My Business' best links

We’ve been bookmarking furiously in our travels across the Net this week. Here are the results, including a debunking of some social media myths, a look at what makes a good conspiracy theory and an explanation of 'freemium' business models.

One of the things that often causes us to laugh nervously here in the My Business office is an approach from a “social media expert”. We find that declaration contentious, given social media has been around for about five years and changes with furious speed. Not a lot of time to become an expert, surely?

This piece from Gallup Management Journal challenges three of the assertions we hear from those experts, namely that social media “effectively drives customer acquisition, that social networkers are all the same, and that social networking is an online-only phenomenon.”

Another new business phenomenon is the “freemium” business model, which gets nicely dissected here.

Tech-lovers around the globe are lauding this piece, in which the Wall Street Journal picks apart the poor decisions that Hewlett Packard has made over the last year. Don’t be put off reading this because you think what happens at a global titan cannot apply to you: there are some obvious lessons here about lack of leadership.

Bernard Salt’s weekly columns are buried in an obscure part of The Australian. We wonder if that’s a conspiracy? He has a bit to say on the subject too.

Another thing we watch with fascination in the office is debate in the USA over just how much to cut its government spending. Is the space program a candidate? We expect it will be, given that Americans apparently believe NASA is responsible for about a quarter of public sector dollars. You can find that and nine other myths about the space program here.

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