I'm hearing people talking about mission/purpose/values in the venture investing world more frequently. It shouldn't really be a surprise given the tectonic shifts in the systems of our society. From some perspectives it's "the right thing to do". From others it's a straight-forward commercial opportunity with good market fundamentals. What is often surprising to folks however is how much is already underway and who is involved.
MaRS released a white-paper that's a great primer for those that are interested. It's the beginning of what's sure to be a great series and if you are interested in digging more into this area ...
A couple of weeks ago, Scoble had a epiphany that ‘hashtags are dead...’. That epiphany was really more about realtime search than the future of hashtags. If anything, inline tags (hashtags) are going to be an increasingly important aspect of the realtime web.
Inline tags are simply the combination of a unique character and a keyword (e.g. #tag). Introduced to Twitter by Chris Messina back in 2007, hashtags have seen increasing usage around current events, conversation and collaboration. Here’s what makes them uniquely valuable, particularly in the public micro-message:
Natural, fast, easy
Requiring only an additional keystroke they become part of natural practice, ...
Popularized by Twitter, the public micro-messaging medium is leading to a major evolution of the web and society.
Twitter is just the beginning of this real-time internet - the simplest manifestation of this long term trend - that spells the end of communications and start of an interaction society. ~ Om Malik, What Twitter and Broadband Mean to Me.
The public micro-message medium represents the potential for a 4 billion person global message board, where anyone can share their interests, ideas, and actions real-time, and where every message can be seen, referenced, and responded to by anyone directly, person to person. This ...
Igniter :-P RT @JPBarlow: If you ever reach total enlightenment while you're drinking a beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose. - Jack Handy [igniter].