Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto

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January 2010

THE SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLOSION: CARL SAGAN WOULD BE PROUD.

More than 175,000,000 Facebook users sign on every day.
The average number of tweets per hour is 1,300,000.
LinkedIn now has over 50,000,000 members worldwide.
Flickr hosts more than 4,000,000,000 (that's billion) images.

Just some of the pretty crazy numbers on social media adoption, here.

30 January 2010 in a little levity: the blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Carl Sagan, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, social media, statistics, Twitter

PEPSI IS IT.

Okay, I still prefer Coke to Pepsi -- and Dr. Pepper to either cola -- but Pepsi seems to be doing a really good job of capitalizing on the social media craze.

Here's an interesting run down of how it's effectively interacting with consumers.

30 January 2010 in a little levity: the blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Coke, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, social media

GHOSTBLOGGING: I MEAN, WHAT DID YOU THINK?

Here is a thought-provoking post from Todd Defren at PR-Squared about the frowned-upon new phenomenon of 'ghostblogging' -- essentially ghostwriting blog posts (usually for corporate blogs).

Maybe because I've spent a fair amount of my career writing customer letters signed by the president of X or the marketing manager of Y, I never really thought much about the ethical implications of ghostblogging.

I pen this blog and it would be a bit strange to ask someone to do it on my behalf. But I figured most people realized that when they get a letter signed by Bill Gates or Stephen Harper, neither probably wrote it. Just as Sarah Palin didn't write her recent book -- as hard as that is to believe.

(See, this is not really Sarah Palin either.)

I realize that social media vehicles like blogging and Twitter are perceived as more authentic, but come on. If the purpose of a communication is essentially public relations or marketing, I'm going to assume it was ghostwritten or edited by a professional. You should too.

28 January 2010 in a little levity: the blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tags: Bill Gates, ghostblogging, ghostwriting, Sarah Palin, Stephen Harper

THE SMARTEST THING I'VE READ TODAY 28.01.10.

"Want to know why so many companies can't keep up with Apple? It's because they compromise, have meetings, work to fit in, fear the critics and generally work to appease the lizard. Meetings are just one symptom of an organization run by the lizard brain. Late launches, middle of the road products and the rationalization that goes with them are others."

(Here Leezard Leezard.)