Entire Relationships in One Paragraph: It’s a short, sharp and utterly effective glimpse into three relationships that’s utterly bowled me over. Wish I could write this concisely and effectively.
Facebook’s Ad Network
Facebook came out this week with their real business plan – to leverage the network of people and the information they have on them to create an advertising behemoth. Using the ideas of viral marketing, combined with targeted advertising based on the interests and activities that many users list in their profiles, Facebook hopes to deliver an effective advertising platform that surpasses others simply because of the social power behind it.
It’s a great business move – with that much data on interests, and people piling in to add more, along with the value of the links between people, it’s an almost foolproof business case. Advertising targeted at user interests means they are more likely to react to it, allowing advertisers to tailor their messages and get the maximum payoff for their investment, which means advertising distribution agencies will lap it up.
Add in the viral marketing angle, where advertising effectively comes with a personal endorsement of someone you (vaguely) trust or at the very least have some shared experience with means you’re more likely to take a look at the message and consider it – for however many hundredths of a second – to be a real message, again making it more likely that you will follow through on it. Personal recommendations have always carried the greatest weight, and only recently have marketers tried to leverage it.
Great move, Facebook. I’m buying none of it.
NYGirlOfMyDreams found
The story of NYGirlOfMyDreams, including a picture of the girl (she’s Aussie!) – Damn, she’s cute too :)
Two in One
Two for you today – cumul.us, a social weather prediction site where you get scored for how well you pick the weather (I’m hooked already), and the Mythbusters test out the plane on a conveyor question in the next season (airing December). Much awesomeness. (via)
TV Shows
May contain spoilers!
Heroes
Heroes is back! I had a fear that this would be somewhat like the second season of Lost, where more and more plot elements were going to be added until it was all an addled mess that wanders around and goes nowhere; up until this week’s episode, that fear wasn’t too far from being proven true.
But this week, they bought it back, and threw in a cute little twist to boot. I likey. There was no sign of the Alejandro-Maya-Sylar plot thread, which was a relief (can a character get more annoying than Maya or a plot thread more predictable than theirs?), but it inevitably means an extended sequence next episode.
On the other hand, one of Lost‘s plus points – its ability to kill off major characters just as you got to liking them, thereby simultaneously exasperating and reinvigorating for your interest – is a little lacking, to my inexpert opinion.
Top Gear
My god, it just gets better and better. This week found our intrepid trio driving across Botswana in second hand £1500 two-wheel-drive cars, a challenge most would only contemplate in serious 4-wheel-drives.
They turned up with cars I would suggest would be much cheaper than £1500, given what showed up for a similar Porsche challenge, but let’s not let that get in the way of a stupendously funny episode.
If you’re not watching Top Gear, what are you doing with your Sundays?! (ok, Mondays by the time it gets to Australia) Get to it.
30 Rock
I picked this up on a whim after seeing a little sample back in the first season, and I reckon I’ll be sticking with it for a bit. It’s not exactly predicable or by the numbers, but it sits firmly in the American-New York Sitcom genre.
Guest appearances weekly make it lively, Tina Fey is a talent (cute to boot!) and Alec Baldwin is straight out of his role in Will and Grace, the campness toned down a little for a little more general asshole-ness. It’s awesome!
Secret Diary of a London Call Girl
I never followed the Intimate Adventures blog, but I had heard about it – and when I heard Billie Piper (yes, the former pop singer, but did you see that series or two of Doctor Who? She was kick-ass!) was playing the title character, I just had to watch. (alright alright, pipe down).
I’m… a little surprised at what these guys are more-than-ready to put on free-to-air broadcast-TV week-to-week – and it’s getting further into it by the looks of things. Sure, timeslot, mature European attitude, all that and a bag of chips, but I would struggle to imagine any of the Australian networks airing this, no matter what the timeslot. America? HBO would pretty much be your only bet.
It’s a well-written left of the middle show, and my only regret is that I hadn’t and am not reading it now. Having just cut back on my RSS feeds, I’m not subscribing too any more for a bit, and really, I think I would only imagine Billie Piper as Belle now.
It’s also a little disconcerting to see places I’m getting very familiar with in London show up in the TV show – sure, there’s the famous spots, but this will have, for example, Belle walking to catch a bus… about 2 minutes walk from my work, where I pass by almost daily on my way in. Ordinary world reflected through the half-silvered mirror of the TV.
Others? There’s always The Daily Show, though that is threatened with the American writers’ strike. And… well, not much else to be honest. Lost, Ugly Betty, House, and practically every show I used to watch have all fallen by the wayside for reason or another, and plus, it doesn’t help that I don’t have a TV :)
Happy Beads
Remember the lead-paint toys scandal? Here’s an even better one – ‘Bindeez’ have a glue which turns into GHB (a.k.a. fantasy, liquid ecstasy) when swallowed. How’s that for corrupting our kids? :)
Inanity
You know how poking is used to get someone’s attention/flirt non-commitally on Facebook?
Officially peaked.
Bonfire Night
Think some celebrations are entirely random? You wait till you see Bonfire Night (a.k.a. Guy Fawkes Night) in England.
- Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
- The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
- I know of no reason
- Why Gunpowder Treason
- Should ever be forgot.
The last four days or so – since Halloween really – fireworks have been going off around London, from various spots. Tonight, they’re celebrating in earnest, with fireworks going off pretty much everywhere, even from backyards.
When I asked for someone to tell me why, they said it was to celebrate the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot (1605), when a bunch of religious fanatics Catholics tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament with the honourable members inside, along with the King.
Far be it for me to question traditions, but celebrating it by… blowing up fireworks? You gotta wonder at the logic. Was there a surplus of gunpowder by any chance? I can imagine this didn’t go on too much during the world wars. Sounds vaguely like various bits of London are getting bombed on a regular basis.
And today, it would have been called a “terrorist incident” – bombs! religion! politicians! Will the Americans be celebrating 9/11 400 years from now with fireworks? (too soon?) :P Ah, you gotta love the English.
(on the other hand, Friday is Diwali – a perfectly good reason to blow up fireworks!)
NYGirlOfMyDreams
NYGirlOfMyDreams.com: If I did this for London, I would have one practically every week. (hey, I dream a lot, ok?) (Ed: He’s found her! But no “and we’ll be back for the rest of the story at some point.”)
(Ed2: For those still stumbling across this post, the fairytale didn’t end so well)
Remember Haneef?
Remember the Haneef case? The latest should interest you. The skeptics of the government suddenly find themselves very, very right.