I am totally impressed with Bing, Microsoft’s attempt to get back into the search game, and its not just because of the plethora of results of my vanity search – I finally beat out the Erin Norton who makes jewelry.
Bing’s spin is that its a “Decision Engine” so they’ve organized and categorized the results to help you make decisions. I highly recommend testing out an image search (limitless scroll bar!), a restaurant search (check out the left hand options!) and a travel search (they graph out ticket prices!). For some more capabilities check out this video -
However, I’m really very disappointed by the display ads. These are just crap – so far I’ve only seen them on tech heavy/early adopter web sites – show me some flights to SFO, comparison shopping a new tech gadget an image search for some nerdy movie if you’re going with the early adopters.
Creepy guy in mirror, woman giving me evil eye surrounded by photos and crappy stock “I can do it” photo = what is this ad for again? Erectile dysfunction? Anti-depressants? It’s so generic, no defined personality and totally lame.
I love Facebook, really I do. However FB’s inability to offer any sort of advertising quality control is killing me. I’ve ranted about Facebook telling me I need a diet and a man, I’ve been disturbed by zombie hands and now we have TNT overkill.
The ads are slick with great copywriting and clicking on any of them take you to the show’s Facebook page to watch a preview of tonight’s episode. It is a very well executed campaign – I would totally give it an A. However, I don’t need 3 of the same ads at a time. Facebook you need to recognize that despite these ads being variations – they belong to the same advertiser and should rotate with other advertisers.
I log on this morning to see this and hit refresh to see more of the same -
BooneOakley also launched a new site this week that’s causing some buzz as its completely in YouTube.
They utilize YouTube’s ability to have clickable portions within videos to create the buttons that take you to different “pages”. Very much like Modernista’s unwebsite (that Skittles later copied) and in keeping with their agency description “BooneOakley is a full-service, out of the box ad agency.”
Big news out of China this week is that the government has once again cut off access to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other social media sites in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. You can read here, here and here to learn more.
A few months ago I was sitting at a funeral for a family friend and while waiting for the memorial to begin I was eavesdropping on conversations.
Older Woman - ”You know my grand-kids all text message and email me these days. I can’t understand half of what they’re saying.”
Middle Aged Man – “You text message with them?”
Older Woman – “Well, they won’t take answer the phone when I call. What does LOL mean?”
Middle Aged Man – (with total conviction) ” That means Lots of Love”
Older Woman – “Ohhh that’s so nice!”
I love that. I don’t even care that its wrong. Just think how often those teens probably text LOL and every time that woman is going to think they’re saying Lots of Love. Granted, most of their conversations won’t make sense and the kids will probably think their grandma is crazy, but she’ll feel loved.
Oh and for anyone who has ever been lost in a text message vernacular I give you UrbanDictionary.com.
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