Our partnership with the folks at WGBH continues as we join forces again this week to bring you the Xconomy Report. In this week’s innovation news, TripAdvisor goes public and independent, breaking ties with Expedia. Seattle-based Amazon.com makes plans for a Boston-area office, which will open in Cambridge early next year. And much more, including news from Akamai, Nuance, and Metamark Genetics.

In case you missed it this morning, have a listen below. The Xconomy Report airs every Friday at 7:49am on 89.7FM.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Xconomy continues its partnership with WGBH to bring you the latest and greatest in news from Boston’s innovation community. Have a listen to find out about software that may help you work off that Thanksgiving feast, investments in companies that make high-power lasers and plant-harvesting robots, and the Xconomy quote of the week. Plus, get the details on one of Xconomy’s major Boston events, 6×6: Six Cities, Six Big Tech Ideas—this Thursday at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology. The Xconomy Report airs every Friday at 7:49am on 89.7 FM. Listen here:

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Today’s news: Weston, MA-based Biogen Idec, the largest maker of injectable treatments for multiple sclerosis, met its goals in a second clinical trial for an oral pill to treat the disease. The pill reduced flare-ups by 44 percent when taken twice per day, and by 51 percent if taken three times a day. Bedford, MA-based iRobot announced layoffs last week of 8 percent of its staff, or 55 employees across Massachusetts, North Carolina, and California, despite showing a strong third quarter profit. Boston startup accelerator MassChallenge awarded $1 million to be split across 17 startups, and Bay State companies collectively raised $250 million in venture capital last month. The total funding for the third quarter was $505 million, down by about half from the previous quarter when there was talk of a tech bubble.

In case you missed it this morning, have a listen. The Xconomy Report airs every Friday morning at 7:49am on 89.7 FM.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Our exciting partnership with the folks at WGBH continues. Check out this morning’s Xconomy report—a roundup of business, technology, and life sciences news that airs every Friday at 7:49am on 89.7 FM.

Today’s news: Wilmington, MA-based Security Innovation is involved in a transportation safety project that will test a wireless collision avoidance system for cars. Third Rock Ventures put $35 million behind Sage Therapeutics. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is seeking FDA approval for a drug that offers a new way to treat cystic fibrosis. And two Boston-area tech companies are being bought out by West Coast giants.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Xconomy continues to team up with WGBH radio every Friday morning to bring you the Xconomy report, a weekly roundup of business, technology, and life science innovation news and how it’s impacting the local economy. Last week’s report highlighted new technology developed by OvaScience, as well as an update on the MassChallenge competition and a newly announced venture investment for Waltham-based Care.com.

The Xconomy report airs every Friday morning at 7:49am on 89.7 FM. In case you missed it, you can listen here:

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

We’re a few weeks into our partnership with WGBH Radio to provide a weekly roundup of the week’s technology and innovation news and how it’s affecting the economy and other corners of our lives. This week’s Xconomy Report, read by WGBH’s Bob Seay, covered big cleantech and startup incubator financings, as well as deals for a software maker and drug developer.

The segment runs every Friday at 7:49 AM on 89.7. In case you missed today’s, have a listen below.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Boston area radio listeners may have noticed something pretty cool on Friday morning: Xconomy’s on-air debut, during “Morning Edition” on WGBH’s 89.7.  The Xconomy Report segment, which will be a regular feature Fridays at 7:49 am, is the product of a new partnership between us and WGBH Radio. It should come as no surprise that several of us on the Xconomy staff are huge public radio dorks, and WGBH is one of the best in the biz, so we’re really excited about this one.

The idea behind the segment is to give 89.7 listeners a weekly dose of news and analysis about how technology, life sciences, and other innovation industries are affecting the economy and our lives. It is part of a broader effort on WGBH’s part to grow its coverage of innovation—and of course it’s a natural extension of what Xconomy does on our website, in our feeds and newsletters, and through our events.

So without further ado, here’s last week’s segment:

Please tune in to WGBH at 89.7 on Fridays at 7:49 to catch future installments of the Xconomy Report. We hope you’ll enjoy it, and look forward to your feedback at editors@xconomy.com.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Last weekend I decided to get serious about the fact that I live in an earthquake zone, and started putting together a kit with all the food, water, and equipment I’d need to survive for a few days if local services broke down. One of the items that turns up on all of the standard readiness checklists is a battery-powered radio. So I dutifully added “radio” too my shopping list. But then I realized that in an actual emergency, I wouldn’t know what to do with a radio. I know the name of only one local station, KQED, and I don’t think I could even tell you where it’s located on the dial.

It’s not that I don’t listen to lots of radio programming—I do. I’m a huge fan of public radio shows like Fresh Air, Marketplace, and All Things Considered. I just don’t listen to any of this content on radios (except in my car, where I never change the station anyway). Instead, I get my “radio” via Internet streaming and podcasts. So when the big quake hits, I’ll be reduced to surfing the radio dial at random; I’ll feel like the doofus who has to ask where Google is on the computer.

That got me thinking about all the other examples of media-shifting in my life.

—It’s been almost three years since a video signal has entered my television by way of a coaxial cable or a terrestrial broadcast. I get all my TV shows via Netflix, or iTunes on the Apple TV, or the Roku Player.

—I buy plenty of books, but in the last year only four of them have been on paper. I ordered two, a cookbook and a graphic novel, from Amazon, and picked up the other two at local bookstores. The rest came from the Kindle Store.

—I get one print magazine by mail, MIT’s Technology Review, and that’s only because I’m an alum. All of my other magazines (the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Wired) come to my Kindle or my iPad.

—I have several hundred CDs laying around, but I almost never play them. More than 99 percent of my music comes from iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify.

—I read plenty of newspaper articles online, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I bought a printed newspaper. 2004 maybe?

I’m not trying to paint myself as some kind of digital pioneer—I don’t think that any of these media behaviors are that unusual anymore. What’s noteworthy is that when I listen to a podcast of Fresh Air, I still think of it as a radio show. When I’m enjoying a Kindle edition of a novel, I still think of it as a book. When I listen to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” on my iPhone, I think of it as an album. And I read something from the New York Times, I still think of it as a newspaper article.

I probably think this way because the digital versions of these shows, books, albums, and articles are still recognizable as examples of their original genres, though they’ve been ripped from their traditional contexts. The forms have persisted, even after the vessels that shaped them have been taken away.

It appears that Marshall McLuhan was wrong: the medium is not the message. Or at least, the medium is not the whole message. If it were, there’d be no room for online-only newspapers like seattlepi.com, or podcast-only radio productions like Planet Money, or live theatrical broadcasts of New York operas.

But the current stability of form—the traditions that, for example, make a group of eight or nine singles recognizable as an “album”—won’t last forever. Without the old constraints, certain traditions just stop making sense. Take the inverted pyramid style in newspaper writing, for example. This venerable rule, which says that the most newsworthy details in a story should be … Next Page »

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

In a regulatory filing yesterday, Oakland, CA-based Pandora Media revealed the hoped-for terms of its upcoming public offering. The company intends to sell 5 million shares of common stock, while stockholders will sell another 8.7 million shares, at a price of $7 to $9 per share. That would bring in between $96 million and $123 million in new capital and give Pandora a market capitalization of $1.1 to $1.4 billion. The company’s largest shareholders are Crosslink Capital, Walden Venture capital, Greylock Partners, Labrador Ventures, and Hearst Corp.; only Hearst plans to sell shares in the IPO.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Seattle-based Impinj, a 10-year-old RFID tech firm founded by University of Washington professor Chris Diorio, filed registration papers for an initial public offering today. The company said it was seeking up to $100 million. Impinj’s numbers were a little up and down in the past few years: The company went from about $25 million in revenue in 2008 to about $21 million in 2009, before bouncing back to about $32 million last year. Impinj also isn’t profitable, showing a loss of about $11 million for 2010. The company, a survivor of the post dot-com hype around use of RFID for supply-chain tracking, is backed by a number of VC firms, including Madrona Venture Group, Samsung Ventures, and Unilever Technology Ventures. Underwriters for the IPO are listed as Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan, with Needham & Co., Pacific Crest Securities and Raymond James.

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:          

Oakland, CA-based Pandora, the vastly popular personalized streaming music service, filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission today in preparation for an initial public offering this year. In the filing, the company said it hopes to raise as much as $100 million in a sale of common stock, and revealed that it is nearly profitable: It suffered a net loss of just $0.3 million in the first nine months of 2010, against revenue of $55.2 million. (The company earns money primarily on advertising through the Pandora website, though it also collected $5 million in fiscal 2010 for premium subscription services.) Venture backer Crosslink Capital owns the largest chunk of Pandora shares (23 percent), according to the filing; Walden Venture Capital, Greylock Partners, Labrador Ventures, the Hearst Corporation, and GGV Capital also stand to profit from the offering. Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan will underwrite the IPO.

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

Relume Technologies might become one of the great growth stories in the state of Michigan’s tech sector next year. The Oxford, MI-based maker of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting products and networked lighting control systems is aiming for significant increases in revenue and employment over the next year, president and chief technology officer Peter Hochstein says.

The company raised its first institutional capital last year from Beringea, the Farmington Hills, MI-based venture firm, Hochstein says. Ever since, the company has been investing in modernizing its manufacturing operations in Oxford and improving its sales and distribution. The investment appears to be paying off.

Relume, which is expecting sales of around $8 million this year, has gained orders for next year that could help the firm double its revenue in 2011, Hochstein says. Also, the firm might double its work force of about 50 people over the next year because of the expected increase in business. In the first quarter of 2011, he says, the company expects to raise more money from Beringea as one of multiple investments that are expected to total about $7 million.

The LED market consists of major players like General Electric, Osram Sylvania, and Philips Lighting, but when it comes to the design and assembly of LED lighting products, “no one does anything close to what we do,” Hochstein says.

Relume has differentiated methods for fabricating its lighting assemblies to make them last longer and perform better than others, Hochstein says. While the firm doesn’t produce LED semiconductors, it makes … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Something like 50 million Americans spend at least an hour a day commuting to work, which is a lot of people and a lot of time. For entrepreneurs who aspire to deliver audio content over the wireless Web, this is turning into a huge market of potential consumers up for grabs.

More and more of these commuters carry smartphones with wireless data plans, and there’s an abundance of content that can, in principle, be sent on-demand to those devices, from NPR podcasts to CNN news videos to streaming radio stations. The problem is that it takes some work to locate all that content and get it onto your device—which is where audio-aggregator services like Stitcher, MediaFly, and Aha Mobile come in. Then there’s the issue of making the technology so simple that it doesn’t make drivers distracted. When audio equipment maker Harman bought Palo Alto, CA-based Aha last month, Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal called safe in-vehicle Internet access “one of the biggest challenges facing the infotainment industry” and portrayed it as a major growth area for the company.

Such a big market is unlikely to have one dominant player, and this month a new one jumped into the mix: San Francisco-based startup AudioPress. The company’s free iPhone app was released on Columbus Day, and has already climbed to the No. 4 spot in the iTunes App Store’s list of the most popular free news apps; it also won a coveted spot in the “New and Noteworthy” section of the iTunes App Store’s front page. Judging from user reviews, the app is hitting a sweet spot: it lets people subscribe to podcasts and hear the latest episodes on demand without having to sync with iTunes or figure out what they’ve already listened to. “This could become my one-stop, go-to streaming app,” gushes one reviewer.

I met recently with Taylor Bollman, the CEO and founder of AudioPress, who says the idea behind the advertising-supported app is to let commuters create their own lineups of audio programming from the app’s catalog of podcasts, radio stations, and other content. By stringing audio selections together into custom playlists, users can ensure they won’t run out of fresh content while they’re supposed to be concentrating on driving. “The problem we’re addressing here is the person who gets in the car and wants to switch between podcasts and audiobooks and updates on local traffic, then tune into the radio to hear weather, then check for stocks or sports scores, all while they’re driving to and form work,” Bollman says.

Stitcher and Aha Radio are similarly configurable, but AudioPress has an added ingredient that could set it apart from the competition. It’s called AudioArticles: long-form pieces, based on newspaper, magazine, or wire service content, that are read aloud by human voiceover artists (not synthesized voices). Think of it as Audible.com for news. The first AudioPress AudioArticles are all based on Associated Press content, with 20 to 40 new articles available every day. But Bollman says the company is working to bring in articles from other sources such as The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and Technology Review. “That enables access to a huge universe of quality content that people often don’t get to read, but may have extra time to listen to during their commute,” Bollman says.

Bollman is a New England expatriate who formerly analyzed the mobile technology sector as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. He says the AudioArticles concept was the seed idea that the rest of the AudioPress business grew around. While walking to … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Things are evolving quickly over at DataXu. Six months after announcing a new $11 million round of venture financing, the Boston-based online advertising software firm has expanded its focus to help its corporate customers reach a wider swath of consumers wherever they are.

Earlier this week, DataXu (pronounced “Data Zoo”) rolled out what it calls “the industry’s first three-screen demand side platform.” That’s online ad-speak for giving digital advertisers new tools for optimizing how, when, and where they place ads across the Web, video, and mobile devices. So the company now gives buyers of online display ads a way to make spending decisions across these separate digital channels.

“It’s a big change for us—a big addition,” says DataXu CEO Mike Baker, who was previously a vice president with Nokia (after its acquisition of his startup Enpocket). Baker is also an active angel investor in digital media, and was formerly a partner at venture firm GrandBanks Capital.

DataXu’s core technology helps online advertisers decide which ad purchases are most likely to pay off in terms of click-throughs and conversions. It analyzes dozens of parameters such as the location of the viewer, the day of the week and time of day, and the content of the ad. The software does all of this 100,000 times (or more) per second, “learning” as it goes by measuring actual click-through rates for ads the engine has placed. The startup’s 50-odd customers include big companies such as Ford, American Express, and Adobe, says Baker.

By expanding to mobile and video, DataXu is positioning itself as one-stop shopping for advertisers who want real-time information on consumer behavior across all available digital channels—especially mobile advertising, which might finally be ready for prime time. The company’s new product includes tools to measure consumer intent through surveys and other kinds of engagement metrics, Baker says.

Still, DataXu plays in a crowded and noisy sector, with hundreds of startups … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Cambridge, MA-based Vanu, a provider of wireless infrastructure software, raised $2.1 million of a planned $5.2 million offering of equity, options, and warrants, according to an SEC filing. The company, whose software radio technology uses software to mimic functions typically handled by hardware in traditional radios, raised $32 million in a Series B financing two years ago. Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen is listed as a Vanu board member on the filing for the newest funding. Vanu’s previous investors include Charles River Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Tata Capital.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

When last we checked in with Ken Carnesi, the co-founder and CEO of Anaptyx, he was busy setting up a free Wi-Fi network in Harvard Square. He was also starting to bring his Boston-area company’s wireless Internet service, meant primarily for apartments and condo buildings, to new cities around the country.

Today he’s helping to switch on an important new service in his own backyard. The City of Boston and the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway Conservancy have just announced that free wireless Internet access is now available throughout the Greenway parks—the relatively new series of green spaces that cut through downtown Boston and the financial district, from the North End to Chinatown.

That means your laptop, iPhone, BlackBerry, or other terribly addictive device will be able to get on the Web when you’re out and about in the parks. It also means workers and visitors in the office buildings that line the parks can access the network, which is called “Greenway.” It’s one of the biggest free Wi-Fi hotspots in the state.

While the city played a leading role in this project—including donating the fiber-optic connections and light poles that support the network—it’s an even bigger deal for Anaptyx, being a small company. The Watertown, MA-based startup designed and built the mesh network, which is made up of about 15 radios and can adjust itself automatically if any of the individual units fails. The network will also allow city workers to remotely monitor the parks’ fountains, lighting, and irrigation systems. “It’s the most visible project we’ve done to date,” says Carnesi, whose background is in management and finance.

Anaptyx is just over three years old and has grown to seven full-time employees. The company was mostly self-funded, and has been profitable almost from its inception. In a strategic move, it started making its own hardware last November. And yes, its Harvard Square Wi-Fi network is still up and running. The network, created with MIT spinoff Meraki, serves upwards of 600 people a day, and had more than 100,000 total users as of six months ago, says Carnesi.

So what are the prospects of getting free wireless access throughout Boston? After all, here we are two years later, and it still hasn’t happened. The Greenway project could be “key for the city to get free Wi-Fi,” Carnesi says. “Over the next year you’re going to see it happening a lot more. They’re definitely still pushing for it. It’s closer than it ever was.”

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

As the Web enters its third decade, it’s getting harder to think of industries that haven’t been transformed in major ways by its ubiquitous, disintermediating, democratizing force. But we wrote about one of them last week—banking—and there’s another that’s just as ubiquitous as the Web itself: broadcast radio.

“If Alexander Graham Bell came from the past and saw the current stage of the telecom industry, with its massive change in network architecture and wireless devices, for example, he wouldn’t recognize it,” says Mike Dougherty, CEO and co-founder of San Mateo, CA-based Jelli. “But if Charles David Harold, the first guy who started a radio station—which was in San Jose, incidentally, in 1909—came into today’s radio world, he would probably recognize everything about the technology…There hasn’t been a lot of innovation in radio for a long time, for lots of reasons.”

At Jelli, Dougherty and co-founder and COO/CTO Jateen Parekh are doing their part to modernize terrestrial radio, one station at a time. For the last six months, San Francisco-based CBS affiliate Live 105 (KITS) has been handing over its airwaves to Jelli’s automated, Web-based audience voting software six nights a week, with an electrifying effect on ratings. Through radio syndicator Triton Media, Jelli programming now airs on 18 stations nationwide, including X107.5 in Las Vegas (WZRX)—which will launch a Jelli-powered program called “Resistance Radio” at 9:00 p.m. tonight.

The basic idea behind Jelli is to let a radio station’s listeners decide which songs get air time, at least for part of each day. “It’s a crowdsourcing concept,” says Dougherty. “Rather than being chosen by a programming director or a DJ, the playlist is now being developed by the audience itself. We call it ‘social broadcasting’ or ‘radio democracy.’”

Of course, there’s nothing new about letting listeners suggest songs. Radio stations have been taking call-in requests since the 1940s. But Jelli’s concept goes well beyond that. Once listeners are logged into Jelli’s website, they can not only vote for their favorite songs, but use “power-ups” to push a song to the front or back of the queue. They can also influence what’s currently playing, through votes called “Rocks” or “Sucks.” Enough “Sucks” votes and a song will implode in mid-stream, complete with funny sound effects. It’s all a great example of what Greg has called the “gamification” of the Web—or in this case, the airwaves.

Dougherty, Parekh, and their backers—who include Battery Ventures, First Round Capital, and a variety of angel investors—hope that the Jelli concept will become the next big thing in radio, helping an industry that’s been hit especially hard by the recession. The goal is to help stations find new ways of engaging with listeners while at the same time lowering programming costs. A station syndicating Jelli doesn’t need a DJ during the hours Jelli’s platform is in control, which makes the format “highly cost effective,” in Dougherty’s words.

That’s key in a business that saw an 18 percent revenue decline in 2009, thanks to the evaporation of key advertising accounts with sectors like the automobile industry. “This year it’s back up about 16 percent, which gives them some breathing room, but it was a wakeup call that … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

A new law is about to go into effect in San Francisco requiring sellers of mobile phones to post the “Specific Absorption Rate” (SAR) levels of the devices. How will conveying this information to consumers affect sales of mobile phones and devices—and which manufactures will feel the burden of this new stigma?

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association defines SAR as “a way of measuring the quantity of radio frequency (RF) energy that is absorbed by the body.” For a mobile phone to be sold in the United States or Canada, its maximum SAR level must be less than 1.6 watts per kilogram. In Europe, the highest allowed SAR level is 2 watts per kilogram.

I should state now that currently there is no concrete evidence that current SAR levels affect humans in any detrimental way. Some studies have shown that cellular radiation has no affect on the human body and does not cause cancer, while others say that higher levels of radiation with continued usage can have an impact on human physiology.

But it is likely that people’s fears of “radiation” will lead consumers to view higher numbers as negative, even if only subconsciously, which will affect mobile device sales.

By requiring sellers of mobile devices to post SAR numbers, the manufacturers on the low end of the scale would have an additional tool in their marketing arsenal to convince buyers that their device is the better choice for you. The numbers will probably not affect the buying decisions of brand loyalists, in the same way that nutrition facts don’t stop many consumer from buying food that may not be the healthiest of choices.

San Francisco may be the first city in the country to require SAR number to be posted, but will other jurisdictions follow suit? If more cities and states start requiring SAR levels to be posted along with the device, it may indeed begin to affect sales of devices in the upper range of “acceptable” limits. If manufacturers jump on the low-SAR band wagon and reduce their SAR levels by either lowering the power of their handsets or inserting shielding, we may see less reliable phones and more dropped calls.

What do you think about having the SAR numbers displayed with the mobile device? Will a higher number affect your buying decision? Do you have a phone in the “high” risk area, and how does that make you feel about continued use of the device? Let’s get a discussion going.

Data sources for charts: Environmental Working Group (http://www.ewg.org/node/2839, http://www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/Get-a-Safer-Phone?allphones=1)

Comments (2) | Reprints | Share:          

Where the heck did all these group-buying websites come from? With the rise of Groupon, LivingSocial, BuyWithMe, and dozens of other smaller daily-deal sites, suddenly it seems like every Web entrepreneur and his brother are out to make a quick buck. So maybe the better question is, where is this all going?

Tippr.com is the Seattle representative in this scrum. The local-deals startup—which rolled out its site in February, based on patents purchased from Mercata, an old Paul Allen-backed dot-com—has been on an expansion and acquisition tear recently, punctuated by its purchase of Austin, TX-based FanForce, which was just announced today. Chief executive Martin Tobias says Tippr now has 21 employees (up from four at the start of this year) and 20-25 open positions around the country.

The company has a pretty compelling expansion strategy. It couples consumer-facing deals sites in different geographies (10 U.S. cities and counting) with a technology platform approach that is the focus of its latest acquisition. Tobias, the sometimes controversial entrepreneur and investor, did not mince words about the FanForce deal today. “They realized what they were doing was covered by my patents,” he says. “It’s a great fit, we love the management team. We love their drive. These are serious startup guys.”

Tippr’s and FanForce’s software is targeted at “anyone in the publishing business,” Tobias says. That means everyone from niche blogs and online communities to big newspaper groups, radio and TV companies, and tech companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google. The idea is that these sites can hook up to Tippr’s platform, and quickly start making money on daily deals and collective coupons from local businesses. “They’re all sitting there saying, ‘Hey, Groupon is competing for the local merchant marketing dollars.’ They have all called us,” Tobias says.

While Groupon shares revenue with merchants, Tippr’s approach is to cut in the Web publishers. If the right publishers eventually sign up (think MSN, Hearst, or Viacom, hypothetically), the market could be much larger than that for a single branded site like Groupon. That’s a big “if,” though.

In the meantime, Tobias declined to give any stats on revenue or percentage growth just yet. But he says, “The numbers are big…I’m making a [boatload] of money and I’m growing, and I have too much work to do.” Which is why he says he’s hiring aggressively.

Entrepreneurs I’ve talked to around town seem to think Tippr could be on to something big. But the window of Wild West opportunity—rumor has it a couple guys in a garage can make $300,000 … Next Page »

Comments (9) | Reprints | Share:          

Every once in a while, I sit down with a businessperson who brings a unique perspective to a huge global trend—and helps me see things in a profound new light. In this case, that person is Kelly Jo MacArthur, and the global trend is the explosion of social media and its broader impact on corporations.

MacArthur was the former general counsel, senior vice president, and chief of staff at Seattle-based RealNetworks—and she also did a stint at Linden Lab, creators of the virtual world Second Life—so she has her digital media and Internet technologies down cold. A 10-year veteran of Real, she left the company in 2007 and has been focusing on consulting work with startups, big companies, and other organizations across the fields of social media, networking technologies, cleantech and sustainability, traditional media, and arts.

We were talking recently about the future of companies like Twitter and Facebook, and what struck me was the way MacArthur thinks of social media as an inevitable—and inherently predictable—evolution of communication technologies on the Internet. That means smart entrepreneurs and executives should be able to anticipate how all of this is affecting societal behavior, and what the new opportunities will be. What’s more, she’s finding that these technologies are forcing big companies and organizations to completely rethink their core strategy and value proposition—indeed, their very existence.

Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation:

Xconomy: So what are you hearing from companies out in the field?

Kelly Jo MacArthur: In my own work as a strategic advisor to CEOs, various boards, and executives on their corporate strategy, the inevitable conversation is, “What should we be doing with social media?” I’m not a marketing person—they work with their advertising and marketing agencies—but it leads you to the conversation that each business, especially in more traditional, entrenched industries, should be thinking about how they’re relevant in the future. And how we as citizens and consumers are demanding more, and also participating more, in the offerings and opportunities that these businesses have.

There’s a huge opportunity, no matter what business you’re in, if you’re constantly thinking ahead about how we as societies are shifting. Versus focusing on, “Should I be using this tool, or should I have a Facebook page?” You should be using these tools for your … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share: