Ben-Rowe.com

via PSFK

For those who think that the iPad, is “just an bigger iphone that actually isn’t even a phone”, a present you this:

Tumblr has the best login page. No one will ever beat it.

While it would be easy to pass judgement on the marketing folks at Virgin for this DM 101 blunder, you can’t help respect the quick turnaround (by big corporate standards) and Virgin’s trademark cheeky sense of humour…

… This does make me wonder, as veterans of email direct marketing, could Virgin have known about this possible outcome? To make such a big faux pas on Friday the 13th was, indeed, awfully convenient. Could Virgin be pioneering a new technique?

Perhaps we’ve just witnessed a new dawn in marketing – the strategic marketing mistake.

Great Article over at Anthill Magazine about Virgin’s blunder this week.

Via BrainPickings:

I just did a search on Magnation’s website.

I got no results.

But the “no results” message made up for it:

Waaaa Waaaa Waaaa Waaaaaaaaaaaa… (Meant to be sung in a descending tone). This means I could not find any matches to what you were searching for. Please dont blame me. I am just a simplistic search engine. I also have feelings. Feel free to try again or go to advanced search. I hope you find what you are looking for. I dont know if my ego could take another blank draw.

via e-consultancy:

1. Alerts (register and response rates / by channel / CTR / post click activity)
2. Bookmarks (onsite, offsite)
3. Comments
4. Downloads
5. Email subscriptions
6. Fans (become a fan of something / someone)
7. Favourites (add an item to favourites)
8. Feedback (via the site) 
9. Followers (follow something / someone)
10. Forward to a friend
11. Groups (create / join / total number of groups / group activity)
12. Install widget (on a blog page, Facebook, etc)
13. Invite / Refer (a friend)
14. Key page activity (post-activity)
15. Love / Like this (a simpler form of rating something)
16. Messaging (onsite)
17. Personalisation (pages, display, theme)
18. Posts
19. Profile (e.g. update avatar, bio, links, email, customisation, etc)
20. Print page
21. Ratings
22. Registered users (new / total / active / dormant / churn)
23. Report spam / abuse
24. Reviews
25. Settings
26. Social media sharing / participation (activity on key social media sites, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc)
27. Tagging (user-generated metadata)
28. Testimonials
29. Time spent on key pages
30. Time spent on site (by source / by entry page)
31. Total contributors (and % active contributors)
32. Uploads (add an item, e.g. articles, links, images, videos)
33. Views (videos, ads, rich images)
34. Widgets (number of new widgets users / embedded widgets)
35. Wishlists (save an item to wishlist)

If you have 5 minutes spare, I urge you to watch this vimeo classic, Ikea Heights.

A glorious mini soap-opera, all filmed within an Ikea store. It’s really great.

But something like this is a huge, HUGE opportunity for IKEA. What if they sponsored it? Helped the writers pitch a whole series of it? Paid for its production? You’d have people talking about IKEA all over the place. It’s a word of mouth silver bullet.

If IKEA were smart, they’d take my advice and divert all marketing budgets necessary and put it behind turning this 5 minute cracker into a full-blown production. I can see this becoming a cult classic. We’d watch every episode. And we’d regale in the things we love and hate about IKEA.

So whaddya reckon, IKEA? Why not give it a shot?

Read write web on Myspace’s decision to focus on Music:

The question that remains, of course, is whether or not MySpace’s re-branding efforts will be enough to keep the site from going under. Although MySpace still had a healthy 64 million users in August of this year, that number is 12 million fewer than it did at the same time last year. Meanwhile, Facebook climbed to 300 million worldwide that same month.

Can MySpace entice people to come back to the network through its new music-based initiatives? It’s too soon to tell at the moment whether the strategy will work or not, but it’s definitely the network’s best shot. By capitalizing on what remains the most popular activity on MySpace to date (music and video), the company hopes to become more of a niche site for socializing around music instead of a site for just socializing. The newly launched features are just a part of the company’s overall efforts in this direction, too. Still to come are concert ticket and merchandise sales, although no details or launch dates have been given for those features as of yet.

While these efforts may not ever allow MySpace to reclaim its status as the number one social network – that ship seems to have sailed – they could definitely help the network maintain profitability. And at the end of the day, that’s all that’s really needed. It’s not about how many users you have, it’s about how much money you can make off of those that you do.

I think it’s great that they’ve decided to go stong into their niche. I always argue that Myspace isn’t a dead-zone if you’re a musician.

As social networks become mainstream, we’ll continue to see social network niches. I think it will be rare in, say, 3 years that there’ll be a one-stop shop for social networks. People will visit a hand-ful of social hubs, be they twitter or flickr or etsy or youtube.

It makes total sense that they choose to focus on their strength here. And I imagine has the potential to be a far smaller, but profitable niche player.

And, let’s face it – it’s either that or down the plug-hole.

Latest web copy for the new Freitag computer bags:

Leaving the office with a laptop case demonstrates:
«I’ve got work to do.» Stowing your notebook in an
new F76 LEO or F77 BEN says: «I’ve got things to do.»
It’s not the same.

The first is predictable: You finish that Excel-budget
at home. After brushing your teeth, you write a couple
of mails to subordinates (10.34pm looks good in the
header). And for the mail to your boss, you set the
alarm at 06.04am. In career fiction this means:
«A thought I had during my morning run.»

If an F76 or F77 wearer has «things to do», this is
unpredictable and downright dangerous: Maybe she’s
an influential blogger? Maybe tonight he’ll confirm
the boss as his facebook friend? Or she’s going to
pitch a revolutionary ecosocially sustainable business
model to the CEO?

These are the doubts and fears a dedicated FREITAG
computer bag can instil in business class.