Santa’s Virtual Elves

I’ll be jetting off to Singapore early in the A.M. for the IBM InterConnect event, where I’ll be both blogging and broadcasting (via LiveStream and YouTube), interviewing a variety of IBM execs, partners, and clients.

Tune your TweetDeck now to hashtag #ibminterconnect to keep track of the festivities.  The event officially kicks off next Tuesday, October 9th.

As I was scanning my newsfeeds to catch up on what I’ve been missing all day while preparing for all those interviews, I saw that Facebook reached 1 billion users, although some of their recent moves, including the alteration of their algorithm to minimize brand page posts being seen by those who have opted in to “liking” that page, may start sending those numbers due south.

I also discovered that Microsoft is slated to launch its new Surface tablet at midnight on October 26th.

Midnight?  Really??  You guys couldn’t come up with something more original than that? 12:15, maybe? Or 12:30, even?

Sorry, dudes, I’m all tabletted out, although I will be keeping an eye on the horizon to see what gives with the iPad Mini.

Speaking of holiday shopping, the National Retail Federation released some important holiday shopping forecasts earlier this week that bear sharing.

The NRF’s 2012 holiday forecast expects sales will increase this season by 4.1 percent ($586.1 billion), well above the 10-year holiday average, but behind the 2011 season of 5.6 percent.

To which I say, “Bah, Humbug.” I do most ALL my holiday shopping online, so I’ll be doing my personal best to get those numbers up.  And I expect to pick up a few IBM “Smarter Commerce” tricks of the trade at the sessions next week in Singapore, which I’ll share.

Although I am inclined to show up on Black Friday to run at Wal-Mart with the mortar shopping “bulls!” Nothing like a little full contact holiday shopping, taking down a few eager shoppers to grab that last “Tickle Me Elmo!”

Kidding!

All these holiday tidings come just ahead of today’s news by Thomson Reuters, which reported that back-to-school sales growth slowed in September after “a strong August,” according to The New York Times “Economy” section.

Little Johnny don’t need no more pencils, Mom.  Get in line and buy that kid a Nexus 7!

But the story doesn’t end there.

AlixPartners’ Joel Bines is also quoted in the story as saying this doesn’t necessarily bode badly for the holiday shopping season, as no “conclusive” ten-year correlation between back-to-school and holiday sales seems evident.

As for me, as I fly Eastward, I’m going to have to start giving some serious consideration to my own Christmas holiday shopping list for Santa.

Of course, I’ve been extremely bad this year, which is par for the course, but hey, it never hurts to ask!

Next stop, Singapore, where I hope NOT to participate in any caning demonstrations.

But keep an eye out on YouTube just in case.

Live @ IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Orlando: Twitter Editorial Director Karen Wickre On Effective Communication In 140 Characters Or Less

Karen Wickre is Editorial Director at Twitter, where she shapes the way the company communicates publicly. She has worked the editorial side of publishing for 20+ years as an editor, author, columnist and content strategist. Previously, Karen worked at Google, for which she developed the company’s corporate content strategy, and built its blog and Twitter platforms into global channels.

Karen Wickre, currently the editorial director for Twitter, has been on the vanguard of digital and social media communications for over a decade.

During her nine-year stint at Google, she helped found the Google Corporate Blog, which paved the way for Google’s more aggressive embrace of blogging for not only corporate communications, but also knowledge sharing and Google product enablement.

More recently, she’s served as the editorial director for Twitter, helping Twitter employees and customers communicate as widely and engagingly as is possible in 140 characters or less.

During our interview at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Orlando last week, Karen and I chatted about the early days of social media, then worked our way forward to more cutting-edge concerns, including Twitter celebrity, Twitter’s key role in helping share the zeitgeist of live events, Twitter’s increasing international reach, and yes, even the ever-feared “DM Fail.”

Karen’s insights into both the philosophy and reality of effective social media communications can impact organizations everywhere looking to build their own smarter commerce strategies.

You can follow her on Twitter at @kvox.

Less is More?

It’s good to see some good news these days.

EWeek has a story today that suggests the tech sector hasn’t been hit nearly as hard as some other industries in terms of job losses.

That’s not to say it’s been pretty.

According to the story, between January and June, we lost 115K jobs, much of that in tech manufacturing.

Overall, starting in June 2008, tech lost 224,100 jobs, a 3.7 percent workforce decline in the IT sector, as opposed to the overall U.S. private sector, 5.1 percent.

I guess things could be worse…unless you’re one of that 3.7 percent.

If you did lose your tech job, you might want to thinking about sending your resume to the gang at Twitter.

The Wall Street Journal Deal Journal reports today that Twitter is nearing a deal to close as much as $100M of new funding from as many as seven investors.

The new valuation from these investors has Twitter worth an estimated $1B.  Them’s a whole bunch of Tweets.

Speaking of Twitter, has anybody checked out the new TweetDeck on the Mac (I’m at V 0.30.5)?

Wow, that full Facebook Newsfeed with photos and links and all is VERY cool and extremely useful.  More and more, TweetDeck is my Twitter/Facebook-streaming console du jour.  Keep up the great work there, yo.

If you didn’t like the new TweetDeck (and it’s doubtful that you did), soon you’ll be able to use a new tool from Google to comment right there on the Website.

Google “SiteWiki” is a new Google Toolbar addon, which is intended to let anyone with a Google account comment about a Web site or even add content.

Crowdsourcers, start your engines…and your markup!

This move extends the Google juggernaut to ALL Web pages everywhere throughout the known Universe.

Sources are telling me that the new Mars toolbar extension, which allows Martians to communicate directly with we humans via the Google operating system, will be entering beta shortly.

But only after Google can get the temperature on Mars WAY up…it’s too frickin’ cold there now, even for the Google Chrome browser, which was thought to be impervious to extreme temperatures at either end of the thermometer.

Me, I’d just like to be able to say hi to Marvin and hear him say just one more time:

“Capture that creature and return my elunium pu36 explosive space modulator!”