local business opens 883 social media accounts

Social Media

sporting goods guys

A sporting goods store in Perth, Australia holds what is considered to be a record for opening up the most social media accounts associated with one business. The co-owners of SportsJumpPlus, Jim Manners and Bill Heath have registered accounts on 883 different social media networks around the world.

“The first 15-20 networks were easy to crack, the really well known ones” said Jim, “You know – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. But we both knew if we were going to do this social media thing properly we’d need to connect and build relationships with the majority of the world’s population. And so we now have a social media presence in every corner of the planet. Bill even stumbled across a fairly new social network in Inner Mongolia which was set up by a goat-herders collective – we were super lucky to get in early on that one.

“Most of the social media media networks we’re registered with we’d never heard of before recently, which is hardly surprising as neither Bill or I grew up with any of this stuff. But we’re making up for lost time… you just can’t afford to ignore a changed business landscape.

“Is social media a lot of work? Hell yes – Bill and I have been working tirelessly on this for some while, but I feel we’re almost there. I’m confident we’ll be seeing a lift in sales any day now.”

 

man remains active on Facebook after dying

Death, Hootsuite, Social Media

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Social media is being blamed for the delayed discovery of a 24-year old man in Manchester, England who died from injuries sustained after falling from his bunk bed. Police estimate that the deceased, Robert Grime lay dead in his flat for 38 days before a relative finally raised the alarm. Although Grime lived alone, was unemployed and single, he had a wide circle of friends and was described as outgoing by people who knew him. But in a bizarre twist Grime’s Facebook account continued to publish automated daily updates after his death, leading friends and family to believe he was still alive and well.

Police are blaming a popular and freely available online service called Hootsuite which enables users of social media to schedule their posts to be published at future dates. Police have no clues as to why Grime chose to pre-schedule his updates. “Social media is a confusing phenomena” remarked one senior officer close to the case, “Why a person would want to fabricate a future rather than just live in the moment… it’s a mystery to us.”

Nigel Camden, a close friend of Grime was shocked to hear the news  “As far as I knew Robbo was doing just fine” said Camden. “I mean, I hadn’t seen him in a while but I saw his Facebook updates most days. He was posting the usual cool stuff – mirror selfies, pics of his takeaway meals, some Japanese calligraphy he was thinking of getting tattooed, grumpy cat memes, etc.  Robbo had a great sense of humour – his comments were classic. He was a funny guy right to the end… well, even for quite a while after the end as it turned out. The weird thing is I could have sworn he liked and shared one of my own posts a few weeks back – or maybe I just imagined that.”

The owners of Hootsuite, a US based company declined to comment on the incident.

 

launching a website can cause harm: study

Study, Trauma, Website

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Researchers in Canada have released startling findings which bring into focus the health risks of getting a new website up and running. The longitudinal study conducted over 10 years tracked the metal health of over 25,000 marketing executives who had been directly involved in a website launch.

“At first glance the process of relaunching an existing website or building a new one looks relatively easy, but the opposite is mostly true” says lead researcher Lars Garnott. “The website build and launch process causes psychological trauma for thousands of people every day. The pressure to deliver a website on time and on-budget is considerable – we estimate it to be the stress-level equivalent of a soldier involved in a sustained combat situation. But whereas soldiers are physically trained to deal with battlefield conflict, and to some extent are psychologically prepared for their experience from watching old war movies on television, people who are tasked with launching a website are grossly underprepared. Marketing executives are generally assigned the task and then left to navigate a rugged and unfamiliar terrain on their own – from a psychological and behavioural viewpoint it’s a fast and slippery downward slope.

“When a website build goes off the rails – as 96% of them do within the first 72 hours of signing a commencement contract – a person will attempt to reconcile the disconnect between the early promises of their web developer or agency, and the horror of the unfolding reality. The long-standing stigma associated with not getting a website launched as per the internally announced due date often forces people to internalise destructive emotions such as shame, guilt and anger. In a knock-on effect, these people often become alienated from colleagues and shy away from anything related to the internet. A large number of study respondents also felt that their career prospects had been irreversibly compromised in some undefined way.

“The results of this study leaves no room for doubt whatsoever: launching a new website presents a raft of hidden health risks to the modern marketing executive. We’ve swept this issue under the carpet for too long. We have a serious problem here, we should acknowledge that – it’s simply not fair that friends and family are being left to pick up the broken pieces of people who have seen their website project go to shit.”

Facebook assumes the missionary position

Facebook, World Domination

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A revamped Facebook logo was prematurely leaked to the media on Tuesday. The Huffington Post was the first to break the story, citing an unknown former Facebook employee as their source. The new look logo has apparently been designed to broaden its appeal to local and international Christian communities without alienating non-Christians. Although a distinct cross is visible to anyone looking for one, Facebook is presumably counting on non-christians not noticing any change at all. Commenting on the new logo design, Mel Fringer, author of New York Times bestseller ‘Social Media: A Collective Psychosis’ said “Mark Zuckerberg is kind of like a modern day saviour to many people anyway – he certainly has the followers. Facebook could easily pivot into a pseudo-religious organisation to challenge the moral authority of any organised religion or national government anywhere. This could be the start of something much, much bigger.”

Facebook declined to comment.

cats meme business

Cats, Memes, Social Media Law

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Prestigious New York law firm Parker, Mitchell & Monberg have filed a $175 million class action suit against Facebook on behalf of over 1200 cats. According to records filed with the district court of New Jersey the claim is for “loss of earnings for appearing in memes and for the general humiliation of cats.” The suit is the first of its kind in that the claimants are asserting ‘fair compensation’ under the Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, even though animals are not generally considered to be legally recognised entities.

Trudy McVoy, adjunct professor at Stanford University, author and digital copyright specialist described the move as  “disturbing” in a recently published article. McVoy asserts that “Cat related images which go viral on social media are of such low quality that no-one could reasonably regard them as ‘entertainment’ and therefore no exchange of value is necessary. If anything, the rate at which these memes are shared are an indication of their lack of intrinsic worth. And as for the attendant claim of humiliation, that will be tough to prove. From what I can see the cats look like they’re actually enjoying themselves (apart from Grumpy Cat, but I think we all know he’s just putting it on).”

McVoy concluded her article with a warning: “Let’s be clear – if this ruling goes in favour of the cats, you could expect to see a wave of similar class actions brought on behalf of dogs, birds, kangaroos and dolphins. It would be mayhem, and could possibly mark the end of the Friday afternoon meme as most people know it.”

#shit’s on the way out

#hashtags, Shit

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In a rare display of online unity many of the world’s largest social media companies announced today an agreement to phase out any use of the #shit hashtag across their websites. A rainbow coalition spearheaded and co-chaired by Twitter and Facebook have set June 1, 2015 as the last day the #shit hashtag would be searchable or clickable within user’s posts. A complete ban on the hashtag is scheduled for late 2016.

“We’re sick of it and so are many of our users” said Twitter’s media spokesperson Randy Steinwig. “Certain elements of the community are using #shit as if it were a clever or fun hashtag – like #funnythingsoverheardatwork for example – but it’s really neither of those things. If people want to go potty-mouth with their friends maybe they should head over to Tumblr”.

When asked about other offensive hashtags in common usage across social media, Steinwig replied “We’re not aware of anything more offensive than the #shit hashtag at the moment, but we’re always on the lookout for anything unsavoury which might start gaining widespread adoption – we’d obviously look to aggressively stamp these out too.”

local business owner finally cracks Google

Google, Moron, Search

Woman standing outside florist

Michelle Chesterton, who owns a small florist in the inner Melbourne suburb of Armadale, recently announced to close friends and family that she was now coming up number 1 on Google for searches on her own business name. “Over the last couple of weeks we finally cracked it.” said Michelle. “Now if you google ‘Michelle’s Florist & Gift Shop Armadale’ we’re dominating the results. This is a real game-changer – our competitors won’t know what’s hit them!”

Michelle, like many small business-owners these days relies heavily on organic search to drive new customers through the door. Appearing high in Google’s search results is now seen as a business ‘must have’. While many aspire to do well in the space, not everyone is able to reach the pinnacle of unpaid search: appearing somewhere on page 1 for people who run a search on their business name.

“It’s been a long struggle – for years we were in the digital wilderness”, says Michelle thoughtfully. “We really owe a huge thanks to our SEO guru-consultant Max Bull who worked tirelessly to make this happen. Although we’ve invested a considerable sum, and there will be ongoing maintenance costs, it’s worth every cent. In fact, we’re so impressed with the results we’re thinking about launching our own website next year”.