More Microsoft bashing.
I’m trying to investigate advertising on Bing.com search for a couple clients, so I fill out the little more information form online and patiently wait for someone to contact me. This is the little “thanks for contacting us” email I recieved a couple of hours later.
It is from Microsoft to my Outlook on a PC. There is absolutely no excuse for it to look like this!
Can you spot the difference and similarities between these graphics for the US and Poland?
US
Poland
Need a hint? Check this out.
Last week FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook. Rumors that it was merely a talent grab (FF founders are ex-Googlers) and of course the scoffs that FB has been stealing features from FF for a while now anyways (like button, stacked comments…its totally true). Then there were rumors about Twitter being acquired by Google, a variety of crazy conspiracy theories and the announcement of the “next FriendFeed”.
Mashable declared the that Streamy would take over as the FF loyalists announced their dissappointment and retreat back to Twitter (ugh social media folks are soooo dramatic).
I’ve tested out Streamy and I totally agree; Streamy will be a new and improved version of FF if enough people adopt.
Why is it so great? Well, they’ve integrated a reader into the service to start. Twitter and FF is all about sharing links, and discussing what’s going on. In Streamy’s reader I can sort my subscriptions, browse what my friends are reading and instantly share the articles along with my comments across a variety of social networks. There is a built in URL shortner and a place for comments. Sharing is easier in Streamy then in any other platform.
They’ve also integrated more than just other micro-blogging networks. Through Streamy I post to Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg and I can email it other contacts.
Plus their reader is super slick. I’m a bloglines loyalist, but Streamy doesn’t erase old stories in my reader when I read them – they’re all still there. Through the categories I’ve set up for everything I subscribe too I can read my news by specific website or through categories allowing me to quickly scan for the top news stories and then drill deeper into individual sites for more information.
I love Streamy!
Once you create an account, be my Streamy friend 
Yes FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook yesterday.
There is outrage and stories galore out on the interwebs, but only one thing out there got me to really understand the pain and anguish of FF loyalists.
Enjoy.
I’ve gone on many a “I hate Facebook ad” tangents which often result in some post-tangent regret. After all FB is just trying to monetize; we can’t expect these awesome little companies to be poor because I don’t like their ads. And all the crappy/ugly/inefficient ads are little businesses trying to get “in” on social media and may not realize what they’re doing wrong. I’m no expert and maybe I’m the only one annoyed by Acai Berry Diet Plans and gross pictures of obese people or the endless stream of dating site ads just because my FB says I’m single. Hey, maybe I’m the only person not clicking on those.
So I feel bad and I think that maybe this little companies are just trying to make it and I should check them out….but then they remind me all over again why I have FB ads. Its not that I don’t like the idea that they’re easy enough anyone can do them. And hey Google annoys me with their “standards” and “regulations” because sometimes a text ad really does need two exclamation points!!
But just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should. The FB advertiser that sent me into this particular rage is MyInteriorDecorator. Their ad was pretty basic and one of the few actually got be to click (unfortunately I can’t get it to show up again). This is a screen shot of the landing page (check out the link if you can’t see much off this picture).
Did you instantly recoil from the huge font? Or was it that the generic header and the bright red font clash How about the incredible amount of text but OMG they can help me RIGHT NOW! Apparently there is such a thing as a design emergency.
This company asks you to pay $15-$125 for a complete stranger to tell you how to design your house, but they cannot even match a blog header with a font color.
I’m really trying hard to be a nicer person and less critical of others work, but you’re a design company! Please spend just a little bit of money with a freelancer to design your blog/landing page or just take 10 minutes and find a better header, turn off the caps lock, change the font back to a normal size and change the red font color.
I’ve gone on record declaring my love for Discovery’s Shark Week.
Discovery does some great work on their own promotions and advertising for the week long extravaganza, but I have yet to see decent advertising within programming. With the amount of loyalty faans have for Shark Week I am incredibly surprised by the lack of new creative for spots. I stumbled onto this one for MoveOn.org which is, sadly, the only spot I have ever seen created for the Shark Week.
I wonder how many copy revisions they went through to get this right….
It’s my favorite time of year – Shark Week promotion time. Just like the Superbowl I love Shark Week more for its ads than for the content, they never fail to deliver innovative and fun campaigns. Last year was taxis topped with fins, lifeguard chairs around the city and
This year bloggers must figure out their own deaths.
Via AgencySpy
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