But as I got to reading the article I was baffled by two things: a) the apparently vapid obviousities (yes, I make words up. Deal with it.) of the kid’s “analysis” and b) the ludicrous frenzy that this report apparently created, with “dozens and dozens of clients calling and emailing all day.”
And what, pray tell, is this kid’s amazing wisdom? Teens don’t twitter. Teens like free music. Teens eschew banner ads.

Didn’t we all know this already? How many teens do you run into on Twitter? Speaking for myself, the answer is none. I finally got my college-age daughter, a dvorak-typing technorata who runs Linux and is generally an early adopter, to sign up for Twitter, and I see nary a tweet coming out of her.

Do teens like free music? Oh shock. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling me that lawyers like billable hours, or that the new Transformers movie was “unrealistic”.

Oh c’mon now, my esteemed African-American brother. Surely you jest.

The race is on! If you want to claim your own name on Facebook.com, you better hurry.

What I mean is this: Up to now, the URL for your Facebook profile was something like this:
www.facebook.com/people/Your-Name/728843290 (that’s not a real link, btw)

But wouldn’t it be a lot cooler to own www.facebook.com/yourname?

And of course it’s even more important to own your own URL for Facebook pages! Can you imagine how much of a bummer it’d be to find that your name has already been taken?

It’s first come, first serve. And there’s a couple of hundred million people all trying to grab their name at the same time! So go do it now.

Log in to Facebook, and then go to  this link

You will see a form that will give you several suggested usernames, and the ability to choose your own. Either choose one of the names suggested or type in your own.

Repeat this process for any Facebook Fan Pages you administer, though there are three catches: first, your page must have over 1000 fans prior to May 31st 2009, you can’t claim something generic like travel or insurance, and you can’t claim someone else’s trademark.

If you have a registered trademark, you’d better go to this link right now to prevent squatters pitching camp at your name!

(PS: If your name is already taken, try your.name, your.m.name (middle initial), or yourname1, etc.)

But go through the list (I sure will!) and see what else you can find.

(You can see Joel’s original post here.)

1) First and foremost, every complaint is an OPPORTUNITY in disguise. For two reasons:

2) Complaints come in different flavors and shapes. It’s important to identify which.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful/useful.

Got a comment? (or a complaint? LOL) Please reply below.

He recently wrote an interesting post about the importance of CRM and databasing your customers.

Now, the cool thing is that Suresh, the guy who sold Mike his watch strap and a fax machine, runs this database in his head! Now, that’s impressive. But you don’t have to do that. Just find yourself a good, solid CRM system, and also make sure that your client list has more fields than just email and name!

Read Mike’s full post here.

First it was the rumors that Facebook was trying to buy Twitter; then it was all the bruhaha about Mark Zuckerberg’s “secret” Twitter account. (Personally, I think that if he meant for it to be a secret, his avatar wouldn’t have been a PHOTO of himself – LOL.)

And now this.

Personally, I think that internet marketers, voracious little creatures that they (ok, ok, we) are, biting into every social network like it was a tasty Napoleon cake. C’mon now, Facebook is for FRIENDS. And for all the good feeling that I have for my hundreds of Twitter followers or my LinkedIn contacts, the fact is that they’re not really my buddies. I don’t talk to them about women or religion, I won’t call them in the middle of the night asking for a favor (and don’t expect them to!), and I won’t let them see me in my underwear or grab stuff from my fridge. They’re contacts. Business acquaintances. Which is nice, it’s well and good and as it should be. Nothing wrong with that, like that Seinfeld episode kept saying. Just, not my buddies.

So, who’s on my Facebook? My childhood friends, my siblings, my Dad (finally got him on it, after much cajoling – “C’mon Dad, I’m not gonna send you pics of the kids, they’re all on my Facebook. Get an account already.”) Some friends I’ve made over the years, at work, volunteering or on other social occasions. That’s my Facebook.

And yet, there was good ol’ Ed Dale back in 2008 preaching the “get as many friends on your Facebook as you can” approach. (I love ya Ed, you’re usually spot-on. But I went another way on this one.)

Now, Caroline Middlebrook had it right in her post about Facebook multiple accounts and how that’s a bad idea. And what was Caroline preaching back then? Facebook pages.

Boy, was she right.

Now, what happened to all those that got thousands of Facebook openquote-friends-closequote? They lost all value of their Facebook accounts as they got mired down in the myriad minutiae of many minions (alliterated aplenty, right there!) whose shenanigans were not relevant to our protagonists’ lives. And why not? Because they were not noquote-friends-noquote. That’s why. (Which is why Ed started saying this.)

So, recently Ed Dale went on a quotefriend purge and sacked the whole bunch.

Soon, Jesse Newhart also took the axe to his quotefriends. But, much to his chagrin, Facebook went aTwitter on us. What is that about, says Jesse.

The fact is, Twitter has a lot going for it. And Mark is not dumb, and neither are his cohorts over at Facebookville. So, of course they would look at Twitter’s growth chart and start stealing replicating, emulating it. Plus, Facebook is experiencing unprecedented expansion these days. EVERYONE is getting on it now. So it’s only natural that Mark&Co would look for ways to improve it, catering to the influx of new users.

Bottomline:

1. Silly marketer, Facebook is for friends!
2. Facebook pages = good
3. Facebook will be more like Twitter. Twitter will grow on. Life is good.
4. Get over it.

And the two will live happily ever after.
As evidenced by Facebook groups preaching the Twitter gospel and Facebook tutorials on how to best integrate Twitter.

Don’t know how?
Well, I’ll tell ya.
Nah, too lazy.

I’ll let AJ Vaynerchuck do it for me, since his tutorial rocks.
(But do keep in mind that AJ is biased.)

Links:

• The Flock browser
• Ed Dale’s Thirty-Day Challenge

Needless to say I was blown away by these news. It shows, simultaneously, that a) Twitter is getting bigger than The Beatles (I’m not even going to drag Lennon’s own quote into this); b) Guy really IS totally and completely tuned in to the latest happening on the twittesphere; and c) the Dalai Lama, having time and time again proven a keen understanding of the power of a worldwide audience, is demonstrating prudence (to borrow a word from one of his office’s twits) by the truckload (that last part not borrowed.)

I mean, what other religious leader is twittering? Is the Pope even online? Does the Archbishop of Canterbury have a MySpace? One of the key, key aspects of this that is so engaging is that, whereas many of us are used to seeing religions -and more specifically religious leaders- to be aloof, unreachable, reluctant to mingle or enter debate, dialog or discussion, here you have The Office of His Holiness ready and willing to communicate, on Twitter, on Facebook, on MySpace. THAT makes a statement. His Holiness is connected, is willing to be connected. He is one with all of us, in a Web 2.0 display of Buddhist principle in motion.

Of course, I immediately started following His Holiness, curious to see what his twits would consist of. Predictably, it wasn’t long before the subject of China came up And shortly after, there were several twits saying that the Office of His Holiness was overwhelmed with twits and was endeavoring to reply to them all. Traffic flood!

Now, here’s the most amazing thing: While I was composing this blog I stopped to check my email. And you’ll never guess what I found in my Inbox: His Holiness is now following me!

I don’t know how I feel about this. I have no problem following the Dalai Lama – words of wisdom and inspiration, and the occasional anti-communist rhetoric, are welcome in my daily routine. But having a religious leader following me? How will this influence my twits? Will I still so giddily twit about robotic shenanigans, google streetview peeping-tom escapades, or an exploding whale? I half expect to get a letter someday, with a Tibetan exotic stamp on it, and inside, a little lecture (in a soothing, pleasant tone) about the propriety of such things and the need for a focused mind.

But then, who knows? For all I know, any day I’ll find that His Holiness is retweeting my tweets!

Once those commercials hit the web I’ll be posting them here. In the meantime, here are some hilarious commercials (and even banned commercials) to set the tone.

And here they are! The best commercials of the Superbowl (at least the ones at CBS)