Testing Disqus

I'm going to be checking out a new(ish) system called Disqus that allows for threaded conversation in the comments section.

Which seems like a good thing.

Check Disqus out here, and aggregated Toad Stool comments here.

I'll check back in a week or two to see how you all like it. I'll post the first few comments here, just to check it out. I'm trying to figure out a way to get the most comments listed in the sidebar, as always. Sure someone's got a widget for it somewhere.

Weekend Fun

Nerve.com, which was all about sex last time I checked (though that was admittedly several years ago) has compiled the "50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All Time.”

If you loved the Saturday Night Live commercial parodies as much as I did, you'll get a real kick out of this. They've got a bunch from the show's golden years (late 70s, early 80s) on there. Stuff you can't find on YouTube, so it's worth it.

Enjoy.

Thinking About Web Video

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the right way to use web video. Because when it works, it's very cool, but more often than not, it's just gratuitous.

One of the things about the web, for those of us with short attention spans, is that it allows us to multi-task. Many is the time that I've loaded up some web video, realized it was just a talking head, and clicked off to some other site and treated the video like a podcast-- just something playing in the background.

Which isn't the worst thing, I mean I actually processed the information. That's more than I do with a lot of web videos which seemingly drag on forever, taking advantage of the "no time limit" exception online. Which is great in that it lets you tell your story in 37 seconds instead of 30, but unless I am specifically there to watch your video, shorter is always going to be better.

And that's the key thing right there: Most people are online to read. To scan, actually. They're there to quickly and efficiently gather information. Your long-winded video is not part of that equation, no matter how compelling it is. So your site becomes user-unfriendly because you're making the user stay there longer than they want in order to watch your video. (Or, just as likely, you're losing them.)

Now if I'm going online to actually watch videos (e.g. YouTube) then that's a very different story. I've already mentally alloted the time. But for sites that are text driven, the less video, the better.

Tagging

So I got an email tonight from Timothy Blevins, a copywriter at Minneapolis agency Colle + McVoy, pointing me to a very cool site he and his agency had done for a local hip-hop band called Atmosphere to promote their album When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold.

The site, called paintthatshitgold.com, is very nicely done and well worth a visit. It essentially lets you "tag" (e.g. "spray paint upon," for those of you not up on your urban slang) any other site on the web. (What you see above is Tim's expertly done desecration of The Toad Stool.) The site is very robust and lets you do all sorts of cool things like use stencils and adjust the size of the paint can nozzle. It's fun without getting in the way of itself, which is often an issue with these sorts of sites.

Now as I'd pointed out in Your Brand Is Not My Friend™, music acts like Atmosphere (along with movies, TV shows and sports teams) are almost always Prom King Brands. In other words, there's an associated coolness factor that comes with them. They have fans, not customers. And their fans want to be their friend.

So that this very same site, if it had come from, say, Sunny Delight Fruit Drinks would lose all credibility and become just another lame "Clicking Through The Internet" web site. Because you need that Prom King cred, that coolness factor for a site like this to work. Otherwise it's just another ad agency microsite trying to get me to do something that's completely out of character for the brand. Kind of like a mom in a mini-skirt.

Maybe the thing to do is to find some of those completely out of character sites and tag them. Send the results to me and I'll post them.

Facebook Chat Makes Me Self-Conscious

So we're now a few weeks into Facebook's chat application and I'm definitely noticing a change in my behavior.

I'm very aware if I'm on Facebook, knowing that my friends are also aware of it. (I know that you could determine who was online before the institution of chat, it just wasn't as obvious or accessible.)

I'm very aware of who else is on Facebook, if they might want to talk to me, if they have been on there a while, if they're logging on from work.

I'm also cognizant when I click out of Facebook - was someone just about to initiate a chat session? Now that may be because my Facebook interactions are usually quick hits- 15 seconds to see if there are any new messages or notifications or friend requests, maybe a minute or two if I'm going to play Scrabulous.

I've preached before about the dangers of universalizing one's own experience, so I won't make the assumption that my neuroses are universal. But on the other hand, I'll assume I'm not the only one who's become more self-conscious about using Facebook and I'm wondering if this makes the site less useful because anything that makes you self-conscious inevitably becomes less fun. And I'm guessing the answer depends on how much FB chat is adopted. If everyone ignores it, the self-consciousness will go away. If it becomes more common, then self-consciousness increases.

Until, of course, someone invents an app that lets you use Facebook chat without actually being logged on to Facebook

Truth In Advertising

As I noted in "The Real Digital Revolution" one of the biggest changes in the way advertising works is that if you aren't 100% honest, people are going to call you on it.

And sometimes those people are going to be your competitors.

The above video (via Ad Age) which has already gotten close to 700,000 hits on YouTube, points out some of the extras that you'll need with the "fits in an envelope" Macbook Air. And contrasts it with the no-extras-necessay Lenovo ThinkPad.

Without going into the whole Mac vs. PC conundrum, I'm wondering what effect this will have on Apple's reputation for simplicity and A+ design. And if it will help Lenovo regain the luster of the ThinkPad brand.

Given the seemingly high production value, I'm wondering if any of you know who did this-- Oglivy (Lenovo's ad agency, the last time I checked) or someone else?

Facebook Chat - On BeyondMadisonAvenue

Facebook chat went live last week and the jury is still out on how—or if—people are going to use it. Right now it seems to mostly be in the “Hey, is this thing on?” stage, where people are testing it out and seeing how it works.

Read the rest of the post at BeyondMadisonAvenue here.

Public Service

While readers of this blog are no doubt savvy as to the ways of phishing scams and other web tricks, most of us are related to or friends with someone who is not as savvy. (At least when it comes to these sorts of things.)

Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's technology columnist, has an excellent piece today that's aimed at the aforementioned group and offers great advice on how not to get taken advantage of by online scam artists.

Unlike many Wall Street Journal articles, this one is free.

You can find it here. Have a look and then please forward the link to anyone you think could benefit from reading it.