‘New’ is addictive. Here’s some stuff that’s not new. Don’t matter though, try em anyway.

I should just fricking put these links on Twitter where they belong instead of saving them up to try and add some useful insight. Whatever.

1. Faris Yakob and some other blokes talk about interesting stuff in 2008. Seems a long time ago now. Still, nobody knew anything then, nobody knows anything now. If anybody does know, send me a postcard, ta. And if you don’t know (and nobody does), give it some interesting chat instead.

2. BJ Fogg on Simplicity. If I say more, you won’t bother clicking. Then you’ll miss out. Go on, click. It’s worth it

3. Five ways to ruin your industry reputation. Seems pretty retro and obvious, now right? Surely everyone knows Facebook is for baby pictures and debauchery; business networking is done with linkedin and twitter. Or do they? And who’s ‘everyone’ anyway. Get ‘everyone’ to send me a postcard, see how many I get.

4. John Kay. If you don’t like learning about business and economics at all, well, whatever. If you do like business and economics and you don’t like reading John Kay, you’re just wrong, and I’ll fight you. Unless you are (a) bigger than me, or (b) better at fighting than me or (c) nah.

5. “Viral marketing may also be limited by the virtue that most people are actually only talking to small groups of people online.” HP Labs research from 2008. So talk to lots of small groups, right? Or – get this – make sure you start a conversation with one person, repeat that n times. Don’t just arrogantly broadcast your views out at people…hmm. Irony fail. Kzzzpttt. [end]

First, go to the privacy page.

I’d already customised my “Sharing on facebook” settings – setting everything to “Friends Only”

It turns out that what facebook means by “Friends Only” isn’t exactly what I thought it meant though – it actually means “Your Friends”, “Any websites facebook trusts”, “Anyone applications your friends trust”, “Any websites your friends trust”, and “Any of your applications”.

To reduce the huge number of places facebook will share your personal data with a bit, click “Edit your settings” under “Applications, games and websites”, and change the settings for “Instant personalization” [sic]. Now turn off any extra applications you’ve got installed (several applications seemed to have mysteriously installed themselves on my account through using facebook connect twice, although I would never have said I was willing to install a facebook app from them).

Another privacy concern is that Facebook can track your movements over the entire internet due to people using Facebook Connect – If I want facebook to have data, I’ll enter it myself.

Most sites that collect information about you (like tracking codes) can be blocked if you’re so-inclined. What’s more, they normally just track you – they don’t tie it into personal information about you. Facebook on the other hand is trusted with personal data by enough people that it is able to know exactly who you are, and exactly what you’re doing right now.

Unfortunately it’s very tough to block facebook connect on other websites – they serve the “social plugins” from the same domain as Facebook – so you can’t just block it with an entry in your hosts file. You can install ad blockers to do it but, working in advertising, I really don’t like that option.

It would be a massive shame if Facebook ended up ruining the web for ad-funded publishers because they don’t give any other way to block their services.

I’m not leaving Facebook yet, but I’m coming perilously close. Perhaps the most worrying thing to me is if I do leave, I won’t be able to stop facebook from sharing any and all information my friends enter with everyone and his dog.

Everybody likes to think their viral creatives are going to go viral without any kind of push – but here’s the bottom line:

Summary:

How much would you enjoy reporting to your client to tell them their average cost per view was £20? (even if you don’t phrase it like that, they will be calculating it).

Including a bought spend reduces their (and your) risk – in very worst case above you’d be entering that meeting reporting an average cost per view of around 1/40th of that price – that’s 40 times more ROI for them, and a more economically viable campaign.

What’s missing from the above?

Quite a bit – for a start, the more that your content is seen, the more likely it is to get organic views – so a bought media buy makes it far less likely that you’ll be hitting anywhere close to the worst case. For simplicity I’ve left this at the most basic calculation I could.

(Disclaimer: these numbers are estimated and may not necessarily reflect real-life results, which will depend on individual campaigns)

I’m a big fan of Ice Road truckers. This is a show about truckers moving supplies in the frozen far north of Canada, in temperatures as low as minus 34 centigrade.

One thing that truckers need is diesel. Not just for the simple reason of getting their trucks from A to B. The reason ice road truckers need diesel is to run the heater in their cab. If they run out of diesel, the heater goes off. If the heater goes off, they die. It’s minus thirty four. So no heat, they die.

Ice road truckers devote time and effort to ensuring they have enough diesel. It’s a major concern for them. Because if they run out, they die.

Profit for a business like ours is rather like diesel for ice road truckers. It’s not the aim of the game.

The aim of the game for an ice road trucker is to get the goods from A to B, safely and in good time. It’s customer service, solving the customer’s problem, meeting or exceeding expectations; businesses have the same goals the world over. Our aims are no different.

We need profit in the same way a trucker needs diesel. We don’t seek it for its own sake, but we have to have it, otherwise we die. That’s why we spend time and effort making sure we have enough. We’ve always had profit and we intend to keep it that way.

For truckers, the business of maintaining diesel levels requires five simple steps: get large tanks on the truck, fill them up before starting a job, check the levels often, be vigilant for leaks, and take measures to fix leaks immediately. Five simple steps. Then they get on with the job of solving the customer’s problem, getting from A to B and providing service.

–
And because no blog post is complete without some truck pictures…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tth91722/3414501485/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturallight/142953959/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gr8_pics_4_u/4379003289/

The chart below shows the share of tweets by political party, split by question over the debate.

Data provided by Delib and The Viral Ad Network

[update]

News just in (straight after this post was published) – YouGov poll suggests that the Conservatives won the debate – which coincides with the data we recorded above.

[update]
1. Gez thinks these results are massively skewed by a joke from Simon Pegg.
2. Twitter is all up in arms about YouGov CEO standing as Tory candiate.

It’s a nice summary of what we’ve learned in the last ten or so years. Cheers – Andy

Twitter of course excels at short succinct messages. So do cartoons. Me, I’m hoping for the cartoon equivalent of Twitter. I would use it to Kill Birds. There’s a free web-app idea for someone. Let me know when it’s done…

Now you can monitor all the LOLs and WTFs to your heart’s content…

Thanks to Mark Pack