Fighting Fraud with Fraud. And Threats. and Stupidity.
It looks like a restaurateur got fed up with some entitled vegans (no, not all vegans act that way , don’t assume I think that way just because I think bacon is awesome) making unreasonable order requests. It also looks like the restaurateur lost it on social media, and it turned into the usual war of fraudulent negative Yelp reviews and ill-tempered responses. That way, everybody loses. There are nice ways to ask people to be reasonable. I’m not sure the best way to fight Yelp-stuffing, but making violent threats (even if you don’t mean it) might not be the best way. Still, what’s the best way to deal with that, regardless of how you got into the mess?
Grantland’s Tomb: Should Brands Get into Long-Form Journalism?
One content marketing pundit, Joe Pulizzi, thinks Nike (or some other sports-oriented brand) “missed an opportunity” to take over Grantland after ESPN shut it down. Forgetting for a moment the theory (mine) that the site shutdown may be a vengeful act aimed at scrubbing all evidence of Grantland founder Bill Simmons’ existence from their web-waves – why would a brand want to do that? It’s an interesting question as Grantland has a positive brand association with high-quality long-form writing. It’s also worth asking: why would any brand make an investment in thoughtful, long-form content? Why would a brand dive this far into journalism? Grantland worked as a respite from headlines and “hot takes.” Is it worth throwing marketing budget – and do not underestimate the significant outlay for top-shelf writers making lots of words – at a stand-alone long-form content play? At some point someone will ask if it sells sneakers, and the answer better be “Yes.” So, I say Nike should pass on this, but the general idea of sponsoring a journalistic content site is worth pondering.
Snapchat Retains Rights to Use All User Content. Big Deal…
Snapchat just changed it’s terms of agreement, significantly broadening the content (images, voices, etc) it claims the right to re-use. One take is that it is scary and you are relinquishing your rights. Another is that your rights are limited to the fact that you are using someone else’s service and the rights they claim are fairly common in social media. I lean towards the latter interpretation; assume everything you post on a platform you don’t own or control is not completely yours. On the other hand, all those Snapchat sexts are probably not going to be come part of a mass marketing campaign, as proud as you might be of them.
Hahahahahaha.. I mean, LOL ;)
So, one of the Hillary Clinton emails released recently was a 2012 query about how to make “smiley faces” on her Blackberry. I think it’s adorable when people make fun of people of a certain generation- or a certain environment, like government work- for not being “hip.” I bet the people who laugh at this hardest approve of man-buns.
Wikipedia Has Reached 5,000,000 Articles.
That’s it? There must be something missing. Also interesting: more than 2.5 billion total edits comes to an average of 500 edits per article. That I can believe.