Before Tweeting got local…

You may have felt like this.

A day without Facebook, or ‘What’s that bright light in the sky?’

Happy Data Privacy Day! A day to relax with family and friends IRL, ponder your digital fingerprint and maybe grill a few Tofurkey sausages.

I’m celebrating Data Privacy Day by staying offline for 24 hours. By “offline”, I mean “not on Facebook”, lest you think I have magic analogue blogging powers. I’m  temporarily defecting from the Big F, as a conscientious objection to its recent bait and switch privacy shenanigans. 24 hours logged out of the world’s most popular social network. I can totally do that. It’s just one little website.

Bleary this morning without my usual cup of decaf (I’m whitening), my mouse moves automatically toward the little blue and white ‘f’ icon in my bookmarks toolbar. Whoa! I think, barely deflecting the click in time. Let’s visit somewhere else. Twitter, perhaps. Twitter use doesn’t strike me as contrary to the spirit of Privacy Day, because despite the fact that it’s actually more publicly searchable, I use it for business and it contains no pictures of me drinking beer.

In support of my Privacy Day tweet, I google* “Data Privacy Day”. The second search result is a Facebook page. Ubiquitous little bugger, that Facebook. I neatly avoid that particular link and go on about my day.

On the road, I wonder how my husband’s convergent media panel at ALL ACCESS: The Digital Incubator is going. Normally I’d Facebook him and see what was shaking. Unlocking my iPhone and heading for the blue square is almost one smooth motion; again I brake and consider my other communication options. I’m not going to phone him, for Pete’s sake. What’s this “messages” icon? Huh. I suppose I could text him. That would actually be faster. Ok. Read the rest of this entry »

What should you do with your advertising budget in 2010?

The spread of smartphones and location-aware mobile technology is opening up a (smaller) world of local marketing possibilities.

3 words: location, location, location. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

You’re the CEO, Senior VP of Marketing, and Chief Janitor of your very own local small business. You typically place an ad in the yellow pages, stuff a few dayglo flyers in mailboxes, and have a brochure website with an infrequently-updated ‘news’ section (because frankly, you can’t think of a whole lot of news with which to fascinate the public). You’ve heard of this new-fangled socialized media thing, but near as you can tell it’s all retired ladies stalking their in-laws and teenagers sending untoward photos to each other. But you also hear it costs less than fluorescent photocopies.

With major marketing superpowers like Pepsi skipping the superbowl and Coke basically declaring websites obsolete in order to refocus ad dollars on social media, Local Small Businessmen can safely assume the research is in, and traditional advertising isn’t. Social media is officially a great publicity channel. But what makes 2010 the year to dive in? Read the rest of this entry »

Viral gone wild: Girls flash their Facebook friends for breast cancer awareness

Hooray for boobies!

It was girls gone virtually wild on Facebook yesterday, as a ‘tell us your bra colour’ meme quickly infected the rest of the world from some patient zeros in Detroit. I heard about it on a New York ladies’ forum before I saw it in action, with the rationale that it was for breast cancer awareness. When it popped up amongst my Facebook friends, the ‘awareness’ mechanism became clear: each highly descriptive, cryptic colour was like a wink, forcing you to pause a moment and picture each friend in her skivvies.

So how does that steamy little moment promote breast cancer awareness? Jaded females wondered if they were being pwned by the internet and giving up the goods for free. But think about it: there are a couple approaches to marketing a cause*. Show people the disaster that looms without their support, or make them think about the great thing they already have & threaten to take it away. In the case of boobs, you’ve got a great product to call to mind! Taking a moment (or several, depending on the size of friends list) to reflect on the glory of boobs certainly makes you appreciate them. You’d hate to see any lost to breast cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Unreasonably searching: Is privacy uncool, and are we cool with that?

When I was youngster, our house was on a party line with another house across the dusty gravel road. The phone would ring one long for our house, two short for theirs. You answered it if it was for you. You could pick it up at any time and hear—heck, participate in—the conversation of anyone else on the line. Party lines functioned on respect, the honour system, and general good-neighbourliness.

My 8-year-old conversations didn’t have a whole lot of scandalous content such as might impact my future personal brand, but it was a pretty weird situation. That level of personal space invasion would be intolerable today. Within the same household, within the same family we all have our own phones. We hold our communications cards close to our chest. I squint with suspicion when my iPod picks up next door’s wifi network. What kind of person names their network Afrosizzle?

Facebook’s been making some big headlines with their new privacy settings, which include forced exposure of some previously private stats (name, gender, home town, your list of friends). This is ostensibly to appease Canada’s Privacy Commission, although completely removing the ability to hide your associations and personal details can’t be what the ole’ CPC had in mind. Read the rest of this entry »