The News Is Coming Too Fast Lately

3 deaths in one day that have the US talking & the internet straining at the seams:

The death of Farrah Fawcett
The death of Sanford's political career, dignity, & possibly his marriage
The death of Michael Jackson

There were so many searches for "Michael Jackson" on the internet last night between 5 & 7pm that Google's security systems thought they were being hit with a denial of service attack & activated the "capcha" feature. The News section of Google also thought they were having a DOS attack as well.

Perez Hilton screwed up yet again this week when he blogged that he doubted that Jackson had gone into cardiac arrest & speculated that Jackson was pulling a stunt. He told readers to ask for their ticket money back. Very nice, right on the heels of the whole Much Music award night debacle (I'm not eve going there--look it up)

When the news that Jackson had died was confirmed, the ill-timed respons on Hilton's blog was deleted--but not before he was showered with criticism by his readers. I wonder if this is the start of the end of his 15 minutes?

Twitter saw a doubled rate of twits for about 2 hours after the news of Jackson's death started spreading.

Information overload.

Kicking And Screaming To Twitter

I don't want to do it, but I think I may have to. I have a client & an organization that are going to make me. Dang it, I don't need another social network!

Ok, enough whining. I signed up (hopefully not for long). I sure hope this dies on the vine...

Twitter Me This...

What is wrong with this picture?

This washing machine posts a message to you on Twitter when it's load is finished washing. Does this mean that corporate Japan is counting on us being so tied to our computers that we can't make it across the house to check the clothes?

Man, are we weak!

Personally, I don't like Twitter at all, and it has nothing to do with my laundry...

Facebook Fatigue

I've been hearing the word "Facebook" for some time now & it's intensifying every week. Words like "Superpoke" are gaining ground in common American lexicon & the average business lunch includes reference after reference to Facebook, often ending with "hey man, look me up on facebook when you get back to the office".

I've been hired to teach a class on Facebook & tie it to guerilla marketing & it doesn't even bother me to do so. I think it's inevitable that Facebook will peak & then level off. Maybe it already has.

For those of you wondering (I can't imagine), Facebook is a free-access social networking site that allows users to join & instantly become part of networks organized by city, workplace, school, region, or interest to connect withothers. You create a personal profile & voila! the friend finder tool instantly starts suggesting others you might know so that you can add them as a friend to your profile.

Messages, free apps, etc. are all stupid-simple & require little or no real training on the part of the user. Within a day many newbies hook up with friends & loved ones they haven't been able to find for years.

I know people who admit to spending at least an hour a day on Facebook & from what I can tell, most folks using the service actually log in multiple times each day to check up on their posse.

You can update the world as to what you are doing at any given moment. Ex--"I'm craving a parsley salad" No joke, I actually saw that in December. I might not have seen that fellow since 5th grade but I now know he craves parsley salads.

It's exactly that kind of information overload that is going to tire us out. Oh wait, maybe it's the thinly veiled semi professional commercials my friends are throwing at me now. Or could it be the 90+ requests in my Notifications to "join ________ group & make a difference"? Information overload!

When I get asked to teach a subject to a group of business people it means the subject has become mainstream & business is now trying to figure out how to exploit it to their advantage. Not that I blame them. After all, we're talking about an extremely targeted demographic that they, "the business people" can market to for no cost but their time. Oh, maybe their integrity too, but I'm pretty sure most of them aren't using that anyway.

So start saying buh-bye to your love affair with Facebook. You'll be tired of it soon enough & it will eventually sink into it's proper place on the Internet. I don't think it will go away anytime soon, but it will evolve & it's appeal may be a bit tarnished by the time this massive wave of
"average joes just trying to make a buck" is finished with it.

Piece of advice--don't even ask me about Twitter.

See you at the next big thing.