WTF AOL?

Broad strokes: AOL buys Tacoda.  Less than six months later, Dave Morgan is back in startup land and Curt Viebranz is on the street. What's going on here?  Buyers were led to believe that AOL was bringing scale to behavioral targeting and cross-platform digital marketing.  They promoted a bunch of Tacoda people into key sales positions.  Now the top two Tacoda execs are out of AOL and Platform A has a new president.  Now what happens?

My prediction is that Morgan's folks start migrating out of AOL and joining up with him (and/or Viebranz) at the next opportunity.

Has Facebook Jumped the Shark for Adults, Too?

After looking at the past few days' worth of activity, I'm wondering whether Facebook has outlived its usefulness. I like letting people I haven't  met yet "friend" me, because most of the time they end up being fans of my column or of other things I've written and they just want to get to know me.  I always look to see if we have friends in common before I accept friend requests, because it's usually a good indicator if they're friends with Masha Geller, Mark Naples, Jim Meskauskas or other folks who write about the space.  Increasingly, I'm finding out that a few of the people I thought were casual fans are actually multilevel marketers and spammers who infiltrate friend networks a few levels deep and then start sending out wall spam and private messages about MLM Work from Home opportunities or whatnot.  So today when I get back from client meetings I'm going to have to de-friend a bunch of people.

Then there are the friend whores.  Most of them are just people who have no lives outside social networks, and you run into them in almost every social network.  They wear their number of friends like a badge and pretend that they actually have relationships with everyone in their network.  You look back at your interactions with these people and find out it's all artificial.  Or worse, creepy.  I've got a couple of people to de-friend that have done nothing but send me mail trying to get me to join their tangentially-related groups, or they've done weird stuff like dedicate strange songs to me on iLike.

I'm thinking a lot about the ways apps propagate through Facebook, too.  And I think that there's an unhealthy concentration on the numbers, kind of like there are a bunch of apps out there that weren't built to extend functionality, but to address the viral effect as an end unto itself.  So you get all these apps that go ahead and message everyone on your contact list without your permission, or try to trick you into spreading it to all your friends.  I guess app developers and the companies that underwrite them don't understand that once this flurry of useless apps becomes too burdensome, people are going to flee from Facebook in droves.

Facebook's January uniques are down, and I don't think that's just a continuation of the greying of social networks.  I think people are tired of maintaining their accounts, seeing as how the signal to noise ratio has decreased quite a bit.  Ask yourself this: What percentage of your requests have been declining useless apps?  Declining unknown "Friends?"  Clearing out spammy FunWall posts?

Hmm....

Light Pollution

Things have too many fricking lights. I'm not talking about when Wal-Mart comes to town and they ruin stargazing for miles in each direction by putting a sports stadium's compliment of sodium lights in their parking lot. That's a rant for another time.

I'm talking about electronic devices.

It's tough to sleep sometimes, especially when I forget to charge my cell phone in my truck and I leave it in my bedroom. It has to blink green or red or blue every few seconds to convey the mission-critical information that it is, in fact, on.

My HP desktop blinks like crazy. Push the power button and it glows blue, lighting up the entire room. When the computer goes to sleep, the blue light doesn't turn off. It blinks. I have passed my home office at night, seen the blue, blinking glow coming from under the door, and thought the cops might have pulled someone over in front of the house. It's that bad.

Scanning around my bedroom trying to fall asleep last night, here's what's lit up even after the lights are out.

1. Playstation 3. A red light, evidently there to show everyone that it is off. Isn't that just silly on its face? A light that comes on to indicate that something is off...
2. The cable box. This thing won't stop glowing unless you unplug it. When it's on, it shows the channels and whatnot. When it's off, it's a glowing green clock. Oh, and this green display lights up and says "Bypass," as in "the cable box is bypassed. You're not currently watching TV." More silliness, if you ask me.
3. The DVD player. Another light to show that it is, in fact, off.
4. The light switch. It glows so you can find it in the dark. No thanks. I'll just feel around the wall.
5. Two alarm clocks. My wife's is fine - one of those standard digital ones that glows red. Mine was a gift from Dad, and wonderful in all respects except for this one: When you shut the lights off, it glows blue. Not the numbers, mind you. The numbers stay black and the clock display is backlit in blue. It's like 50 Indiglo watches with the "light" button stuck in the "on" position. I put a pillow between me and it during the night. If I wake up and want to know what time it is, I move the pillow.
6. MyBlackberry. It's blinking.

Maybe it's just a design fad thing that will go away soon. But right now I feel like William Shatner's character in Airplane II:

Oh, cut the bleeding heart crap, will ya? We've all got our switches, lights, and knobs to deal with, Striker. I mean, down here there are literally hundreds and thousands of blinking, beeping, and flashing lights, blinking and beeping and flashing - they're flashing and they're beeping. I can't stand it anymore! They're blinking and beeping and flashing! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug?!

Ripe Digital INFront

I went to Ripe Digital's INFront last night, to see what programming they have in store for advertisers. Since they're an agency client, I had an inkling, but it was good to see a formal presentation so it could be brought to life. The RipeTV network served up over 85MM videos in 4Q 2007, which was an increase of 80%. So it looks like Ripe is on an upswing and people are digging the content. Speaking of the content, I was lmao at the concept of "Jack With The Box," where a guy stays in a small box (probably about the same size as my first NYC apartment) for 30 days. If he can stay in there for the duration, he gets $100K. Meanwhile, viewers can interact via digital media, throwing ideas at Ripe over what they should put in the box with him, what he ought to eat, etc. If you're the person who comes up with the idea that gets the guy to run screaming from the box, you get the $100K.

Oh, also, some skateboarder named Danny Way wants to skate down the face of the Luxor in Vegas and jump the Sphinx. I'd pay to see that.