Tuesday Buzz: Reflection for the World Wide Web’s birthday

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, an invention of onetime CERN employee Tim Berners-Lee  (opens in a new tab) that’s changed the world to an unfathomable degree and turned the internet from an obscure idea with a lot of potential to a mainstream phenomenon.

“Digital Life in 20125,”  (opens in a new tab) a joint project by the Pew Research Center and Imagining the Internet Center, spoke to numerous internet luminaries to capture their thoughts on the web’s past, present, and future.

For example, Vint Cerf, Google’s vice president and an internet evangelist, predicts  (opens in a new tab) “more businesses will be born online with a global market from the beginning. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) will become important revenue streams.”

Microsoft Research’s principal researcher, Jonathan Grudin, spoke about how the internet has made the world more transparent: “We often or usually formulate rules knowing they won’t always apply, and ignore inconsequential violations, but now that is more difficult—the violations are visible, selective enforcement is visible, yet formulating more nuanced rules would leave us with little time to do anything else.”

Just think: Way back in 1989, you’d have been reading this in a pamphlet or magazine.

Speaking of reading, you can look through the entire report right here  (opens in a new tab) [PDF].

Learn Your Data

One of the internet’s biggest impacts has been in the breadth of data it makes available. But is all that data being put to good use? Suhas Sreedhar thinks not, as he explains in a piece he wrote for Forbes  (opens in a new tab).

Citing a Corporate Executive Board (CEB) study  (opens in a new tab) that found 62 percent of workers are unable to properly analyze and use data to make business decisions, Sreedhar calls for the creation of data-driven offices. And for such offices to take hold, workers need to upgrade their analytic know-how. How could your association benefit from an approach like this?

Great Stuff

Today marks the final day of the ASAE Great Ideas Conference  (opens in a new tab), and our live coverage of the proceedings continues. Here’s just a peek into what’s going on:

Great example of content marketing. Air New Zealand Hobbit Safety Video. #ideas14  (opens in a new tab) http://t.co/zqFoJfg3Ov  (opens in a new tab)

— Matthew Amick (@amick_matt) March 11, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

Creative room layout to facilitate community. #ideas14  (opens in a new tab) pic.twitter.com/zyJeAZR248  (opens in a new tab)

— Jessica Seitz, CAE (@JessicaRSeitz) March 11, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

And you can still follow along with the #ideas14 hashtag on Twitter  (opens in a new tab).

Other Good Reads Today

Not gaining any momentum on Instagram? You’re not alone. Lesley Vos at SocialFish has some tips  (opens in a new tab) to help build some filtered momentum.

Worried about Gmail’s universal unsubscribe button? It may throw a monkey wrench into many associations’ outreach efforts, but Ann Breckencamp, product manager for CommandIQ  (opens in a new tab), tells CMSWire there’s a silver lining  (opens in a new tab).