I’ll keep this (kinda) short, because I expect that among the people reading this, there will be some who know me, and some who don’t. Of course, that expectation presupposes that a lot of you actually read this blog. Hah. We’ll see I guess. Oh, and for those of you that don’t know me, don’t get scared off by the title of this blog. I’m not trying to sell you anything.

I signed up for Twitter a few years ago when a friend (@joanna) introduced me to it. I hadn’t used it since. I’ve posted quite a bit about it in the past, but I’ve never actually used it.

As time went by, I heard about more and more people hopping on, but I never took to it. I just didn’t get it. In fact, I still don’t. As far as the communication angle is concerned, I’m already waist deep in instant messengers, websites, message boards, text messages and a cellphone. So why am I here/there then?

Well, I’ve noticed that like with many mechanisms of communication, people use Twitter in very different ways. Some people are letting the world know about their breakfasts, some are self-promoting, some are staying in relatively close circles of communication, and some people are actually engaging in conversations with, well, just about everyone. This is something I didn’t expect, and in retrospect it should have been obvious.

One look at the list of people that I’m following, and your next question is probably…”WTF?” Well, there’s no semblance of order there, really. In addition to the few people that I know, I just started going through the lists of people that were following others, and adding names that I recognized. I will admit that I was rather surprised when I was notified via email that “Richard Moll is following you on Twitter!” Now, this is likely due to the fact that some people return the favour of a follow-action in order to expand their own networks. But hey, I thought it was kinda neat regardless. Thanks Richard!

So I guess I’m here to [attempt to] join the conversation. I’ll be blogging (here) about some of the things that I really can’t cram into 140-characters, but I’ll also be in and amongst some of you, trying to be somewhat entertaining, but mainly trying to figure this whole Twitter thing out.

Cheers!

Here are some quick points to ponder that have me wondering about… well, just about everything.

1) According to Nielsen, The Weather Network was the 4th most accessed site (in Canada) on mobile phones in Q1/2009. They beat out Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iTunes, Google Maps, MSN Games, and YouTube. Windows LiveMail, Google Search and Facebook took the top 3 spots.

Think about this. 674,000 people were in a position where they needed to access information that is questionably accurate at the best of times. Further, it’s winter in Canada (Q1 2009). You do not need a network of trained meteorologists to tell you that it’s going to be COLD.

2) I’ve decided to use the Twitter account that I had abandoned 3 seconds after signing up for it upon its birth, to actually, genuinely see what the fuss is all about. I don’t know if I plan on updating it. I want to see if I can establish a really ecclectic list of people to follow for starters. My first reaction? Following Brent Spiner is equal parts amazing, creepy, and disturbingly addictive. I’d definitely suggest checking out his feed.

“ALARM! ALARM! Someone has breached the security system! “Ernst, Ernst, to me! (learned that from Picard) STAT! (learned that from ER)”

3) The same could be said about any specialized industry, but I’ve always found the task of describing what I do to be a difficult task, especially when the person asking isn’t in the industry (specifically if said person is older and happens to be in my family). I usually start off explaining a particular project, stepping back to mention that it’s in the Digital Marketing space, stepping back once more to mention that it’s just marketing with a particular technology spin to it, and finally I resort to grunting “I do computers.” This is usually met with a lightbulb reaction and a remark similar to “Ah yes. My friend/your cousin Jane is a programmer too!” It’s usually at that point that my soul dies a little and I start fantasizing about violently dramatic ways to escape the conversation and/or the room.

…is that (unfortunately) they don’t resonate with the majority of the North American audience.

Now, a few points I need to clarify here:

1) I’m in North America.
2) I’m not calling the general public a bunch of morons. … …
3) I’m not under the impression that this is a ‘new’ idea.

I’ve been going through the archives at http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/ and I just started to notice that whenever I’d smile and nod, savouring that “a-ha” moment that really good ads are known for inducing, it would be due to one of the non-North American teams at BBDO, Publicis, Oglivy etc etc etc… Seldom were those moments the result of an ad that was grown and cultivated here on this side of the pond.

This post however, is not about the differences between the North American market and… pretty much the rest of the world. I just wanted to make a few observations about ads that make me wonder about them for a little while after I’ve seen them, and the effect that has on the brand the ad is trying to represent. It tends to be the rule rather than the exception, that advertisers want their customers to “get it” immediately after they consume one of their ads. Sometimes, that actually works:

There’s an instant connection/spark/kick to the groin upon delivering their message. However if this fails, well then you can always resort to plan B; play the ad 10-15 times an hour, plaster it within view of any moving organism with a pair of eyes and shove it in every paper publication available on the news stand in order to beat your message over the heads of the public.

Or… you can do something like this (click the image to go directly to the IBIA site):

Now I’m completely open to the fact that I may just be obtuse and I didn’t “get it” instantly. But those of you that (like me) looked at it for a bit and went “…what?” will know what I mean. The internal monologue in my head switched on, and I started to wonder about what exactly was going on here.

There’s a shirt, a tie… a rather extreme closeup of said things. Hmm… It’s for Clearasil. They’re an acne cream. There’s not much of the guys face in the ad. “Say hello to the mirror…” What does that mean? … That guy’s collar’s kinda weird. You’d think he would ha-…

Now here’s an ad that just got me to stare at it for about the same length of time as an average television spot, and all it had in it was a picture of a shirt and a tie (and some stubbly dude). Is this going to have the same effect on me as an ad that repeats… *ahem* ad nauseum (sorry), or one that appeals to my sense of kitsch like a cute ol’ grandma wondering about the location of misplaced beef? Perhaps, perhaps not. I suppose the real question is, what kind of brainpower does one need to apply towards perceiving an ad (active or passive) before that ad becomes ‘effective’? Further, if both types of perception result in increased sales, does it really matter?

As usual, leaving you with more questions than answers,… cheers.

As I was writing the title for this post, I wrestled with whether or not it even needed to be said. Yet, incidences of crime amongst kids and teens attributed to violent video games still continue to make the news (as recently as last month, in fact). I’ve never understood the tendency for the public to imbue video games, movies, and most other forms of media with the responsibility of teaching children right from wrong. “What message is this sending my child?” “How can they be allowed to teach this to children?” Those are just some of the questions that are hurled at the producers of media that contain the blood, guts, and gore that we’ve come to accept as somewhat commonplace.

So, I saw the following article come through my RSS feeds this morning: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/07/games-for-tweens/ After reading it, I wondered where all of the acid-tongued criticism was, and why it wasn’t being being doled out for these games as well. Then I took a step back and asked a larger question. Why are we holding these games (and their movie counterparts, where applicable) responsible for setting the moral compass for these kids? To what degree is society willing to transfer [what should be a] parental role, into the hands of the media?

There’s been a lot of commentary on this subject before, and I’m certainly not going to be the last one to voice my opinion on it. I feel that it’s necessary to maintain a dialogue on this issue though, as whenever an incident occurs that’s supposedly linked to a piece of “corrupt” media, cooler heads seldom prevail. The witch hunts, calls for sanctions, boycotts, and bans usually begin, well before someone opts to take a serious look for root causes.

In 10 years or so, if a contestant for a reality show like America’s Next Top Model (God help me if that show is still on in 10 years) flips out and kills an entire town, I wonder how much blame would be placed on games like those in the Wired article. Or what happens if a girl falls into a manhole while texting on her cellphone? Will the city get blamed, or is it technology’s fault that she didn’t see the large void in the pavement? Oh wait… nevermind.

I noticed that TechCrunch picked up a story today about how FriendFeed launched it’s real-time search feature. Now, you can get search results based on constant stream of incoming data from various FriendFeed blogs.

I’m wrestling with just how useful this feature is. Given Twitter’s recent spot in the limelight, just about all of the other big names in technology have been adopting Twitter-like behaviour in order to stay relevant. So is this in fact like Twitter? Twitter’s main function is to serve out real-time updates. FriendFeed is all about aggregating social network information, so there’s potentially some overlap there.

BUT,… there’s still this question of usefulness. Nearly every successful search paradigm starts with envisioning a use case. “What’s the user trying to do, and how can we make that thing easier for them?” That’s where this whole real-time search results thing kinda falls flat on its face, as far as I can see it. I tried to noodle some scenarios that have a heavy search flavour to them, hopped over to FriendFeed, to see what happens. (http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/07/real-time-search-we-have-it-its-here.html) These are the questions that I attempted to find answers for:

1) What kind of pizza is there around Toronto? (It’d be interesting to see what ‘Za joints people are talking about, no?)
2) How was Transformers 2?
3) What’s this whole thing about the Mythbusters and a Twitter account?

Now, the results are impossible to replicate (*ahem… real-time results and all*), but here’s what I discovered.

1) For the pizza scenario, on the first page of results, there was a small note about Pizza Libretto, and numerous other posts that contained the words “pizza” and “Toronto” without any real… relevance. Still searching for ‘Za.

2) A plethora of links to various Transformers 2 F.A.Q.s hosted on other sites, and a healthy smattering of “Transformers 2 sucks balls” comments. Alright, that was moderately helpful, but it doesn’t take much to get me to avoid the movie theatre these days.

3) The first time I entered “Mythbusters” and “Twitter”, I got jack. I got a few posts that had references to one or the other, but nothing that gave me any real answers. Then I figured I might do the same search over again. THIS time I got 5 posts in a row that all explained the issue.

The thing is, if I want to “search” for something, I’m not prone to sticking my head amongst a group of people so I listen for certain words, which is exactly what FF’s real time search attempts to do. It is sometimes interesting to see what people are chattering on about, and you can accomplish this quite well just by letting the stream update itself as new posts come in. But in that case you’re not really searching for anything, so much as you’re merely people-watching.