LB's Rambles

Arrogant and Stupid

As you probably already know, there's been quite an uproar in social media over the stunt pulled by GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, who not only went to Zimbabwe to kill an elephant but also posted the whole sordid thing on Twitter. That may strike you as an arrogant and stupid thing to do. You'd be right.

I have occasionally disagreed with comments made by Erik Sass at MediaPost's The Social Graf blog, but I think he is absolutely right in his comments on the arrogant idiocy displayed by Parsons. "Social media is great," he says, "but even the most innovative social media strategy is futile when your company's top management is stupid, malicious, or both."

Apparently, a lot of people agree with him. I know an entrepreneur, who announced on Facebook that he had 400 GoDaddy domains but who has moved (or is moving) them all because of Parsons' stupidity. I imagine he's not alone. I'm sure there are other people working at GoDaddy who deserve a hell of a lot better as a leader.

Energy, Life, Death - and Marketing

When you think about energy safety, how do the various forms of energy line up in your head? What comes to mind? Nuclear? Oil? Coal? Seth Godin looks at some numbers from a marketing/PR viewpoint - and comes up with some information and opinions that may surprise you...

Hat tip: Instapundit

I Really Love Stupidity

Let's start with a basic assumption: spammers are stupid. We see new evidence of their stupidity daily. I just got a piece of email spam which is - at least - a promising new angle. According to this dreck, a State Department office has awarded me...a green card!

Yes, friends, I guess I'm no longer an illegal alien, a status which might have been hard to reconcile with my native-born US citizenship anyway. All I have to do is...you guessed it...pay some processing fees.

Ingenious? Not so much. Maybe there's more here than meets the eye, but it's hard to tell, because the author of this dubious letter has some serious issues with basic English:

This e-mail ballot visa- lottery- program was innovated ON JAN by- USAFIS, This is the 2nd edition of the program and its designed to be held every year, the aims and objectives of the program is to give free- visa's to citizens of developing countries around the world who wishes to travel to U.S and start a new life and work.

There's a lot more of this semi-literate nonsense, and the English continues to deteriorate. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be participating anytime soon. Stupid spammers. That's redundant. I know.

Good for Apple!

Amid all the dispiriting and painful news coming out of Japan, it's worth reading the story of what Apple has been doing for people through its stores and offices there. Blogger Kevin Rose has published a pretty remarkable email from an Apple store worker. I'm not an Apple fanboy or an Apple worker - but I think the company and the people involved deserve a lot of credit for the decisions they have taken and the actions they have performed to help themselves and everybody around them, beginning on the day of the gigantic earthquake and continuing ever since.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Blogs: On the Way Out?

Are blogs really declining in both usage and popularity, as the New York Times seems to think?

Maybe. And maybe not so much.

The Times quotes a Pew study saying that blogging among young people ages 12-17 fell by half between 2006 and 2009, to the point where only about 14% of those in that age group now blog. Apparently, the rest of them believe they can reach a larger audience with Facebook and/or Twitter.

Perhaps so. And yet it's hard to say much of anything in 140 characters. Or to limit your potential readership to your existing circle of friends, as many people do on Facebook.

To me, as a blogger, blogs serve a different purpose. They allow for longer discussions. They allow me to link to a variety of sources. A broad reading of a number of blogs can help avoid the kind of tunnel vision which - sorry! - has largely overtaken outlets like the New York Times and much of the legacy media, for that matter. I'm with Elisa Camahort Page, the co-founder of BlogHer, who is quoted WAY down in the Times article: "if you're looking for substantive conversation, you turn to blogs."

Hat tip: Shelly Palmer.

 

Dumb as...

No excuses, please.

Social media is not that new a phenomenon. The Internet, and a few basic rules of conduct, shouldn't be that mysterious. So when a congressperson gets "caught" doing something unbelievably dumb on line...there really isn't that much to say except, goodbye.

I'm referring, of course, to the strange case of (now ex-) Congressman Christopher Lee. Not the actor, the apparently not-too-bright (now ex-) member of Congress who got himself caught doing something so incredibly dumb that...

Well, let Erik Sass of MediaPost's The Social Graf blog tell you the story. And remind us of a few rules about dumbness. Not that most readers of this blog haven't already figured these rules out. But, hey, you never know.

To Gaffe or Not to Gaffe?

When is a social media gaffe not a gaffe? When a company, brand or individual posts something stupid...then apologizes a few hours later and pulls down the offending post or tweet or article, is that a gaffe? Is the withdrawal the end of the matter?

We had an example this past week with a widely-publicized tweet from Kenneth Cole, seeking to link events in Egypt to the brand's spring fashion collection. Gaffe? Strategy? Some thoughts from PR guru Mark Ragan at Ragan.com.

Is Ragan too cynical? I'd like to think so. I'm not sure I can think so.

Lessons in Speechwriting from "I Have a Dream"

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, Andrew Dlugan has posted an interesting article at ragan.com, called "‘I Have a Dream’ holds 5 lessons for speechwriters." There's no question (in my mind, anyway) that Dr. King's speech was one of the finest, most moving and powerful speeches of the 20th century, and Dlugan examines at least five techniques which Dr. King used to make that speech the powerhouse that it is. Worth reading for all communicators!

The Aging of TV News

There's not a lot of good news about news, as far as television news outlets are concerned, in the latest study just released from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. According to this study, television is still the first choice overall as a primary source for news, cited by 66% of news consumers - but that is because it is the overwhelming favorite of the over-65 crowd. That aging audience is what's keeping TV News going.

What's more, younger audiences are moving to the Internet as their primary news source. For people younger than 30, the Internet is now the prime news source - according to Pew, the first time that has ever happened.Nearly 65% of 18-to-29 year olds say the Internet is their main source, a percentage that has nearly doubled in just three years. Mashable has zeroed in on this angle of the story, and there's a lot of good analysis available from their site.

Hat tip: Ragan's PR Daily

Snow, Twitter and Mayor Booker

This week's blizzard and snow emergency situation in the northeast has brought renewed attention to the work of Newark, New Jersey's, tweeting Mayor Cory Booker. While another mayor of a large city fairly near Newark has been getting nothing but bad press and complaints about his city's slow response to the snow, Mayor Booker has been getting a lot of praise - deservedly so, I think - for the way he's been using Twitter to find people who need immediate help and then getting that help to them. Vanity Fair and Wired have some excellent examples.

This is not a surprise to me - I've been following @CoryBooker for some time, now, as my home town is adjacent to part of Newark. He's no newbie on Twitter - he's been posting there regularly, usually several times a day, and a lot more frequently, obviously, in the latest snow crisis. Yes, HE's been posting. He has more than a million followers now, so when he posts, he has a pretty good network available to him for reaching a lot of the people he needs to reach. I can't think of a better or more timely use of social media by a politician who's trying to grapple with a major problem. Kudos to Mayor Booker!

Hat tip: SmartBrief on Social Media newsletter