DISQUS

+10 Bonus geek points, for combining a tech topic, with a geek metaphor.

Well done.

I actually had tears in my eyes at some of those. Thanks for the find.

It is an excellent example of how some things can be funnier (or in the case of Garfiled actually) by stripping "the necessary" away.

The comic is so much darker and funnier this way.

I have a weird relationship with twitter, or in FB lingo "it's complicated". Sometimes I hate her, but boy do I miss her when she is gone. At one point I might have said the same thing about Facebook. When in the throes of addiction it can hard to tell the difference between an essential service and a frivolous luxury.

Disintermediation of twitter or something twitter-like is innevitable. I am more loyal to Twhirl than I ever was to twitter and if twhirl operated the same way on a different protocol, I couldn't care less. The role that twitter plays in my life could very easily be snapped up by another (open-source or just more reliable) infrastructure.

While I agree with the fact that Unilever is very hypocritical, I don't think it is insidious or any kind of conspiracy. The truth is they are a really big company and in big companies it is difficult or impossible to coordinate different brands in a planned way.

Given the choice between conspiracy and stupidity, always go for stupidity. The cynic in me, says that they are only talking to different audiences the way they think they want to be spoken to.

I too love the Dove campaign and if you want to send a message, vote with your wallet and buy Dove products or encourage others to. They are testing the waters of "responsible advertising" and if you want to see more like it, the shareholders will need to see the bottom line results.

I have never really been fond of the term viral, since it describes a successful effect and not the actual discipline of generating attention and buzz. There is no question that a marketing message that goes viral is vastly superior to an interuptive ad - the reason being that people have either sought out the content or been referred by a trusted source and therefore the viewer is in much more receptive mindset to the message because every click is a vote. Whereas in traditional advertising, would anyone pay more attention to an ad because it happens to interupt their favourite show?
Crappy ads or content almost never achieve viral distribution. Generating significant traffic online is a system of natural selection - the videos, sites, news stories or whatever that are most adapted to the environment thrive, those that aren't are ignored.