Social Media Lover Offers Perspective on Facebook Chat

Sarah Hutton, a writer for Our American Shelf Life and a contributor here on Adrants was featured in a video, shot by Amanda Mooney (also an ASL writer and Adrants contributor) about Facebook chat.

Sarah tells the story about how she like to stay in touch (stalk?) with a friend abroad using Facebook chat because her friend is never on AIM or iChat. She also offers perspective on chat, friending and social media in general.

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It's a Daisy Chain of Sensory Delights!

Okay. We don't make music ourselves, but this iPhone synthesizer is too cool to stand. Wait for the piano sequence around 2:10. Oh, and the song is pretty kick-ass too.

Brought to our attention by Shilo.tv, a team of bicoastal filmmakers, music lovers and artists. We Make it Good serves as its blog and portfolio site, where you can get a taste of neat things Shilo's involved in, like Pretty Titty's We Make It Good mix series, which went out on Obey Giant Records -- another brand we love to the point of hyperventilation -- this year.

Obey Giant was founded by Shepard Fairey, who first caught our eye with his provocative visual mashups of familiar advertising, Communist propaganda and pop and political icons.

McCain Girls Outed, Gnarls Barkley Refurbed, AgencySpy Critiqued, AmEx Does Travel (BETA!!!)

- The new Honda Accord is so lame that RPA had to use an image of its own creative team, gawking at the car, as part of an outdoor wallscape.

- American Express has launched Members Know, an "insider" travel community that, in trademark AmEx style, manages to be both elitist and bland. Also, there are INSIGHTS. And TAG CLOUDS. And the word BETA.

- Interactive firm ROKKAN redid the Gnarls Barkley site to reflect the duo's dynamism and harmony. (You know, like OutKast, but without Andre's mood swings.) The site includes a pretty awesome pop-up video player. In fact, it's pretty awesome all around.

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Still Relevant MySpace Debuts Profile Tool for Marketers

Deep Focus is the sole beta partner with MySpace using the social networks new self-service platform which allows marketers to easily create and manage branded pages within the network.Writing on his blog, Deep Focus' Ian Schafer was surprised at commentary given to Advertising Age from other advertising executives who have basically written off MySpace.

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Seth Godin Praises Twitter; Seth's Tweetiquette Critiqued

Seth Godin recently wrote a warm laudy post about how Twitter is great for building trust, brand equity and ultimately sales. Practically two seconds later, marketing and social media blogger Ryan Kuder wrote Seth an open letter declaring shenanigans.

It's not that Seth is wrong. Twitter is a great relationship development tool. I maintain daily contact with more people on Twitter than I've met in real life over the past year. We pass on streams of thought, as well as links we find interesting or valuable.

Occasionally, that interesting or valuable link brings users to our website. But that isn't only or always the case ... and this is where Ryan raises his complaint.

"I've got a beef with the way you use Twitter," he writes, "Because you don't use it."

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News Corp. and AOL Pick Sides in MicroHoo Drama

Big day for Yahoo yesterday. In addition to tentatively agreeing to serve Google ads on its search pages, Yahoo's apparently in talks with Time Warner to fold AOL into itself, in exchange for 20 percent ownership. Time Warner will pay in cash.

Microsoft, always one to take a crappy bluff, is now in talks with News Corp. to lob a joint bid at the company anyway.

Good life lesson here: if you can't pick just one, take the whole plate.

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Feed Company Drops Stats on Zune 'Masks' Effort

Hey, remember that Zune Masks spot? Feed Company, which seeded it on YouTube and elsewhere, sent us metrics on how well it fared.

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Xiaxue Was iJustine Before Justine Became iJustine

Back in 2004, Singapore hottie Wendy Cheng, aka Xiaxue was just a blogger. But a very popular blogger. in Singapore, at least. Then, in 2005, a t-shirt company LocalBrand approached her to become their brand ambassador. It was sort of a big deal back then for a brand to tap the popularity of a blogger.

Xiaxue was sort of like iJustine before iJustine became iJustine.

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'Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis' Brings Garish Colors Out in Soccer Match

Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a movie that plays on southern French stereotypes about northerners (the "Ch'tis"), beat France's beloved La Grande Vadrouille record at the box office with over 17 million views, according to Gael Clouzard of Influencia.net.

Those that don't know what it means to be a Ch'ti got a quick education at a soccer match involving northerner team Lens, when a group unrolled a banner reading "Pedophiles, unemployed and inbred, bienvenue chez les Ch'tis."

Ohhh. So being a Ch'ti is kinda like being a redneck on South Park. Got it.

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Social Media Kicks the Ass of Old Media

Who's This Pompous Idiot?

Want to hear an interesting conversation about social media and it's impact on marketing, advertising, public relations and journalism? Want to know how the role of public relations is changing in the world of public relations? Want to explore the differences in mentality between new media and old? Want to now whether or not it's sinful to publish a story before every last detail of the story is known? Want to know why readers, who are now commenters, are so important to the whole of the story? Then give this podcast a listen.

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