A quote some "Experts" should listen to:

Margaret Thatcher - "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

Within advertising and social media, I meet and work with people who boast.  A lot.  About themselves.  And then I think of the quote above, and smile. 

Social media has a niche for ANYBODY!!!

In addition to Hoffspace the David Hasslehoff social network, which offers a feature where you can leave a message for David, or in other words-hassle the Hoff-here is my new favorite social media site.  If you have a cat-you will enjoy this.  I have already checked it several times today...so many cats, so many sinks....and surprisingly-so many fans!

Barack Obama goes digital

President Barack Obama is a president of firsts:  he is the first African-American president, but he is also the first digital president.

An initiative of Obama has been to bring the presidency to the digital age.  Obama is going to be the first president whose term will be viewed in HD.  He is also the first president who will bring a laptop to the oval office-which he plans to use.  Already, he is the first American president to have a blog.  

And although he was not the first president or politician to use the Internet to draw support and donations, he has been by far the most successful.  His website www.barackobama.com helped him amass over 500 million dollars in online donations during his campaign.  He also has an e-mail list with over 13 million addresses, and sent out over 7000 text messages during his campaign.  That number can only be topped by a teenager in CA.  

But back to the firsts.  Obama wants to be the first president to have a blackberry and to maintain an e-mail address.  The secret service is against this because of the security concerns.  Evidently the useful GPS technology in the blackberry make it easier for hackers or other potential threatening people to locate and target the president.  Also, the courts can subpoena or potentially make Obama's correspondence public-which could create other security issues or create potential embarrassments (What?!  The president uses smiley face emoticons when e-mailing Russia?!?!  J/K).

The Internet and digital era has eased the lives of many, creating useful communication tools and other organizational tools that I personally could not function without.  So I applaud a president who want to do everything he can and to use every tool available to help him do the best job possible.

Whether Obama gets to keep his blackberry or not, I welcome and am proud of our president who is determined to move forward with progress-both culturally and digitally. 

Uniqlock

You might notice a new widget that I’ve downloaded on the left over there.  It’s Uniqlock.  Uniqlock is a campaign that has won the Grand Prix at Cannes and Japan Interactive Advertising Annual.  It is brilliant and innovative and everyone should know about it. 

By simply clicking on the Uniqlock link, or perhaps by watching my little widget, you don’t really understand what it is, what it does or what it’s promoting, if you’re not familiar with the brand already.  However, it certainly makes one curios.  Curios enough to look it up and become pseudo-obsessed with its brilliance.

Uniqlock promotes the Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo-which I have never heard of until today.  It does this through a variety of ways.  The most basic form, is the web site.  The web site is a clock that alternates between time and a constant, 24/7 music video of a group of dancers, doing various dances in different Uniqlo clothes.  It’s mesmerizing.  You find yourself watching to see the loop, or wait for the dancers to repeat something-but they don’t.  Also, the dancers clothing changes at night, to sleepwear, and in winter and summer their clothing changes to the winter or summer line. 

If you’re like me, and can’t get enough of these adorable Japanese dancers in their clean clothing-then you can download the widget and put it on your blog.  So far, there are over 27,000 widgets in over 76 different companies. 

And in case you’re not a blogger, but you want Uniqlock-you can download a screensaver.  And in case you’re a super freak-there is an iPhone app for it. 

Brilliant-it’s so accessible, and interesting and engaging.  It was also executed extraordinarily well.  There was obviously a large amount of time put into this initiative-but I think it’s well worth it.   This is definitely an innovative website worth looking at.  

Performance Reviews Go Digital

Here is an article explaining the new, free system “Rypple”.  Rypple basically is a free tool that allows employees to pick other trusted, valued colleagues to give them performance feedback.

The article claims that the benefits are that this can do away with the uncomfortable, time consuming annual performance review, while giving the younger “Net Generation” the constant feedback that they thrive on.

As a member of the “Net Generation”, who needs constant feedback to thwart my unwarranted daily fear of getting fired-this sounds too good to be true. 

1)    Rypple is free-so why not?

2)    The responses are anonymous.  I think that that is great-because you will get more honest feedback.