Something I’ve noticed on pintrest – Mass Uploads of pins.

The problems: Mass uploads of pins bombards people’s front page feed with your stuff (usually junk, since you’re mass uploading. Learn to improve your editing eye)

Why are you mass uploading anyway? Is there a reason? (planning, you’re on a site where you happen to love everything)

Do you just post a couple and link to the site or do you post everything you see that you like?

Pintrest is for yourself as much as people following you…but where do you draw the line of it being a social network and a personal reference?

Strangely, most of the people who break this rule are “SOCIAL MEDIA” people who seem to be filling out their wall rather than making a serious look book of cool stuff.

end stream.

That condemnation was everywhere on the web after the Ferris Bueller superbowl commercial aired. It showed Matthew Broderick as himself driving in a Honda after feigning sickness to skip out on an acting role, replete with blatant breaking of the fourth wall. Critics and nobodies alike were up in arms over it, expressing their disapproval online through Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and other social media sites. Some deemed Broderick a sellout or a hack, all over his willingness to exploit the classic of 1986 that he starred in.

The concept of exploiting icons to sell products is nothing new. From old Beatles and Led Zeppelin songs used in car commercials to superstars selling clothes, the cash cow is milked for all it’s worth. The nostalgia associated with big icons such as these is what helps drive the appeal—marketing 101. No matter how near and dear Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is to the hearts of fans, it is a product of Hollywood at its core. Is it a classic? Yes. Are there millions of people world-wide who will attest to its worthiness of being considered a classic? Absolutely. However, it was created for the purposes of entertaining and raking in money to fuel the multimillion-dollar industry.

Having such an idyllic view of Hollywood is unrealistic, as it is like any other business—to sell products. In this case, it’s entertainment. It is not a machine designed to churn out immortal symbols of generations to be placed on a pedestal, free of any meddling. Matthew Broderick is a human being who enjoys money and decent food, just like everyone else. To hold him to a noble standard of not “selling out” is absurd, partly because selling out often translates to a few people disapproving of the actions of a celebrity—actions they like to think they themselves wouldn’t take.

The impact the commercial has on peoples’ lives is trivial at most. They’ll scoff, yell, berate, mourn their self-proclaimed destroyed childhoods, and move on to the next bastardization of a classic film, song, or star to seethe over.

- Zander Buel, Director of Research

Pinterest is not a stranger to people on the web. A rapid 4, 000 percent increase in 2011 garnered the site 11 million visits per week and ranks No. 10 in the top 10 social sites, according to Hitwise. 429 percent alone was from September to December 2011, as reported by Compete.com. AllThingsD reported in October that Pinterest closed a deal with Andreessen Horowitz, giving it a value of USD $200 million. Janet Aronica of Shareaholic reports its referral traffic as larger than Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Youtube combined. Monetate Platform-wide Analytics reports that Pinterest’s same store referral traffic rose 389 percent from July to December 2011. By way of one of its specialties being crafts, home decorating, planning, food, entertainment, fashion, and beauty, Pinterest has a acquired a very vast female user base. Business titans Martha Stewart and Paula Deen have Pinterest accounts with several hundred thousand followers.

Pinterest is a huge source of traffic for other websites, thanks to the referrals they get from users pinning items on their pages and sharing with other users. Etsy representative Adam Brown claims Pinterest is “terrific for our members because it’s another way for shoppers to discover all of the amazing things that Etsy sellers create.” The retail and department store Nordstrom also caught wind of the Pinterest craze with its own page. Nordstrom’s Social media manager Shauna Causey says, “We found that it’s a great way to not only share info but also learn about our community. Pinterest allows us to see what trends and styles the community likes based on engagement – likes and repins.” Lands’ End also took advantage of Pinterest with its own page. It ran a “Pin it to Win it” contest during the holidays, which gave its members a chance to win Lands’ End Canvas gift cards by creating pinboards of products from their website.

With such an explosion in exposure and popularity, and with high-profile celebrities and stores taking advantage of its features, it’s not too bold to speculate that Pinterest will become a household name in contemporary social media outlets. The site’s simple, organized, and convenient layout equips it with strong appeal and the potential for even more growth in the future.  It resonates with the remarkability of the ever-growing entity that is the online world.

Sources:

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/real-simple-pinterest-drives-traffic-facebook/231576/

http://www.policymic.com/articles/3306/pinterest-becomes-the-first-major-social-networking-site-driven-by-women

http://blog.shareaholic.com/2012/01/pinterest-referral-traffic/

http://allthingsd.com/20111007/exclusive-pinterest-set-to-close-a-new-round-with-andreessen-horowitz-valuing-start-up-at-200m/

http://allthingsd.com/20111222/pinterests-growth-hockey-stick-would-make-a-great-craft-project/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/260940598024

Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner announced to join in the Internet blackout day started by link-sharing site Reddit on Jan. 16. The decision to shutdown was decided by the greater community that writes, edits and posts articles.

“Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1,800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA,” Wikipedia said in a press release. “This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation.”

Who else is joining the Internet blackout Jan. 18?

Wikipedia joins sites like MoveOn, Reddit, BoingBoing, Mozilla, WordPress, TwitPic and the ICanHasCheezBurger network. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr will not be joining the day of protest, however, all have expressed their stance against the bills.

The move for Wikipedia to go down for a day is probably the most disruptive of all because of the sheer amount of visitors who rely on the site for up-to-date information. The English version of the site has 3.8 million pages alone. According to Wales, “comScore estimates the English Wikipedia receives 25 million average daily visitors globally.”

MoveOn announced that they would join Wikipedia in the protest Monday. Justin Ruben, Executive Director of MoveOn released this statement today:

“Congress is playing fast and loose with Internet censorship legislation that would have people like Justin Bieber thrown in jail for uploading a video to YouTube. The Internet censorship legislation could severely restrict free speech, and put a stranglehold on one of the most innovative, job-creating industries of our time. MoveOn is joining the massive website blackout because it’s critical to preserve an open internet that enables our members to engage on issues they care about. Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, would be wise to take a step back and reconsider their support for this reckless legislation.”

What should I do in the meanwhile?

Wales suggests doing your homework early. Some great tools to use to capture screen grabs of Wikipedia pages now are Evernote (PC/Mac), Skitch (Mac) or Paparazzi (Mac).

There’s always Encyclopedia Britannica Online, although the articles aren’t as up-to-date as Wikipedia.

If you seriously need Wikipedia and have 5 terabytes of space to spare, you can always download the entire database. Good luck with that, though. The average download speed in the U.S. is 3.0 megabits per second and there are 8.3 million megabits in a terabyte.

Worst-case scenario, you can always go “old school” and visit your local library. Many libraries have online catalogs, so you can do a bit of research before you hit the stacks.

What is SOPA and PIPA?

SOPA and PIPA are intended to curb the illegal download of copyrighted materials from foreign “rogue” sites, like The Pirate Bay. There is already legislation that provides some protection for copyrighted material, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires companies to remove copyrighted content “in good faith.”

Worst-case scenarios are being debated. The Electronic Frontier Foundation speculates, “Instead of complying with the DMCA, a copyright owner may now be able to use these new provisions to effectively shut down a site by cutting off access to its domain name, its search engine hits, its ads, and its other financing even if the safe harbors would apply.”

There are certain things that exist on the internet that if you don’t know about, you don’t really understand a large part of people today; memes is one of them.

Do you recognize any of these images below? If you were unfamiliar with any of them, I wouldn’t let you touch one of my social media campaigns. Internet. Serious business.

If you didn’t catch the serious business part, you need to do a lot of studying. Seriously, knowing this stuff will help you to communicate with 100,000 fans like the SAW horror film franchise campaign I oversaw. Stay relevant. Knowing how people talk is is a big part of getting through to them.

Hyper assiduous attention to microscopic detail leads to acute schizophrenia; First distinguished by a twitch in the left eye, followed soon by the sensation that space aliens will arrive momentarily to take you “home.”

That’s how I was taught to understand glitch design. One of my favorite things about technology is how it displays errors. Warhol attempted to make perfect, machine-like art but the errors are what gave it style. Errors and mistakes are an artist’s true style. Everyone makes mistakes, which are probably one of the few original things they create.

As you probably know by now, Google struck another blow the other day in the social wars with the launch of Search Plus Your World, their enhanced algorithm for personalization in your SERPs. Google Search plus Your World is going to make it a little more complex for those stock SEO companies. It’s not enough anymore  (and hasn’t been for a while) to simply put a ton of key words on your website and submit your site to search engines. You need to think start thinking custom.

Presence away from your .com is now nescarrey, and now requires more attention than ever given Google’s recent social upgrades. To be relevant, you have to ask yourself is your content is easier to share, and is it actually generating real conversations on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other forms of social media? SEO has brought advertising and marketing full circle- It’s getting hard to trick people and that’s a good thing.

Learn the difference: Black Hat Versus White Hat SEO