These are my links for January 25th through January 26th:

• Revealed: The most effective Healthcare Engagement Strategies in the world – Creation Interactive are a digital engagement specialist agency, who have a lot of clients in healthcare. I've started working with them recently in the emerging field of digital engagement (which I predict will become big in 2010). Their recent healthcare engagement awards list some interesting approaches global businesses are using in investing in community content and services using social media settings which benefit both users and increases business reach. The win-win of digital engagement.
• Finding The Long Tail In Music – More interesting US led discussion on the long tail – does it work in music? Can musicians succeed without the music machine's marketing muscle? My own research showed a lot of pros and cons, and was inconclusive. Mike Masnick from Techdirt is firmly a new media evangelist, but the overall discussion here is varied.
• HarperCollins Publishers Expands Its Digital Strategy With the Launch of Inkpop, an Interactive Writing Platform for Teens – A somewhat interesting diversion: teen publisher divison of major publisher launches a platform for teen writers (and those writing for teens) to publish short stories, poems etc. and uses community and user rating to seek out fresh talent. The platform itself for me was somewhat drab but functional, but it shows a new openness in publishing to putting editorial out to graze, and letting the market talent scout (thus saving time and money).
• Twitter User Growth Slowed From Peak of 13% in March 2009 to 3.5% in October – Hubspot's latest report on Twitter shows a slow down in new user registration, but an increase in user activity. It's actually really difficult to track Twitter as most people use third party apps to access their Twitter feed (I use TweetDeck). This article shows the average tweets, followers and following which is the baseline means of measuring the success of Twiter. Looking at the graph, it looks like the media spark gave Twitter an almighty boast in mid 2009, before a slow down to earlier, lower levels.
• Why Diversity Can Backfire On Company Boards – Article on how to successful manage the (usually unsuccessful) fusion of diversity in board membership. This applies equally to a corporate, independent small company, or an arts or non-profit board.