Wide-eyed and Jaded

…is “watch this video.” Please.

This video went live less than a week ago and now has over one million views. I will never be able to express how brilliant it is. Just watch it.

What was more interesting and fun to me than Cuil’s launch this week? Delicious‘ redesign! I normally find out about these things on Twitter, but not this time! I logged in to my account to pull something up for one of my colleagues and was shocked by an aesthetically pleasing user interface.

The good:

• Sleek presentation!
• I love the UI’s organization and how much easier it is now to search for something in my hoards of bookmarks
• The Top 10 Tags chart is much nicer to look at than a long tailed list

I’m not sure about:

• I might like the Top Tags more if they were listed in order of most to least tagged rather than alphabetically
• I really liked the del.icio.us brand!
• My blog’s Delicious widget is messed up now

I’m sure I’ll learn about and fall in love with other details of the new site as I play around with it a little more. But for now I suggest checking out this video from Delicious that walks the viewer through the redesign:

Now that you’ve read what I think, I want to know what you love and hate and the new site!

I recorded the above Utter at PodCamp Boston 3 a couple weeks ago. I briefly spoke with Chris Hanaka from Utterz who was representing the company and its sponsorship of the unconference. He’s quite the charmer and, I must say, I am pretty jealous of his job.

What do you guys think of Utterz? Reply with an Utter!

Thanks to FASHION Magazine’s Reporter Search, I am so overwhelmed with my new discovery of interesting and talented fashion bloggers. Until now, I thought I was doing a pretty good job at keeping up with these unique Canadian fashionistas. I was mistaken!

Posts highlighting bloggers’ individual styles, tastes and hometowns were judged by members of the FASHION team, and 20 finalists spanning our home and native land were named. The regions represented are Eastern Canada 1 and 2, Montreal, Toronto, Ontario, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. I love how many of the participants’ entry posts, bios and personal blogs exude their whereabouts. That’s Canadian regional pride in action, my friends.

I’m particularly interested to see how the search pans out for ridiculously cute Jill Butler in St. John’s, N.L., ultimate Belleville, Ont. hipster Isabel Slone and the ever lovely Terri Potratz in Vancouver, B.C.

Visitors to the contest site can choose between two bloggers per region to vote for once per day. FASHION says, “the one with the most votes wins a trip to New York City! The 10 winning bloggers will become key players on our web site, reporting on the latest shopping scoop in their cities.”

Great campaign, FASHION! I’ll be voting every day.

One last thing: Will you all please dearly vote for Terri on my behalf? Terri’s blog, The Conveyor Belt, is rich with dynamic conversations about fashion, beauty, arts and culture and more. She has been so good to me since starting at Veritas, and I can’t think of a better way to thank her!

I went to FacebookCamp Toronto 4 tonight with my friends Eden and Miranda. According to the FacebookCamp wiki, the evening was “an unconference for everyone with an interest in building on the Facebook Platform. FacebookCamp brings together developers, marketers, strategists, technologists, and students, in an open and collaborative environment of sharing and learning.”

The speakers were from Facebook’s monetization team; representatives of Trapeze and Refresh Partners, who were the event’s organizers; and Facebook application developers.

First, some Facebook stats that aren’t necessarily new, but always cool:

• One third of Canadians are on Facebook
• Six per cent of Facebook users are from Ontario
• Ontario is the world’s most present state on Facebook
• There are over 30,000 Facebook applications
• There were only about 5,000 applications six months ago
• There is a significant growth in users signing up to Facebook in September

Facebook’s Rebecca Sawyer spoke about monetizing Facebook applications. Much of what she talked about surrounded the use of social ads and exact targeting. This information wasn’t new to me because this is stuff I actively seek to learn about every day. Further, I’ve been playing around with Facebook ads for work lately, so I understood first hand the slides she guided us through. But, I found her presentation particularly interesting because I heard it in terms of teaching developers how to target and attract audiences. She advised, “Target ads to smaller, more specific groups of users.”

Sawyer’s main points of advice to monitize a Facebook application are:

1. Take advantage of social actions
2. Target an exact audience
3. Write interesting, effective ad text
4. Create multiple ads to find out which are more effective
5. Optimize

Andrew Cherwenka from Trapeze introduced the attendees to Facebook’s upcoming new look and feel. He says Facebook “cleaned themselves up” because the clutter was starting “be a little like MySpace.” Profiles will soon be organized by tabs such as Info, Photos, Applications, etc. One of the first things I look at when I get a few Facebook friend is their education and work info. I’m excited to not have to sift through seas of monster applications and FunWalls in order to find this information.

The applications tab (and possibly the others) is fully customizable in terms of placement and organization. An optional tab will be made available for users to add their favourite app to their tabs. The tabs will most likely be the first thing seen on a user’s profile, so this option is a great way for developers to “pitch their own apps,” says Cherwenka.

The new interface (which will be live in about a week) is supposed to be available for viewing now at new.facebook.com, but doesn’t seem to be working for me right now. How about everyone else?

The Facebook application case studies presented were:

• Refresh Analytics presented by Roy Pereira, Refresh Partners
• Praize’n'raze presented by Sebastien Provencher, Praized Media
• MouseHunt presented by Joel Auge, HitGrab
• SlangBook presented by Daniel Cooper

I may post more about these apps once I have tried them for myself.

Overall, I really enjoyed FacebookCamp Toronto 4. However, I think there should have been some signage. The wiki, Facebook invite, etc. had the building and “downstairs” stated, but there were other goings-on at MaRS tonight, and figuring out where to go was slightly confusing—and I’ve been in the building for a conference before! The branded lanyards were cool, though.

Finally, Facebook was giving out $25 vouchers for social ads, which I was so excited about! Sawyer ended her presentation brilliantly by announcing the coupons would be given out at the exit. When I was ready to leave, Sawyer was busy chatting with someone. Someone else told me there was a queue to talk to/introduce myself to her, but all I wanted was the chance to make my own Facebook ads promoting my modest music career. There were other small complications in getting the voucher and I ended up home without one. Not a big deal, but I’m disappointed nonetheless.

Thanks to Trapeze and Refresh Partners for putting on another great event! Thanks also to the wonderful presenters and my great friends for joining me again!

I welcome and encourage everyone’s else’s thoughts on FacebookCamp and the topics discussed here—whether you were there tonight or not!

One of the first things I was taught in my Online PR course was the importance of building, protecting and managing my personal brand. Keep up blog posts (I promise I’m working on this!), leave comments on other blogs, get involved in various online spaces, be careful of what you have on your Facebook profile, etc.

I found it pretty easy to produce some top notch Google juice of my own. It isn’t difficult when you have a name like Rayanne Langdon. Even before joining Seesmic, signing up to Twitter or starting a discussion about ethics on Inside PR, googling “Rayanne Langdon” turned up dozens of pages—most of which directly related to me. A LiveJournal account here, a profile on the CBC Radio 3 website there… I’ve existed online for a very long time. One of the first searches I did resulted in my re-discovery of an ICQ Foo Fighters fan group I made when I was 14. I called it Forever Foo. I’m a moron. Hah.

I was never scared of any of the information out there about me. I’ve never worried about what I did or said in the past that may rear its questionable head again. I’ve done and I still do some weird and ridiculous things on the Internet (more posts are a-brewin’), and I am not ashamed or embarrassed. I’m the girl who had Wayne Gretzky as an imaginary friend when I was a child, remember?

The intricacies of my online activities make me who I am. I love and am so proud of everything one can learn about me by doing a simple Google search. My heart goes out to those with names a little more common than mine.

So, when I see influencers teaching young people to constantly remain professional in all their online endeavours, I feel sad for them. I recognize the necessity to smarten up about the public photos posted on one’s Facebook profile, but I think introducing someone to online public relations by giving warnings about what can and will be used against them deters young people from wanting to get involved in such a space.

Yes, being social media savvy might help a student land a great job in the near future, but don’t lie—there are still plenty of communications jobs for those refusing to blog or tweet. Many people still need to be convinced that this a great place to be! Please don’t use scare tactics. And yes, I believe scare tactics are exactly what is being used.

We are all people. We all make mistakes and we all want to have fun. We can be responsible and human at the same time.

Have you guys heard about Lauren Bernat yet? I saw this tweet from Jason Calacanis this afternoon and decided to dig a little deeper:

Meet the latest internet celebrity Lauren Bernat: http://mahalo.com/Lauren_Be… (famous for playing Wii Fit in panties in YouTube video).

Really, that’s all you need to know, but it’s an… interesting video to watch nonetheless:

An advertising guy taped his advertising girlfriend hula hooping on Wii Fit, put it on YouTube and titled it Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit. Yikes, Gutierrez could have come up with a more grammatically correct sentence, but I digress.

There are speculations that, because the couple work in advertising, the video is a marketing tactic from Nintendo. But, both the couple and Nintendo have gone on record saying the gaming company had nothing to do with the new YouTube phenomenon. Fair enough—though I think it would have been a clever idea.

The whole thing is kind of ridiculous and blown way out of proportion just like every other weirdo YouTube star. But, the nearly 2.5 million views and 2,300+ comments just go to show the power of consumer as spokesperson.

The blurred lines between authenticity/transparency and good ol’ fun with our good friend social media is a pretty hot topic in the Toronto PR realm right now. After listening to the latest episode of Inside PR, I realized I have a few thoughts to sort out about the issue.

Local screenwriter Jill Golick presented Story2Oh! at CaseCamp Toronto 7 a couple weeks ago. In very basic and not at all sufficient language, her idea to bring her work online lead to the creation of a group of fictional characters that live and interact online with each other and with real people. Golick’s characters had Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts, posted videos on YouTube, etc. I was amazed by the presentation and intricacy of the entire phenomenon. And, I couldn’t wait to get home and look these people up on the many social networks they are part of.

But, when I got around to doing a Facebook search (the next day, oops!), I discovered Ali Barrett et al. no longer live on the site. Someone at Facebook learned of Terms of Service compromise and removed the four from Canada’s favourite social network.

Okay, that’s fair–Golick broke the rules (unlike my brother’s friend) and paid the consequences. She knows this, and she has been nothing but professional and diplomatic about the situation that blew up in the blogosphere the following few days. I wish the same could be said for the other writers who have her back.

My good friend Eden asked a question about transparency after Golick’s presentation. She said one of the characters requested to be her Facebook friend and she found no obvious explanation of her falseness on her profile. Golick apologized for the confusion and said she made sure to point that fact out every place her characters live. My favourite part of the question from “the woman with dark hair” was when she pointed out that many people toy with their 160 character bios on Twitter. People write all kinds of cutesy things. Saying “I’m a fictional character” shouldn’t always be taken at face value in that space.

Eden was attacked after the Facebook profiles were deleted. She was accused as reporting Golick’s imaginary friends to Facebook–which never happened. In order to straighten out the situation and explain her stance on transparency, Eden wrote this post on One Degree. I was disgusted with a lot of the feedback she received, particularly this gem from Bill Cunningham:

…

But what’s really heinous is the idea that people who attended a conference in “new” media were so closed-minded and somehow offended (though I really don’t see how they could be. You would think they would want to learn how it was done) that they decided to “tell on” Jill and her storytelling team instead of simply ending the “friendship.”

Those folks will never think to the future. Those folks will never be able to innovate, adapt or overcome. Those folks hold the rest of us back. They are a sign of the “grim meathook future” (look it up) that awaits us if we keep doing things the same old way we always have instead of getting down to the business of learning and growing up.

…

Here’s what I had to say:

And to Bill re: new media people being closed minded–I completely disagree. These people use social media every day for both personal and professional reasons. They are paid based on their transparency; their ability to interact with people online while fully disclosing who they are, who they work for and why they’re in a specific space. These people are making sure the blurred line of authenticity isn’t completely crossed forever.

I don’t disagree with everything you said, but most of the people who attended CaseCamp aren’t in the business of interactive screenwriting.

That still doesn’t say much to the topic I introduced this post with, but I felt it was important to tell this person that there were two very different groups of people with different backgrounds approaching the situation.

As to having fun with flogs (does it really have to be a negative word every time?), see my post about the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall on glossblog. I say let them have fun!

On IPR 110, Terry Fallis said he has no problem with these promotional blogs as long as there is some up front, honest information about who is really writing the blog and what is really going on. You know… I don’t even think I’d go that far. Peter Bretter’s blog didn’t do that.

There is, of course, a huge difference between RVing around America, sleeping in Wal-Mart parking lots and blogging about the experience all the while hiding the fact that you’re a journalist hired by the firm handling the company’s PR and blogging from the perspective of a character in a movie or an Aussie party boy.

In the case of the latter, I think these blogs challenge the reader to figure things out and put pieces together. Let’s make our audiences as smart as we want them to be. It is possible.

Photo by Jill Golick