A few years back, I knew a guy who always had a great idea up his sleeve. He’d share these ideas with anyone that was in his company, and tell of his grand plans for when his ideas made him rich. They would invariably involve Salma Hayek, a yacht and six months at sea… Everyone smiled and asked him not to forget us when he was rich and famous. After all, we were the sounding boards for his ideas and…

Earlier this year, Geoff Livingston and myself shared a post on the state of women in the tech industry, and why/how the situation could improve. The posts sparked quite the discussion across the web, with great points being made from both sides of the coin, and the likes of Robert Scoble becoming involved. Since then, we’ve been working on an idea behind-the-scenes to support the initiative even more. And on May 5, the Thursday before Mother’s Day, we’re going to…

Last week, several web services like Hootsuite, Livefyre, Quora, Foursquare and more crashed as Amazon Web Hosting’s EC2 servers took a nosedive off the diving board and into an empty swimming pool. The technical issues that Amazon experienced meant you couldn’t access the services hosted by Amazon Web (or, if you could, with very limited features). Because of the amount of services using Amazon Web, the outage was a big one and affected users by almost a day. As one…

Welcome to a new episode of Sunday Brunch, where we talk about your questions on social media, marketing, business tips, entrepreneurship and more. Today’s question is one that’s been asked a few times, both in the comments of past blog posts as well as online on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The question is: “How can you use Twitter as a marketing tool?” There are a few ways, and I look at some of these in the video – hope it…

When I was 19 I tried to kill myself. I don’t often speak about this. It’s probably not the kind of topic you talk about at dinner, or on a first date, or when you meet prospective in-laws. Sometimes, though, it’s a good reminder that even dark turns to light, and the follies of youth can make a huge impact on the paths we take as adults. I know this was the case for me, as it made me face…

This is a guest post from Lisa Petrilli. I just spent two full days in a phenomenal leadership simulation program entitled, “Magnetic Leadership” that was conceived, created and offered by Profitability Business Simulations. I had the privilege of playing the role of the customer throughout the simulation, and then coaching the teams and their leaders after each simulation round was completed. During each round, one person on each team was appointed “CEO” and was responsible for determining the overall direction…

People are hungry creatures by nature. Hungry to be liked; hungry to be loved; hungry to be respected; hungry to be successful. That’s good. Without hunger, we have no drive. Without drive, we have no goals. Without goals, we have no yardstick to base our success on. And so the circle comes back around. The problem is, people are more often than not getting speed hungry. They want the like, the love, the respect and the success yesterday. So they…

Hi guys. This post will be short, because your time is needed elsewhere. It’s a short request for help. You may have seen me tweet or share the same message on Facebook, and thank you for your help there. I just wanted to expand a little bit. My friend Deb Morello is trying to raise 5,000 signatures for a petition to lobby the Libyan government to release four freelance journalists currently being held against their will in Libya – James…

Welcome to a new episode of Sunday Brunch, where we talk about your questions on social media, marketing, business tips, entrepreneurship and more. Today’s question is from Gini Dietrich, CEO of communications firm Arment Dietrich and owner of the popular Spin Sucks blog. Gini asks: “Danny, when I saw you speak at PodCamp in Toronto, you said Google is your number one driver of traffic. Our number one driver is Twitter, then Facebook, then Networked Blogs, then Hootsuite, and THEN…

There’s a lot of buzz online at the minute about a video doing the rounds from U.K. online content specialists Purplefeather. In the video (seen below), a blind beggar is struggling to get people to put money in his tin. They see him, but most walk by. Then a girl walks by, sees the man, looks at his sign and has a brainwave (I won’t spoil it in case you haven’t seen the video yet). It’s this action, and the…