Really? How much work did you put into this….Your marketing guys must be pure genius.
Category: Personal (Page 28 of 48)
A few things collided in my brain this week, and I think it’s time we admitted they probably are inter-related in some way.
Phelps
First off, Michael Phelps gets busted for smoking marijuana in October. The country flies into outrage. After all, why should a 20-something year old, who just accomplished the greatest feat in Olympic History, in a room full of other 20-somethings who admire him, sit down and do what they do? The nerve. And if the guy who has more Olympic Gold Medals than anyone on earth can do so AND smoke marijuana, should it really be illegal? Is there really someone saying, “Well you know, if he didn’t smoke dope, he’d probably be able to be a brain surgeon as well as Olympic Gold Medalist.”
The part that kills me now is that because of the photo, the county sheriff has had to haul in 7 people at the party and the guy who owned the bong, even though that guy wasn’t even there. You want to talk about a guy born under a black cloud. A guy who lives at the house DIDN’T get to party when a superstar randomly dropped by. But someone did grab his bong out of his room so said superstar could smoke from it. And then when he tried to sell it on eBay for $100k, he got arrested.
A-Rod
On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the guy we just KNEW was up to something, but could never figure out what. His breakup with Jeter was odd, getting caught with a stripper was odder, and being friends with Madonna was just plain bizarre. But it turns out all he was doing was taking steroids with 103 other players from 2001-2003.
And do you wonder why not one team has sued any players for breech of contract? Think about it. A guy has a monster year. You sign him to a 4 year, $40 Million deal. Then the Mitchell report comes out and spooks everyone off the juice. Now your $40 Million guy goes clean, and falls back to 15 HR a year. Well if you didn’t know he was on roids before you signed him, then found out he was on the list, wouldn’t you sue and renegotiate back to what a 15 HR guy should make?
Dow <8K
So we have illogical drug laws, cheaters playing and reporting about our national pastime and we honestly ask ourselves, “So how did our economy get so bad?” Obama supporters are already wondering and asking why they haven’t received a blank check in their mailbox to cover all their expenses in 2009. People think a national bank should be set up where every citizen who asks can get an ATM card to withdraw whatever they want. Then there are all of these CEO’s who managed to get the government to give them big piles of money, and are now faced with the choice of taking a 80% pay cut and digging their company out of bankruptcy, or taking a 100% pay cut and resting on the beach in Costa Rica.
Here’s what I don’t get about the $900 BILLION stimulus package. Obama is out their pounding his fist saying, “We must do this today or our people will be bankrupt.” The Republicans are out there saying, “Some of this makes sense, but I don’t get how $300M for STD testing stimulates the economy.” So, why can’t we agree on about $250 Billion that makes the most sense, shoot it into action and then argue about the next chunk? Any Senator who says they won’t approve a $100 Billion for construction and infrastructure projects unless the raises for Special Ed teachers are approved, is obviously gorging on pork.
Summary
So are these unrelated? I just think it shows a complete lack of logic in the whole structure. A guy making $25 million a year cheats, affecting 800 other ball players, 75 million fans, the seasons of 29 other teams, and the advertising revenue of several networks. And we seem to be upset that a guy who at most is putting three of his teammates at risk is able to smoke pot and still shatter Olympic records. And we’ll continue to drop billions into pretending to fight marijuana, arresting people, running them through trials and then releasing them to probation, instead of spending that money to hire a teacher to explain why you shouldn’t buy a house with zero percent down, especially if you don’t have a job. There has to be some logic somewhere.
I just don’t understand when people my age tell me, “Facebook is just for kids.” I will argue that the best part about Facebook is in fact lost on these newbies, and us more mature folks are getting the best it has to offer.
To wit: My friend’s daughter is 15. She has something like 700 friends. Basically every person she has ever met is on her Facebook page. There has never been a time in her life in which she was not keenly aware of what her people were up to.
No consider the 30-something year old who is tip-toeing into Facebook for the first time. First he finds some work friends and maybe some folks he plays soccer with. Then a few folks from his last job. Then a few people from the town he used to live in, then college guys and then back to high school and elementary school. People he hasn’t talked to or heard from in 20 years are now available.
I mention this because this has happened to me twice now in the last few weeks. An old friend from college disappeared off the planet, reappeared on Facebook and it allowed us to have lunch and catch up. Meanwhile, the next time I’m in New York in June, I will be able to meet up with a friend I last saw in New Orleans circa 1986.
Now, today’s 15 year olds won’t get to enjoy this type of reunion. So I’m sticking with my story – Lil’ Green Patches and SuperPokes may be fun and all, but it’s the reconnecting with long lost friends that makes Facebook as powerful as it is.
Not sure why I found this so amusing….
These guys are doing a nice job of complimenting their Super Bowl buy with some additional Social Media content. Check out these “outtakes” from the eTrade Babies.
2 Twitter posts in one day….must mean something, right? Anyway, proof of concept – I saw this on Twitter, posted by John Batelle.
Silly, but really why *shouldn’t* Congress be updating us in real time?
So Twitter doesn’t make a dime of revenue. But there must be value there, since it’s extremely popular and nature abhors a vacuum. So maybe I’m the one who should generate the revenue from it.
For example, suppose Pepsi called me and wanted me to tell all my Twitter friends that Double Caffeinated Clear Blueberry Diet-Pepsi was a one calorie blow pop of hyperactive goodness. How much would I charge them?
Well lucky for me, I can go to TweetValue.com and get an estimate. Turns out all my 60 or so Twitter friends are worth a measley $18. Which actually sounds like a lot of money to me because it’s around to a $300 CPM. Pepsi media buyer, call in the next 48 hours and I’ll give you a special deal price of $10 for each January tweet, and we’ll see how it goes.
Maybe one day I can get as valuable as Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter feed, which is a reachable $302. Barack Obama’s value of $41,000 seems a little unattainable.
But, I do wonder what would I get to message my Facebook friends?
I don’t know why I find this amusing. But Techcrunch, the sometimes snarky, often critical, source to get news about the technology industry, experienced a site crash today.
This is only relevant since they consistently blast web sites and technologies when their servers break. I wonder of they will explain what caused their own server issue.
So someone writes something nasty about you on a blog no one reads. What do you do?
a) Ignore it
b) Write a post on your own blog explaining why the other post is libelous
c) Do some personal SEO work so that you can bury the post on Google under a list of your own links
d) File a lawsuit so that the post goes super public across the blogosphere, letting everyone in the world link to the post that says the nasty things about you, and making it the number one link that shows up when people Google you for the next 20 years?
If you answered A, B or C, then we can have a reasonable conversation. If you said, D, then you are model Liskula Cohen and are not familiar with how the world of Social Media works. According to this Mediapost article, “Cohen alleges that she was defamed by the blog Skanks in NYC. The entire blog consists of five posts, all dated Aug. 21 that jab at Cohen.” Note that the posts came out in August 2008, and if anyone cared about it then, they certainly don’t care now. But, Cohen has managed to grab the remains of that flame, fan it, dump gasoline on it, and insert half a forest into the campfire. Well done.
On a side but not totally irrelevant note, this is an important lesson in why you need to spend the $50 a year to own the url’s of your name, to register yourname.everyblog.com, to have basic profiles on Ning, LinkedIn, Naymz, Biznik, etc….and lock down yourname@everyemailaddress.com. Because, you just never know when you may be named to a blog like Skanks of NYC and need to bury the link when people Google you.
A Tech blog called Fudzilla announced on December 30, that Micosoft will be laying off 17% of its workforce, which comes out to be about 15,000 people.
Now, this is interesting because they don’t use the terms “speculate” “”could”, “might” or “possibly” to describe the layoff. The exact quote is “The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff at Microsoft have been informed that the company is readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it’s not a small cut, either.”
Meanwhile Henry Blodget of Silicon Valley Insider Reporter reports today that Fudzilla is just that, full of Fud. He says “A cut of this magnitude seems highly unlikely, although the targeted areas do make sense.”
I don’t know much about Fudzilla, but I do know Henry Blodget is on the speed dial of every person in Microsoft PR. So it’s liekly that Blodget is repeating something he’s been told. Either Blodget is lying, is being lied to, or Fudzilla received some faulty info.
On Jan 22, we’ll see who is closer to the truth, the blog that originally broke a story, or a reporter breifed by a PR team. Should be interesting.