Tiger on the prowl

Tiger, Tiger, Tiger…things aren’t looking so good for ya pal. Seems like lately Woods’ good boy image has taken a hit from his recent front yard car crash and alleged relationship with a Los Angeles cocktail waitress.

Woods released a statement on his website regarding the recent press attention his family has received. His statement came DAYS after much speculation surrounding the crash details and love affair rumors. The time between the news break and his statement only allowed time for suspicion to grow and rumors to spread once given that the tabloids had control of the story.

The news surrounding this story is very contradictory as his alleged lovers have both confirmed and denied having an affair with the once golden child of golf. He might be the only one who can set the record straight.

Public relations experts are saying that Woods has broken a major rule concerning damage control by not coming clean from the start. Woods not only took his time but he did not clearly address the accusations against him. It seems as if he is truly doing things his way.

What is in store for Woods in the future? One of his many sponsors, Nike,  has released a statement that their relationship with Woods will “remain unaffected” by the current negative attention their boy has received. As for the public, only time will tell what they choose to do with the provided information. After all I can’t be the only one who is intrigued by the numerous reports surfacing of the shady details of Woods’ supposed adulterous behavior.

Kate Moss and her skinny mistake

Kate Moss is a reknowned supermodel, bad girl, trend setter, and now  pro-anorexia enthusiasts? In a recent interview with the fashion website WWD Moss was asked to supply one of her favorite mottos. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”  was her response.

Did she not realize that this just so happened to be the motto of several pro-anorexic groups? Interestingly enough she seems to share this motto with several pro-anorexic sites and groups.

Moss who is famous for her waif like figure began a super skin craze in the 1990s. As one of the thinnest stars in the celebrity spectrum she has undoubtedly served as an icon for weight conscious young woman.

Moss’s modeling agency has defended their client’s qoute as an unfortunate case of misinterpretation.You would think Moss’s “people” would have warned Moss to stay clear from placing her weight even further into the spotlight especially since the target market of celebrity gossip happens to be the same demographic at the highest risk of anorexia.

Business for Moss has not slowed down any since the 90′s. She has recently launched campaigns with such fashion corporations such as Topshop, David Yurman, and Coty.

There are already been signs of the effects of her qoute have ghad on social networking and blogging. Tweeters saying such things as “Well she’s right anyways”.

What should Moss do next? Could this be hurtful to her career or is it not surprising enough that people will let her slip up slid?

BRAND TYLER

In an interview with Classic Rock magazine Steven tyler addressed the rumor that he quit Aerosmith.  ”I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” Tyler said in the magazine, “but it’s definitly going to be something Steven Tyler, working on the brand of myself. Brand Tyler.”

Celebrity branding- the idea of making a brand out of your image. I don’t know what is funnier. But people buy it. So many celebrities are more like a brand than anything else. Mary Kate and Ashley, Oprah and David Beckham are all examples of strong celebrity brands.

An easy way to test the brand of a celebrity is to google them. The top results will present  a report of the most current image of the celebrity brand.

A brand is an image defined by what people think about them, they have a competitive positioning relative to the other celebrities.  Along with their brand they exist in the minds of their audience in the same way corporate brands do. The public also responds the same way they would respond to corporate brands by either buying into it or not.

The mention of a celebrity conjures a a certain image , an opinion or memory.This is unavoidable and difficult to track. Another way to test a celebrity’s brand power is to check out the sales of their latest product or service. This may include their latest perfume, clothing line, or grill. Many singers, actors and models have at least one product or service licensed to them. Celebrity branding is like a global phenomenon.  People buy the products and in a sense  they buy an extension of their favorite star.

If a celebrity is not aware or not careful then they can easily damage their brand. In the news recently for hurting their brand image are celebrities such as Kanye West for his VMA outbreak and Lindsay Lohan for her personal outbursts on her  Twitter account.

I think it might be too late for Steven Tyler to bust out with this Brand Tyler business. Hats off to the guy for trying!

Facebook engages with the dead

Facebook recently extended their Suggestions feature to now recommend users to engage with account holders that seem less involved with the social networking site. The feature is meant to “reconnect” friends and family. This feature takes the Suggestion tool a step further by encouraging you to reconnect with old friends through a message, poke, or wall post.

Although I can see why this would be a great idea for Facebook because it targets that audience that has an account with them but just does not seem to use it or like it. The problem is that these are not the only users that are targeted by this feature. It seems that many of the accounts lacking action are those of  the deceased, therefore Facebook is suggests you reconnect with them.

Facebook has defended their new feature by claiming the recommendation to reconnect with the deceased is a premeditated attempt  to remind users of their loved ones who have passed and to encourage them to memorialize their pages.

Which makes me wonder , how does facebook deal with accounts of those no longer living? Well apparently it’s all up to the friends and family of this person to contact Facebook and let them know.

Facebook stresses that friends and family take action to notify them  of their loved ones passing in order for them to memorialize their account. Once a profile is memorialized log ins to the account are no longer permitted but wall posts are still allowed. The memoralization process being a simple one leads me to wonder, what if the person isn’t really dead? What if a friend (or enemy) is playing a sick joke?

The reconnection tool is also offending people who don’t necessarily want to be reconnected with. It is almost as if those people that Facebook has to beg friends to reconnect with should be embarrassed that they otherwise don’t receive many visitors to their profile.A recent post on Textsfromlastnight, a site that claims to remember the text you sent last night even when you don’t,  posted this text recently:

(802): Promise me that if I become one of those sad people that Facebook pesters you to ‘reconnect with’ you’ll tell me so I can delete mine and save myself the humiliation?

Maybe this new tool on Facebook is working in their favor as account holders are scared to be featured as someone you need to “reconnect with.” This could possibly increase user frequency and activity on the on the social networking site.

As for those who are offended by the tool’s occasional suggestion to engage with the dead,  I do not think Facebook should be held accountable for that.They offer the option to freeze the profiles of the deceased and if that action is not taken then what more can they do?

Where’s my invitation to the Google Wave party ?

Googe Wave preview

On September 30,2009 Google sent out 100,000 invitations to preview and use their newest social media platform- Google Wave. Where was my invite?

Let’s talk about how this social media platform Google Wave drew a large crowd by making the announcement that their new tool would only be offered to a select few. That’s exclusive, and everyone wants to be part of something exclusive.

There were about four ways to get a Google Wave invite.

1. You signed up for a Google Wave account when it was first announced

2. You have an account on the Developer Preview of Google wave

3.You are a paying user of Google apps

4. You are invited by someone that got an invitation

What is Google wave and how will affect you and me?

Google describes their social media platform as an “online tool for realeal-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.” Ohhh that’s what is.

Looking further into it I really just wanted to know about the cool features.The most innovative is the real-time conversation capability. This allows users to have an up to date conversation. That sounds nice but then again I often find myself deleting and editing my first thoughts in all conversation . This real- time stuff will take some time getting used to.

Next cool feature, any member can edit another’s work through Google Wave. It provides a forum for collaboration, and will make you feel better about staying home sick from work.

Another feature love is the drag and drop ability. This abolishes the copy and paste era and reminds me of the the Twitter browser,  TweetDeck. It allows users to share links via drag and drop. So easy and really makes tweeting more enjoyable.

For a more in depth look at Google Wave check this out.

Wave is due for public release in 2010. They still have a lot of bugs to work out. Any of you plan on using the new Google Wave?

For all of us who have yet to receive an invite, give it time I say. They don’t know what kind of Google Wave users they are missing out on.

#(insert fake celebrity death/hoax here)

#RIPKanyeWest < This was the most popular trending topic on October 20, 2009.  False claims that the 32 year old rapper died  in a devastating car crash rapidly spread via the mirco-blogging site Twitter. By the next morning “Kanye West died” and other variations of that phrase had become the top Google search as well.

Hours after the #RIPKanyeWest twitter blast West’s girlfriend, Amber Rose,  took to her own Twitter page to deny the rumor of her boyfriend’s death and call the whole thing an internet hoax.

Twitter  is what people tweet. Users have the power to mold the site into which genre of information they decide to make popular by including it in their 160 word mini blog. I have a feeling things could get ugly if  this sort of funny business continues to pollute the instant news feed aspect of the site. The amount of people that rely on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook  could be harmful to not only media and  celebrities but also to society. A misinformed person in some way is a dangerous one.

Another threat to the credibility of the trending topics are internet scams. Twitter scammers have been known to link trending topics to diseased sites. In order to combat these scammers Twitter set up a 2,000 followers limit for each account. The exception being for those themselves who have more than the 2,000 limit following them such as celebrities, corporations or just really really popular people.

While this new limit only prevents the amount of followers spammers can have Twitter hopes that it will cut down on the amount of  account holders that naively follow all companies that follow them.Twitter takes to its home support page to go into a little more detail of it’s limits and policies.

Do you think Twitter is at risk of losing users because of it’s recent internet hoaxes, fake celebrity deaths and increasing amount of scammers on the site?

Now what are you really trying to say?

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When you write, start with your buyers, not with your products. Your buyers are not impressed by puffed writing, exhausted phrases, and clouded language.  This is the advice from David Meerman Scott’s book – The Gobbledygook Manifesto.

Gobbledygook , an interesting word itself,  is defined as nonsensical language. The word was created as an onomatopoeic imitation of the gobble noise a turkey makes.

Although what he describes is nonsensical phrasing Scott steers clear of that in his book. He makes his point clear-  There are so many overused and somewhat ridiculous words and phrases.

As a student I will plead guilty to having used these words to fill up page space in my news release assignments:
- groundbreaking

- industry-standard

- cutting-edge product from a market-leading

- well positioned

-world- class

-solution- driven

Public relations people have the reputation of writing like this — using gobbledygook-filled phrases that are rendered meaningless. I like to think that these words are stuck in a vicious cycle.

Public relations students are introduced to the news release format with a textbook example .This example that spread itself through the field is rooted on the idea that to make a good release you must use words that really set you apart. These are  words like “revolutionary” or “class leading” or any other word that one relates with something super cool. These practices are never corrected and the gobbledygook language travels with the student to their career where they spit out news releases that end up on the internet.The next generation of  students find the gobbledygook news release on the internet while pulling an all night-er and decide to take a couple of words from it for their homework assignment. When will the cycle end?