As the editor of a fairly well established media and culture site (*cough* Transbuddha *cough*), I receive more than my fair share of e-mail links to viral and WOM sites.  Quite often they are legitimately sent in by readers, but mostly they’re hamfisted attempts at garnering cool cred by those tasked with promoting viral sites and media.  Far be it from me to begrudge an individual from trying to do their job.  In fact, I’m here today in an attempt to make that job a little easier. 

Sending out mass e-mails with ‘OMG check out this funny site!’ to random people who’ve foolishly signed up to receive communications from Company X is one thing.  Sending that same e-mail to the guy who runs a site that discusses advertising and virals at length is another.  If I can see that site X is a product site within two mouseclicks, all you’ve done is piss me off.  There are any number of bloggers and site editors who’ve watched the rise and fall of the various heavy hitters of the viral genre (hell, most of the time they’ve contributed to it), and we’re not a stupid breed.  We’re not autistics that someone planted in front a computer to post stuff.  We’re obviously interested and engaged in the online world, so treating us like rubes won’t do you any favors.  Unless negative mentions are what you’re looking for, that is. 

The fact is most content dependent sites don’t succeed based on pure linkage.  It’s the context and perspective we bring to the table.  We’re filters, you see.  We willfully and happily render ourselves crappy content meat shields so that our readers don’t have to wade through the infinite trench of crap that runs through the heart of this here intraweb.  Our success is as dependent on our ability to provide background and context as it is to find that perfect football to daddy’s crotch video.  Because of that, we won’t just post a viral site because an heretofore anonymous person sent us an e-mail telling us to.  That’d make us chumps, you see?  We’ll post it because we can provide a reason to visit.  We’ll post it because our ability to be in the know (and by proxy let the reader know) makes or breaks us.

So in essence:  Don’t treat site editors and bloggers like they’re dumb, and we won’t immediately consign your e-mails to our ever increasingly vigilant spam filters.  If you (and your client) think your site is mierda caliente, then have enough faith in it to provide us the details we want.  Who built the site?  Who is running the campaign?  What other campaigns go with it?  That information won’t tank a campaign, I promise.

“But, oh no”, you say, “our clever teaser campaign needs secrecy to build anticipation!”.  I got news for you, chump:  No it doesn’t.  On the off chance your viral can live up to even .01% of the hype you think you’ve garnered for it, people don’t like being tricked.  The first response your audience will have upon realizing that the enigmatic billboards, teaser sites, and WOM stuff is for nothing more exciting than gunk you spread on your armpit is a collective:  Well, that sucks.  It’d be like finding out Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory was just 1000 undocumented illegals running production line machinery that used nothing more than milk, cocoa, and sugar.  Letdown doesn’t even begin to cover it.  Blowback, baby.  It’s all about blowback.

Now you may have reams and reams of polling data that says otherwise, but let me kill yet another marketing chestnut:  You’re basing multimillion dollar decisions off the input of people too stupid to get out of completing a market survey.  Well done, Madison Avenue!  You’ve handed your financial success over to the same couple that fills out complaint cards at Wendy’s when the chili is four degrees too cold!  And you wonder why we don’t respect you….

While it may be comforting to believe that everyone who doesn’t work in a marketing office is just two IQ points removed from Play-Doh, or that we’re not hip enough to adequately comprehend just how kick ass your metrosexual soul patch is, the fact is web denizens are much smarter, and much more media savvy than we’re given credit for.  Reward that savvy, and it’ll reward you.  Treat content site editors and bloggers with intelligence and respect, and yes: we’ll do your job for you.  For free, no less.

I don’t know about you, but I feel better.  Now let’s hug this shit out and get back to our collective media ass-kicking.

Oh, and while I’ve got you here:  Were I to be crowned King Awesome of the Internet tomorrow, my first decree would be that Flash based product sites that launch in new, full screen or non-scalable windows would immediately be grounds for that site designer to be cockpunched by a PCP crazed Mr. T.  So cut that shit out already.  It’s annoying.  Seriously. 

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It’s simple ideas like this that remind me of the power of the web: 24/day live footage of a watering hole at the Sabi Sands Private Game Reserve in South Africa.  Brought to you by Africam.com.

Granted, you can always see the “highlights” by watching any number of nature shows on PBS or Discovery.  But there is just something about live that gives it so much more weight.  Live seems to connect me to that event in a way that can’t be duplicated by pre-recorded stuff.  And what with the environmental issues we are facing, what better idea than to be connected in such a tangible way to African wildlife that would otherwise seem so distant.

It’s nighttime over there as I’m writing this, which gives the footage an added bonus.  I have the video minimized and am just listening to the calming sound of crickets and frogs as I work.  I get a nice, soothing soundtrack without having to buy one of those crappy Pure Moods cds!  Brilliant!

Thanks to FushigiDenki for the link

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Here is one kick-ass way to use syndicated feeds for a single service.

The Hype Machine works perfectly from the search to the playlist that is created.

From the site:

About the Hype Machine

What is this?

The Hype Machine is an experiment that keeps track of songs and discussion posted on the best blogs about music.

Easily listen, discover and buy songs that everyone is talking about!

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Not only is this a great pesentation it is the future of online/digital identity. I’m not sure if it will be Sxip that pulls it off but the idea and notion is dead on. 

For the love of god watch this. Now I know Dick…you will understand after you watch the video.

Thanks for the link Mike.

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If you have not seen this, you must check it out. Windows Live Local Preview has street level, photographic views based on live.local mapping. 

This is some really cool stuff. It’s a technology preview so it has some bugs but you will certainly get the idea and eventually be able to look at your phone and walk the map to the location you want to find.

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We have posted about Kozoru here before. They are doing some really innovative stuff. I guess this last innovation got Google’s, knickers in a twist. From what I can tell, they took Google search results and made them more relevant based on a Kozoru Parse on the pages. Sounds good to me, why get banned over that?

I’m not going to pretend I know all the details but The Lone Ronin blog gets into the details.

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The World Wildlife Foundation has a new site where you can track a few pygmy elephants fitted with satellite collars.  As fun as that sounds, poor usability makes it worse than a school project.

First, it’s all wrapped in a crappy Flash interface.  You have to click through five screens to get to the tracking part, and you can’t control how the tracking data is displayed.  The tracking map animates the elephant’s locations each week, but without coordinates or even a distance scale.  We don’t even know if this position is a snapshot at some time during the week or an average.  It’s clear that this project wasn’t intended for repeat viewers or serious researchers.  It might be intended for children and school demonstrations, but then why is it so ugly and boring?  A much better project would have been syndication of the data, so interesting representations could be made by anyone.  And it probably would have been cheaper for the WWF than paying someone to do this.

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This is yet another smart move by . The user tagging biz is a hot subject matter that is only going to get hotter as time and the tags get better. Del.icio.us will be only one of many that gets picked up. I have been using Shadows, which I like pretty well.

Del.icio.us joins a growing stable of properties where Yahoo seeks to encourage hundreds of millions of its users worldwide to rely on the opinions of others—– their writings, photos, videos and Web links—to search the Web.

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Sonic has started selling gift cards to go with the card readers recently installed in their drive up bays.  Unfortunately, every good idea in the gift card program is countered by a stupid mistake.

• A cup?

  I like the background of the card; colorful, abstract, but detailed enough to look like rings from a cup set on paper. The different colors even remind you that Sonic has a wide variety of flavorings for their drinks, and the design is tastefully finished with a logo and a URL. So why did they have to put a big picture of a styrofoam cup in there? It totally ruins what could have been a pretty classy design.

• Reloads

  The cards can be reloaded on Sonic’s website, and there is even an automatic reload subscription. I actually can’t see anything wrong with this part, but I didn’t get into the members only area.

• There’s a members only area

  For the cards, this makes some sense. If I’m going to give them my credit card number, I want a little security. Users who register their Sonic card also get some extra benefits (or so says the website). But they also put irrelevant things in their members area like screen savers and email greeting cards.

  I don’t know who started this trend, but why in the world would you want to restrict access to your advertisements? Think of all the money that is wasted because most users don’t want to register just to get a crappy branded screen saver or desktop background. Flash designers and swf to scr programs aren’t cheap. Most companies that do this claim that they want to get usage data, but if you’re giving someone an executable that they’ll run on their computer there are much easier ways to track usage.

• Bad press area

  This isn’t directly related to the card, and certainly not limited to Sonic, but there is no high-resolution picture of the Sonic Card on their website. The only “press kit” they offer is a Zip file of PDFs containing company overviews. A lot of companies are paranoid about misuse of their assets, but most “misuses” are just free advertising. Even the funny ones.

• The name

  MySonic. I thought we were done with the MyBrand thing. We get it, you know that personalization is “totally hot right now”. Stop trying to be hip. A reloadable gift card doesn’t count as personalization anyway.

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Google has opened a free internet cafe in Heathrow Airport called Google Space.  It is supposed to be temporary, but I would expect to see permanent installations in a broad range of public spaces next year.  Not only is this good for travellers with time to kill, Google will log thousands of hours of real-world usability data and introduce their web services to a host of people.  Where else besides an airport can you get a better cross-section of the computer-owning public, all of whom are sitting around doing nothing?

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