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Women Want Solutions, Men Only Want the Very Best

posted on July 8, 2011

He’s won trophies for his game face alone. He is the life of parties he’s never attended. Sharks have a week dedicated to him. He’s the most interesting man in the world and he’s right on point.

According to a new chart from comScore, men respond to commercials that makes superiority claims while women prefer to see solutions to their problems. It’s a sad, sexist state of affairs but we’ve seen the evidence on our TV screens for years. Female oriented commercials taught us how to remove ring around the collar, get a full serving of vegetables into our kids without a veggie on the plate, and look years younger and pounds thinner.

Commercials aimed at men promise faster cars, prettier women, adventure, and excitement. As unbalanced as it is, it’s hard to find fault when it’s a system that obviously works.

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The End of the Wallet? [Infographic]

posted on July 8, 2011

Whenever I hear about these kinds of proclamations regarding the end of anything I go back to the bold prediction of the paperless society. Trees still cringe when they hear that one (which begs the question “If we say that to a tree in the forest does it mean it was said?” Think about it.)

Anyway, in our effort to bring you some interesting infographics from around the web we thought we would share this one from G+ (no not that one) via Mashable which looks at the future of the wallet. If smartphones have anything to do with it, it looks bleak for wallets and better for cows (that’s a reference to less leather being used, get it?).

Here is a preview. Be sure to click through to see the rest of the infographic.

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Would You Pass A Social Media Background Check?

posted on July 8, 2011

Even if you have been living under a rock for the past several years you are likely to be aware of the importance of keeping tabs of what is being said on the Internet about you personally, your business, your brand etc.

The theory is that if something is out there that could harm your reputation or brand etc it could hurt your ability to get a job or a client etc. Old news, right?

Now, it looks like formalized social media background checks could become the norm for employers when doing their due diligence. A company called Social Intelligence is providing the service. How they get that information is completely out of your control but knowing what they look for isn’t.

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TV Ad Dollars Set To Double Online Spend

posted on July 8, 2011

This is one of those ‘it’s not a surprise but it’s still a surprise statistics’. It feels sometimes to us inside the Internet marketing space that with how massive online is, it must be as big as TV, right?

Well, according to this chart from SAI’s Chart of the Day that’s not even close to true by a wide margin.

This kind of perspective is good to remember because it reminds us that people still watch TV a lot (probably too much) and that shift to the online world while happening is happening at a pace that many may find hard to believe.

So how are working to get those TV dollars moved over to the online side of the ledger?

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Will Facebook Need to Start Its Network from Scratch?

posted on July 8, 2011

It appears Facebook is built on a house of cards.

Cards that rely on more than 4,000 MySQL “shards” or should that be sharts?

According to GigaOm:

…Facebook has split its MySQL database into 4,000 shards in order to handle the site’s massive data volume, and is running 9,000 instances of memcached in order to keep up with the number of transactions the database must serve.

And, citing database guru Michael Stonebraker…

…Facebook is operating a huge, complex MySQL implementation equivalent to “a fate worse than death,” and the only way out is “bite the bullet and rewrite everything.”

That may sound like an exaggeration, but having lived through this nightmare myself, he may have a point.

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Young Canadians Spend a Month Per Year on Social Networks

posted on July 7, 2011

Today we’re crossing the border into the lovely country of Canada. Newad conducted a survey of 2943 Canadians age 18-to-34 with the goal of finding out about social, web and mobile usage. Here’s what they found out.

“Nearly one month a year spent on social networks… But not on Foursquare.”

88% of the survey group had a Facebook account which was 19% higher than the general Canadian population. They spend most of their time Like-ing, commenting and sharing photos, videos and other content. 56% follow at least one brand, with Nike, Coke and Apple listed as some of their favorites.


(light blue is Young & Affluent, darker line is 18-49)

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Chick-fil-A Turns a Made-Up Holiday into a Marketing Bonanza

posted on July 7, 2011

Tomorrow is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A, which means you can score a free lunch if you show up at any location dressed as a bovine beast. You might think that only the most dedicated fan would go that far for a free sandwich, but last year they served more than 450,000 “cow-clad customers,” and they expect to top that this year.

Granted, not everyone went whole hog. Some people came with cow-spotted t-shirts or paper ears, but even a partial costume is enough to earn you a free entree.

Steve Robinson, Chick-fil-A’s senior vice president of marketing says,