“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.”
Alice Kahn

I follow a lot of experienced marketers on Twitter, along with several whose real-world experience is questionable, and one of the most annoying memes I’ve seen is the belief that everyone should be on Twitter, particularly major brands and small businesses. When a colleague tweeted a link to a study that claimed “97% of users believe that brands should engage with their customers on Twitter”, I literally laughed out loud, noting that 97% of the people who’d take a poll like that are probably marketers.

I should have said “social media gurus” instead of marketers, because the “study” — a  statistically irrelevant, 6-question survey of 208 people — is the kind of vacuous “data” that gets referenced by the former all the time.

NEWSFLASH: You’re not a guru, you just tweet a lot!

Een must-read voor iedereen die denkt dat Social Media dé goedkope oplossing voor alle marketingproblemen is.

Apple has launched a beautiful phone with a fantastic user interface that has had a number of technological shortcomings that many iPhone users have accepted and defended, despite those shortcomings resulting in limitations in iPhone users’ daily lives.

When we examine the iPhone users’ arguments defending the iPhone, it reminds us of the famous Stockholm Syndrome - a term that was invented by psychologists after a hostage drama in Stockholm. Here hostages reacted to the psychological pressure they were experiencing, by defending the people that had held them hostage for 6 days. You can read more about the Stockholm Syndrome here:

Een zeer terechte constatering. Ik kan niet meer zonder m'n iPhone (urenregistratie via Freshbooks, mail on the go via imap). Maar de build quality is zo belabberd dat ik, inmiddels aan mijn vijfde toestel toe, dat witte plastic ding het liefst tegen de muur zou kwakken. Laatst nog een tip opgevolgd om de wifi weer aan de praat te krijgen: een kwartiertje in de vriezer leggen, dan doet-ie het weer. Guess what? Het werkte. Een half uurtje lang werkte de internetverbinding. Gelukkig gaat het vriezen.

Simon Louis Lajeunesse, a postdoctoral student and professor at the School of Social Work, set out to examine the effects of pornography on men, which would involve studying men in their 20s who've never consumed pornography. "We couldn't find any," he says.

 

"Take a fuckin' chance bunch of goddamn pussies. Besides, what d'ya think you have an immune system for? It's for killing germs! But it needs practice, it needs germs to practice on. So if you kill all the germs around you, and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you're not g onna be prepared. And never mind ordinary germs, what are you gonna do when some super virus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit?! I'll tell you what your gonna do ... you're gonna get sick. You're gonna die and your gonna deserve it because you're fucking weak and you got a fuckin' weak immune system!

Let me tell you a true story about immunization ok. When I was a little boy in New York city in the nineteen-forties, we swam in the Hudson river. And it was filled with raw sewage! OK? We swam in raw sewage, you know, to cool off. And at that time the big fear was polio. Thousands of kids died from polio every year. But you know something? In my neighborhood no one ever got polio. No one! EVER! You know why? Cause WE SWAM IN RAW SEWAGE! It strengthened our immune system, the polio never had a prayer. We were tempered in raw shit!"

Amen.

Recently, though, an accelerating trend has led to new challenges for those looking to support their digital media through advertising: Marketers are increasingly taking what used to be above-the-line dollars and placing them into the media they're producing themselves. They are using marketing funds to attract their own audiences, rather than advertising to others'.

PepsiCo, which spends many millions of dollars on marketing every year, is just one example. During Internet Week in New York, I helped lead a project for which we hired nine "social communicators" (some of whom were traditional journalists) and built out a suite of blogs and social media tools, including a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel and a proprietary app, to cover the week's events and, PepsiCo hoped, reach an audience of influential people in digital media and marketing. PepsiCo has done similar projects for the SXSW festival and said it is planning more in the future.

 

't Schijnt dat zelfs Obama en de Daila Lama uit voorzorg tegen griepbesmetting weigeren om handen te schudden. Gelukkig kunnen ze voor $ 19.90 (10 stuks, inc shipping and handling) duidelijk maken dat ze het niet kwaad bedoelen.

Sit on my Facebook and I'll whack you up the Twitter. Hilarische video over Social Media consultants.