For the first time at ACORD LOMA one of the sessions was a discussion, a workshop on a topic that required the audience to participate.  The session, “Social Media in Business: Friend, Foe, or Who Cares” was moderated by Mike Fitzgerald of Celent and in the end was well attended and well received. When I [...]

As if financial institutions don’t already have enough to do to keep up with developments in social media! They must clearly outline company policy to employees concerning what should and should not be posted, inform agents of the regulatory do’s and don’ts, and continually scan the internet to respond to comments about their brand. Now, [...]

It is widely agreed that baby boomers and seniors are increasing their on-line presence. On multiple occasions, I have heard this observation made, followed by a statement to the effect that “they want to keep up with their families and post pictures of their grandchildren”. Data from Pew Research actually shows that these groups are [...]

Our esteemed social networking guru, Craig Beattie, circulated a blog posting that he found at http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/12297_3905931_1/Pre-crime-Comes-to-the-HR-Dept.htm It describes an internet company, Social Intelligence that monitors social networks to help companies with hiring decisions. Their data mining tool collects information from the major sites looking for behavior-based information about job applicants and summarizes what is found [...]

The story that Ben & Jerry’s are dropping email marketing in favour of social media hit something of a sweet spot with me. Not only do I not like trawling the ever increasing mass of emails each day but I also have a keen interest in how the Internet is evolving and a highly developed [...]

The story that Ben & Jerry’s are dropping email marketing in favour of social media hit something of a sweet spot with me. Not only do I not like trawling the ever increasing mass of emails each day but I also have a keen interest in how the Internet is evolving and a highly developed [...]

My colleagues, Catherine Stagg-Macey and Craig Beattie, released a research report today titled Leveraging Social Networks: An In-Depth View for Insurers. They predict that “insurers will increasingly use public shared data to inform pricing decisions and aid in fraud detection.” They cite several situations where data held on social networks has already been used in [...]

A new product – as yet unnamed but dubbed ‘The Facebook Cap’ – is every social networker’s dream. Fitted with 3G, GPS, and a digital camera, the cap keeps all of your friends up-to-date with your location and pictures of what you are doing uploaded to Facebook.com every 3 minutes. A 16 core computer and [...]

Google tends to get a lot of press simply because it’s Google, although it’s fair to say Google has got a few things wrong with some of its products – anyone remember Orkut, or all the hype around Google Wave? One thing is certain Google have got a lot right about its launch of Google [...]

As reported in the press today, Legal & General here is the UK is considering adding the usage of social network sites in deciding on premiums. On the back of their own commissioned research, the company believes that burglars are increasingly using sites such as Facebook to identify targets. I can understand the logic of [...]