Eugene David ...The One-Minute Pundit |
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
If it's Sunday it must be Big-Double-A-Scribble Time:
1. Most Web surfers are choosing the most popular rubbish -- but they might not be choosing rubbish with such passion if BIGMEDIA had not embraced it too. And just because revuers say something is good doesn't mean it's good. If we've learned anything from the Web years it's the Curse of the CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED. So where will the culture go? It's hard to think it could get worse. It will get worse. But the time must come when people will seek each other out without wires, and start making culture again -- and who knows? After so long in the LCD-lit darkness it might be good. Who thought the unlettered furriers and glove salesmen and street musicians from Europe could make something other than money? We must remember, however, it took at least a century after our founding before our theater became the pride of the world, and longer for our music. 2. I'm still not convinced social media can't do more harm for Big Business than good. Ford got back in the public's good graces not because it was so adept at Twitter but because it didn't directly take our money. And it doesn't take much for Corporate America to pull the fast one. Could Toyota's have lessened its predicament had it sent out legions of PR men through Facebook? One doubts it. And the people have a way of coming together better than executives. 3. We may further wonder: As of last week, Axe's Facebook page had fewer than half the fans that its most recent campaign website -- AxeHairCrisisRelief.org -- attracted in one month last June in the U.S. alone, per Compete.com. The 200,000 fans of P&G's Pampers on Facebook are dwarfed by 1.5 million monthly visitors (per Compete) to Pampers.com, which anchors one of several online relationship programs with seven-figure databases for P&G brands. We must note everything in this week's issue is part of a theme, a theme to overstate social media's value much as we would have overstated TV commercials' value thirty years ago. That alone brings on a certain skeptical itch.
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