Quarterlife, the new series from Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, is far from racking up impressive broadcast-style numbers on MySpace and YouTube, which leads The New York Times to question. The low traffic numbers are significant because the series has been touted as the first television-quality production for the Web, as well as the first to be introduced online as a warm-up for its network debut. NBC will …
These Walls Can Talk
This Ain't No Disco is one of the more interesting entries in the new in '07 ad blog category. Here's some copy from their About page: It’s a well known fact that some agencies spend huge chunks of their hard earned money turning lifeless commercial spaces into bastions of creativity. These interiors provide insight as to the breadth and depth of their thinking and creative execution. They create spaces to envy. …
The New Oxygen of the Internet
BusinessWeek has a new video program called Digital Dish. Fred Wilson, aka "A VC," stopped by for a chat, which turned to soc nets and how some of them are bound to falter, if not disappear from the web altogether. Here's Wilson's response to that charge... "I think that you're missing one thing, which is that the web itself is becoming social. And the large social networks—whether it be MySpace or Facebook, Bebo, …
Time for Year-End Lists
'Tis the season for year-end lists of every variety. Time Magazine has 50 such lists, one of which--Top 10 websites--I'd like to take a closer look at. 1. Lemonade.com 2. AskSunday.com 3. Wink.com 4. TechPresident.com 5. GoodReads.com 6. MenuPages.com 7. DontForgetYourToothbrush.com 8. VolunteerMatch.com 9. Fatsecret.com 10. Indeed.com It's pretty easy to see the common thread here--services made possible, or made …
Media Resurrection
According to The New York Times, real estate tycoon, Samuel Zell, is shaking things up at The Tribune Company. After completing an $8.2 billion deal on Thursday that makes the media company a privately held operation, Zell made himself chief executive, announced a new set of directors and managers, and declared that the troubled company would look to raise revenue. He disparaged the conventional wisdom that the …
Circuit City’s Stock Price Gets Zapped. Not A Shock.
Sorry for all the bad puns, but hey, a bad brand deserves bad puns. I wrote back in March about Circuit City's decision to fire 3000 employees, the ones who were the most knowledgeable on the sales floor. Of course, at the time, it was a way to make Wall Street happy by lowering costs and boosting profits. Well, Wall Street is not happy. From the Chicago Tribune: Shares of Circuit City Stores Inc. lost more than a …
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Scratch And Win The Caucus
Over at Politico.com, Roger Simon reveals Hillary Clinton's latest tactic to win support in Iowa: A campaign with limited resources would forget about the expansion voters and just go after the provens and potentials. But the Clinton campaign has been sending out a special glossy mailing to expansion voters. On the bottom is a scratch card that says: “Itching for change? Show your support for Hillary. Scratch to win …
Retail Gets Webified
According to The Wall Street Journal, web-style consumer testimonials and other online conveniences are migrating to retail. Taking a page from the e-commerce world, companies including Cabela's and Staples are featuring endorsements from shoppers in their product displays. These testimonials are different from the Web version in one big way: While most Web retailers leave negative ratings and reviews untouched on …
From Terminated To Terminator
Every now and then, we post some news or item about an ad agency that leads to some very personal and controversial comments. And other blogs do, too. HighJive at MultiCultClassics has some very interesting thoughts on the way blogs sometimes cover agencies, particularly when it comes to employee or ex-employee gossip and crosstalk: The terminated are becoming the terminators. They’re mad as hell and they’re not …
Devotion To Sugar
According to the BBC, Orthodox Christians in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia are upset with Coca-Cola over the misuse of sacred images. "Coca-Cola uses all these Orthodox symbols in a blasphemous way," the complaint, lodged on 11 December, said. "Some images are deliberately turned upside down, including the crosses," it said. An inverted cross is considered to be one of the symbols of satanism. Coca-Cola officials have …