Once It's Live, Leave It Live

About a year ago a highly rated TV show built a fictional company's web site to tie in to real life events at Comic-Con, the convention in San Diego. The finale of the newest season was this week. Just a few minutes ago a friend on Twitter and Facebook changed their status to say he wanted to work for that fictional company, and I wanted to comment/reply to my friend's status with the link to the fictional site. The site is down, offline, 404.

I wanted to share a part of the show with a friend, and they won't let me. I wanted to promote their product for free, and they stopped me. Instead of allowing all the money spent on the site and its very good videos and promotions pay off forever, they took it down. Estimated annual savings in taking down the site: $2000 (which ought to be lower, but for various reasons in this case is not lower). Estimated loss of audience engagement, good-will and ability for the franchise's value to increase over many decades: infinite.

The stock of the parent company that owns the network that carries the show has lost about $20,300,000,000 of market value since mid September (admittedly this may not only result from company wide failure to understand or capitalize on the internet).

A Google-less World

Starting at about a half hour ago, I noticed that the adsense ads I have run on some of my sites weren't loading. Then I began having trouble connecting to the blogging platform blogger. Hoping to stay productive while the network hopefully adjusted, I went to YouTube planning to change the avatar image one of my various YouTube accounts. YouTube wouldn't load. Remembering these are all owned by Google, I tried to load google.com. It was also was sluggish/non-responsive. I checked my gmail, nothing.

While navigating my cable company's phone system seeking a person to see if they were having a problem keeping my cable modem connected, on a lark I tried yahoo.com and it loaded, immediately. Still holding for an operator at my cable company, I checked twitter. Others couldn't get to google services either. And not just near me but on other continents too. This surprised me. Thursday morning (in North America) is not a time anyone would chose to have their sites off-line, and while a few on twitter seemed to still have Google's sites running just fine, it highlights how enmeshed we all are with Google's systems, and how good they are at keeping them up for people like me to assume they will be up and available virtually always.

For a few moments I had to mentally step back and assess how I'd react if Google, and all of it's wonderful products, vanished. It reminds me of an article I read years ago asking how much of your business Google controls. Between search traffic they provide, videos they host, email, and the myriad of other products they offer, what would you do if they simply stopped? I know what I would do: I'd grouse, whine and moan for a few minutes, and then swap the services of theirs I use for other, in almost every case inferior, services offered by others. The fact is Google is as successful as they are because in so many ways they do what they do better than anyone else. Yet still, with all the bright people, deep pockets and prestigious name, if they stop being what the audience expects, in minutes the audience will begin replacing them.

Not quite an hour later, the hastag #googlefail is already the number 6 trending topic on twitter, with "gmail" the number 3. That's some of the most active users of technology on earth already reacting to this hiccup. This does remind me to back up things offline ;-). I wish the best to the Googlers I imagine are already hard at work fixing things.

Update: Google's systems seem to be working again and coming back online for most people. Worth noting: spread your content widely, exploding your content makes you less susceptible to problems at any one company or on a single site.

The Leary Mission (flash)

Hulu's latest funny ad in their evil plot to destroy the world.

President's Plane Scares NYC (news, flash)

The President's plane (Air Force One when he is on board) flew over New York City for a photo shoot, costing taxpayers $300,000 and frightening the nation's largest city (watch AP video or citizen video of the flyover below).

Presidential Press Conference Without Broadcasters

Right now I'm watching the Presidential Press Conference live on YouTube. There are no 20th century broadcasters (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, etc.) involved in the distribution. I hope this gives them and their news divisions pause, and they realize that business as usual is not an option.

Don't Say 'Feel Free' If You Mean 'Please Do'

Many people have begun to use phrases like:

• "feel free to tell your friends/retweet/share this video/post/site"
• "feel free to comment/rate/favorite this video"
• "feel free to ask a question"

Online and in emails when they really mean:

• "Please tell your friends about this video/post/site"
• "Please comment/rate/favorite this video (because I really want it to be on the most discussed/highest highest rated/most favorite lists so that more people will see it)"
• "Please ask a question (because this podcast/channel/site only has content if the audience participates)"

Are people allergic to "please"? No. But many seem to have forgotten the simple, honest power of saying please and asking for what they want.

People seem to think concealing what they want is better than coming out and saying it. They are wrong. Of course people will feel free to do all of the things mentioned; the internet is one of the most sophisticated and far reaching communication and distribution systems ever and everyone using it will share and access information as they see fit. To tell your audience they can "feel free to" do what they are already doing is to be redundant at least, and often conveys a simultaneous air of superiority and lack of understanding of the medium; it suggests you are giving permission to people already empowered. Coating a request in a foolish condescension helps no one.

While being as specific/pedantic as the parenthetical phrases in the examples above isn't necessary, be honest and say what you mean. Many already do this with the simple convention of "please retweet" on twitter. Using "feel free to" as wrapping makes the call-to-action marketers love so much a dishonest attempt to be polite; it actually erodes trust, candor and transparency. It's like our mothers told us: don't lie.

"Be sure to check back..." is the illegitimate cousin of "feel free to..." online. There are many ways to let visitors opt-in to more communication from you: email lists, feeds, follows, friending, etc. If you are mentioning something that does not exist yet, but will in the future, help your audience chose to opt-in to be informed when this event-in-the-future happens. If you can't be bothered to use such common methods for communicating with your potential future audience, do not expect your audience to be bother to care about your future creations.

We all make mistakes (myself included) but being as clear and honest as possible makes the many messages we all encounter everyday more useful. And now, just for fun, I ask you to please share this post with everyone who asks you to "feel free" to use the internet ;-).

Viral Video Best Practices

Viral-ness cannot be bought into or out of any more than gravity can. Like gravity, viral-ness is not strictly in your control. Unlike gravity, viral-ness is not a law of nature, but more a tendency.

You can't pay a fee and know your video will draw millions of viewers in the way you can buy a plane ticket and fly. You can buy your way to tipping the odds in your favor, to weighting the dice, if you will, encouraging it to catch on and lead people to spread your content.

Content is viral if upon viewing it, the viewer encourages other people to view it (to become viewers), who then encourage others to view it and so on. What happens when the user presses play is still the most important part the viral equation, but best practices can help get users to press play and then tell others about it after they've watched.