Alan Is Good

In just five months, she gained over 2.1 million followers on Twitter.  Not nearly as impressive as @AlanIsGood, but not bad for a 16 year-old pop star.  For a time, things were good, but Miley decided to make like Trent Reznor and become a qwitter, even going one step further by actually deleting her account.

It’s always a party in the USA when you’re Miley, so she explains her decision via (drumroll) YouTube rap video. More »

No apologies for any bias or skew this post may contain.  The past 5 years have been horrendous for American horror, and original films like the SAW franchise have been our only saving grace from throwing in the towel and letting Japan go ahead and handle the entire genre.

Yes, the SAW franchise is five sequels deep.  I strongly recommend watching them chronologically, as the story definitely builds upon each previous movie.  In an age with remakes abound,  films produced around gore/new CGI tricks instead of storyline and plot, the SAW franchise is original, unpredictable, and THE most successful horror franchise ever.  Fact.

I put together a rough breakdown of the box office success the SAW franchise has seen to date:

(Hover over the movie posters to see movie data) More »

Facebook Is Now In A Complicated Relationship With FriendFeed

First off, Facebook acquired FriendFeed for $50M this week.  If you’re not familiar with FriendFeed, its an aggregator of your activity on Facebook, *Twitter (<—- :-O )*, Youtube and dozens of other compatible social networks.  It’s a good site to use.  TechCrunch posted pics of the meeting:

Yeah, these guys party real hard.  Anyway, everyone goes around whispering that this is really bad news for Twitter, but 9 out of 10 people I asked couldn’t give a decent explanation for how or why.  Sensationalism and drama are awesome, don’t get me wrong, but its good to be able to simplify and dissect conflict. More »

Well, now that the whole 4chan/AT&T thing is cooled down, I can finally write about something else.

So the secret to social media marketing is. . .

Wait, there’s still more.  Erling Løken Andersen, who first posted about the AT&T block on 4chan, shares an email from an anonymous (not 4chan Anonymous) AT&T insider who supposedly has the backend explanation on the whole mess.   More »

• Always relate to new media/digital PR
• Write about topics I’d actually want to read about

If you have internet access this week, you’ve probably heard about this strange 4chan vs. AT&T situation.  If you read AlanIsGood.com regularly, great – you’re already seasoned and informed regarding trolls, lulz and the missteps of corporate America in dealing with them.  This AT&T/net neutrality/4chan/revenge story is getting far deeper reach, traffic and attention than almost any other story in 4chan history. More »

According to the Rolling Stone and other entertainment news sources, Trent Reznor threw in the Twitter towel last week.  A few weeks ago I wrote about the ongoing trolling by Twitter users from across various message boards and forums.  Reznor said he was going to use Twitter solely to announce news and tour dates, but the @ reply trolling didn’t calm down, and succeeded in frustrating him further.

I’m truly surprised at the number and intensity of anti-Reznor blog posts and comments.  It seems like every time someone posts that “Reznor is God,” a troll is born.  Even though I disagree subjectively with a lot of the angles, I respect this post written by AndreaUrbanFox, which fully details and maps out the Reznor vs. anti-Reznor trolls saga.

More »

Working in Social Media Strategy?  You Should Know This Face

It puzzles me how many social media guru/expert/specialist/wizard/rockstar/dude/dudette/master/manager/scientist/aficionados out there aren’t familiar with 4chan, trolling, or the art of the meme.  I’ve found these concepts extraordinarily important to a comprehensive understanding of the virality of user-generated content as well as a must for anyone engaging with any type of online communities for market research or feedback.  The few digital marketing people I’ve met who were familiar with 4chan actually ‘get’ the internet (interwebz) and tended to have a far deeper understanding of the online space, and generally a more impressive track record in social media. More »