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Do brands really hire underpaid social media people with fleshy, flawed faces?

July 6, 2015 John Carson
Lone person wearing a rabbit suit

[Disruption. That was going to be the topic of today's blog post based on what's currently happening between Uber and Toronto taxi cabs. But that can wait for another day; disruption is not going away.]

"Of course brands screw up a lot on social media. It’s because, despite their rictus grins, the plastic masks of friendship they wear are just hiding the fleshy, flawed faces of underpaid social media people, who are often trying to be the fun voice of several soulless logos at once."

Ouch!

That scathing paragraph comes from a blog post entitled, "Brands aren’t your friends, they’re the idiots at the social media party" on The Next Web site.

The gist of the article is that brands aren't our friends and many fake their social media presence to pretend they are. I have seen some brands do that, and some not. Horses for courses.

We can't forget that the consumer is in the driving seat now. I believe that people do enjoy following their favourite brands, and can just as easily leave them behind if they become, "the leeches of social networking, desperately trying to drain some blood from every bit of creativity they encounter," as the blog writer describes.

Brings to mind this meme:

I wonder if my favourite brand of kitchen roll has a Twitter stream I can follow

Whether it's kitchen roll, cars, soft drinks, cookies .... whatever ... people do like to follow certain companies. It's up to those brands to judge the audience and engage accordingly.

John.

Tags john carson, herb communications, digital communications toronto, tnw, the next web, social media, twitter, brands
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You have an extra second to play with tomorrow

June 29, 2015 John Carson
Train station analog clock

You probably don't feel it as you rush through your daily digital life, but the Earth's rotation is slowing down. Yeah, right, eh? Seems like there's not enough hours in the day, so that extra second being added tomorrow will really come in handy.

It's called a "leap second" and gets added roughly every 18 months, according to this interesting blog post by The Next Web.

Humans can handle it, but it's more of a problem for computers and apparently "wreaked havoc online" when it was last added back in 2012.

This all brings back memories of New Year's Eve 1999 when there was speculation about e-doom and gloom because of the change to 2000. If I recall, we survived that OK.

It's more technical in nature as the article explains ...

"The leap second is mostly a headache for system administrators who need to ensure their services are highly available and need to plan how to handle the change. Hardware providers such as Cisco now provide detailed advice on how their hardware handles the leap second, but the side effects are unpredictable."

If you want to count it down to a random one-second video with your friends and family, here's a handy Leap Second Countdown Clock from John Oliver.

John.

Tags john carson, herb communications, digital communications toronto, john oliver, last week tonight, the next web, tnw, leap second countdown clock
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