Students and alumni of King’s College London have reacted with horror after the university announced it will change its name to “King’s London”.
Yet another spectacularly stupid epic fail in the world of “rebranding.” There are a lot of smart people who work in universities and colleges — including your faithful correspondent — but there really are an astonishing number of stupid people running many of them.
Read this from Times Higher Education.
This was the lede in John Warner’s Just Visiting blog on Inside Higher Ed recently:
To the surprise of no one, disgraced journalist and serial bullshitter Jonah Lehrer is back.
Jonah Lehrer. New and Improved Version? We’ll see.|Image: Nina Subin/Slate
I’ve been following the saga of Mr. Lehrer since the nascent days of this blog when I was quoted by Forbes.com about the early days of the then-breaking original scandal. (You should definitely place emphasis on the second syllable: skan-DAAHL!)
Lehrer is back to publishing, this time alongside Shlomo Benartzi, a UCLA behavioral economist and Lehrer’s co-author of the forthcoming book The Digital Mind: How We Think and Behave Differently on Screens.
Like Warner, I don’t believe Lehrer should be banned from publishing for life, but I do think that I’ll think twice about actually believing anything he has to say for quite a long time. Not saying ever; just saying a long time.
Warner’s Take on This Reemergence
Footnote to it all: I heard Lehrer on NPR over the weekend. One supposes that means he’s back for sure!
HLN announced that they were abandoning their programming to become a social media focused network. And some of their shows will make you weep for journalism. I Can Haz NewsToons will serve up animated satire of current events, One.Click.Away will scour online classified for big buys, while Keywords is a game about searching and tagging trivia from the online world. Can somebody check and see if Ted Turner’s head exploded?
So, do you want to know what stupid looks like? Here it is. This is obviously some 50-year-old’s idea of how to attract 20-something social media users to engage with TV. Speaking as a 50-year-old (almost) IT’S THE DUMBEST IDEA EVER IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS THAT’S NOT STARTING A WAR!!
Why? Why are corporations so stupid? Do you really want to engage young people? Turn your damn cable channel back into a NEWS CHANNEL and then — here’s a shocker — broadcast the news!
I’m just going to apologize up front before I say it: MySpace still has employees? For real? Huh. Learn something new every day.
Is it real? Witness builds an app to verify user-submitted content » Nieman Journalism Lab.
By now, it’s a familiar cycle: An amazing image is discovered — and then proven to be fake.
Whether it’s photos of flooding during Hurricane Sandy, or videos of eagles stealing babies, it’s not always easy to detect fakery. And when you think of the number of videos and photos produced by our phones each day, it can be problematic for news organizations trying to deal with submissions from readers.
Nifty.
5 ways journalists can use social media to resurface old content | Poynter..
Interesting idea.
More interesting is the knowledge that despite having died 66 years ago, 400 people follow former New York City mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia on Twitter!
“The Little Flower,” LaGuardia died in 1947 but has risen again on Twitter!
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor’s first social-media director quit her post on Monday after it was alleged that she had lied about graduating from college on her résumé—an assertion that, ironically, first bubbled up on social media.
First of all: Hey, Wolverines! Maybe you should actually check people’s credentials. There are actually businesses that do that for you.
Second: How many professors have gotten jobs at UM without having their CV’s vetted?
Third: Kinda gives new meaning to “The Big House.”
Tee hee.
This is a royal clusterfuck. Okay, Facebook has this algorithm called Edgerank. With Edgerank, nonprofits are only getting through to about 6-9% of their fans. Why? Because Edgerank constricts the information flow and only lets certain people interact with your page. Don’t ask me which people; damned if I can tell.
Anyway, in the few short days since this link was published, Facebook has changed things AGAIN.
To view most of what you have “liked,” look on the left side of your Facebook page. You will see a category called PAGES. Under this, look for PAGES FEED. See it? Now click on it. It will display a timeline of only posts from pages that you have liked.
Better?
I dunno.
Facebook wants you to pay for the privilege of having more people see your posts. These are called “Promoted Posts” and if you own a page, you will see a little Promote arrow on posts. This will open a window letting you have the option of paying X amount to have Edgerank open its electronic chastity belt and release your posts to the number of people you have paid for.
I’m not sure what the best work-around is yet, but paying ain’t it.
I’ll keep thinking. If you come up with some genius answer to this, leave me a comment.
Great article by Simon Dumenco.
Do not underestimate the Bieber-Industrial Complex. For one thing, Bieber, estimated by Forbes to have pulled down $55 million between May 2011 and May 2012, outearns Adele, Katy Perry, Rihanna and even Lady Gaga. Forbes also reports that his fragrance Someday — just one of countless Bieber-brand products — rang up $60 million at retail in its first six months, which helps give him the pocket change needed to be a budding tech investor (in Spotify, Tinychat, etc.).
Now, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t drunk the entire pitcher of social-media Kool-Aid. I’m more than happy to question some of the more dubious precepts of the social-media faith. In fact, after I spoke at yet another conference a couple weeks ago, a member of the audience came up to me and said, “Thank you for calling bullshit on social media!” (Which I guess I sort of did, somewhat.)
I’m with Dumenco on the social media Kool-Aid. I’ve probably only consumed a half of a glass myself. Still, it’s worth noting what’s happening in the world and WHERE it’s happening. It ain’t about the old farts like me, campers, it’s the babies that have the Bieber Fever and are texting and tweeting and YouTubing like a house a-fire.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it 5 million more times, I’m sure, watch what the damn kids are doing. And figure out how to translate that into meaningful marketing for you.
That’s all. Read the article.
H/T – Media Bistro
The NCAA’s Latest Priority: Instagram? – The Ticker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Much ado about not much, but it’s a great lesson in rules not keeping pace with technology AND the people who explain the rules not knowing what they are talking about, technologically-speaking.
I am particularly enamored of The Chronicle’s description of Instagram:
Instagram, for the uninitiated, is Facebook’s billion-dollar photography app that uses vintage-inspired filters to spruce up otherwise mediocre pictures of sunsets, flowers, lattes,and rich kids.
The Ticker blog, Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/12/12
Mark Blackmon 