What to read this morning: news, analysis & smart takes

Wondering what to read this morning and get informed? Here are my picks of stories worth reading and some news that is worth noting. Plus a couple of great pieces from GigaOM, and a little self-serving link at the bottom.

• There is too much news about Thanksgiving shopping madness, but very little context. Smithsonian magazine brings some sanity with this great piece, “Shopping gets personal.” It is the only one you need to read in order to get the context of all the news blurbs that keep popping up all over the place. (#)
• Social commerce bites dust, mobile rules it all. An even shorter, more succinct take on all this shopping talk by David Churbuck. (#)
• Talking about social, Rohit Bhargava, a smart guy who writes books and is a professor of marketing, believe that brands don’t get social media and the latest example is Verizon Wireless. Memo to Rohit: Verizon is a brand that doesn’t believe in customer happiness, hence it is never going to understand social, because social is about people. Sorry, but the post is pretty awesome. (#)
• Jeff Dachis, CEO and founder of Dachis Group and formerly a chairman of Razorfish, thinks the Facebook(s FB) naysayers are just wrong. He is right and he is wrong. I don’t feel like debating right now, but if he wants to come and talk to me on stage at PaidContent 2013, it be a great conversation. For now read his post. (#)
• Are your Facebook friends stressing you out? (Yes.) Megan Garber asks the question. To that I paraphrase Yogi Berra: it is like that restaurant that is so popular, no one goes there anymore. Well, I don’t. The post is a good read. (#)
• Everybody lies. Including numbers, or something of that sort. Read it and make up your mind.

In some other news:

• BT has experimented with a 10 Gbps broadband connection. God, I want that in my apartment right now. (#)
• The bitter struggle over internet regulation will be the topic du jour at ITU’s global summit in Dubai. (#)
• MOG founder David Hyman is leaving the company he sold to Beats for pennies on the dollar is taking off to Nepal. I would say, go to Bhutan David, but let’s lunch before you go. No hard feelings, right? (#)
• VMware might be looking to spin off its CloudFoundry and other technologies into a new EMC-owned subsidiary. (#)

Here are two posts from GigaOM you should read:

• The future of the internet is intelligent machines, argues GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt in a guest column for my little publication. (#)
• Internet of things is brought to you by your smartphone, argues my colleague Stacey Higginbotham. It is a must-read piece.(#)

And one more thing:

• Please take a minute to read my piece on Famo.us, which has come up with a great way to work around the limitations of HTML5 and turn the attention back to the browser.