On
20 November 2008 tagged Advertising, Video
So there’s this video game called Guitar Hero that the kids are into these days. A few days ago, a video appeared on YouTube showing someone “playing” the game while riding a bike. Today a videogame blog found out that that the video was produced by an ad agency. (Score one for bloggers doing real journalism.)
Internet impresario Ze Frank, who posted the video to his site a few days earlier, today asked his readers, “does it detract from its value?” Here’s what I think.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: It’s not that it’s a commercial, it’s that it’s a hidden commercial. It’s not the art, it’s the ruse.
Newspapers and magazines figured this out a long time ago. That’s why they put “ADVERTISEMENT” at the top of the page when an ad could be mistaken for genuine content.
The thing these marketeers constantly miss is that, had it been labeled an ad, people would still have talked about it, linked to it, enjoyed it. It’s only their ad man inferiority complex that made them dress up an ad in a “user-generated” costume.
One thing pretending to be another is always a betrayal of trust. If these brands really want to engage communities online, they’re going to have to learn how to stop lying to us and start interacting honestly with us.
Would it really have been so hard for the video’s description so say: “Yeah, we’re an ad agency, but we also love Guitar Hero, so we made this video.” I submit that it would have gotten just as much attention, without all the negativity that will surely come from the revelation that it was a sham.
On
19 November 2008 tagged Fun, Geek, Internet
You know all those things you wish you could post to Twitter but don’t want to say with your name on them? Those brilliant angry complaints that would feel so good to get off your chest? Now you can.
Kvetch is an anonymous oracle of complaint. Kvetches are displayed randomly and anonymously. There are no permalinks and no search mechanism. Just enjoy the moment.
Wanna play? First, you’ll need a Twitter account. If you’re not a Twitter member already, go sign up. I’ll wait.
To participate, you have to follow Kvetch. Go to Twitter and type “follow kvetch” or click the “follow” link on this page. Kvetch will automatically follow you back. We need to have this relationship so you can send us private messages.
Now that we’re all set up, just direct message Kvetch with your complaints. To do that, just twitter “D Kvetch Your kvetch here!” or just post it here (you must be logged in to Twitter and a Kvetch contact for that link to work).
Once an hour, the Kvetch website pulls in all the direct messages, strips out the sender, and displays the kvetches randomly. Sweet, sweet release!
But that’s not all! On the Kvetch website, there’s this widget under each kvetch. If you like a kvetch, click the thumbs up button. If you don’t, click the thumbs down. If you’re ambivalent, click in the middle. Clicking any of the three will refresh the kvetch. We use these votes to determine the frequency of the kvetches displayed. Higher rated kvetches will be displayed more often. Lower rated kvetches will be banished to the dustbin of obscurity.
If this seems a little familiar, it’s because Kvetch has existed for over a decade. The site was born while avoiding paying work way back in 1996 as a place to blow off steam (thanks to Christian Mogensen). I redesigned it in 1998 and tricked it out with a realtime chatroom (thanks to Greg Knauss). That’s where I first experimented with the Community Boot – a system that put the chatroom participants in charge of moderating their own space – which I later wrote about in Design for Community.
I shut down Kvetch in 2002 because it’d just grown too unwieldy and I could no longer handle weeding out the dumb posts by hand.
But the ascendence of Twitter got me thinking. Its 140-character limit matched a similar limit we had at Kvetch. And its popularity again created that need for a more temporary, anonymous place to let off steam.
I whipped up the design and gathered a garage band of talented friends. Let’s hear it for Josh Bryant on html/css, Jonathan Snook on javascript, Toby Joe Boudreaux on php/mysql, Alex Payne on the Twitter api, and Media Temple on the server box. They’re all masters of their craft, come from good homes, and are kind to children.
Why do all this? Just because it’s fun. Isn’t that why we started making websites in the first place?
Kvetch! Let it out, baby. You’ll feel better. Promise.
On
17 November 2008 tagged Geek, Internet
Just a brief housekeeping note: This site is now hosted at Media Temple. They’ve been hosting Fray since last year, and the few times something’s gone wrong they’ve been completely on top of it. So I finally got all my sites moved over. If you need expert hosting for sites big or small, tell ’em I sentcha.
