Nostalgia at the speed of technology • 1/365 •

Star date: January first, two thousand and eleven. I begin my 365 days of blogging today. New Year's Day is a good day to gain perspective through reflective and resolute vision, to re-evaluate and adjust course towards goals and dreams. I have a process for this that I try to do every January. Today, though, it seems glaringly obvious to me that it needs to happen more often than yearly. As Bob Dylan says: 

"If your time to you is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'."

• ch-ch-ch-ch-changes • 

In 1982 "Tron" broke special-effects and conceptual ground. Twenty-eight years later in the sequel, "Tron: Legacy," an aged Alan tells Flynn's son Sam that he has received a page from a number at Flynn's old arcade. Sam's response is, "You still carry a pager?"

My 10-year old son turned to me and asked, "Mommy, what's a pager?"

"It's this thing we had back in the 80's - like a phone that you couldn't call from. You would call it and put a number in. Then the person who gets it finds a pay phone, puts a quarter in and calls you back. It's like one-way texting without the text. Just numbers. It was really handy!"

Looking back, my technological and cultural renaissance started with MTV. I can't imagine what I would have thought back then if someone would have told me about today's smartphones. I could only relate it to something on Star Trek. We didn't have the internet yet, and mobile phones were only in wealthy people's cars. Videos were on tape, photos were on film, music was in the store, research was done in the library and I used to call a radio station when I couldn't think of who sang a song.

Back then, the year 2000 sounded futuristic, as if we would all be 100 years old, wearing enormous shoulder pads and piloting our cars through space. I thought it would never arrive. Conversely, I knew things like virtual reality holographic video were coming, but I never dreamed it would be so fast! 

We're gaining momentum so quickly it makes my head spin. Anatomically modern-appearing humans originated about 200,000 years ago. The wheel and agriculture came 10,000 years ago. Written history, 6,000 years ago. Transportation via chariot, 4,000 years ago. Automobiles, 240 years ago. Airplanes, 120 years ago. Radio, television, computers, remote controls, internet, gps, iPads and so on, all in the past 100 years.  

My MTV was followed by an Atari home video game system in 1982, a Tandy keyboard that used BASIC language in 1984, a pager in the early 1990's, the internet, a cell phone, a laptop, then a short lull before the social media flurry hit civilization as we knew it.  

• a golden age • 

There was a period of time after the social media flurry hit and before Facebook at MySpace for dinner, which was kind of a golden age. Maybe it was the eye of the storm as it passed over us. I look back on that time like "the good old days" of social media expressionism. Blogs were fresh and most anyone who had one was actually a thinker, an artist, a journalist, had something to say. MySpace was cool and expressive, people were uploading art, music, poetry, writing and deep thoughts. It was a supportive community of like-minded strangers and friends. If you blogged on MySpace during its golden age, people not only read it, they commented. Thoughtfully. Sometimes the string of comments was more interesting than the blog itself. You were only allowed 12 photographs, but It was a philosopher's paradise.

The internet was relatively uncluttered. Your creative, charitable or political message stood some chance of being seen at random. Twitter started up and had few enough members that it showed you a visual of your connections in a giant, interactive grid-like map. Your tweets were not lost in a stream of voices. 

It's all a blur now. How long ago was it? It was something like 2004 - 2007, give or take a year. I look back on it with nostalgia, knowing we will never get it back. I love Facebook and the fact that I can find just about anyone on it, but along with everyone's old friends from high school there are parents, bosses, clients, exes and children. Facebook hasn't just broken down the walls between us by linking us together, it has also built walls up around creative, free-spirited expression. I love having my wall written on, though, so please do so!

• chasing that high • 

We might never have that golden age back, but my bet is that there will be other ages with even greater potential for creative expression and change. I'm always looking for the next wave because I don't like something as much once everyone likes it. It ruins the spirit of that thing somehow. I look around every corner for new technology and trends that give that feeling of having climbed to another level and arriving at the edge of a cliff. A cliff where paradoxically, if you step off you don't fall down, rather you find yourself on another higher level where the world is just a little bit different and new things are possible. Magic. Like a video game. It's an addiction.

Fun with analytics!

Hello kids. Today we are going to touch on the funner points of analytics. Not finer points, funner points. Yes there are some.

I don't think I even uttered the word "analytics" before the web. In fact, it's not in my dictionary as a noun. It sounds pretty nerdy, like something the math/computing/biology/pollster guys would worry about, not me. I'm a creative, why would I want to analyze data? Sounds dry.  

Raise your hand if you think that I actually look forward to launching Google Analytics and checking on the websites I manage. Those of you with your hands down are wrong, sorry. If you never thought "fun" and "analytics" would be in the same sentence, think again.

Take my website, littleblackmask.com, for example. Hmm, I wonder what people are typing in to find me. Can you guess? How about "brainwashing design"? You didn't predict that? Okay, try "if Rip Van Winkle woke up today?" No? I didn't either. 

Okay boys and girls, let's look at another example. I design and manage Mara Rodriguez's blog, Wear in Ocala. It's an up and coming blog about fashion in Ocala, with some great advice and a spicy sense of humor. What would you guess people would have been typing in when they find it? Maybe, "can I wear velvet in puerto rico"? You didn't guess that either? What about, "lady gaga dress made from hair"? I never would have called that one. Meat, maybe, but hair? 

What can we learn from this? I'd love to say we have learned that staying on current topics is a good idea. As you can see from some of the other searches, there are some current event/famous people/on-trend searches. If your blog has content that applies, you'll be found more often. What about the others, though? How could you predict someone wants to know if they can wear velvet in Puerto Rico? You can't, but it's definitely fun to see! Never before on earth have we gotten such a peek into people's minds. This data is truly golden.

Alright. That's it for today's peek at analytics. As you can see kids, they can be fun! Kind of like a box of chocolates, if you know what I mean.

('’)

WTFacebook Ads [part 2 of the continuing saga]

Okay, it's not really a saga, but it is an advertising travesty.

In [part 1: This blog could lower your interest], I broached this topic and thought in my idealistic way that the random, meaningless, attention-getting gimmicks would phase out in favor of clear and relevant content. I was wrong (big surprise!).

They're not getting much better, in fact they might be getting worse? Not sure if they can. Here are more from my growing collection of Facebook ads that either make no sense, are stealing from a celebrity, or are misleading along the lines of snake oil salespeople of old and modern day tabloids.

Yeah, I repeated the "Scholarships For Moms" because that guy is so NOT A MOM! Does anyone know what all this means? What does it say about society? What does it say about carrot feathers?

('’)

This blog could lower your interest! It's almost guaranteed!

Advertising is a really big word, and it keeps growing all the time. It contains mediums, philosophies and specialties that are expanding and changing at a mind-numbing speed.

What method or tactic you take depends on the medium, market, budget and brand. The message shouldn't be the same across the board. Direct mail, for example, needs to get the recipient's attention, interest and trust immediately in order for them to open, read, then act on it. A billboard needs gain the driver's attention and be memorable enough for them to act on it later, but it has only a few seconds, a visual and seven words or less to accomplish this with. An ad in a coupon section of the newspaper needs to visually "pop" out of all that noise as well as contain a perceived savings enough to get the reader to act on it. The list goes on, and while the strategies vary for the different forms of advertising, they all need to be honest.

Truth in advertising might sound like an oxymoron, but for the most part, it's the law. Did you notice that I said "perceived savings" about the ad in the coupon section? Just because something is true doesn't mean it's not slanted in its view. Different people have different points of view, different ideas of value. With behavioral marketing exploding the way it is, different people are actually seeing different ads when they go to the same places – ads with their needs and interests in mind. I'm a big fan of it, from both the perspective of the consumer and the advertiser. What I don't get is what's going on with some of the Facebook ads.

Can someone please explain the strategy to me that prompted this photograph to be in this ad?

Does a hippie-type guy speak to moms? Random. I see tons of things that make me tilt my head and wonder, "WTH??" Like this one with Oprah:

What does she have to do with this coffee? Is she endorsing it? My bet is no. Who's going to call the ad police about that one? I just pass it by with the rest, thinking that the internet really still is the wild, wild west. Still a lot of law and order to come, which will probably both help and restrict us. In the meantime, each to their own ethics, and the prospecting opportunity is spectacular.