scurvypirates

Troy T. over at Travel 2.0 picked up on this late last week and wrote a post about it. Apparently, this ad was floating around the interwebs last week, and at first I thought it had to have been a joke. Perhaps an art director and a copy writer had just lost a pitch, and thought they’d build a portfolio piece around making fun of the account that wasn’t to be. Turns out, it was a real ad in a campaign, and became an internet sensation. This ad was wrong on so many levels, but look at the bright side. The North Dakota PR agency must be earning their fees right now. Whatever happens in Fargo, never really happened.

Which one of you Brokebacks is getting lucky tonight?

Ahoy mateys. It’s been awhile since the captain has been on deck and behind the wheel. When I am not wearing the eye patch, I have been busy running a new start-up digital marketing firm called Rally Interactive LLC, and business has been, well, a treasure trove of projects to work on. Which leads me to a question I want to throw out there for my one or two followers of this blog. I am not looking for right or wrong type answers, but I’d like to know what works for you. Here’s the spin: We are busy rebuilding a business-to-consumer site for a well-known outdoor apparel brand. Part of their ongoing content marketing strategy involves a healthy amount of blogging, which they are good at. The crux of the decision that needs to be made is this: should the blog live within the main consumer site for SEO purposes, or is there value in breaking it out and having it live on its own domain? Tell me what you think in the comments section.

Sometime last week, Facebook made good on a threat to significantly change the layout of Fan Pages (business pages, brand pages, etc.) and also the methodology in which they are built. This marks the death bell for FBML, the proprietary mark-up language of Facebook that has spawned a cottage industry explosion of “social media experts” and services who build tab applications like simple Welcome pages. Going forward, all applications need to be built using an IFRAME rather than FBML. Facebook says this is for the better for all parties involved. As developers we have to agree. This straight from the Facebook Developers Blog:

“As of today, you can build your Page Tab apps using iframes rather than FBML. This means you can now build apps that run across Facebook (including Pages and Canvas applications) using the same simple, standards-based web programming model (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS). In addition, you can easily integrate social plugins and the Graph API within your tab.”

So in a nutshell, here are highlights and lowlights:

1. Tabs are gone, and Pages for brands and businesses look a lot more like personal pages. There is a photo strip above the status update window, much like on personal pages.

2. Navigation links in the left column replace tabs. So if you had a Welcome page that new visitors default to when they visit your brand page, it will still work*, but rather than having a tab at the top of your page, it will show up in the lefthand links.

3. Powerful new feature: admins of Pages can toggle between using Facebook as themselves (John Doe) or the Brand (Acme Widget Company). Social Media marketing managers are going to wet themselves over this change alone.

4. Brands who have invested in the development of FBML tab apps will likely have to rewrite these apps at some point using the new iFrame method, but Facebook’s official word on when FBML will be deprecated and phased out has been vague. The Captain recommends you do it sooner rather than later. That crap should live on your own server anyway.

5. A lot of folks have been complaining about the order of Status Updates: the new change apparently applies a ranking to Status Updates, and the most relevant or popular appear top down, rather than in chronological order. I’d be willing to bet, mateys, that Facebook will change this back to chronological, and/or give users the choice. After all, it wouldn’t really be a status update if “What Are You Doing Right Now” didn’t appear at the top of the list.

What do you think on these new changes? Pirate Booty? Cause for mutiny? Couldn’t give a scurvy rat’s ass? We’d like to know.