Archive for the 'Viral' Category

No, I don’t have a report; I’m hoping to get one.

In case you’re not up on this, it was recently suggested that supporters of Barack Obama make contributions in multiples of $5.01 on February 12. It was to be a money bomb, a la Ron Paul (only this time for someone who actually has a shot at winning). Why $5.01, and why February 12? The five dollar bill and the penny both feature images of a certain president who, like Obama, started his career as a legislator in Illinois, and February 12 happens to be his birthday. Get it?

The idea got picked up and spread throughout the social networks, with more than 2600 diggs. It was discussed at length (and with great petulance, as usual) at reddit, a reddit/Obama group was created, and it was added as an event on facebook (and another, and yet another).

All of these sources pointed people to Obama’s donation page, and I assume it convinced quite a few people to contribute. Hell, even I contributed, and I’m notoriously cheap and cynical — a combination that tends not to lead to financial support for political campaigns.

So how much was raised? I don’t know. I’ve been searching blogs and news sites for the past 15 hours or so, and I can’t find a thing. When they ran money bombs for Ron Paul, it was always easy to find the results. I know the Obama campaign has made numerous announcements of how much they’ve raised in a given quarter, week, weekend, etc. and I’d really love to know how this went.

Has anyone out there located any information I haven’t been able to find in spite of my extraordinary internet fu?

This is an absolutely terrific use of a film clip that’s already recognizable by a huge number of people, which serves to make it even more viral. Apparently, it’s been around for a few weeks, but I’ve only just found out about it from a post by Muhammed Saleem at Pronet Advertising.

It’s all to promote a new Dylan greatest hits album, because the world just can’t live without yet another Dylan greatest hits album, but who cares? Sometimes the promotion is better than the product being promoted. Remember Subservient Chicken? I thought that was great, but it sure as shit didn’t convince me to eat at Burger King.

It’s shopping the ultra-modern way: Tags! UGC! Wish lists! Feeds! Wiki!

Hat tip to Brand Infection.

I love this thing. I saw it at Crooks and Liars, and they got it from my.break.com. Spread the love, people. Let’s viralofy this bugger.

Bush Worried About New Threat

Of course you do. It’s Atlanta attorney, newlywed and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis patient Andrew Speaker, currently being treated in Denver after an escapade across Europe and North America.

The question is, why do we know him? He’s a medical patient. What happened to the concept of confidentiality? Wouldn’t we be ok with exciting stories about “Patient Zero” without needing to know his name, see his face, and have him personally apologize on Good Morning America?

I’ve mentioned First Freedom First a couple of times already, but Blue Gal posted this video today, and it’s really good. Without further comment, this is the message:

You may have heard about some guy called “JP” who was trying to raise money to propose to his girlfriend on the broadcast of the Überbowl last week. I wasn’t really following along with it myself, although I’d seen a few mentions of it in the various search marketing sites I read. JP had a blog called “My Super Proposal” and he was getting some publicity assistance from Joe Morin, a well-known search marketer. JP even got interviewed on Good Morning America.

The plan to get the proposal broadcast during the feetsball game fell through, but JP ended up recording the proposal at a local TV station that broadcast it during last night’s episode of Veronica Mars.

It turns out that JP is none other than Rand Fishkin, aka Randfish, a highly respected (and far more famous than your faithful servant, qwerty) search marketer. The video of his proposal to Geraldine, aka Mystery Guest is here, and here’s her response. That’s them in the picture. The guy on the left is Danny Sullivan, Godfather of Search.

The weird coincidence is that I had emailed Rand yesterday because I’d read a post at Think Progress that indicated that this week’s episode of VM was going to be spreading misinformation about the morning after pill. I figured they’d be watching, since Geraldine had written about how much she likes the show, but I had no idea they had a much bigger reason to watch.

So I’m making a rare exception and writing a post here that’s at least somewhat related to my work, just to say congratulations to Rand and Geraldine. Now the big question is what couple name they’re going to be given, since they’re such a famous pair in our little world of search… let me think…

• Randaldine
• Gerafish
• Mystery Fish
• Gerand

Jesus’ General provides us with this pleasant discussion between Pat Leahy and Alberto Gonzales about Mr. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was sent on a little detour to Syria on his way home to Montreal.

The RCMP and the Canadian government have officially apologized to Arar for their small role in this. The US government, not so much.

I’ve never liked Mountain Dew. When I was a kid, at least according to my dim memories of my childhood, Mountain Dew was about as uncool as a drink could be. It was right up there with Fresca. Its coolness factor wasn’t the reason I hated it, of course. I hated it because it tasted like orange soda that somebody had pissed in.

I’m not sure how long ago it happened, but “the Dew” has been marketed for some time now as being the beverage of choice of the Dude set — you know, shredders, betties, skate-or-die thrillseekers, etc. I don’t know whether they changed the flavor of the drink when they changed the marketing strategy, but I don’t suppose that matters. If you want to be cool, you’ll drink orange soda that somebody pissed in. That’s the way things work nowadays. Something is cool because it’s labeled as cool by people who are labeled as cool.

In spite of my hatred for the beverage and the way it’s marketed, I have to admit that I love its new viral campaign: Sue Teller in “DO Your Own Adventure.” (Get it? “DO”?) Sue teaches us all about crafts, like using a woodburning tool to decorate sneakers, or, in the episode below, creating your own mashups.

Word to your great grandmother.