November 8, 2007

You are currently browsing the daily archive for November 8, 2007.

Light candles. Our just send cash.

November 8, 2007 in Art | 1 comment

Chris Locke turns 60 on Monday, He asks that, in lieu of flowers, please send cash. Or Amazon gift certificates. Or just enjoy an original pre-framed (in black) Cluetrain Reunion Photo, featuring JP Rangaswami, Cluetrain’s 5th Beatle. As chance and obligation both had it, JP and I flew to Denver from the UK for Defrag, and are now back in England at yet another gathering. Also, JP will turn 50 or something on Monday as well. I don’t know how old Neil Young will be, but he’ll also be flipping a year that day, as will my daughter Colette. I don’t want to know how old she is now, and she probably doesn’t want to rest of us to know, either.

Anyway, that photo calls to mind a line from P.J. O’Rourke: If I give up drinking, smoking, and fatty foods, I can add ten years to my life. Trouble is, I’ll add it to the wrong end.

Happy Birthdays, everybody.

ClosedNet

November 8, 2007 in News | Comments closed

The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) is following the shutdown of Pakistan. Its understated summary: The overall openness of the Internet today remains in question.

Quotes du jour

November 8, 2007 in News, problems, VRM | 10 comments

just because ads are socially targeted, it doesn’t make me want more ads. — Fred Stutzman. Also, Spamminess is the death of a network, socially targeted or no.

And Nick Carr:

  Yes, today is the first day of the rest of advertising’s life.

  I like the way that Zuckerberg considers “media” and “advertising” to be synonymous. It cuts through the bullshit. It simplifies. Get over your MSM hangups, granddads. Editorial is advertorial. The medium is the message from our sponsor.

  Marketing is conversational, says Zuckerberg, and advertising is social. There is no intimacy that is not a branding opportunity, no friendship that can’t be monetized, no kiss that doesn’t carry an exchange of value. The cluetrain has reached its last stop, its terminus, the end of the line. From the Facebook press release: “Facebook’s ad system serves Social Ads that combine social actions from your friends – such as a purchase of a product or review of a restaurant – with an advertiser’s message.” The social graph, it turns out, is a platform for social graft.

  The Fortune 500 is, natch, lining up…]

Paul Boutin:

  Your Facebook profile is your public persona: The music, books, TV shows, political candidates, and celebrities you love or hate. The site’s ad model is based on personal endorsements–cool stuff, important stuff, and things that make you look good when they show up in everyone else’s news feed. I’m sure there are people who’ll blog about their socks. But there aren’t 50 million of them, and they won’t keep their friends long.

  The secret of Google’s success? They let you market anything, no matter how uncool, to anyone who can figure out a PC. We can Google for anything and buy it without anyone knowing. Google for “dandruff,” “hemorrhoids,” or “erictile disfunction” [sic]. Boom, boom, and boom–$4 billion adds up fast. Do you think I’m going to let Facebook use me to hawk Preparation H to fellow writers? Not a chance.

Dave Winer:

  Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that’s good!

Ian Wilker

  my impression is that SocialAds makes a systemic feature out of the fake profile, which “fan-sumers” can friend and flack to their friends — clutter up their friends’ News Feed with info about a brand.

  Blech. The whole thing gives me a pretty visceral flashback to being AmWay’d by a guy I’d seen as a friend — soon as I realized he’d gotten back in touch with me not to catch up on old times but to attempt to siphon money out of me I very nearly slugged him.

Brian Oberkirch:

  Here we are now, monetize us…

  To recast it: conversations are markets.