New media—and social media, for that matter—share something in common with old media moguls: Personality, as in the persons so acutely identified with the organizations. The brands are big, but often no bigger than the people behind them.
‘Hey, Buddy, You Can’t Poop There’
While shaving this morning, I heard someone outside talking to his dog: “Hey, buddy, you can’t poop there”. Yeah, like the dog understands what the guy is saying. Owners’ actions—letting a dog do its business anywhere it pleases and then cleaning up the dodo with a baggie—reinforce the animal’s poop-anywhere behavior. Dogs are responsive to humans. This owner, and the many others I see here in California, train their animals to behave a certain way: Poop anytime, anywhere they want. Outside the residence, of course. 🙂
You’re Zucked!
Perhaps I don’t pay enough attention to Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis. Something, somewhen, somehow bugged me about his blog posts—maybe it was frequency or attitude, I don’t recall—and so I nuked his RSS feed sometime ago.
But post “The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand” has me howling delight, even though Jason rambles on even more incoherently than I do. Thanks to Dare Obasanjo for tweeting the link.
American Apparel Rummage Sale
Apple has got nothing on American Apparel. The line for the rummage sale in San Diego on May 8, 2010, made an Apple new product launch line seem tiny indeed. Both companies have strong brands—and […]
Conan O’Brien Googles
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7TwqpWiY5s] Comedian Conan O`Brien’s 45-minute @Google visit is simply amazing. He’s funny, yet reflective, also identifying how the Internet and social sharing disrupts decisions the suits at old media companies like NBC make. […]
Let Your Stories Teach You How to Write Headlines
Marco Arment got me to thinking about headlines today. Let me start by apologizing to Marco for nearly copying his post in it’s entirety. I don’t normally do that. In post “My Bad Post Titles Are Getting Out Of Control And Are Inconvenient For Techmeme, Now,” he writes:
At Least When Business Insider Copies My Articles Nearly In Their Entirety, They Write Their Own Sensational Titles To Replace Mine And Make Me Sound Much More Critical Of Apple Than My Posts Really Are, Every Single Time I Write Anything About Them.
‘Downfall’ Reenactment 56
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpmvtPXQR4] Brandon Hardesty has appropriately answered YouTube yanking (or disabling) dozens of “Downfall” parodies. Brandon recreated the “Hitler Bunker” scene for all those people looking to make their own “Downfall” parody. You can laugh at […]
Wall Street Journal's Pay-more Paywall demands Too Much
Do you pay Rupert Murdoch 18 bucks a month for a Wall Street Journal iPad subscription? I dare you to confess. Today, during News Corporation’s earnings call, CEO Murdoch claims that the Journal has 64,000 active users on iPad. Presumably one of them is you.
I ask because I see the Journal as having gone too far with its paywall approach. I’m testing iPhone 3GS again, and I downloaded the WSJ app last week. I logged in with my web subscription account, and the Journal let me read for a couple days. Then came the demand for more cash. Not much, just a buck a week. But I already pay for the web subscription, for which the Journal charges about $150 a year. So Murdoch wants another 52 bucks a year for iPhone and about another $215 for iPad, which I also am testing? OK, it’s only $207 a year for iPad if taking advantage of the $3.99-a-week promotion.
A Dating Service for Apple Fans?
My thoughts on this: Apple fans can be annoying when they’re on their own. The thought of them breeding and creating little Apple fans, a whole family of hard core hipster Apple lovers, is just not a good thing. On the other hand, making sure that Apple fans only date other Apple fans is a good way of stopping them from spreading their Apple fan genes to the general population, I guess. So maybe this site isn’t all bad.
Michael Arrington
Barber of Seville
Last night, while my wife and I walked in the neighborhood, I snapped a picture of the sign over the Barber of Seville shop. The barber there has cut hair for 50 years—30 in the […]
New York Dog Walkers Bing? What About California?
Microsoft has this nifty marketing promotion where New York City dog walkers wear Bing T-Shirts. Hell, why not any city in California? The people out here are dog nuts, sometimes walking two or three animals at once.
The Register Should Know Better
Right about this time each month, some blogger or journalist ogles Net Applications browser data and writes about Internet Explorer’s declining “marketshare”. The Register is May’s guilty party, calling the data something it isn’t. Headline: “Internet Explorer […]