Big companies frequently hire ad agencies to do grassroots marketing. Employees pose as members of online communities and promote products with seemingly spontanious testimonials. If done correctly it can be a really powerful tool but it can also backfire if it isn’t genuine and/or well-done. Here’s an entertaining example with Joel Johnson at the popular blog Boing Boing Gadgets calling out a character named M. Goode for pontificating the wonders of Motorola’s new Krave phone:

Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?

TwittEarth

October 17, 2008

I love creative data visualizations. TwittEarth is a fun way to watch Twitter post from around the world with a 3D globe and cute like characters.

I played around with Twist today. It’s a charting tool similar to Google Trends that lets you compare the popularity on various terms in Twitter posts. It might not be an accurate representation of the real pull of the populous, but it is interesting to see what twitchy tech folks are obsessed with from day to day. I first learned about Twist from a post Kara Andrade did with a chart comparing Obama, Clinton and McCain, but I thought it would be cool to test out trends in the Twitter hive mind comparing four words from the classic Godfathers song to create a Birth, School, Work, Death chart.

Yeh, you guess right… “Obama” and “Work” are the winning terms with the Twitter crowd

Good recommendations are one of the most important tools in job hunting. Recently I’ve received a pair of really great recommendations on the social networking site LinkedIn. I wanted to return the favor and tell you about two of my previous employees who are excellent web developers looking for opportunities in the San Francisco Bay area, Eddie Monge and Andy Christensen.

Eddie Monge
Eddie came to Clear Ink with a strong IT background and a strong desire to learn about Internet marketing technology, but he quickly blew us away with his ability to jump in and take on complex technical projects for large clients like Autodesk and Hewlett Packard. Eddie also has a strong ability to see the bigger picture and suggest tactics to make projects run smoothly and efficiently. He will be an asset to your organization.

Andy Christensen
Andy has a deep technical understanding and his background as an educator helps him communicate complex technical concepts to others. Andy supported Clear Ink’s IT infrastructure but also displayed a strong ability to take on web development projects for large clients like 24 Hour Fitness.

Feel free to contact me if you would like more information about either of these guys.