Just a few of the millions that go out every day.

In a scant four years, Hamdi Ulukaya has built something that even Silicon Valley types should covet: a $700 million business that’s profitable, dominant and growing at a furious clip.

Even more incredible: Ulukaya makes yogurt.  YOGURT. The stuff comprised of milk and culture.  This is the ancient food that must be produced, packaged and shipped to grocery store chains who, if they feel like stocking their shelves, finally disseminate it to consumers.  It’s perishable (like software rot, but worse).  And the yogurt market is competitive, stocked with old stalwarts such as Yoplait, Dannon and Fage, the king of Greek yogurt before Ulukaya showed up.

On cigarette packages, QR codes reveal a nearby place to smoke

Ronhill has begun to use QR codes on its cigarette packaging to help consumers find a nearby place to smoke.

8th September 2011 in Lifestyle & Leisure.

Social media has succeeded by being more human.

Social media succeeded by abandoning the traditional mindset and assumptions of our machine-based organizations, and instead embracing ideas that are much more consistent with what it means to be human. In social media, relationships matter. So does trust. So do things like meaning, humor, transparency, authenticity, and creativity. Social media is built on the principle that control is a thing of the past, and that the results you get are not always the ones that you were seeking when you started. Those principles are much more aligned with what it means to be human, than with what makes machines work well. That is fundamentally why social media has been so explosive. We like being human. We can’t help it. When we get access to something that lets more of our humanity come out, we are drawn to it. That is why we are flocking to social media.

how do we break down the artificial walls that keep us from creating great things together? How can organizations foster environments that encourage natural, unforced collaboration?

There are no quick fixes, but these are far from insurmountable problems. I propose the following five-level hierarchy as a solution:

There are no shortcuts to breaking down silos. You can’t fix the environment if the organization doesn’t understand the problem. You can’t improve the development process if the right environment doesn’t exist to enable healthy guidelines. You have to climb the pyramid brick by brick to the ultimate goal: better software through true collaboration.

Let’s look at each of these levels.

Amazon’s entry is only rumored but I think the description of it is detailed enough to be credible. The day after the scoop with Amazon, Baidu announced the Yi platform. Baidu is the sixth most visited site in the world, so it’s not a bit player and it makes as much sense for Baidu to have a mobile platform as it does for Google.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Use humor, but ensure that the humor supports your brand. Humor is very personal, and in order for most things to be funny, it will usually push the edges of NSFW (not safe for work) — and if you don’t know that acronym then you should definitely not be judging whether something is funny).

Don’t do creative by committee. If you want a viral video effort to work, you must free the hands of your agency from company politics.

Be aware that it might backfire. Inform those in the company that it may generate a lot of chatter, which is not always bad.

Don’t get discouraged. If one viral video fails, get up and make another one.

Moontoast, one of the leading social commerce platforms working with retailers, publishers, musicians and celebrities has just published a new, useful and insightful e-book on Facebook commerce for brands.

It’s most definitely worth a download – from here (free) – as it contains some of the smartest advice we’ve found on f-commerce to date.  We think the smartest way for brands to understand Facebook and Facebook Commerce is as fan-media and fan-sales; Moontoast’s e-book provides invaluable insight for doing precisely that – and for creating an army of ‘super fans‘ (brilliant concept) who buy and advocate more and more often.

Image of Foursquare’s board via Fortune

While some folks might attribute the rumbling feeling that hit New York this afternoon to a 5.9 earthquake in Virginia, Betabeat now knows better. It was the tectonic reverberations of defeat, as Facebook quietly phased out the Places feature of its mobile app which everyone was screaming for months would kill Foursquare.

Simply put, the key to increasing creativity in any organization is to make it start acting like a creative organization. Suppose you wanted to be an artist: You would begin behaving like an artist by painting every day. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you’ll become much more of an artist than someone who has never tried. Similarly, you and your organization will become more creative if you start acting the part. The following are 16 suggestions to encourage you and your colleagues to start becoming more creative today.