communication. community. cognition.
Archive for June, 2009
What your ads say about you
Jun 29th
Earlier today, I was combing through my Facebook and wondering about the little ads that appear to the right. Do you think people take it personally when they are reminded they have bad complexion, or might have a few extra pounds to lose in the gut? Is the ad server hooked up to a camera?
Consider those ads warning you of hair in “unsightly places.” Are we providing too much information in our profile? Or is there a deeper conspiracy to scan the words we use when chatting and posting…
Back On the Air
Jun 24th
No, I’m not going back to television.
But I will be a guest on “BSide with Alan Hunter and Dr. Josh“ tonight on Live 100.5.
Alan Hunter is, well… he’s Alan Hunter. Yeah, that one.
Dr. Josh Klapow is a psychology professor here in Birmingham who I had done a number of interviews with in the past, and is an all-around pretty cool guy.
This time, I’ll be the subject of the interview questions. From 6-7 p.m. (Central time), I’ll be talking with them about the past, present and future of what we call Social Media. Maybe even get a plug in for the new #bhamchat Twitter events on Tuesday nights, and the upcoming Social South conference and soiree.
It ought to be fun, and you don’t have to be in Birmingham to listen. Live 100.5 streams on the net.
3653
Jun 19th
Three thousand, six hundred and fifty-three days ago…
…at this moment…
..married.
Happy Anniversary, Sweetie!
Tactical Laziness
“In the postmodern age, Tactical Laziness has replaced Necessity as the Mother of Invention.”
The End of the Ostrich
“You can’t stick your head in the sand without showing your ass to the world.”
The Secret Hidden Markup That Drives Killer Facebook Ads
Jun 14th
As you know, the Facebook platform has posted such astonishing growth, I would look really stupid posting a number here that would be dated and quaint a month from now. Likewise, the platform’s stability is something to behold, as evidenced by this past weekend’s “land rush” for custom Facebook urls. (You can find me here, by the way…)
Given the tremendous opportunity to see significant reach, I felt it was time to share a gem of a secret about how to make your Facebook ad really shine.
First, let’s look at the ad as it appears on most Facebook pages:
The ad itself does not, at first glance, seem to have any miraculous mojo. You might have noticed it sitting idly on the right-hand edge of your page, and if you didn’t pay any attention, that’s just as well.
It’s a simple DIV, with three sections: the top line, meant to resemble other clickable links; the picture; and the teaser copy, with the voting arrows on a line break below.
The hidden markup is what makes this so interesting.
If you look at the actual code, and strip away the < deception > < /deception > tags, you get a very different (and more truthful) result:
With the < deception > markup missing, we see the real result of clicking on the advertisement. < deception > has been buried within HTML since the early days of the web, and is robust enough that Internet Explorer – even in its worst incarnation and configuration for meeting web standards – could still render it flawlessly.
< Deception > is one of the few rarely-used tags in little danger of being deprecated. It is too useful for those who employ it. The < sarcasm > and < irony > tags are often used on blogs today, although the comments section often turns those off inadvertently.
Extremely clever marketing, though.
