Monday, January 3, 2011

A Few of Your Favorite Things (Best of "Things We Like" 2010)

Sent to you by Steve Sherlock via Google Reader:

via NTEN by Brett on 12/30/10

The annual roundup of the most clicked items from "Things We Like". Read more posts on our blog.
  1. We could have sworn "Kitteh Roulette" would be the last cat video site you'd ever need. Perhaps we misunderestimated you.
  2. After all, there's no guarantee that, without our fine cat video curation, you'd always end up with something as funny as "Staticky Cat vs. Balloon", let alone our most popular link:
  3. Yes, gentle readers, it gives us great pleasure to re-present your 2010 "Things We Like" champion: "An Engineer's Guide to Cats". (We just watched it again, and the tears are still rolling down our cheeks. Thanks for the reminder.)
  4. Why were the cat videos so popular? Maybe it's true what Fast Company wrote, that "Hard Work's Overrated, Maybe Detrimental".
  5. Actually, let's propose a slight rewording: nothing but hard work is bad for you. You turn to NTEN Connect for the information that will help you do your job better -- the articles in this very issue prove it -- but also for those brief sanity breaks that let you keep pushing aheadtoward realizing your vision of a better world. We are definitely pro-that.
  6. So, while this year's recap may be light on hard knowledge, we're going to resist the urge to write up thelatest and greatest reports. We know you'll get around to them. No, these are the links you clicked the most in 2010 -- and after a long and productive year, you deserve, at the very least, some Star Wars cupcakes.
  7. After all, it wasn't all puppy dogs, posed Stormtrooper action figures, and Google Street View shenanigans.
  8. We made strides in figuring out how to use -- and meaure our use of -- social media. While Facebook's new Insights may have mitigated the need to use Google Analytics with your Fan page, it's still cool that you can. And you definitely need a custom landing tab. But should your ED be the one figuring it out?
  9. 2010 was also a good year for maps and data visualization, from the true size of Africa and the relief efforts in Haiti to the amount of data Americans consumeand the relative size of all the social media spaces. We continue to believe that data, properly analyzed and put into context, is key to the future of the nonprofit sector,particularly given the huge aggregations created by social networks. You'll see a lot more on that from NTEN in 2011.
  10. But for now, we know only this: if you like cats so much,you'd better make darn sure you know how to pet them. Happy holidays!

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