Doug Hamlin

  • The Queen sees Internet trends, and they’re largely mobile

    People sometimes ask why I have seemingly random slides pinned to the wall behind my desk. The slides are all from past presentations given by longtime Morgan Stanley analyst-turned-Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Mary Meeker, once named “Queen of the Net” by Barron’s. Well, Meeker unleashed... Read more

  • The word of mouth grilled cheese

    There’s a grilled cheese man in New York who runs the most delicious anti-social business I’ve ever heard of. I say he’s anti-social not because he doesn’t have a blog or share widgets and whatnot, but because he appears out of thin air with with... Read more

  • User experience first

    Like any business that charges on an hourly basis, we have a time-tracking system. The system is slow, prone to crashing and chock-full of icons that give little indication of what their purpose in life is. It is, quite simply, the epitome of bad user... Read more

  • Mobile social media. (But I’m being redundant.)

    The talk of the Internet today (or at least my inbox and Twitter stream) is this chart from eMarketer showing the results of a recent survey that asked U.S. marketers which social media efforts would have the greatest effect on their companies and brands. Leading... Read more

  • What is mobile?

    “What is your mobile strategy” is a question that has received a lot of attention this year. In fact, I’m ready to call it the question of the year, just as pundits declared 2010 the year of mobile (and 2009, 2008 and 2007 before that).... Read more

  • Apple deleting Consumer Reports discussions, learned nothing from Whole Foods

    Did Apple learn nothing from Whole Foods? The high-end purveyor of beets and quinoa found itself in the midst of controversy last August over a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by CEO John Mackey. The article was bad P.R. to begin with, but what happened next... Read more

  • Twitter gets official iPhone, Blackberry apps. Is it shooting itself in the foot?

    On Wednesday, Union Square Ventures founder and Twitter venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote on his blog that Twitter has reached an inflection point, a post that was widely seen as threatening to third-party developers of applications that live on top of the Twitter platform. Would... Read more

  • Don’t lie to your mom

    Last week’s Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event featured a lively discussion about ethics and law. The event exemplified the fact that there still exists a large gulf between what is ethical and what is legal, and that marketers need to continue asking themselves every... Read more

  • Check in and tweet with the swipe of a card

    Last week, I wrote how location-based services are making loyalty marketing sexy; today Tasti D-Lite has introduced a great example. The frozen dessert and drink peddler appears to be the first retailer to tie an offline activity, swiping a loyalty card at check-out, with location... Read more

  • Get yourself a Twitter conversation list

    One of the greatest things about Twitter is its open API that allows developers to build any kind of application they can imagine on top of the conversation platform. Twitter is famous for not having a lot of features, but when it does add one,... Read more