Big Brother and Facebook

I used to think that everyone on facebook was being bombarded with ads for Arrested Development t-shirts and American Apparel. Not so. It seems that facebook monitors not only which ads you click on, but also your actual profile info to target ads to you. Information about the countries in which you access facebook also sticks; after living in France for 8 months I still get ads intended for French citizens applying for US visas.

My friend clicked on a link for meeting "cute, single girls", and now he gets ads for singles sites every time he logs in. So there's at least one downside of targeted ads, they may remind you of doing something embarrassing you'd rather forget :)

The Post Goes 2.0

We've come a long way since the '90s AOL chat rooms, now Washington Post is running discussions all day. It's essentially a moderated chat room, with expert hosts on sports, music, economics, politics, etc.

Great way to offer people a direct connection to the news and journalists, check out the one running right now on the Superbowl music line up.

You can find all of the daily discussions on the left sidebar of the Post's homepage.

Pitch Perfect: Simple and SMRs

Today's session consisted of two webinars which detailed both the simple and the syndicated. RSS feeds, Wikis, Embeds, and Hubs are terms familiar to the new SMR, though don't discount the simple tactics when pitching, as one of Axiom's well-rounded interns Annie Vanasek observed:

There are many things that may come as obvious to-dos when pitching a reporter. But it is always nice to be reminded of what you should and should not do when delivering your pitch. For example, I had already been aware of the importance of researching your reporter and knowing their beat before you try to pitch them, but today's webinar seemed to hammer it into my brain.

The three tips to always follow are:

• You should develop your story into something that would be attractive to them. With a creative mind, you can give them what they want while still making sure your news is covered. (At the same time, if you are having trouble figuring out how the two relate, then you probably shouldn't be pitching them in the first place.)

• Something from their archives that can be useful to you in your pitch. For example, if you are pitching a restaurant's new recipe and you discovered that they have included recipes in their past articles.

• The final one is a combination of the two. You can grab the reporter's attention by referencing one of their past articles, then telling them how you can help them with your story.

Social Media Releases
Now a new topic emerges, though it's not new to the PR scene. Hardly. Since its inception by Todd Defren, the social media release (SMR) can be a journalist's best friend. How tech savvy do you have to be to navigate it? If you can't navigate the web, a blog, or some other web hub, you'll likely have difficulty.

PR/Web 2.0 enthusiast Brian Solis led the talk about SMRs and they're feasibility for a new and improved online press room, and wired services.

Before I go into more detail, check out the conversation prism as I delve into many blogs on this topic, including Solis' own Web site.

Google Thinks You're Popular

Google has plans to rank social influence. They currently have a patent pending for technology that ranks your social influence on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

How it would work? This article sums it up:

"The new technology could track not just how many friends you have on Facebook but how many friends your friends have. Well-connected chums make you particularly influential. The tracking system also would follow how frequently people post things on each other’s sites. It could even rate how successful somebody is in getting friends to read a news story or watch a video clip, according to people familiar with the patent filing."


While this seems like it would turn into a high school popularity contest, this is also good news for advertisers. They will be able to seek out the most influential people in a group or niche, therefore having more targeted and effective ads. Also, I'll admit it, I would be interested to see where I rank among my fellow Facebookers & Twitterers.

Facebook App Gets a Much Needed Update

I've finally converted. Today I have switched over to using the Facebook iPhone app as opposed to the Facebook mobile website. Facebook finally got it right.

Basically, everything on the web-version of Facebook has been condensed down into a slick application for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

My problem with the Facebook application before, was that it didn't have a status update feature and lacked a few others: new home page, comments, ability to read notes, ability to see posted items, etc...

Check out a photo below from TechCrunch:



This update alleviates all of my past issues with the Facebook App in the past. The update is well worth downloading.


You can download the updated version here.

Wall Street Journal Wine Club

With newspapers nervous about their impending doom, a lot of cutbacks are being made across the country. More news from the wire, smaller sub-sections (such as travel), and more blogging efforts are all results of the struggling business.

Wall Street Journal has come up with a creative new way to subsidize revenue; they're starting a WSJ wine club. It's one of those wine-of-the-month clubs as found in SkyMall, except WSJ runs it, kind of. They're teaming up with Direct Wines, and other than loaning their name the collaboration isn't clear.

Regardless, if you want to support the WSJ and get something out of it, this seems pretty viable. And hey, maybe it's about time those economic commentators put their money where their mouths are and diversified their portfolios! On the other hand, how many people want to sign up for a wine of the month club during this dire economic downturn?

Read the WSJ-bashing NYT artice here (spoiler: author implies that WSJ readers aren't "effete" enough for wine): (NYT)