010 08:15 am

Provided Courtesy Of:   Google tonight acquired YouTube in a $1.65bn (£884m) all share deal making the 18-month-old video-sharing website one of the fastest internet success stories ever.

The deal, which dwarfs the $580m (£310m) that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation paid for social networking website MySpace last year, puts Google ahead of its rivals as the internet moves into the video generation.

The deal will see Google technology power search and advertising technology to YouTube.

For Google, YouTube marks the culmination of a new wave digital land grab. Earlier this summer, Google struck a $900m three-year deal to provide search and advertising services to MySpace and other News Corp sites, beating rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft to secure the contract.

Particularly galling for Microsoft was the fact that Google had previously beaten it to a $1bn deal with AOL.

The Google/YouTube deal, which is entirely comprised of Google stock, will turn YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen into instant multi-millionaires.

Announcing the deal, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said the two companies were a natural fit.

“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google's mission,” he said. “Our companies share similar values … together we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.”

Rumours began to surface of a possible deal last week, and further reports over the weekend suggested that a deal could be imminent. The speculation came hot on the heels of the news that Yahoo! was considering a $1bn acquisition of Facebook, the social networking site.

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Océ Part Three: Change Management

This is part three in a multi-part series on how Océ is implementing Enterprise 2.0 within their organization. Part one covered the business drivers of Enterprise 2.0, and part two covered making the push for Enterprise 2.0

Today I will cover how Océ dealt with change management issues.

Océ was faced with how to deal with the current company culture.  Traditionally, employees were not encouraged to ask questions or be open about personal doubts and ideas.  Employees were oftentimes perceived as being weak if they had doubts about something and as a result, they refrained from asking questions or challenging ideas.  This was a difficult challenge to overcome and I commend Samuel and Jan for being so open and honest about this.  They overcame this culture of closed communication by leading by example.  This meant a few things; the first is that Samuel and Jan had to show their peers that other organizations have successfully adopted an open culture of sharing ideas and expressing doubts and uncertainties.  The second is that Samuel and Jan had to “walk the talk” so to speak and lead by example.  They had to ask questions and openly express their doubts, uncertainties, and need for help.

At one point, a small department called “The New Media Lab” was formed to enable the use of social media while helping to implement new social media tools and ideas.  The “Lab” was comprised of a group of employee/> [...]

Fri Apr 30, 2010 17:15 pm