Subcultural Moments + Amusements (as dictated by one with a short attention span)

Everyone’s favorite new incarnation of the Big Brother phenomenon – Facebook – filed suit against Teachbook, an social media community catering to teachers.

Here are the deets from Mashable:

The lawsuit argues that Teachbook’s use of “book” dilutes the Facebook (Facebook) brand name, impairs Facebook’s ability to remain unique and creates the facade of a false relationship between the two social networking entities.

While Facebook does not own the rights to the word “book” in all its forms, the company believes its name trademark applies to the word “book” when used in connection with a website of similar purpose
While most would never confuse Teachbook as as a subsidiary or affiliate of Facebook, the suit alleges that Teachbook is attempting to profit by the Facebook name. The suit is also likely designed to help Facebook set a legal precedent for future cases(emphasis mine).

Let’s first note that Facebook the Site did not invent the term “Facebook”. While admittedly, when anyone says “Facebook” today, it means the Great Mothership of our Social Media Lives, it’s not as if Mr. Zuckerberg invented the term Facebook – I clearly remember being a freshman in college in 1999, where we were all handed Facebooks – a magazine dedicated to pictures of every incoming student in alphabetical order. As Facebook the Site was started from Harvard to serve current college students and their friends, the use of the term makes sense.

Most of us are aware that Facebook the Site didn’t coin the original phrase – so to turn and sue a social media site that caters to teachers makes Facebook the Site look really, really bad.
Facebook is now just another corporate bully.

More from Mashable:

The lawsuit decrees that, “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix BOOK could become a generic term for ‘online community/networking services’ or ’social networking services’.”

That’s how it should be – and Facebook should be proud that it’s social media service has been so well-crafted that it’s “Book”-ness means “Social media” to people. The term Facebook started simple, was adapted into a trail-blazing social media website, and now is the defacto term in our collective consciousness of what a social media experience should be.

However, Facebook has decided that protecting its brand now involves suing niche websites that services teachers, for Christ’s sake – a group that everyone loves to love. And with how uncomfortable current users are with how in-bed Facebook is with corporations, this’ll further sully the image Facebook has to its users. While some may begrudge how our lives are so intertwined with Facebook that now it’s impossible to get out, most of us still love/adore Facebook when its services are useful to us. But Facebook is only as big as its user base, and they really should consider how their lawsuit to “protect their brand” is really just hurting it.

Besides, the public don’t usually side with the people who are against Teachers. It’s just a bad target, people.

*Picture from Ideagrove.

To be fair, I’m not particularly familiar with how Foursquare and Gowalla have marketed their services – but the brand emotions I get from these two geo-location programs is all “Hey!! I’m at this awesome bar! Do other awesome friends want to have awesome drinks with awesome me?!”

However, how Facebook is marketing their stab at geo-location takes a different tack.

“Serendipitous” is used quite a bit, and the whole video seems smeared with a layer of bromantic Vaseline. The use of emotion and connections is both cheesy, yet strong – and the instant access to your friends circle definitely beats Foursquare. Afterall, my Foursquare account still lists only like 5 friends – now all 170 of my friends’ activities are at my fingertips.

I’m more interested to see how Foursquare and Gowalla will respond to Facebook finally entering the geo-location ring – I expect intriguing new features that’ll raise its status above Facebook. Or otherwise it might blow away like a tumbleweed within a year.

UPDATE: Or maybe I’m just a super-wrong douchebag. Mashable reports that the day after FB Places launched, Foursquare had the most new users sign up, breaking their own records.

According to a tweet from Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, the company had its “biggest day ever” for signups of new users on Thursday. The surge in signups was probably due to the countless comparisons people are making between Facebook Places and Foursquare. With heightened media and user interest, it’s no wonder people are signing up to find out what this location thing is all about.

Record signups doesn’t mean the company’s in the clear, though. As the weeks and months pass and Places establishes itself as a service, we’ll get a better picture of whether Foursquare can fend off Facebook’s advances and continue its rapid growth.

Full Mashable Post here.

Last week, the smart fellows at Jumptap hosted The Mobile Upfront – an all-day event that brought together the top people working in mobile phone advertising. The army of panelists talked about the State of the Mobile Movement – the mistakes ad agencies make, and predictions on how mobile will further change the already chaotic media scene.

The Mobile Upfront was 10 days ago, so I realize in regards to the Speed of t eh Netz, this blog post is a total dinosaur. Please allow me, this humble plesiosaur, to talk about some of the things discussed that day.

And lo, A Bushy-haired Man Will Show Us The Way

Bob Greenberg, Visionary Leader (or as I think of it, The Great Seer) at R/GA, started the day off with a 1-on-1 interview on all things mobile. Crammed into that half hour were many tasty gems of mobile knowledge, which I shall impart to you (like the good disciple that I am).

-Greenberg Prediction One: Mobile Will Become The 1st Screen

Most advertisers work off a hierarchy of screen importance:

TV = 1st screen – the most important, most far reach touchpoint
Desktop/Laptop = The 2nd Screen
Mobile Screen = 3rd Screen

Greenberg points out that the coming of 4G Networks (broadband speed on phones!), streaming mobile video will take off. GPS and geo-location will become increasingly used on a daily basis. Better voice recognition means voice search, armed with the possibility of your phone becoming truly a Personal Assistant, and further become a Personalized Entertainment Device. Thus, we see how the smartphone can evolve to become the 1st Screen.

Not quite covered by Greenberg, but discussed throughout the day:
The other effect of people becoming increasingly attached to their mobile screen (much more than now, when a large amount of people already sleep with their iPhones next to their pillows), is that the smartphone becomes a very private, personal screen.

It’s not like a TV, which is meant for groups of people to partake in (even if one watches TV “alone”, its still an experience potentially shared by millions).

The mobile device is becoming a utilitarian, and entertainment, device. As the mobile user customizes and personalizes his smartphone to run all the things she is interested in. A device that can be intrinsically in-tune with its owner. Of course, this is another step in humanity turning into cyborgs, which I support wholeheartedly.

However, that phone also holds a cache of very valuable data on the owner – which marketers would love to have access to. But if marketers do get access to that data, how can we use it without creeping out the owner?

Already, I can foretell people being creeped out by overly-pushy geo-location advertising. When I had a cellphone in Tokyo, I would get spam emails on my phone about 3 times a week. For whatever reason, I always felt more creepy about spam hitting my phone, instead of my computer. Because it’s my phone. If marketers started pushing (read: interruptive advertising) more into my mobile phone space because of what they have learned about me, then I very well might feel violated.

Thus, when pursuing mobile marketing ideas, we need to make sure we think about and respect the privacy of the mobile user. Nothing revokes trust/loyalty faster than not respecting the privacy of the person.

Wal-Mart is pushing their well-designed, good quality generic brands. Thus, the Name Brands of America panic, the hallways of their offices filled with the screeching stampeding of a workforce coddled into thinking the consumer masses will buy your name brand as long as there is a fun graphic or commercial on the air about it.

I guess you can’t rely on 50+ years of consumer/company history to keep consumer loyalty. My, aren’t us consumers just fucking ungrateful to Nabisco and company.

National Name Brands once stood for quality – the idea that, each box would be the same as the last. It was helped that most generic competitors just looked a good deal crappier than the Name Brands there were trying to clone. No, no Silver Shark crackers for my family, thank you!

Then came the Recession, and us consumers are telling the pollsters that we aren’t really planning to come back to the Name Brands once things get sunnier.

Essentially, people are recognizing that the extra 50 cents we’ve spent for the name brands, is just 50 cents of marketing. If the cheaper generics can offer an equally pleasing package, witha product that makes you want to NOM NOM through the whole bag anyway, then one has no reason to support the name brands.

In this atmosphere, here I come, trying to break into the advertising game. I have the challenge of working with a smarter, savvier consumer to convince them that they should drop those 50 cents. Afterall, If that 50 cents is marketing, then I better do a good job of it.

What the Name Brands can do, and a select few are doing, is giving consumers Utility.

Kraft is my Big White Knight, because:

-Their website, Kraftfoods.com, isn’t just a company page listing their products – it’s a deep den of recipes.

-The iFood Assistant App. A couple of bucks and you have hundreds of recipes at your thumb-tip. Stumped at the Supermarket of what to make for dinner that night? Give the iFood Assistant 2 minutes of your time, and you have a recipe and a shopping list all ready to go. For the working mum on a budget, this is highly useful.

Here is Mark Stewart, the VP of Global Media at Kraft, says it best in 3 minutes on this Advertising Age Video.

Companies who give value to their customers will keep buying their products. Make us appreciate you and love you.

This makes my job a lot less about writing witty headlines, and a lot more trying to best serve a consumer’s needs. And if I’m lucky (read: good enough) they’ll buy my brand.

I’ve… got a lot of work to do.

While most homos, driven out of the house due to a fight with the husband-in-future, would find solace in the arms of either liquor or kind male strangers, I – the most nerdotronic one – got myself to the nearest used bookstore.

“Summer is the season to re-read Harry Potter”, as I like to sardonically imagine, but I also stumbled upon this awesome gem

The Aum Shinrikyo Cult gained notoriety when they executed a sarin gas attack, in the Tokyo subway system back in 95. Haruki Murakami interviewed tons of victims from that attack a few years ago.

This book, however, goes into interviewing members of the Cult. In a broader sense, Lifton is trying to break down what drives people in general to such strong Fundamentalist urgings. What’s fascinating is that a lot of what motivates people to join up with these more extreme forms of religion, are really not that much different as the reasons most people subscribe to the specific subcultures that they do. Geek. Punk. Queercore. The power of small worlds/scenes, where your actions seem to have impact and merit.

Then I keep running all this around in my head this weekend, and think “Well, how can I apply this to advertising?” Thus sealing my fate as a sell-out for all eternity.

Anyway, this is all to say that this has been terribly interesting summer reading, even if that admits a fascination with such things as Contemporary Apocalypse Cults. Not that I have any sort of sanctified legs to stand on – considering I spent Saturday night seeing fag punk band Pansy Division rip apart a Bible on stage while singing about blowjobs. Considering I’m going into advertising, I suppose that I am exactly that which Good Christians fear.

Who knew it could come in a package quite so cute as this?