Monthly Archives: November 2009

“Don’t judge too Quickly” – Who had this idea first?

Posted on November 27, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

I recently found these hilarious ads for Ameriquest. They each have a quick situation that, at the end, always looks worse than what’s really going on.

But then I saw a series of similar ads for Budweiser:

These ads are posted on numerous other blogs, but I have to wonder: How do two completely separate companies have the exact same types of ads? Even the punchline is the same. I have to assume both companies used the same agency, which recycled the idea. I assume that because I cannot find proof of any lawsuit between the two for stolen intellectual property.

If anyone knows the story on how this happened, please let me know!

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Posted in Viral Content, television advertising

Turning down the volume on TV ads

Posted on November 23, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 2 Comments

I’m so glad someone’s on this: House Commerce Committee passes bill to hush TV ads.

For years we’ve all heard commercials come booming at us in between shows. This is done by producers of the ads who want to make sure it’s harder for you to ignore them. If you go into the next room to make a sandwich between shows, you’ll still hear their shrill cry to give them money for things you don’t need.

We could complain all we want, but it does take the government to step in and tell them to cut it out. I’m so glad they are. Frankly, if the FCC doesn’t tell an advertiser to stop doing something, you couldn’t get them to stop if you threatened the lives of their children. (Another solution to crass commercialism we really haven’t given a fair shake, I might add.)

There are no metrics I can find that show the effectiveness of turning up the volume on TV ads. It’s a fine idea if you think the only problem is people are in the bathroom while your Lexus ad is on. But people aren’t ignoring ads because they don’t know they’re on. They’re ignoring them because they don’t care. People don’t buy products because they see a TV ad anymore. They find out about it there, maybe, then they do Google searches on it to learn more, or ask other people what they think if they’ve tried it, then, maybe, they test it out.

If the only way they can think of to reach us now is to increase the audio, it shows you how much shit they have on the shelf. They may actually believe people just need to hear the magic they’re sharing and consumers will start buying. In short, it’s a way for television advertising to show they’re somehow innovating a solution, when their solution does nothing to fix the real problem: Consumers have evolved, TV ads have not.

TV advertising itself is going to go away soon, because the model for television is going to change. The very way we get information has already changed dramatically thanks to the Internet, and we have all decided that finding things ourselves is a much better way to do things than to have it fed to us.

If agencies and producers really want to keep their jobs, they’ll need to come up with a better way to reach us than simply annoy the crap out of us.

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Posted in Advertising, television advertising

5 Reasons I’m Giving Up on Foursquare

Posted on November 22, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

I write a lot of these, “I hate” posts about social sites, and I don’t usually post them. That’s because a lot of my bitching about some site – while well founded and exceedingly intelligent – are my opinions. I don’t want to keep other people from using what they think is interesting or fun, no matter how wrong about that site they are. (My unpublished scree against Facebook would have certainly gotten me burned as a witch.)

Foursquare is definitely one of these sites that are popular, but flawed, and ultimately not very fun. I’m not trying to sway others away from using it, but I’m definitely out. And here’s why:

1. Foursquare is tough to navigate

My girlfriend puts up with a lot from me and my need to document things via social media. When I tried to explain to her that I had spent 5 minutes just finding the address of the place we were at, so I could enter it as a new locale, check in, and do nothing else, she was floored. I would have done this faster, but it isn’t possible to do this faster. Foursquare doesn’t look at your location and say, “know what? Looks like you’re at Fresh & Easy! Want to check in now?” Instead it makes you jump through hoops just to add a location, or find the one you’re at.

2. Finding ways around the shoddy mobile access resembles “Gaming” the system

Okay, this one is just me getting pissy.

I found that checking into a location was much easier to do once I got home and had time to myself. I didn’t have to ignore my coffee or stand in a busy Target aisle in order to find the mysterious button I needed to press in order to simply say, “I am here.” If I need to add a new place, (which I often do since none of the places I frequent seem to be visited by my fellow geeks,) it takes forever to find the address on Google Maps, type it into the “Add a Location” section of the Android app, all while hoping have a solid connection so it doesn’t time out.

I can do all that, or I can go home and type in the address from my computer. But if I do that I’m not really out in the world, which is what Geosocial pinions on. Also, other users then assume you are playing a trick on the system to get more Foursquare badges.

3. There’s no such thing as a Foursquare badge

Not really, anyway.

Sure, you get these baubles when you check into 10 places, or the same place some number of times, or tag things, (I think – the score card isn’t too clear,) but they only exist on Foursquare, for other Foursquare members to see. And once you are the “Mayor of Xtreme Bean,” which means you’ve checked into Xtreme Bean more than anyone, what have you got? Bragging rights that you go to a coffee shop?

No offense, Foursquare users, but I get trophies for beating levels of Super Smash Brothers too – I just won’t be adding that to my resume.

4. There isn’t much to do after you’ve checked in

You know all of those asshole reviews of Twitter that bemoan people posting about their meals? Foursquare is the ultimate extension of that, only it doesn’t ask people to post as much as, “I’m eating brisket” – not because that’s uninteresting, but presumably because that’s too much work.

No, Foursquare cuts out the need to type anything, and simply asks you to check in. Just like Brightkite – the site that also lets you send and recieve messages and photos. With Brightkite, you might also find people in your area to meet. (Which, admittedly, is REALLY uncomfortable if you’ve ever pulled off that hat trick.)

Or there’s Yelp, where you can leave meaningful reviews and find new places. But with Foursquare, the best you can do is leave tips – quick samples of information about a place, but nothing too long or too meaningful.

After that… nothing. No chatting with others, no pictures, no video… At best it works as an add-on for your Twitter account, where you might end up talking to another human.

5. Foursquare is NOT social

Social networking and it’s sister philosophy Social media are grounded in – you guessed it – socialization. Talking, sharing, communicating… you know, that kind of thing.

With this site, the most interaction you have is seeing who’s been at the place you’ve been before, and bumping people out of their “mayorships,” which isn’t the nicest kind of interaction. It feels more like an invitation to a flame war.

“Hey! I’m the master of all things IKEA!”
“Not anymore, jerk!”
“Oh yeah!?! Well I’m going to go there for lunch each day this week and THEN I’ll show YOU!”
“Oh yeah!?! Well I’m going to get a JOB there! For I am the God of IKEA!”

Of course, that would only happen if there was a way to communicate. I’m just extrapolating. My bad. This exchange could only happen on an actual social network. Oh, you can also leave “things to do” at locations, presumably so you can remind yourself and everyone you know that you need to stop at the place you’re leaving that note.

So it is an inovation on, “I’m eating brisket,” as you can now post, “I will soon be eating brisket.” Good job, Foursquare!

“But that’s just me, I could be wrong.”

As I said, if you dig Foursquare, good for you, and have fun. If you are Foursquare, I applaud you for putting out your site. That’s a lot more than I’ve done, as I’ve never put out any social sites. I just use them. Still, having used quite a few, this one has problems.

Which is hardly a unique position for a social site to be in. The list of social networks with big problems is long and distinguished: Facebook, Digg, MySpace, 12seconds, PhotoPhlow, Orkut, Delicious, Utterli, and too many Twitter clones to count.

As such, I think I’m done with Foursquare. When the site becomes more than a check-in game to get electronic badges, let me know.

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Posted in Geosocial Media, Online Tools, Social Media, Social Networking

Tagged geosocial networking

Bing vs. Google is Getting Interesting

Posted on November 18, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 2 Comments

I’ve been saying for a while that I don’t believe Microsoft has the right stuff to challenge Google, but that I would be all for another challenger in the world of search. So if you’ve been paying attention lately, Bing has been doing a lot to compete – and Google is matching them.

Obviously everyone knows about the Bing/Yahoo deal from a few months ago. Both sides were crowing about how they would start integrating Twitter into their search results – though frankly, I don’t know how good an idea that will be. Both may have just killed the site by opening the door to spammers – but we’ll have to just let the three of them work that out.

Then Microsoft announced this week they would start using the Wolfram Alpha Engine. This is a special little tool that finds answers to most any question that has a quantifiable answer. If you need to know what a specific sequence of numbers looks like as a barcode, this will show you. If you want to know the odds of a particular dice roll, they have that too. It’s just the kind of thing a search enginge claiming to be a “decission engine” should have.

Google has always had a wealth of features and purchased sites, (YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps,) so to respond they have to show improvements to what they already have. Movie listings have been expanded, and search listings boast greater child safety. Then of course there was Google Wave, and Google Voice, and just a few hours ago the Google Translator was unveiled. (Which will hopefully work better than the legendary but frequently awkward Babelfish.)

If you’re a capitalist, you know this will lead to many improvements in products from both sides. Google has been trying to transform Gmail into a more “social” platform for some time, and Bing has been getting better and better at image search…

If you worry about SEO, however, this means a LOT more work. (Good news for us professional SEOs!) For the first time in years I’ve been researching how to gain rankings on a Microsoft search engine, just in case. Frankly, they still don’t have Google’s traffic, but that can change very quickly. Facebook kicked the snot out of MySpace in a matter of months. The lesson being those who aren’t able to learn quickly and adapt get left behind quickly.

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Posted in Internet Technology, Search

Blogs are Codependant

Posted on November 14, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

That phrase – this post’s title – was another morsel of interesting phrasing from this week’s Phoenix Wordcamp. Brent Spore said this during his his “Designing for WordPress” presentation. You know, the more I think about what I took away from this year’s WordPress, the more I realize I was more interested in discussions of content creation than I was in designing or tools or plug-ins.

But I’m a writer, so I would be.

But so what? Let’s get back to this codependency statement. If you want to have a blog, for whatever reason, you need to post to it regularly. Not once a week, or as often as you can get to it – but constantly. A lot of blogs start out with someone excited about the idea of putting out their ideas and exchanging them with others, only to eventually fall off the horse and forget about it completely.

And I have to admit, I fell into this this month. Having just started my new job, I haven’t had the time to dedicate to “Ciao, Enrico” like I did when I was blissfully unemployed. And it shows in my search rankings.

I regularly Google “ciaoenrico” to see how my blog is faring for this one unique phrase. Seeing how I do for “seo” or “small business marketing” is useless, since there are so many other phrases to compete with. On this, though, I am usually the winner, since Enrico Berlinguer never blogged.

This week I noticed a significant drop in this site’s ranking, from first place to fifth. That’s not a bad fall, but a fair sized one. Usually, if you have the keyword right there in your URL, or in this case, when the keyword practically is the URL, it should score first in a Google SERP. But it has dropped to fifth place, behind my Twitter and Friendfeed and Flickr accounts, and even my old LiveJournal blog, which I hardly ever use anymore.

Why? Because I ignored this bitch for too long. This may be the flagship for “ciaoenrico,” but Google cares about the most current, up-to-date content source for the things it places first. My FriendFeed profile gets new stuff added to it whenever I sneeze, so it makes sense it’s all the way up there.

I’ve said before I’m all in favor of taking breaks from your blog when you need it. Search placement isn’t everything, and if you come back fresh you can get back to seriously writing and getting that ground back. But be careful: Laziness tends to become a habit if you let it, and then your hard work will go down the drain.

I’m going to get serious about this blog for the next couple of weeks again. (Thanks for the inspiration, Phoenix Wordcamp!) Then we’ll see if those rankings go back up!

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Posted in Blogging, Search

Should you use social if the “real you” isn’t interesting?

Posted on November 13, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 3 Comments

Phoenix Wordcamp 2009

Just got back from Phoenix Wordcamp, and it was very hit or miss – the first half of the day’s speakers were… well, lacking.

But everyone later in the day was stellar, especially Merlin Mann’s “Something Something Social Media: The Overdue Minority Report,” which wasn’t really a minority report at all, since his opinions of social media were largely preaching to the choir: Stop trying to game people, stop worrying about your followers, post quality content… and so say all of us.

What I really found interesting, though, was a phrase he shared during a bit about Brand Management: “‘Brand Management’ is only necessary if you’re being fake, or you’re being boring.”

Fair enough – if you’re being your real self on social networks, there’s no reason to have to measure out what you say about yourself and how you say it.

But what if you are boring?

Well, in my opinion, if you don’t have anything necessarily interesting or useful to share with people, you probably shouldn’t be blogging. If your Twitter posts are all the stereotypical bits about meals you’ve had and where you’re going after work, you probably shouldn’t expect a superstar following. And if you have a business that has nothing worth sharing regularly, you really need to stop trying.

It’s a bit elitist, though, isn’t it? When everyone says your business has to be involved in some way with social media, if you are a bore, what else are you supposed to do? Brand management – whether you’re a person or a business – is designed to calculate presentation so you can control what people think of you.

It’s basic PR: Mel Gibson was being himself a couple of years ago when he got pulled over for drunk driving. His being “real” didn’t do him any favors. (Though you have to at least give him this – he wasn’t boring.) Clearly, brand management is useful. Maybe some people are good enough and smart enough and interesting enough that they don’t need to think about it, but for everyone else it can be pretty important stuff.

Maybe that kind of elitism is good. Maybe it’s just common sense that if you don’t have something to say, you shouldn’t be trying to speak.

Sometimes being yourself and being interesting are mutually exclusive. If that’s the case, the next Wordcamp, or Podcamp, or SMAZ, or whichever Internet publishing event we all go to should have a panel on how it isn’t necessary to be involved in social media. Not just the usual, “video isn’t for everyone,” “blogging isn’t for everyone,” or “Twitter isn’t for everyone” warnings. But really, if you have a business in a boring industry, and you’re as boring as it is, maybe you really should just concentrate on your SEO and PPC and media buys for your web site instead of worrying about how to jazz up a blog.

If we can’t do that, then we need to stop talking about the tools of social media, and start talking about strategies for content.

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Posted in Blogging, Online Tools, Public Relations, Social Media

Tagged phoenix wordcamp 2009

Brightkite opens itself up for local promotions

Posted on November 11, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 3 Comments

On their blog, Brightkite has announced they are now available for local shops and restaurants to create Brightkite based promotions. If you check in at the store that’s partnering with the promotion, a coupon post will appear that you can present for free stuff. The first one being announced is for the Rackhouse Pub in Denver, CO.

This is really a brilliant idea, for so many reasons. First, it helps Brightkite get more users. If people know that by regularly posting they could get something free, of course they’re going to check in more. That’s a win for Brightkite.

It works for the business, as more people will show up for the coupon offer. Brightkite users who wouldn’t have necessarily come in will now show up for something free, and likely buy more than that. If they like what they get, they’ll come back. That’s a win for the restaurant.

What I like most of all is the idea that a company can have a promotion like this, without having to build it themselves. I tell you now, the future of phone apps will be like this: Companies that do one thing, social media, offering their platform to companies that want to sponsor promotions.

Does this sound like selling out? It is, if the company sacrifices it’s user base at the altar of commerce. If Twitter posted text ads every 10th post, yes, that would be selling out, and we would all cry bloody murder.

That, however, is what will keep smart companies from ruining our day this way: We will leave them. I don’t believe Twitter or Facebook users would leave these sites if the companies started charging for use. We’re used to paying for things that we want, especially things we know we already like.

But if they soil the experience, they cut their own throats. If they do, then they will go away and there will be no funnerals. The smart ones will find a concept like this, one that attracts social media users AND turns a profit – the Rosetta Stone of on line marketing these days.

It’s also far more democratic for businesses to each be able to use a system that’s already been built, and not having to pay to build one themselves. Coca-cola could probably build their own Facebook, and then attract users to it if they wanted to. But a tiny cola company like Fred’s Bottled Yum-Yum, which doesn’t actually exist, but should, could never afford to compete on that level.

However, with a paid promotional strategy available through the real Facebook, Fred can be as powerful as Coke is. He can get a presence on a site that already has established users, and maintained by a company and employees focused on making sure the platform is running smoothly.

I’ve always loved Brightkite. Well, they’ve only been around two years, but I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for both. They were one of the first sites to realize the potential of moving social media off of computer screens and out into the real world. They were one of the first ones to find a real, fun use for mobile phones in social media too. And I could be wrong, but I believe they had the iPhone’s first social media killer app.

So it makes sense to me that Brightkite comes up with a strategy like this first. They think outside the box, and not in a silly way, but in a productive, “why the hell didn’t I think of that?” kind of way. If I was still working in the agency trenches, and I had a brick-and-morter business that wanted flesh-and-blood walk-in customers, I would be all over this.

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Posted in Geosocial Media, Social Media

DocVerse – A quick fix to make Microsoft Google-ish

Posted on November 7, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

Just read a sponsored blog post about DocVerse, a new plug-in for Microsoft Office. This would essentially give Word, Excel and PowerPoint the kind of collaborative networking functions that Google Docs has.

This, of course, calls attention to another aspect in which Office is lacking. This plug in is an effort to chase Google’s tail, as they have created a better product, but one that fewer people use.

That’s the rub, of course: Established businesses won’t soon switch to Google Docs for documents and presentations, because they have those Office licenses to pay for. It’s a choice between the better product, and the more universal one.

I’ve worked in an office that used both. When creating documents solo, Office was the choice, just because it was there and had more functionality. (Google keeps improving Docs, though, so this won’t be the case forever.)

On the other hand, when it was a collaborative effort, Google Docs worked seamlessly. I wouldn’t use it as often to create the document I’d share, but I would upload it to Docs to get everyone looking at it and making comments/changes.

So this plug-in is a good idea, but it only addresses one of Office’s problems. The bigger ones are the changes they make to it which confuse everyone upon release. I only just figured out Office 2007, and now they’re going to drop Office 2010 on my head. Then I’ll have to re-learn all those things Excel now does, and no longer does, while still on the clock. (Actually, now that I think of it, this is a plug-in for Office 2007. Does anyone know if collaborative tools will be baked into Office 2010 anyway? Microsoft does have a shady history of stealing ideas from the companies that build software for their platforms.)

I think Google Docs will remain a strong choice for the new, small business, as their suite is less expensive, and does as much and more than Office. Office will stick around until cloud computing makes it unnecessary. And that won’t happen until we get the mythical “Internet 2″ up and running, which can then allow Coca-cola and IBM to dial into Google’s servers without constantly choking.

What DocVerse spells out for me is Microsoft’s inability to keep up with what users want. Meanwhile Google, with their Docs and Wave tools, and their considerably deep pockets, are taking the opportunity to steal M$’ lunch. They already do most everything Microsoft does, just better. Now it’s just a matter of winning over the mind share.

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Posted in Internet Technology, Online Tools

Twitter Lists are the latest popularity contest

Posted on November 5, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

Last week, we all got the long-awaited Lists functionality added to our Twitter accounts. If you’re that one person who isn’t on Twitter yet, this is the ability to sort your followers into segmented lists. It’s a wonderful addition. Before, I had 1600 or so people I was following, but no easy way to see what they were saying. Now I can gather them up with all the other people who say similarly interesting things into one place.

If I know a handful of knowledgeable SEOs, they get their own list. Then there’s another list of local contacts I like keeping in touch with. A third for co-workers, a fourth for high school friends… instead of just lumping them all into the admittedly daunting river of posts that the Twitter front page gives, I drill down to just the people I want to read.

What’s funny about all this is that now profiles have collections of the lists a person is a part of. This must be embarrassing for the users who spent all their time following people to get followed. You see them often enough, usually in your inbox: Users who only post links to their blogs, a profile describing the SEO/web design/multi-level marketing business they run… and somehow, 10,000 or more followers.

All those followers aren’t really interested in what these people have to say, they simply followed these titans of industry to get them to follow back. It’s the catch-and-release ecosystem of Twitter that gets many people a lot more followers than they deserve.

Now that lists have been thrown into the mix, you can see right on their profile what the value of their follow count is. If someone has 10,000 followers now, and they’re on a dis-proportionally low number of lists, you know the majority of the people following them doesn’t really care what they post.

For instance, let’s look at this Emmy Award winner:

Here we have someone with over 10,000 followers. Hooray. Still, only 16 people have seen fit to add them to a list of people they want to read often.

On the other hand, here’s the follow count for my hero, Loren Feldman of 1938Media:

Here we see a profile that has almost 10,000 followers, but is part of 208 lists. So there is a larger percentage of his followers that want to be sure they get a direct line to what Loren is posting about.

What’s the difference? Well, profile #1 is full of vague, corny and useless posts about following dreams, and quotes from Kahlil Gibran, and links to help you, “make millions of $ now!” Who needs to read that?

On the other hand, Loren is hilarious. He does some of the best Internet media satire puppetry. He does the only Internet media satire puppetry. He also posts often, and even replies to other twits. In short, he’s a fun and entertaining resource. He’s someone people would want to follow on their own, without having to be lured in with gaming. If you look at the short list of people he’s following himself, you can see he doesn’t have to do much else to get people to follow him.

So now when you get a notification that someone has followed you, you have a better gauge on whether or not to bother returning the favor. If it’s someone posting crap, you’ll be able to tell by the low number of people trying to make sure they stay on top of their posts with a list. If it’s someone worth reading, a lot of other people agree, and that person is on a long number of lists themselves.

But people are smart, and I have no doubt this will only add a new level to gaming follow counts. In a few weeks people will start creating lists and adding their people to it, in the hopes that the people they add will return the favor, just like they did before. It’s silly.

All that work just so you can say you have a bunch of people occasionally clicking on a link to your get-rich-quick-scheme content page? If that really works, I guess the real problem isn’t them, but the suckers rumored to be born every minute.

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Posted in Social Networking, Twitter

Just what the hell is Google Wave anyway?

Posted on November 4, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

I’ve been playing around with Google Wave a bit lately – in case you haven’t heard, it’s Google’s latest entry into the Social Network wars. And there is a war on, just so you know. Facebook is winning, for now, Twitter isn’t, though everyone can’t stop talking about it, and everyone else wants to get that kind of market share because surely that’s where all the money is at.

But so what? Let’s get Wavey. Wave is a strange amalgam of E-mail and instant messaging – two things Google has always, in my opinion, dominated at. Gmail and Gtalk run the way every mail and IM client should, to the point everyone else should just stop trying.

How embarassing - it takes note of when I edit my cursing!

So Google Wave capitalizes on these things by letting users create a group conversation: I post a video with an opinion of it, and the people in my circle read it. They add in pictures or links in response, and I respond back with something else…

So it isn’t just e-mail and IM, it’s sort of a closed FriendFeed river where everything within the wave is related. So it’s also got a bit of bulletin board system DNA in it.

A strange feature is the ability to play back the conversation one step at a time. I’m not entirely sure why this is an important feature to have, though – all it does is relieve me of the responsibility to scroll down.

They tried to add in some simple toys, like simple polls, widgets, and you can save Google SERPs to it if you want to. But these feel a bit forced, like they knew they needed to add something to it but weren’t sure what.

One thing that would make this spectacular – and I’m surprised it isn’t included – is the ability to publish a stream in the making. Or maybe that’s a good thing? If your friend admits to robbing a liquor store, and you think that’s so hardcore you just HAVE to put it up on their blog…. not good.

Finally, I’m not a big fan of the inability to create conversations with people unless they’re already in my Gmail contact list. It makes it difficult to hear new voices, which is really the beauty of social media – you can hear from people you wouldn’t necessarily hear from. It’s the reason I’ve been such a fan of Friendfeed. If someone looks randomly cool, I’ll follow them and be relatively sure that someday they’ll post something that’s so neat I need to pass it around. But this is a a lot like e-mail anyway, as I’ve said. Google Wave is Friendfeed like, but it’s supposed to exist in a closed environment.

If you’re okay with that, it certainly works.

So I do like where they’re going with this so far. I just hope this is a true Beta, not a Google Beta. A true Beta means people are using it, and they are taking suggestions on how to make it better as things go along. A Google Beta is when Google releases something they think is finished, just very slowly. After all, Gmail is apparently still in Beta, and they’ve only made a couple of minor changes since I’ve been using it.

So I guess we’ll just have to see where this is going.

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Posted in Social Media, Social Networking