The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog The GottaQuirk blog is a great resource for information about internet marketing. It’s an up-to-date resource on the happenings in the fast-moving eMarketing industry. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 13 4697

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Facebook is dead. Ok, maybe not. 2007-06-25 13:09:01 Facebook. Facebook. Facebook. Everywhere you bloody look, there it is. I’m sick of it (says he with a Facebook tab open in the background). It’s got so bad, that it’s even had coverage on prime time TV news and news24. And it’s a verb. When that happens, you know it’s way past mainstream. The figures are ridiculous. There are something like 108 000 members in the South Africa network (probably more by the time this post gets published) and not all Facebooking South Africans have joined the network. There are a few thousand more South African sign-ups every single day.  With a traffic rank of 17 on Alexa, it has overtaken Friendster and is closing in on MySpace. Besides the local hype, nary a day goes by that I don’t read that “Facebook is the next big thing.”   Of course, with mainstream adoption, comes the loss of cool. It’s about now in the lifecycle of on online entity that it becomes trendy to decry the death of ...

Quality vs. Quantity 2007-06-25 08:52:56 Having just had a rather funny experience with Carlos, the Internet and something called a Merkin (better take a look for yourself – but be warned); it dawned on me, through absolutely no traceable logic, that the Internet and technology appear to be spearheading the quality vs. quantity paradigm, or rather – forcing quality out of the picture. As has been preached in economics classes since the introduction of Ford's production line almost 100 years ago - “An increase in quality will result in a decrease in producible quantity, provided the available production costs remain the same” – this has now gone full circle. As a “consumer” of information I have to grapple with this teetering scale – do I read something properly or do I skim it and get through more? The cost now is time and the pay off is being informed about this ever changing world. I’ve been thinking about communication a lot recently as well – communication has ...

Imagination at work 2007-06-24 04:47:17 It the weekend of "feel good" ads on GottaQuirk :-) This General Electric ad really appealed to me (probably because I'm a bit of a sucker for these 'warm fuzzies'). Coincidentally "imagination at work" is the slogan which replaced longstanding "we bring good things to life" after the brand gurus at Wolff Olins had a go. In this instance the prestigious brand consultants really got it right - unfortunately I can't say that for the job they did on the branding for the 2012 London Olympics. Comment on "Imagination at work" ...

The world's biggest game of beachball 2007-06-23 03:05:11 What a week! Soaring on overdrive till midweek I felt like I hit a brick wall on Thursday, and I barely managed to crawl over Friday's finishing line. I was probably running on fumes by that stage. Fumes, or the thought of the weekend ahead me... Sarah seemed to be in a similar state of mind, and her message for the weekend's virals was, “Feel good”. The resulting clip? This cool ad by Pepsi: P.S. How cool would it be to have a giant game of beachball on top of Table Mountain? Comment on "The world's biggest game of beachball" ...

Microsoft still playing dirty? 2007-06-22 09:05:34 For years one of the most popular images of Microsoft was one of a company that did everything in its power to control as much of the operating system and software market as it possibly could. Now whether this is true or not is debatable, what is not debatable is that monopolies in the technology industry are not a good thing. Just to fill all of you who don’t know in; Google has accused Microsoft of making it difficult for users who are running Microsoft’s latest OS Vista to run a different desktop search engine. Google claim that although the user has a choice to run Vista's built in search engine or a competitor's desktop search (e.g. Google’s engine) Microsoft has designed Vista in such a way that if a user is not using Vista's built in search function the whole operating system slows down and it becomes frustrating to run a search of your computer's hard drive. After Google made their complaint – confidentially as part of the consent decree proceedin ... Microsoft

iPhone implications 2007-06-20 04:38:59 The world's most wanted gadget right now is undoubtedly the iPhone - social media sites are abuzz with its imminent release on 29th June, with one Digg story gathering a massive 23,338 diggs. Hyped to be sure, but after the success of the iPod, it would be foolish to bet against Steve Jobs on this one. So, if the iPhone is going to become a widespread device (at least in the well-heeled sector), what impact will it have on the technology/communications landscape? First off all, the iPhone will run a stripped down version of Mac OS X, which will likely make it one of the most competent and equipped environments on a mobile. The multi-touch display and large screen are likely to make it easier to use in a PDA role than most current devices - and this is significant, since it is the major stumbling block of using your PDA for just about anything complex. It will run Safari, Apple's web browser (now on Windows too), which will result in a capable browsing experience. And of course, th ... Iphone

Easy Linking 2007-06-19 03:55:11 We’ve seen that a few of our readers have been having some issues when trying to create links in their comments. To avoid any further frustration we’ve revised the system: From now instead of using two underscores __ you'll need to use two dashes --. Example: --www.quirk.biz-- I hope this makes things easier for you. Comment on "Easy Linking" ...

Word of mouth Part II: A brief history of Internet celebrities and other web fads 2007-06-18 07:03:25 As much as the inevitability of many ‘mainstream’ celebrities bothers me, I can’t help but Google the Vox populi. Willing or unwitting, the Internet has made some household names out of utter rot – with just the power of word of mouth. Here’s a few that you may have missed: Dubbed the Star Wars Kid, this dynamo from Quebec became the target of infinite Internet parodies after his self-produced Darth Maul ‘tribute’ video was discovered by his school mates. Another victim of video parodies was American, Gary Brolsma, who pretty much brought it on himself by doing the Numa Numa dance (another Internet phenomenon) and then posting the video on the Internet. Arguably the inspiration for the popular Borat character, Mahir Ça?r? the Turkish web stallion gained 320 000 hits on July 21, 2005. His website featured nothing more than pictures of himself surrounded by pick up lines in broken English. His ‘career’ is still thriving on ... Celebrities  History  Internet

Light Robots 2007-06-17 03:41:47 I remember reading somewhere the other day that C3PO was viewed as the politically correct character in Star Wars. Why? Well aside from speaking some 6 million languages the neurotic cyborg did display some vaguely homosexual mannerisms. Now, considering that Star Wars was released in the '70's I doubt that accounting for the gay market was top of George Lucas' mind (although one can argue that he was aiming to cater for the degenerate market with Jar-Jar Binks 22 years later). Whatever C3PO's sexuality one simply cannot imagine him cracking open a Castle Lager to watch the latest Springbok game with a bunch of his mates. But maybe, he would have felt a little more at home with this beverage: Comment on "Light Robots" ...

Do your feet dream? 2007-06-16 02:42:12 One of the things I hate most about winter is that my feet are stuck in boots all day, which is probably why this Havaianas clip really appealed to me (well that and all the pretty colours). If my feet had dreams I bet they’d be just like that one. Comment on "Do your feet dream?" ...

Sarah the Third 2007-06-15 07:04:28 First off, let’s start with the introductions. I’m the latest intern at the QuirkStation and my name is Sarah the Third (well my Quirk name at least, others just call me Sarah). I arrived a few days ago and it was kind of like the first day at school all over again but within minutes I was greeted with open arms (literally by some) and the nerves abated. I quickly came to the realisation, that quirky is perhaps an understatement for this place, I’ve only been here for 3 days (still alive I am proud to say) but I can truly appreciate that Quirk is aptly named. I’m presently in 4th year at UCT completing a Bachelor of Business Science - Marketing and if all goes to plan will be finishing up in November. This course concentrates on all marketing aspects and I even had the pleasure of being lectured in eMarketing by some of the QuirkStars last year. I must admit it has taken me a day or two to catch onto the virtual network in office that involves me not even hav ...

Business networking 2.0 2007-06-15 01:18:50 MyGenius is a new social media site that launched in March 2007. For those not familiar with it, it’s a great way to make new contacts in the business world, build your online reputation and network with others in your field. So what makes them different from a Facebook or a MySpace? Well, where do we start? Firstly it’s South African specific, so everybody on there is currently linked to the bustling world of SA business. They organise weekly meetings (on and offline) where you can meet others in your field as well as prospective clients. The creators are very involved from the registration period to setting up meetings. Blogging - You can create a blog, comment or just discuss and share views on other posts. They’ve also added a bit of a fun factor to the software, where you need to build your profile up from scratch by adding certain things to your profile, like the amount of people you have met and blog posts you've authored, to men ...

2012 London Olympics Logo Competition 2007-06-12 11:03:18 Following my earlier post on the London 2012 Olympics logo debacle, we’ve built a neat little logo competition site, which is now live. Go to www.better2012logo.com now and upload your logos, vote for your favourites and generally just do your bit for design!  This story has been receiving a lot of press here in the UK, and we’re interested to see if our site can pick up any support.  Call it a viral experiment. Comment on "2012 London Olympics Logo Competition" ...

Pick a tune for Hillary 2007-06-12 05:51:52 We've blogged a bit at GottaQuirk about the US presidential campaigns. Smallz got the ball rolling with his President 2.0 post and then there were follow-up pieces by both Andrew and myself. I didn't think that I was going to add a fourth post to the mixer but then I came across this gutsy move by Hillary Clinton (registration required). I'm not the most avid follower of politics but Clinton's always come across as being very clinical, very clean-cut. So it was a bit surprising when I read that she's invited YouTube users to her site to vote for or submit what they think should be the theme song for her campaign. It adds a different dimension to her image when you consider that she's practically inviting every single opposition joker to take a cheap shot at her. Take into account some of the following nominations: REM's It's the End of the World as We Know It, the Rolling Stones' She's so Cold and Foreigner's Cold as Ice. (For some more possible songs take a look at this u ...

WebTribe: Social Networking vs. Social Responsibility 2007-06-12 03:06:50 Last week, I wrote about WebTribes Inc., a cluster of social networking groups that cater for people with specific problems or diseases, such as depression or HIV, highlighting the benefits of bringing support groups online. In hindsight, I believe WebTribes is being irresponsible. I base this solely around the fact that the people who are they 're appealing to are vulnerable and that social networking infamously allows for anonymity. The WebTribes network is a predator magnet. When someone joins one of the WebTribe communities, they trust that they will find a community of people who are going through what they are and they look forward to talking honestly and openly. The fact of the matter is that they don’t know the people who they are befriending. Whilst all online communities attract some form of predator, these predators are far more likely to target sites where they know that the members are vulnerable. Something else that is particularly dubious to me is their choice ...