i can has change nao?

it's official. lolcats have made it to the white house. alright, clearly not. but it enabled me to have a good friday feline giggle at the same time as address the new change.gov that debuted.

of course there's been considerable buzz around the launch of the presidential-elect blog and website, since it carries his campaign past his election, which some folks thought would end when the road to the white house did. granted, people are still wondering what he's going to do with his new phone list.

i like this "transparency" and carry-through... though it does make me wonder how it will effect the reception of his years as President. if he makes good on promises, it could be a great thing. if he doesn't, it could be detrimental, moreso than previous politicians' promises.

but back to the "phone lists" and all the involvement the Obama army has had. will there be a way for them to continue to stay involved? i'm sure that will be resolved if the folks running his web2.0 stuff are as clever as they've been so far. "tell us your story" is a typical, if nice, gesture. as of right now, you can't leave comments on his blog.

how much involvement do you think is appropriate in this new "2.0" presidency?
UPDATE: & then there's this... obamachangefor.us and his flickr.

&PS>> if you're still here just for kitties and puppies, someone made up a drinking game to go with the live puppy stream i mentioned yesterday. find it here. i chose Autumn. happy weekend!

[img via.]

you make me wanna... LaLa.com?

it's time for 3 music posts. first on the menu: muxtape meets iTunes for your online music needs. if you haven't already heard about this new it-toy, you should look into it. it hasn't converted me from iTunes yet, but it has me poking around and it's definitely worth the curiosity invested.

the short of it:
6 million tracks (+counting). you can listen to any song once for free; no "thirty second preview." currently there are no ads and no subscription fees. just sign up and listen. if you want to listen again, you pay based on what you're licensing for... web only is 10 cents, mp3 download is 79--cheaper than iTunes. if you already own a song, they 'move' it to your purchased tracks for free.

oh and yeah, there's that social aspect where you can add friends, and a last.fm style graphic aspect where i know what kind of style of music a person is into on a sliding scale. it also has this "CD trading" feature you can do, but i don't know what that is yet. and for what it's worth, so far they seem to have most of the stuff i've looked for, including my more esoteric choices. okay, they didn't have Emily's Sassy Lime, but at least they knew the band existed.

and so forth...
so this is being hailed as something of a breakthrough in music distribution. i mean, it's cheaper, and that's a plus, but since it's newer, it's not as integrated. i will need more time before i surrender the awesome that is iTunes. it does seem like a step forward from last.fm and muxtape, merging the social with the purchasing directly, as well as offering a space for all of it to be held purely online if one should so desire. this is a plus for organizational types and i'm sure a few other 'types' as well; the lack of a subscription fee with an iTunes-like purchase system is just an added bonus.

blip.fm: great idea, applied failure.

so, this wasn't the post i'd planned for today... but then my computer committed suicide at 10AM this morning and hasn't yet recovered, pushing much of the rest of my day into work overload on another (not set up) computer. so sorry about the lack of posting--i did have stuff planned; you'll get it tomorrow. in the meanwhile...

@OneLuvGurl sent me a DM asking to join her on blip.fm; i had been peripherally aware of blip, but hadn't dabbled so i said sure, why not, and went at it like a good little social media scene queen. see the fruits of that labour along with my frustrations at my "station" here: http://blip.fm/thegirlriot (and no, it's not yet added to zoolit, haha. i'm not sure i'm keeping this.)

on premise, blip.fm seems pretty awesome. OLG described it as "twitter for music." i like twitter, i like music. seemed a natural fit. i love the idea of carrying on a conversation through songs, as i did about last night's Heroes ep with blip.fm user ZachsMind. so that's a major plus. it's like communicating with other total music dorks, and i like that, because i used to have txt convos using only lyrics. [i am that dork.]

in implementation it's super frustrating. for these reasons:
1 -- shitty music selection. it took me forever to find a song i wanted to post, let alone the one i was actually listening to.
2 -- strike through songs. if the song doesn't work or you don't want me to use it, why is it there? delete it. don't let me preview and then not let me blip. like seriously. wtf?
3 -- incomplete songs. Epicentre by VNV Nation? yeah, no. you only get the first minute. but you don't know that in preview, or, well, anywhere until you get to the 1 minute mark. cos then it stops. but by then it's already in your stream.
4 -- unregulated song titles. "Slide" is by the "Go Goo Dolls." the first song that comes up as "Girl's Not Grey" AFI was unidentifiable. i have no idea if it was a shitty recording of the acoustic of that song, or if it wasn't that song, at all.
5 -- shitty load time. i waited for 20 minutes for "Hurricane" by Something Corporate to load. before i gave up. and found "Girl's Not Grey" by AFI instead (see aforementioned ordeal). which wasn't what i was listening to. until i had to.

in short, song titles should be regulated. also, like on songza, users should be able to vote a link up or down for quality (which would take care of bad copies and shortened songs). shitty load time? i have no suggestion, but i used blip all day, and i had the problem about 1/4 of the time. so maybe not the biggest problem, comparatively. i suppose i could deal.

but the heart of it? APPLE NEEDS TO GET ON a dj system similar to blip where i can stream from my own goddamn music. i have shitloads of iTunes. let me be a user. let me make a stream in the same conversational way, where also in my stream you can buy the .mp3s from iTunes. let me USE the music i've GOT so i'm not so frustrated when YOUR selections are CRAP in variety, length, and quality. just a thought.

"Communities already exist. Instead, think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do." -- Zuckerberg. i just think with an app like iTunes and a share like Apple has in the online music biz, it seems natural to add a similar feature. LET THE PEOPLE MUSIC TWEET! hahaha okay. i'm done here.

[PS: Kathleen Hanna cancelled. i didn't miss her. i feel slightly better about that.
PPS: Rise Against concert was AWESOME. made of win. anyone who says different is a liar.]

cool toy du jour: Zoolit

you may be saying to yourself, with all this social media, where ever will i keep it? and you'd be right! how many times have we laboured over long lost profiles, things we no longer keep track of, shiny toys that got dusty (coughcough: Friendster, Buzznet, Mashable, PROpenMic, Plurk, and identi.ca are just some of the profiles i joined to ignore). how do you find the active ones and share those all in one easy place?

the answer: ZOOLIT.
incredibly simple. incredibly easy.

you want to know where i live on the internet? http://zoolit.com/thegirlriot and look no further. as i recall shit i actually use, i put it up there. don't know whether to judge me by a defunct Threadless account or by my Etsy feedback? wonder no more! every where i am ACTUALLY is there. how about you? send me your Zoolit stalkerbook in the comments. cheers!

i may cry: Apple to shut down iTunes?

hot on the heels of a conversation i was having yesterday about music subscriptions and the issue of transference, it seems that yet another legal battle or other may destroy music lovers' hearts. Apple is threatening to shut down iTunes if it goes through.

i think that of all businesses, the music business has single-handedly gone out of its way to make shit absolutely horrid for themselves. if there is an antithesis to social media, it's the music business. there is nothing social about it and there seems to be an utter disrespect and apathy toward the consumer which they, on the other hand, so avidly court by banning pirating and slapping on RIAA fines before you can say "student loan."

[i'm not referring here to social media music sites like Last.fm or iLike, i mean the industry itself--those in charge of distribution and collection to and from those lesser sites.]

this is not Apple's fault. i don't want them to shut down iTunes, but i don't think it's right for the record execs to hoc more cash out of the resellers, especially when in most cases it's not like the artists see a raise. it's like the music bailout to save some cushy chair's job.

between a copyright hike and streaming radio battles the likes that Muxtape, Pandora, and many more face, all that the music industry is accomplishing is blowing off the one foot they've got left. REALITY CHECK. people are going to find more, new ways to pirate if you're going to make it harder to be legal. work WITH our needs, not against them!

i am a full legal music downloader. i buy everything from iTunes (if .mp3) or Amazon (if CD--i do still buy those). if i hear it on Pandora and like it, i buy it legally. partially because it's easy and partially because, at some point, i respected the industry, and still respect the musicians. the former is fast going down the crapper.

UPDATE 10.03: The Copyright Royalty Board Does Nothing. iTunes’ Rates Remain The Same.

twitter: 'you may as well not have existed.'

thx @awolk (also here).

i'm not sure what the meta-message should be here. apparently people are highly dedicated to twitter, but we knew that already. i particularly enjoy the third verse, where it moves to make fun of twitter users in a tongue-in-cheek way, because though we're "refined" we still have to "validate each other" in our insecurities and talk about new gadgets. maybe that's because i'm a cynic like that, haha.

if anything, this kind of points out that we're still in an echo chamber. the geeks (hand raise) that will sit there and make or watch this kind of video, find it funny (because we have awesome senses of humour), blog it (raise hand), tweet it, etc, are those folks who're sitting on twitter doing exactly those things: talking about gadgets, social media, and everyone who isn't yet on twitter but should be.

[so if you're not... get on that?]

is your brand a moth or a butterfly?

i was reading Faris' blog, as i usually do, when i came across his post regarding The Moth, a slam-style storytelling circle in NY and LA. apart from the fact that it's bloody awesome (and that i will probably go to the Nuyorican showing), it got me thinking about moths and butterflies--a motif that has been following me for months now.

"the founders felt was analogous to:
the characters in their best stories would often find themselves drawn to some bright light—of adventure, ambition, knowledge—but then find themselves burned or trapped, leaving them with some essential conflict to face before the story could reach its conclusion."

the moth represents conflict with the world. it is the self which both loves and yearns. like the butterfly, it too forms a cocoon and transforms itself, but that is not what it has come to symbolize. the moth is about the tension of reconciliation; the struggle for understanding with the exterior world and our place in it.

the butterfly represents conflict with oneself. the symbolic butterfly is about the personal journey, the thing one must undergo in order to develop into our full potential. it is an interior search. the butterfly becomes a symbol of freedom and beauty once the insect emerges. the story ends there.

the one, emphasis on the interactive journey; the other, emphasis on the personal journey. i identify a lot with moths in that regard, but i also came to think about it in terms of creative, and in terms of advertising. for a long time, advertising has been the butterfly. it has been about the personal, transformative journey of the brand. it is this point of view which expects others to love simply out of the respect and beauty of this journey.

this brand has not yet tried to find its place in the world. it has not reconciled itself to interaction, to the space outside of its own head. some advertising is handling brands like moths, are pursuing that tension between self and other, and are fostering those spaces. they are telling the stories not about themselves, but about connections.

in this way, moth branding is more accessible. it asks me to identify with our common spaces, rather than identify with your personal journey. i am not going to like you because you are a heap big 60 year old auto company that has survived through the years and shown your mettle; i will identify with you on my own terms, the ones that show the light of you and i.

but, like the moth, there will be tension. we are experiencing this now, with words like monetization, cashification, viral, social, what have you. we are trying to find our way through this jungle. advertising is romancing the light. only some will get burned. some will have never tried at all.

[photo shown left: Blue's Creative Outlet, specializing in funky moth & butterfly jewelry]

Yeas & Nays: IV

found here, re: greyhound stabbing here
Riot saith: NAY!
okay, so, i'm sure for all humourous purposes, this advertisement has surfaced. i would imagine, and from the look of it assume, that the ad came out before the stabbing. (i really, really hope so.) it's almost in bad taste to show it, if only because it makes me make that groaning noise. for those of you who don't know, a sleeping person on a Canadian Greyhound was stabbed in the throat and decapitated with a hunting knife on a bus full of people. what's Greyhound doing about it? not enough, Jaffe says, and i have to agree. on another note, the advertisement is pretty shitty, regardless of timeliness. i haven't heard of "car rage" either, and both buses and cars (and trucks and hummers) all use roads. 'nuff said.

TIGS, re: gorillas, chimps, ads, primates
Riot saith: YEA!
as if you didn't already know, Faris is wicked awesome. his post, linked above, catalogues something we all learned in 3rd grade and forgot: "they may not remember what you say, but they will always remember how you made them feel." that was supposed to teach us to be nice to one another. and even if advertising isn't exactly about being nice, it is about emotional response. i would like to see an effective ad that appeals not at all to any emotions--in an unironic way. the more and more i think about advertising, the more and more i come to realize that the youth injection is important. folks have got to stop thinking like marketers and remember that they're people, and relearn those things that made them people in the first place.

doesitsellstuff, re: social media
Riot saith: YEA!
i love stumbling across blogs that make me want to redo my entire blogroll (which i will be getting around to doing, there are some much needed additions). this is one such blog. Scott Sigler chronicles social media campaigns and their effectiveness in really interesting ways; the ways that make you actually want to spend time reading it all. and it is really, really interesting. i forget how i stumbled across it but i'm very glad that i did. his blog's subhead reads: "A look at case studies of companies using Social Media to, well, sell stuff. Forget theory - does it add to a company's bottom line, or is it all just a waste of money?" if you're into social and strategic planning, check him out.

pseudomodernity and "hyperliteracy."

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
... Life is very long [Eliot]

a response to Gavin at servant of chaos. a long theoretical friday-candy post.

i do have to agree that while both modernism and postmodernism had a "burdensome sense of a preceding cultural inheritance," that what Kirby calls pseudomodernism, i would argue, has this same sense of inheritance--in a different way. postmodernism worked to break up the linear. to think in circles. understands cycles, and also to step away from them. to know that A can link to F without any letters in between; that logic jumps are products of inflicted learning methods. which is also why i agree that the internet is the pinnacle of postmodern thought.

and yet, it is this internet-style pomo thought process which we have inherited, which produced the thought patterns necessary for this pseudomodernity. it is this which enabled classroom computers in which teachers are assigning Facebook profiles as homework to express Holden Caulfield. what Kirby, who feels that his "pseudo modernists are spookily devoid of agency, caught in the neverland between the capacity to effect change and the overwhelming minutiae digital interactions," did not anticipate is our capacity to navigate that space because of our inherited postmodern thought.

i agree with Gavin when he says that "production fails (and always will) in its effort to capture the live moment" because i have that postmodern schema. that is, with Magritte-like wonder, the video of the event will never be the event (for example): it is a representation of an event purchased and reproduced through angles, moments elongated or not long enough--editing, for lack of a better word, regardless of quality of craft. even if it is live-fed, those watching will not have the same experience as those experiencing firsthand. but the temptation to get it to that space has prompted movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield as well as a rise in mundane youtube videos, etc.

but because of my place as a gen-y "pseudomodernist" i cannot say this will always be the case, that we will never be able to access that. i think we have a genuine skepticism in these productions even as we participate in them. we know they consume our time and that it places a distance between ourselves and the experience, even if we are the ones experiencing. which is to say, if i'm having a friend video my morning routine, my morning routine will be different simply because of the presence of the video camera. and we know this, moreso than our parents' generation who believe youtube videos as true (generalization, but i've noticed a certain naiveté there).

Gavin points out social media as a possibility for the beginning of navigation between those spaces of experience and production because they result in real-life experiences (eg, tweetups). while i think this is an excellent start, i think it's only part of the picture. i think just as before us came oral tradition, we are hyperliterate; we are writing a hyperliteral tradition. this is not the same as books, which had too much 'production value' with editors and publishers. this is your point of view and my point of view on the same thing, both available, both time-transcendent and hyper-recorded on 18 different search engines.

it is this connectivity, like microblogging from a mobile device, which moves real-time information from people to the internet to records to the future. what youtube videos lack are the personalized element. and "me" in the youtube video is superseded by the "me" watching it. what film editors try to artfully capture: the thoughts, emotions, and feelings of an experience, expressed through only audio and visual. eventually, someone will sort out how to merge the recording with the experience seamlessly. you won't have to disrupt your experience to record it. there will be no "postmodern gap," the anxiety between the interactive and the action.

it will feel like freedom. and it will be scary. as this emerges, so too will those who search out total experiences, who reject the idea of this recording, i'm sure. i hope to be one of them. but maybe that's the postmodern, rather than the pseudomodern, in me.

twitter as int'l pr/ad firm merger.

so yesterday i was chatting with my 'big brother' @griner on GChat and, among other things that are likely unrepeatable, we got to talking about what we look for in our jobs, and, what our jobs would look like ideally.

both of us are intrigued by social media (big shocker right?) and somehow we got on the topic of twitter... as many of us tend to do. it seems everyone wants to figure out why, exactly, twitter is awesome, how it could be more awesome, and why younger kids (and older folks?) aren't yet sold on its proverbial awesome awesomeness.

David and i realized that twitter is pretty much the best ad agency we could ever want to work at. as in, if we selected folks we know on twitter, regardless of location, it would make for a pretty sick setting. the thinktank there is marvellous. so many ideas are being bounced, debated, and realized. we're cerebral professionals, only also people, and accepting of that.

twitter is pretty much the staff meeting we always wanted.

in consideration hence, i think this is why its so alluring to our demographic, which i'm going to gingerly put in the 22-50 age bracket of varying professions. i know us social media and digital types are all up on it, but we're not the only ones. study the Everyone tab long enough and many professional communities emerge, from clothing designers to astrologists.

if someone were to form an agency from just our circle of twitter insanity, David and i suggest the following names:

Swallow (David adds: "We do what others won't." har har, pervy social media)
Finch (i counter in buzz cliche: "The next evolution in communication.")

but, to go back to why it's not catching on down the line, young kids don't need that same thinktank. a lot of them are very localized to one another and their desire for idea sharing isn't quite the same as ours (not that it doesn't exist--it just has different needs), a lot of which are solved via regular txt messaging and don't need a supplementary txt message program.

perhaps if there were an organization to join twitter and inform of parties in each area, that may be more attractive to a younger demographic across multiple spaces. or if charities working with a younger target market did it. i mean, even my personal fave charity, TWLOHA, doesn't have a twitter--and given its demographic influence, i would think they should.

the socialcash monstrosity. cashify baby.

right on the heels of Facebook's leap forward (previous post, ability to vote up/down on advertisements users see) is this monstrosity called SocialCash.

"What that means, is that users are given the option to earn stuff in return for completing offers -- like applying for credit cards, getting information about vacation rentals, receiving free trials of magazines, or finding out their credit score. The offers subsidize the reward (like, say, an iPod Touch or an XBox 360) and the developer gets a cut."

so wait, wait--let me get this right.
i click stupid advertisements, fill them out and pretend to like them, and instead of paying me, you give me branded products. yeah, cos that sounds revolutionary. or like a banner ad in and of itself: "click me and a win a free ipod!" yeah thanx no.

i don't want to sign up for credit cards, give out information to third parties via banner ads, or learn more about vacation rentals i won't use, just so i can have a chance at an ipod. no value there. this won't work.

when i said users should be involved with their advertisements, i said in the ads selection. "paying me off" taking time to do shit i don't want to do for stuff i don't want when i could be playing with facebook apps (talking beneath me, here, but you get the idea) is not my idea of a good time.

the only reason socialvibe works with perks is because a) i don't have to DO anything -- the badge stays on my page. b) the information i share is with socialvibe only, or may be shared with my sponsor/charity of choice. c) i go into it knowing that i'm not doing it for the perks, i'm doing it for charity, so if i don't get a $20 gift certificate, i'm not going to be cranky.

but if i fill out hundreds of stupid banner ads or pop up offers or what have you and don't see anything for it--except for lots of credit card bills well then i'm still going to have to go with a HELL NO. this is not RELEVANT. REMEMBER to be relevant when dealing with a teen market! you are not important to them unless you're doing something they already want to do. newsflash: they don't already want to fill out for vacation rental deals. they're sixteen.

"The Gratis concept works for two reasons: 1. people love free stuff, and 2. in order to get the stuff, users must invite a certain number of users who also complete the program (the number varies based on the value of the reward). So the customer pool grows virally and exponentially."

...stop calling it viral. it makes you look bad. < /peeve >

"Clearly, the viral spread didn't work"--anyone else find that sentence funny twofold?

haha dude, i love friendster.

and that's the only time you will ever, ever hear me say that.



unremarkable in the land of social networking war vids, but friendster makes it.

if you're looking for more silly branding videos, try this intervention piece.

plurkers, plurking, and plurk you.

plurk.
what does this evoke for you? lurking pigs? fluorescent pork? frat boy puke?
something unspeedy and possibly the antithesis of a bird, say... twitter?

some are pointing this new platform as the answer to our twitter addiction problems. it's new--that means more uptime, right? and it has to be better, if it's new. new and improved, or something.

well, i'm going to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly on plurk.

THE GOOD:
for visual learners, this is a plus. it's a flash reminiscent timeline that enables users to scroll through the day, with most recent plurks on the left, and a pull of the mouse enabling you to view back previous plurks (do i really have to say that?).

it's more visually engaging, offering different emoticon sets for those with different levels of Karma (which is earned via participation and recruitment), as well as personalized "plurk user mascots" to better express your plurkiness on your plurk profile. case in point:

[this winged thing best represents the digital plurk me]

to boot, when you respond to a plurk, it's like a little mini comment feed, enabling you to keep track of conversations in a neatly organized way. the following system is set up very similarly to Ning. you can have friends (mutual followers) and fans (those who you don't follow back) all plain to see (for some this may be a bad thing!) however, you can select what group (clique) sees a particular plurk, which i know some folks have been wanting (though i personally don't).

lastly, my personal favourite aspect is the Twistori effect, wherein my plurks are fed through tags like "loves," "likes," "shares," "feels," "thinks," and "asks." i'm sure i'm just associating my zen in its use, but it is, i find, a fun aspect.

THE BAD
it's closer to a mini social network than a micro blog feed. for those looking for direct comparisons, i don't also see any way for it to feed into your phones the way that twitter does, but i haven't looked that far because i'm a primary web-based twitter user and new to plurk. (as i assumed, i lied: "contrary to the official FAQ, there’s a mobile version of the site located at http://plurk.com/m which works just fine. SMS support is nowhere to be found, though." found here.)

it's really, painfully slow. i can add a friend, and they can add me back, and i won't know for twenty minutes at best. my karma doesn't update. it takes awhile for others' plurks to show up. it doesn't auto-refresh (so there's still that problem). the alerts are always "late" (ie, an alert was still there to add a friend, even after i'd added him ten minutes ago). as we speak, i have 3 plurk "responses" but the feed only clocks me at 1. statistics = fail.

also, it's not intuitive and somewhat confusing. it's certainly going to be more difficult for "easy adopter" types to stick with it. your mom won't be following your plurks anytime soon. the layout is a little clunky--i can't type a response and view my timeline comfortably at the same time. direct messages don't technically exist; instead, you plurk to a particular person and set it to private. clunky. it's hard to get a sense of who is saying what when. also difficult to figure out where someone "replied" to something you said--requires a lot of back-scrolling.

not to mention, it's difficult to find anyone else, though not impossible. you can go through your friends' friends myspace style. you can invite friends. you can search for existing friends via their emails. but it's so convoluted that it's a little hard to be bothered. all in all, it's very much "twitter 2.0" with all the web graphics and complicated nonsense. in some regards, it's cool, but it takes some getting used to with all the "noise." i don't think i'll be switching over fully anytime soon.

but, in case you want to find me, i'm here: user/thegirlriot or use this link, which automatically makes you friends with me, and you can skip that annoying part of the show where you have to locate me: make friends with Riot

THE UGLY
............PLURK?! really? wtf name is that?

what does "plurk" mean to you?
if you heard this on the street and had to define it, what would you say "plurk" is? noun, adjective, verb?

honestly. at least "twitter" and "tweet" is an actual word. "plurk" is like lurk with a superfluous "p" for flair, or pork with a random "l" injected. i keep typing plork instead of plurk. ick.

my contribution is that "plurk" is a noun, slang, for that person who sits in their office plunking away at their keyboards, lurking on extracurricular stuff, and only pretending to do work. heh.

i have advertising thoughts.

so, after having the luck to engage in an interesting conversation with Ian Schafer, a very smart man, yesterday via Twitter, i decided to delve deeper into the advertising thoughts i initially considered in "huge tracks of land."

i asked what he thought of socialvibe and its implications, after reading something written in Adweek (wish i knew what it was, the link is gone now). he felt skeptical because it gives incentives for a given behavior, but felt that the fact socialvibe benefited charities may even it out. i replied that i liked it because it enabled users to choose what their profiles support, giving street cred to the ads.

he argued this would be problematic if all users were allowed to select their own advertising, because some advertisers wouldn't be selected, and users would inevitably support 'prom king' brands. which, naturally, has a lot of merit. because it's true.

but, nevertheless, the concept i'm talking about would only apply to a user's specific profile--not the apps page, or the main page, or 'common areas' owned by more than one person (ie, events or groups). in that way, less popular folks could still get the word out on the same platform, while making advertising more relevant on personal spaces. agreeing in theory, examples he offered were like nascar or skate decks.

i then asked him if he thought incentive was a bad thing to offer users, since it is the users who bring value (data) to the networks. after all, if the users weren't valuable, advertisers wouldn't be up in arms trying to sort out how to reach them effectively, and there wouldn't be such a bid on Facebook's ownership. and guess what? kids are starting to realize this. i wish i had the Facebook link, but kids were responding saying they wanted money for their data being used. i was floored.

in comparison to giving up cash flow, what's wrong with perk compensation for choice advertisements? ian replied saying that, "playing devil's advocate, isn't using a service for free compensation enough for seeing ads?" initially, i say, yes, by far it's compensation enough, even on a place like Twitter, where i'm not giving out a lot of data value. but on Facebook or Myspace? it seems the perfect way to solve the ad-relevance problem.

+ let users choose the ads their profile page sponsors.
[on social media sites in which the users offer up a lot of personal information, like Facebook and Myspace]
- give them the option of using socialvibe in its place.
[so that if they should want, they can donate to charity through their ads. not all users will opt for this, though, since i doubt socialvibe could host the multitude of sponsors kids will want, and i doubt those multitude of sponsors all want to donate to charity.]
+ use the socialvibe method for incentives
[each day the ad is up, you get 1 Entry. on a given day, there are drawings for incentives that support the user's chosen sponsor. IE, a $20 gift certificate to PacSun for those whose ads are for PacSun. this promotes brand value at the same time as not too much monetary loss. this also fosters elitism and competition, which also adds brand value.]
+ in this way, social space advertising becomes relevant
[if the ad reflects my friend's interests, i'm going to be equally as interested in his or her brand choices as their music choices. we show our sponsors on our tee shirts, from brands to clothing companies to coca cola; showing our preferences on our profiles will only add to this level of sharing. in fact, limiting the amount of sponsors a profile can have will become necessary, likely only 1-3. this increases response rate to advertisements. it also makes users feel like a worthwhile part of the cycle, rather than having ads be something purely ignored.]

these are my current advertising thoughts with regards to social media networks.
i'm already a walking advertisement. i'm supporting my socialvibe charity as i type this in my TWLOHA shirt while wearing matching MAC eyemakeup. why not capitalize on these tendencies and harness them to make advertising more useful without being more intrusive?

huge... tracks of land. yeah.

can i get another "duh" and "i was right" in this corner? kthanx.

adrants picked up a piece on SocialVibe which--guess what? makes social networking ads more relevant by appealing to peoples' ACTUAL interests.

effin' novel, i tell you. bloody hell. finally. "huge tracks of land" aside, awesome way to advertise, and even better that it's linked to charities. that gets a huge KUDOS from Riot. in fact, i'm going to go implement it. so there.

next step? have user-chosen ads REPLACE non-chosen ad placement on user-interfaced social media sites like Facebook, Myspace.

the ... century

from here, found here.

i like it a lot. my one thought, however:
if
the 20th century = mass production for mass consumption
factories, cars, televisions, and fridges

then not
the 21st century = mass innovation

i still think it's missing the point a little. innovation is the sideproduct.
the "cashification" and "monetization" capable aspect, if you will.

it is
the 21st century = mass creation for mass communication

people want to communicate and connect, and so share. not innovate; that's secondary.

directv, revisited. now, with spot!

thanks to @funincalifweric, i have been supplied with the directv spot that i criti(cized/tiqued?) in this post on monday.

so now, for your friday viewing pleasure, a spot i hate:

but what do i love? conversations. [feed/back]
comment/tweet if you want to tell me why it doesn't suck, or, commiserate with me on its shortcomings.

eff you, directv.

speaking of people finding social medias irrelevant, directv is helping along the stereotype that msm is only for "tweens" and can't possibly help your company in the long run. i don't know how long this spot's been running for, but i caught it saturday afternoon.

basically, you enter in on a cable tv board room, as they discuss sales. one of the suits gets really animated and starts talking about how they'll just "get on the 'net" and "blog it up" and how now they have a XX% hike in tween approval.

the directv voiceover is one in which this is looked down on, suggesting the use of directv instead, because they 'really get you' or something. i was too cranky at that point to be able to quote like i can from the previous part.

i'm not saying directv is or is not the sort of brand that can benefit from msm, but their spot annoyed me nonetheless. i couldn't even figure out who exactly their target audience was, other than "not bloggers, not net-savvy people, not teenagers, and not-" a whole bunch of other groups.

[if you can locate the spot, send it my way. i tried.]

Yeas & Nays: I

the site, brandweek, re: Crocs.
Riot saith: NAY!
Brandweek feels that Crocs have lost their 'bite' and i tend to agree. i NEVER liked them. i always thought they were ugly and smelly (literally, they gave the visual impression that because they were plastic, they would smell) and so regardless of supposed comfort i stayed far, far away from the fad. turns out, i wasn't the only person who thought they were ugly. despite making high heeled crocs, people still aren't buying. and guess what? they're still ugly. adding a chunky, "funky" 4 inch heel is not going to fix that.

the site, mtlb review, re: Cadbury.
Riot saith: YEA!
i like the use of exclusivity (you need a password to get into the vault) and how it fosters interaction (the password is somewhere on the site... i haven't had time to find it yet). it also responds to engaged customers by a) posting consumer cadbury commercial remixes, and, b) offering a nifty 'trick out our truck' contest. moreover, in case i don't have the stamina for all the cool mouse-responsive images (nice floating milk glass sculpture!) there's also an html version, which many flash/etc sites tend to forget or forgo. so generally, i say yea to this, even if i'm not quite certain what spawned the link between chocolate and truck racing.

the site, mediapost, re: Sony.
Riot saith: NAY!
i don't care about your "knowledge transfer." i don't care that someone who thought up the "$100,000 professional camera that films the Super Bowl are the same minds behind Sony's $500 to $1,000 camcorders you use to film your child's birthday party." the quality is different, the technology is different. you're not going to assuage me with reassurance that 'the best minds of NASA Sony' came up with my mini-dv. make a better product, if you're concerned about the quality of your image. telling me smart people made it doesn't change the thing i bought. it's not a 100,000 dollar camera, and we both know it.

site1, site2, adage review, ian schafer, re: Myspace.
Riot saith: YEA!
i am not the biggest lovefool for myspace, but i still log in. i've had it since high school. i still check it, at worst, monthly, and at median bi-weekly. i don't go daily but i used to. i would again. that's a big deal. facebook creeps me out too much, still, and nothing has replaced myspace yet. with their new music merger, i think it's too early to discount myspace as relevant. i think that deep focus is doing it right, and i think offering long-term branding aspects that are relevant to the myspace user (KEY here) are much more valuable than the hit-and-run campaigns. i'm for the development. (consequently, i'm also pro-packet.)

the site, adweek review, re: Garmin/live commercials.
Riot saith: YEA! ...for now.
until everyone else jumps on this retro-savvy bandwagon, i think this is a really cool and interesting idea. i'm for the break-up in the usual visuals in commercials and a retro throwback always wins with nostalgia value. i like how Garmin used this technique; i think a company that represents an improvement on the "old ways" (maps < gps) is the best sort of brand to harness live commercials. kudos to Garmin; we just bought one, ourselves. i look forward to more until i'm too tired of seeing them.

words on twitter, 2 of 2: conversations?

i am disconcerted today about twitter for a number of reasons [continued]:
1) the addition of ads conversation
2) the lack of conversation... conversation

--

i'm not sure about the point of twitter.
i have a much better idea on it than when i started, to be sure.
but, like other things, what i was told its about and what it is seem to differentiate, in my experience thus far. mainly in this respect:

YES, i do want to know when you update your blog about something interesting.
>> as a follower, i may want to know what you have to say in more than 140 characters.
NO, i do not want that to be your ONLY updates.
>> i can easily... subscribe to an rss feed to your blog if i like it that much.
YES, i joined to make conversation and have conversations.
>> so why do i see most people not doing this? some are, but not enough.
NO, i don't care only about your meetings/interviews.
>> those things are -sweet- to be sure. but who ARE you; do you like Lewis Black?
[i don't really find him funny. and his root of all evil show is less funny.]

what i mean to say is, your twitter is not another RSS feed for your blog. sure, that might be one of its functions. i don't begrudge that at all. but please use it somewhat socially? isn't that what this social media thing is all about... two way (or more) conversations, not mass distribution with no direction?

if you want to have a conversation, please follow/tweet me: @thegirlriot