Yahoo! News published an article today that nicely summarizes the impact of collaborative digital communications platforms in the first decade of the 2000s.

The article’s author, Laura E. Davis, quotes Professor Paul Levinson of Fordham University who states in his book “New New Media”: “In particular, what makes these newer media so important is that it turns the consumers into producers.”

READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

An informative article describing the impending Comcast-NBC deal appears today on Yahoo! TECH: READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

The article, from AP Business Writers, Deborah Yao and Ryan Nakashima, brings up the inevitable questions about whether or not it may be “questionable” for the “hard-wired” delivery service to own a network. According to Yao and Nakashima, Comcast’s direction may in fact change with this acquisition–that: “The future is in content, and the pipes that carry it matter less.” As the lines of propriety of content ownership continue to blur, and the matter of control over what we see, hear, consume, etc. over different media and where we get it expands every day, licensers, consumer groups, etc. are ready to engage in battle.

What this merger will undoubtedly make happen is another important visit to the issues of rights and permissions over content, of ownership and profit and of the unstoppable socialization of media. The debate and the incremental results are sure to continue for a long, long time.

One of my company, Mitra Creative‘s, most important clients is Derive Technologies. We produced Derive’s now multi-award-winning interactive site, and continue to work with them to refine their messaging, support ongoing needs for their website — including the development of new tools, SEO, drawing additional business development/lead generation value from it, and much more — and .

Derive is a renowned, Wall Street Area-based Infrastructure consultancy which has served the needs of New York businesses for more than two decades. Their reputation as technology problem-solvers for small to large clients in the Healthcare, Financial Services, State and Local Government, Legal, Advertising, and Education industries is nearly legendary. Leading worldwide brands such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Microsoft and Citrix have turned to Derive not just as high-volume sellers of their services, but as Elite, Platinum and Gold alliance partners–the highest level of relationship that solution providers like Derive can attain. With Citrix, Derive is a “Platinum Solution Advisor,” wherein, according to Citrix, they “play a big role in Citrix processes, programs and policies and are a valuable business resource in designing and improving our route to market engines with customers.” Derive also maintains Platinum, Gold and other marquis-level relationships with giants such as Cisco, VMware, Panasonic and others, and has built a powerful Healthcare technology specialization extending far beyond standard IT sales and support.

Derive’s John Wood, a partner in the business, and the company’s Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development,  is a visionary. He attended several of the seminars that I have been giving on behalf of Mitra Creative — largely, to-date, for Microsoft partners — about Web 2.0 origins and tools, and the use of online social communities/social networking, Blogging, and social sharing for business development, lead-generation, problem-solving, viral marketing, talent recruitment and more. Most of the presentations that I have made have been to the owners of IT Business Consultancies and to marketers. After seeing/hearing one of my presentations, the highly forward-thinking John Wood asked me to give a talk on the same topic to Derive’s Sales team. Challenged with giving Sales professionals tools to increase their customer reach, John is not satisfied only using the “standard” techniques and offerings that are commonplace in the IT Channel. He sees the current and future wave of social media and wants to get the Derive team ahead of the curve.

I attended, and made my “IT Business 2.0″ presentation in, a Derive Sales meeting, held yesterday (6/16/2009). I was thrilled to observe such attentive faces and active listening as I discussed the use of communities such as LinkedIn as a “living CRM” for business development and resource acquisition, the social-professional use of Facebook profiles and pages — including a “how-to” guide and responding to questions about appropriateness and methods of personal and professional information sharing — the power of twitter and micro-blogging, the reach of viral marketing through social sharing/bookmarking (especially to promote company — and/or company + partner — events and news), the use of other social networks (especially contextual and industry-specific networks), my Web 2.0 “chaos theory” (yes, “good chaos!”), etc. During and after the hour-long presentation, there was plenty of lively dialogue and were many questions. The time flew by… and I was barely able to scratch the surface! I felt that, both for the audience and for me, there was a hunger for more. I was right–at least 10 members of the Sales team asked me to come back and do a follow-up session. Before I could say that I’d be happy to approach John about scheduling another appearance, the next question from these Sales executives — of many different professional profiles, ages, etc. — was “when?”… this, meaning how soon can you (*I) do it?

John Wood knew the session would be very valuable for Derive’s Sales team and that they would have interest in the topic. However, when I told him that so many people approached me about a follow-up presentation, he was bowled over by their enthusiasm. “I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years…” John said to me. “In all that time, and after sitting through countless presentations to Sales, I’ve NEVER remembered this team, or any Sales team, asking for someone to come back again. CONGRATULATIONS.” (He followed this with a high-five-like handshake.) Always the cutting-edge marketer, now eager to adopt the principles of Web 2.0, John then said: “You should talk about what happened today at Derive on the Mitra Creative Blog and let everyone know about it. I encourage everyone in the Channel to engage Mitra to educate them on this important topic!”

I look forward to the next session for Derive — which we will schedule soon (in which I will speak about the nuts and bolts of permissions and privacy, more about the tactical use of contextual and vertical social networks, about Blogging, and about creating and implementing a corporate policy on Social Media use) — and to conducting more of these programs for other important IT Business Solution providers.

Mitra Creative is excited to announce our new Digital Video Production practice. The practice is led by filmmakers Joe Cantor and James Sapione–both of them highly-accomplished cinematographers/videographers, editors and sound recordists.

With this new discipline, Mitra Creative can provide corporations with superb quality intro. videos, video case studies, presentations, learning tools and more, and entertainment and media organizations and others with the very best of entertainment. These productions can be developed end-to-end, leveraging the new creative team, as well as Mitra Creative’s existing, award-winning talent pool which has, for the past four years, driven our communications, interactive design and development, and branding practices.

Please contact me (Karl Joseph Ufert, Mitra Creative’s President) at karlufert@mitracreative.com for more information, for a general quote or to discuss a specific project.

In an interesting article on CMP Technology’s “Internet Evolution” Blog, Dr. Kim Solez makes fascinating connections between medicine and the aggregation of worldwide consensus through the use of Web 2.0 (and I’d venture, of course, Web 3.0). Dr. Solez says in the article:

“We think of technology as enhancing diagnosis and treatment, the science part of medicine, but it also equally well can enhance the art of medicine, the humanistic, people side, and the doctor-patient relationship.”

We who live in the worlds of Internet marketing and communications, and as designers/developers of of Web 2.0 & Web 3.0 platforms couldn’t agree more. This concept is very important to medicine and facilitates more personal dialogue about treatment. It also spills out to numerous other industries that are trying to make the story of their businesses and organizations more human.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE.