The Evilest Click Bait Tactic

Sylvester Stallone is dead, suggest these two ads on Facebook. News to you? Of course it is. You didn't see that in your news feed anywhere. Surely someone in your Friends list would've said,  "RIP Sly," at the very least. Don't be a fool. Hover over the link. If you see a URL that looks like this

 

then you are being baited. For what? Who knows. It's a scam. Don't be scammed.

Someone actually paid for this crap ad. I don't even want to find out why. I've seen similar ads for Harrison Ford (on the heels of the latest Star Wars film) and a few other celebrities. The Internet is breaking. 

Let's Ask Google About Google+

Long-time fan of the Goog, my search engine of choice since the late 90s. They build some cool things and some fun toys.

Take Blogger for instance. Works great, lasts a long time. Here for me after a long absence, somewhat refined since the last time I used it, but still pretty intuitive and easy to handle. I also love iGoogle, the homepage that contains my reader, weather, email and other gadgetry. They're killing that fine service in November. 

Google+? It's not going to happen. It serves a small, devoted few, and apparently well, if you listen to them. For everyone else, it is a cumbersome and confusing failure.

Am I blogging again? Guess so.

Where Ya Been, Dave?

...asked a friendly email query.

Yeah, sorry. The job has been really crazy busy of late. Writing copy for 120 clients in a soon to be launched partnership between the company I'm with and a major airline. I know so much about day spas, kayaks, dog-sledding, salons and four-course dinners with wine pairings now, it's insane. I'm also learning a lot about Chicago and Denver, the two target cities we've been focusing on. It's actually quite fun to write about so many different things, as opposed to previous jobs where I wrote for one client day in and day out, and usually a client whose goods and/or services I had zero confidence in and would never purchase myself. We expect to launch later this month. I'll keep you posted.

Another thing keeping me busy is the sudden "success" of Radio Free Babylon on Facebook. I hovered around 100 "Likes" for months, but somehow one or two of my comics got shared around Facebook and now I've got thumbs-up all over the place. It's pretty cool, but at the same time now I feel pressure to create more of them, and faster, which is stupid since most internet comics release one a week. I've been on a four-a-day pace since I saw the spike in traffic early this week. Somebody once said, "Leave them wanting more." I should take the weekend off. It's not like anyone is paying me to do these, but I do love to do them. Maybe they will turn into something I can't even foresee at this point. Right now I'm just trying to learn to navigate the strange world of Facebook Fans, something I've done for clients in the past but never for myself. "What is the brand voice?" you find yourself asking yourself. "It's your voice, idiot!" yourself responds.

In other news; Fall has arrived in Florida. This is official as the pool is now too cold for swimming. I tried to prolong the inevitable, jumping in early this week. A Canadian might've found it delightful, but we're wimps down here, and it was "bracing." So soon we'll be pulling out the pants with cloth down to the ankle - whatever they call those things that aren't shorts - and putting on those funny things that cover your feet when you have to wear those other kind of shoes that aren't flip-flops.

Football is here and at Casa de Jetpacks we are thrilled. I hope to find a spot or two from the weekend viewing that is worthy of scorn, mocking, ridicule or praise.

So Social

(Click.)

Twitter and Facebook: We're On It - But Not Really

Over the last few weeks I've been conducting short interviews by phone with clients, hoping to get a feel for their businesses as I prepare to write up overviews and figure an angle to present their offers. When I see that they have Facebook and Twitter icons on their sites, I ask if they stay active with those platforms. More often than not the answer is, "Not really. Someone told us we should be on there so we did." One person I spoke with said she paid a lot of money to someone to get her on a few social platforms, yet she had no idea she could very easily find out when people were talking about her business on them.  

If you're a new media agency selling these services, you'd do well to actually teach your clients how to use them; go beyond the obligatory set-up and selection of an avatar. In many cases, you'd do even better to simply take over the day-to-day usage of social media for your clients, or show them where to find a modestly paid intern to do it for them. Many of them are just wallowing, or they're simply getting their feet wet and then deciding it was a dumb idea to venture in at all.

Make Sure You Like Your Workplace on Facebook

OMG Little Debbie

If Little Debbie really wants to friend your kids, she should look like them.

Mark Zuckerberg Commented on Your Status

Zuckerberg's Free Ride

He was there to do a free commercial for the new profile pages on Facebook and talk about his eventual domination of the universe. Lesley Stahl came across as a sycophantic fangirl. It was interesting to watch as "60 Minutes" allowed him to burnish his image in the wake of "The Social Network," the film that portrays him as a heartless user.

(El click de pic para mas grande action)

This is How They Fight Child Abuse in North Korea

You go ahead and change your Facebook profile picture to your favorite cartoon character and we'll see how many children don't get abused as a result of your effort, all you cause-of-the-week bandwagon jumpers. I'm sorry, I just don't see the point. How will talking about child abuse alter the behavior of child abusers? That's the point of the exercise, after all. You're supposed to be starting a conversation about child abuse via your Facebook profile picture. So, have you been talking about child abuse? Yeah, I didn't think so. The whole exercise seems a silly waste of time designed to make you feel good about yourself. I hope it worked. But I pity the children who get abused next week when you change your profile picture to reflect the latest cause du jour.

Meantime, here's a great propaganda poster from a North Korean collection. The caption reads, "She defeated a bad person who had been harassing children." Awesome. Say what you will about the crazy North Koreans, but even their young girls know how to combat child abuse way better than we do.

We Rode the Same Bus in High School. I Didn't Know You.

Jane's Roller Coaster Day - For All To See

Some people need to get a grip. Or take a pill. Or at least stop sharing so much.

(Click for better legibility.)

It's a Good Gig If You Can Get It - Part II

Dr. Pepper - Snapple Group Suing Facebook

"As early as 1936, the phrase, 'You like it,' has been associated with our product," said Charles Grigg, representing the soft drink giant. "Facebook has appropriated this phrase and used it without authorization from Dr. Pepper - Snapple." The full text of Mr. Grigg's remarks are here.

Unable to cope after the election of a Catholic man to the office of President, Mr. and Mrs. Dan Jones of Middletown suffered numerous nervous breakdowns before undergoing simultaneous lobotomies. They now enjoy trains and 7-up. Their children, Bobby and Sally, are again leading normal lives, only slightly scarred by the events of the previous months.

I Friended Your Mom

Where are the kids congregating now? I know they've discovered a cool new hideout where their parents and the marketers aren't lurking. Yet. Or at least I would've by now if Facebook had been around when I was a kid. Blocking isn't enough. Facebook has to be reaching "gay" status pretty soon if it hasn't already.

Rest assured, kids, the marketers will find you - and hot on their heels are your parents. Keep running!

The Head of Zuckerberg and the Voice of Napolitano

Found this old illustration on Flickr and repurposed it for today's events. (It gets much bigger.)

Tech News! (A Crude Experiment in Text to Movie)

With a voice dub and some other things.

Tech News from Radio Free Babylon on Vimeo.

"Like" is Such a Strong Word

Working on some stuff. Been a little preoccupied. You can help end my preoccupation by going over and "liking" the page the image at left links to. Facebook won't let you have your own page name until your page has 25 Likes. I'm at 21.

So hurry, act now. Don't wait. Walk, don't run.

Radio Free Babylon is sort of the "parent company" of what I do here as well as the "holding company" of all my other projects, and you'll note that my profile image on Blogger is the company's symbol.

As it says in the company's FAQ:

What's with the squiggly symbol?
That's the schematic representation for a resistor.

Why?
Because we are resistors.

What are you resisting?
Stuff and junk.

I keep saying "company" as if it still was a company, but I long ago let my incorporation lapse. What matters these days is securing domain names (I lost track of how many I've collected), Twitter accounts (9 and counting), Posterous, Tumblr and Facebook pages. Once you have all that down, legal takes care of itself. It only occurred to me in the last few days to make a Facebook page for RFB. And now, my procrastination is your emergency. Sorry. And thanks.

Back from the Blog Expo

It took seeing the new Geico commercial to remind me that I have an xtranormal account, which is a great tool, even the free version. In this little movie, Drew is back from Vegas, reporting to his supervisor on what he "took away" from the blogging and new media conference.

Social Medium