Back in the home skillet of NYC. My trip to Chicago was wonderfully quiet. I picked a hotel in the middle of nowhere so as to avoid people; I didn’t want to risk running into the paparazzi and all! Twas quite enjoyable getting away from the masses. There are far too many people here for my taste and in all honesty, I’m rather sick of ‘em all up in my snuffaluffagus everywhere I turn. Time for the Sabs to 23 skidoo? Perchance to dream…
On a completely unrelated topic, I’ve been increasingly interested in the Subway/Quiznos showdown. Who hasn’t suffered from the Subway’s $5 foot long jingle ear worm? Impossible to exterminate! 
Subway is the recognized leader in this market and Quiznos’ attempt to stake claim on a piece o’ that market share pie is a coy lil’ marketing campaign promoting their Toasty Torpedo, “12 inches of flavor” promised by a smoky-voiced toaster that asks a chef to “Put it in me.”
This is a little too close to when George Costanza tried to mix food and sex and “flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami“, “combining food and sex into one disgusting uncontrollable urge”… Hotness.
$@bs
Taste the (Interactive) Rainbow
I’m sure you know by this time, I’m talking about the new Skittles campaign. Since March 1st, if you visit http://skittles.com/ you’ll be taken to the results page for a Twitter search on “skittles,” in real time. Everything except a “small overlay navigation pane is the only Skittles-branded bit; everything else is Twitter.”
Not only are they using a Twitter search on “#skittles” as their homepage, but their videos are housed on YouTube, their photos are housed on Flickr , their friends are on Facebook and their about and description pages link to Wikipedia. Everyone in Tweetopia is naturally agog and wondering how long this will last and what effects it may have. Of course the unprecedented idea has forced some to question whether Skittles is giving up control of their branding and messaging. Your thoughts on this?
In other news, yesterday I tweeted about a woman in FL who called 911 three times when McDonald’s could not fulfill an order for McNuggets. I thought the whole thing was fantastic, but to her defense, this morning I heard that she had already paid for her food when they told her that they didn’t have said McNuggets; annoying.
When she asked for her money back, the McD’s management let her know that McDonald’s has a “no refund” policy so the woman called 911… and again… and again. She’s now being charged with misuse of 911. I think she should have gotten her money back, though I don’t know what she thought the cops would do about it. She needs to write to McD’s corporate; I have saved so much money by bitching, for trufe.
$@bs
Follow the Follower
At first I kind of had a problem admitting it. I think I’m past the that stage now and can honestly own that I’ve somehow developed a serious addiction to Twitter. I can’t stop reading tweets, articles pertaining to the medium and theories on how it will evolve.
Most people are trying to promote some kind of product or service. Some want to be considered thought leaders in the space or drive traffic to a blog or website. Regardless, the idea is to get more followers than you are following .
I’ve also read a lot about different strategies in order to get more users following you than you are following . One way is to request to follow others in order to have them request to follow you out of courtesy. Then after a while you stop following some of those people so that the number of users following you is still higher but the number you are following decreases.
Another article mentioned that one may view Twitter as a kind of cocktail party and behave accordingly. When arriving at a party, you might start talking to people and introduce yourself. The way to do this on Twitter is by sending a direct message to whomever you requested to follow in order to initiate conversation and networking.
Yesterday I received a request to be followed and reciprocated in turn. Then to no surprise, I received a direct message from the individual shortly after thanking me for the return follow. I happened to be in the middle of a number of things and was not available to return the direct message right away. By the time I attempted to reply to his direct message, he had already removed himself from following me.
The funniest part about the whole thing is that the idea of Twitter was to post what you are doing. I would have to say that about 97% of the updates submitted have nothing to do with what that user is doing.
If you’d like to read more, click here to check out my friend The Quixotic Jedi’s blog posting about Twitter for Beginners.
Are You Worth More Than a Burger?
This week Burger King started a new campaign called the Whopper Sacrifice campaign. Basically you’d get a free whopper any time you “sacrificed” 10 of your Facebook friends.
I thought it was hysterical and noted on one Linked In Group chat that the sacrificial lambs should receive a message accordingly.
Apparently BK had the same idea! The campaign was suspended later on today. Visitors were informed that “Facebook has disabled Whopper Sacrifice after your love of The Whopper sandwich proved to be stronger than 232,654 friendships.”
Facebook responded by saying the application is merely being tweaked for privacy reasons. Officials at the social network didn’t like that it alerted people who had been “un-friended” as part of the application.
Feeling Overwhelmed By Social Media
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks being completely consumed by Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and the rest of the time blogging.
I’m not the only one feeling the brain drain from such tools as Twitter. Others are discussing the need to step away and smell the eRoses, like in this article, “How Much Twitter is Too Much”.
Now, I understand how all of these social media outlets work together in combination to drive web traffic, but I’m just now starting to wonder what the central theme should be on my blog, since for the most part it’s been pretty narrative and conceptual – that was my goal anyway.
I’ve covered everything from Politics to Music to Life, and now … Social Media. I’ve tried to stir up some controversy, to entertain, to inform… what has worked and what has not?
Has anything stuck out as particularly interesting, out of the ordinary, entertaining or unique?
Lemme know…
$@bs
