From Cub to Lion – The Long Good-Bye

With the passing of Ted Kennedy, there has been much talk about the ‘end of an era.’ The kidd doesn’t believe this to be the case. After witnessing the funeral celebration at the JFK Memorial Library and the eulogies at the funeral mass, we learned a lot about a man who overcame adversity and atoned for character failings in his earlier years to live a long and successful life in support of the underdog. The legislative triumphs that transformed him from the Cub of Hyannis Port to the Lion of the Senate was based on his patience, perseverance and undying quest for a better world.

According to the kidd, the moral of Ted Kennedy’s life is intrinsically linked to a lifetime that fulfilled the promise and lived the dream. It was the gift of time that allowed this Kennedy to prove his mettle. So instead of closing the door to the end of an era, the kidd thinks it is more fitting if we talk about the “passing of the torch.”

“To carry Ted Kennedy’s torch is a honor,” the kidd humbly professed. “If we are to become lions in our own right, we need to live by his example. Ted Kennedy lived as long as he did to prove that the heartaches and failings of one’s youth is only one phase of one’s time here on Earth. The endurance of the long haul is what makes the man!”

Social Media Says Goodbye To A Voice Of Reason

kidd was in a state of shock today when he was asked to speak about Walter Cronkite and what he meant to a nation. The kidd struggled with the right words that best described what this icon meant to so many.

He reminded us that millions of people wouldn’t believe that President Kennedy had been shot, or that men walked on the moon until they heard it from Walter Cronkite. Like our fictional Uncle Sam, Mr. Cronkite was the reliable friend of the family that you could count on to let you know ‘just the way things were.’

The kidd stated, “the authority and influence of this one man can not be repeated, particularly in the world of social media. Today, the passing of a president or a spaceship launch would be blasted out to the masses in a real-time tweet.”

However, Walter Conkrite’s death is a reminder that time marches on, and the explosive expansion of media was inevitable and necessary. This is progress. But what it lacks, according to the kidd is the “warmth, sincerity and calmness that comes from hearing breaking news delivered by a broadcaster you trust.”

While social media is user-generated and elicits a direct feed from the people, it does lack the heart-felt sentiment that came from a generation that  had to grapple with a Depression, two World Wars and the fear of Communism. “That world mandated a need for larger than life figures to help America tread the uncertain waters of an uncertain time. Uncle Walter helped us do that. He was the gravel-voiced saviour of the airwaves,” noted the kidd.

Today, while the torrent of social media we are exposed to does reach the masses in a timely fashion, a lot of what we seek out on social networks is the echo-chamber of like-minded people. We want our world-view to be authenticated by our fans and followers, people that will put their stamp of approval on what we believe is right. We need the assurance that– ‘that’s the way it is.’ “The question is who do we rely on when its not?” reminded the kidd sadly.

Rest in peace Uncle Walter. You were our rock, our anchor. But today the grace of you needs to be broadcasted to a higher authority. You’ve earned the right to be heard on a higher plane.

kidd millennium & the Attention Economy!

Faced with information-overload and attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder, the kidd was beside himself this week trying to figure how to make transactions in the new Attention Economy. Based on swapping insights for followers on social network sites, the kidd needed to take his cause to a higher power. So after learning Oprah was booked, he begrudgingly settled for second best by landing an interview with the Almighty!

Now, all the kidd really wanted to know was how was he ever to get people to listen to him when they were constantly distracted by data be slung like Dominoes pizzas on a Saturday night. What the Lord told him was classified information, but seeing that you are all kidd fans, the word from ‘on-high’ can be shared here…

Apparently the Attention Economy is analogous to a feudal society, where social networks like Twitter act similar to medieval-like armies of "the followers and the followed." The value of one’s modern-day fiefdom is based on how many followers we have who are ready, willing and able to absorb our propaganda. In essence we grow our power base as digital feudal lords by winning the attention of an eclectic cadre of like-minded folk. In place of food and shelter provided in the days of feudalism, we exchange information for one’s loyalty in the Twitterverse! In essence, since all economies are based on securing scarce resources, the kidd learned that his "attention" came with a price tag! Who’d a thunk his words of wisdom were worth the time of day?

Thanking God for his savvy words of advice, the kidd was last seen securing stock in the Attention Economy, by attracting new tweeps to his Twitter crib. At the time of this posting, he was last seen holding court in a little fiefdom of 3357 followers and wants the world to know that he feels he has a much better shot at making some headway in the Attention Economy than he ever did with the current financial crisis! If you can spare some attention, won’t you join him for a little repartee and the occasional schadenfreude! After all, he’s just a tweet away!

More on the Attention Economy can be found at my zMogo posting. And more kidd millennium toons can be found here!

digg Tags: attention economy, twitter, kidd millennium, ron callari

Guess Who’s Running the Daily Planet?

The dissemination of the news as we once knew it… is broken. Sadly, American newspapers have never been so loved as they are now…now that they’re dying!

An industry once known for posting obituaries is now becoming one itself. RIPS go out to the Rocky Mountain News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Baltimore Examiner, Cincinnati Post, Albuquerque Tribune and even the San Juan Star (you’d have thought tourists could have kept that one alive!)

A 24/7 Wall Street online news article predicted many more major newspapers across the U.S. will shut down their print operations or go digital: including the Philadelphia Daily News, Miami Herald, Detroit News, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun Times, NY Daily News and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The New York Times Company shocked the country recently with its threats to close the Boston Globe on May 1 unless the Globe’s unions anted up $20 million in concessions.

So as legacy newspapers become dinosaurs right before our very eyes, might TV News follow in its mighty footsteps? And if so, who’s in charge of our daily news?

The new media of social networking has already shifted content creation and revenue generation from a top-down model to a bottom-up groundswell.The socialization of the Web has given way to an era of personal brands. From Twitter to Facebook, personal blogs to bookmarking sites like Digg, the era of consumer-generated content is currently guiding the media ship in today’s tech-savvy waters.

The humanization and socialization of journalism will create a viable platform for meaningful interaction of loyalty and community built around individual media brands, one person at a time. And going forward, traditional journalists will need to heed the sign posts that direct them to social networking sites to gather input, research and feedback.

As an affirmation to the power of the individual vs. big media, the social experiment currently being played out by Ashton Kutcher and CNN highlights this point.

Kutcher locked into a battle with CNN to become the first Twitter user to have one million followers (he’s already reached this goal on Facebook) is fast approaching this number as we speak. Actually the two opposing twitter accounts are currently neck-and-neck in the race to reach the milestone. CNN has over 972,000 followers, while Kutcher has more than 963,000 followers (at the time of this post).

“When I saw that I was approaching a million and that CNN was too, I thought this was really significant for social media,” stated Kutcher. “For one person to have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network, I think signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social news outlets.” Here’s some more of Kutcher’s words on the subject.

The CNN twitter account is a news feed of the company’s stories, while Kutcher’s is a combination of daily musings about his life, messages to wife Demi Moore, and links to news stories with the actor’s commentary.

Granted this battle of wits is a somewhat frivolous example, as one celebrity’s ego is pitted against another (Ted Turner) but nonetheless it does highlight the point that social media networks are here to stay and are controlling the decimation of news.

We live in an age of popularity surveillance now. While us news junkies might have evolved past Big Brother, now that the power has been handed over to the people it is you ladies and gentlemen who are now in charge of of the Daily Planet! Here’s hoping you use to keys to the kingdom wisely!

Party of No vs. Party of Know

Bipartisanship neatly tucked its head under its wing shortly after Obama took office this past January. For public display, a smattering of respect was extended to the newly elected president for his historical electoral victory. This decorum lasted for about a half a second, before the GOP realized where they had landed…smack dab in the middle of a powerless party, devoid of leadership! Less they breathe in any more of the rarified air that was wafting throughout the Capital, they collectively knew their only recourse was to retreat. But how was the Party of No going to disagree without appearing disagreeable?

As the Democrats struggle for answers, they are at least acting on potential quick-fix and long-range solutions. While time will tell if Obama’s recovery plan will hit the nail on the proverbial head, it’s the administration’s opinion that it is better to take action than continually wallow in negativity.

The Republicans on the other hand have borrowed a page out of former First Lady Nancy Reagan’s 1980’s playbook: Just Say No! Get use to it! In an attempt to begin the mighty Sisyphus task of rolling the power ball back up the Hill, they will continue to oppose for opposition sake!

Make no mistake: Republicans are pissed off and are acting out. The Party has decided that their road back from perdition is paved with defiant, unified contrarianism. However, being obstinate and petulant smacks of bravado, with no substance. Is the party still suffering from Bush-fatigue? Or has the GOP officially perished at the ripe old age of 154?  Like the Federalists, Whigs, Bull-Moosers, and Dixiecrats before them, will they fade into history? Or do they yet have an ace up their sleeve?

Could they be relying on their defacto distraction, the DittoMaster? Rush Limbaugh has not only saturated his airwaves with vitriol and venom, but he has not missed one mainstream news cycle in the last several weeks, and his blind faith followers, the “dittoheads” can’t get enough. His current rant is intimidating the president into a verbal duel, a radio debate!

Obama not dignifying the request with a reply continues to work on the pressing issues at hand, while the DittoMaster spends countless hours chanting his new mantra: “I hope he fails!”

So there you have it… Partisanship… alive and well in the Land of Lincoln. The GOP’s “no you can’t” versus the Dems “we know we can!” is a heck of a State of the Union!  Fasten your seatbelts America, it’s going to be long, bumpy ride!

(“Party of No GOP elephant” by John Sherffius inspired this cartoon)

Technorati Tags: Obama,GOP,Democrats,Dems,Party of No,Party of Know,DittoMaster,dittoheads,Rush Limbaugh,Federalists,Whigs,Bull-Moosers,Dixiecrats,Ron Callari,Jon Donohoe,kidd millennium

del.icio.us Tags: Obama,GOP,Democrats,Dems,Partyof No,Party of Know,DittoMaster,dittoheads,Rush Limbaugh,Federalists,Whigs,Bull-Moosers,Dixiecrats,Ron Callari,Jon Donohoe,kidd millennium

What Would Jesus Twitter?

Jesus on Twitter

Have you ever thought how Jesus would communicate with his followers if he was alive today. Would he be MySpacing his apostles, befriending his Facebook buds in Galilee, or posting his travel itinerary on Tripit and LinkedIn? Kidd Millennium thinks he might follow in the footsteps of His Holiness, the Dalia Lama who purportedly registered for  a Twitter account recently under the moniker OHHDL (Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama) with the address of http://twitter.com/OHHDL.

For those less enlightened, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send text message updates (aka tweets) up to 140 characters long) via the Twitter website or mobile phone text messaging.Launched in August 2006, the Twitter service claims more than six million users of its service.

On February 6, 2009. explaining the 73-year-old’s decision to join the microblogging site,his first auspicious post announced: “His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience.” Another Tweet read: “I’m sure HH will be just as inquisitive about technology as he has been over the past 14 reincarnations.”

www.kiddmillennium.com

The feed attracted nearly 20,000 followers within 48 hours of launching, under the Tibetan spiritual leader’s name.

But as karma would have it, Twitter was not meant for enlightenment. In a bold move. the top brass at Twitter suspended the account after evidence surfaced that the person behind it was an imposter and had no connection to the Nobel Peace Prize winner.”The account was suspended the following Monday, February 9 because it violated our Terms of Use regarding impersonation,” noted Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

And while the imposter is today without a job, from all intents and purposes, he did appear to be well intentioned. Whenever he would tweet his followers, it was generally with either a link to a pertinent page on the official Dalia Lama website or a gracious thank you for whatever suggestion had been given. The person was fake but the responses were genuine and helpful.

Strangely enough, the appearance and disappearance of the OHHDL account underscored a major tenet of the Buddhist faith. One of the essential doctrines of Buddhism is “impermanence”. The word expresses the notion that everything we can experience through our senses is in flux, constantly changing, and ceasing to be—nothing is permanent. One day you are a twitterer and the next day, you are asked to leave the premises.

Other reported fake twitter accounts are numerous. Kanye West dissed Stephen Colbert last year on Twitter. Then we found out it wasn’t Kanye after all. A White House Twitter account, which had been updated during the Bush years and then switched to Obama right after the inauguration, also turned out to be bogus.

Well, Jesus, you’ve now got the facts. If, in your second coming, you want to quickly attract a mutlitude of followers in a couple of days, I suggest you join the twitterati and give Twitter a big thumbs up! However, you will not be able to claim the user name “God”, as of February 16, 2009, that handle has already been reserved by another impostor who appears to have assembled a following of 6.284 tweeps.

Flickr Tags: Dalai Lama,Twitter,Facebook,kidd millennium,Ron Callari,LinkedIn,Tripit

Did Satire Retire with Bush?

Now that George W. Bush has finally ‘coptered his way out’ of the White House, complete with malapropisms and Homer Simpson gaffes in tow, the kidd believes the satire industry will join the rest of the economy in recession. “It’s been a long 8 years of writing books, speaking engagements and interviews. And while I am physically exhausted,” noted the kidd, “I think I may have to queue up in the cartoon bread lines to find future work.”

Bush was a walking parody of himself; inclusive of his knack for being oblivious, his funny clown walk, and his scary world’s view of certitude. Some describe him as a modern day Trojan Horse. Apart from the obvious similarities of his stick-man demeanor and clueless innocuousness, it was his hollow head that was the perfect transport for the Neo-cons to sneak their way into his psyche and hijack our government!

We forget that Dubya wasn’t meant to ascend to the highest office in the land. Fate chose the wrong brother, and the US Supreme Court chose the wrong candidate! His term was bookended by two of the most momentous crises in world events: 9/11 and the recent financial debacle. He inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion in 2001 and left office, leaving all of us holding the bag for one trillion dollars in debt! One has to work damn hard to accomplish that feat! But I guess an unjustified war in Iraq was a  major assist!

“Surely the irony of feeling the need to keep Bush around for the sole purpose of satire is a little absurd?’ stated the kidd. “No, we’ve made great strides in electing the first African-American as Commander-in-Chief.  Just makes my job a little harder, you know? All I can say…is thank God Sarah Palin is not going away any time soon!”

Faithfully Yours, the Ministers of Satire,

Ron, Jon & the kidd!

The kidd’s book, Uncle Dubya’s Jihad Jamboree, chronicling the Bush Administration can be found at our website or at Amazon.com.  A second book, Crude Behavior is still papering our walls with rejection notices!

del.icio.us Tags: kidd millennium,Bush Retires,political cartoons,Ron Callari,Jon Donohoe,Bush Legacy

Technorati Tags: kidd millennium,Bush Retires,Ron Callari,Jon Donohoe,political cartoons,Bush Legacy

McCain Exposing his Feminine Side

During a recent press trip  through Dayton, Ohio, the kidd learned that John McCain had announced that the better half of his 2008 “dream ticket” would be a 44 year-old ex-Alaskan Beauty Queen. This came shortly after Hillary Clinton flatly turned him down.

Despite being a virtual neophyte to the political arena, Sarah Palin’s chief qualification is her status as what is known in GOP political circles as “a woman.”

Eleventh-hour negotiations with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney broke down at the last minute despite Romney’s ditch-effort to undergo a sex change if that would help the GOP cause. That man just “loves being a girl!”

Since the Artic tundra people are the only ones that have ever heard of Ms Palin, the first question the kidd posed at her first press conference was: “How many igloos do you own?”

In regards to her prolific breeding habits, McCain’s VP pick is proud of her ever growing tribe, but comments if she had to do it over again she would have never sent her daughter to Juneau to see the movie JUNO. Because, as she puts it: “she is too young to be a grandma!”

The kidd was also quick to point out that Obama’s 20-month run for the presidency was just as long as the amount of time Ms. Palin has served as Governor. He also noted that she would be no match in a VP Debate with her Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. To which an Obama critic quickly retorted, “yeah, but she’ll definitely beat him in the swim suit contest!”

Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has appeared in Alternet, Counterpunch, Sacramento News & Review, Albion Monitor and the World and I. He is author of “Uncle Dubya’s Jihad Jamboree”, published in 2005, and the creator of kidd millennium’s editorial cartoons. Ron is also the Chief Marketing Officer for iOptimize Marketing, Inc., a company that provides SEO, SEM and Social Networking Services.

10 Reasons to Fight Keyword Inflation

Share this post :

Spending on online advertising sees strong growth, according to a new report from market analysis firm JupiterResearch — expanding by almost 20 percent in 2008 to reach $23.8 billion. According to the report, 8.4 percent of advertising budgets in 2007 were spent online — a figure expected to reach 14.3 percent by 2013, a growth that attests to the increasing shift of dollars away from traditional media.

Paid search continues to represent the largest category of online spend, and is expected to grow to $20.9 billion in 2013.With that said, the cost per acquisition (CPA) continues to grow exponentially making it nearly out of reach for a small operator to compete against the bigger brands with sizeable advertising budgets.

How then does one compete in a recessionary climate, when the commodity of keywords is just as inflationary as the price of oil?

Here are 10 reasons to start changing your strategy:

10. Consider “long tail keywords.” They are cheaper and can draw more qualified buyers to your site.

9. Save dollars with “Dayparting,” by checking the effectiveness of your campaign at different hours of the day.

8. Why pay for membership to the GYM (Google, Yahoo, MSN), when you can exercise your keywords 24/7 at an SEO park.

7. When a paid search budget runs out, advertisers lose their presence all together on the Search Engines, where SEO continues to move you up in the rankings.

6. Geo-target your campaign with LOCAL SEARCH, and right now Google isn’t charging for it.

5. Diversify. There are search engines other than Google that charge less.

4. Studies indicate that 60 percent of searches click on organic results versus paid placements

3. Ad blockers are available now which not only block pop-ups and banners, but paid search as well.

2. Organic search has the perception of “implied endorsement.” Sponsored listings imply commercialism. In the world of Web 2.0, the customers like to be in control.

1. It’s okay not to be in the Number 1 spot on Google. Rankings above the fold bring in substantial ROI, just as well!

 
Ron Callari is the Chief Marketing Officer of iOptimize Marketing, an Internet marketing firm, and a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has appeared in Alternet, Counterpunch, Sacramento News & Review, Albion Monitor and the World and I. He is author of “Uncle Dubya’s Jihad Jamboree”, published in 2005, and the creator of kidd millennium’s editorial cartoons, www.kiddmillennium.com

 

 

 

 

The Audacity of SEO

                    

Share this post :

         
                                     

Well now that we have survived a grueling 16 months of Primary Elections, its time to reflect on just how “ optimized” our candidates really were. Was Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a major factor in selecting the Democratic and Republican presumptive nominees and if so, how will it play out in the General Election?

Well, based on the early exit polls, it looks like the candidates who were the most search engine savvy, were the ones that squeaked in under the wire, with keywords to spare.

Compete, a search analytic metrics firm reported that Obama consistently beat Hillary Clinton 2 to 1 in Web traffic, 4 to 1 in Wikipedia article readers, and 10 to 1 based on the time viewers spent watching their videos on YouTube.

Compete also measured something it called “FaceTime,” which tracked the amount of time viewers spent with each candidate across several leading social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and LinkedIn. Obama trounced Clinton there as well, with a 78 to 21 percent share.

In May, a month prior to Barack Obama becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee; he must have been pretty confident of the outcome of his campaign, as he posted an Internet marketing position opening, which listed the job duration as “indefinite.” The recruitment ad was posted on the ClickZ’s network, and the Obama for America Campaign listed the position as full time, where only applicants with search engine marketing, SEO, display advertising, Flash animation, and Web video experience need apply.

Obama’s campaign has been Internet savvy from the get-go. While last century, the GM assembly plants in Flint, Michigan were a mandatory destination for presidential candidates, this election cycle, a new industry giant became the requisite campaign stop. And while Obama, McCain and Clinton all visited Google’s HDQ in Mountain View, California, Obama was the only candidate who actually spoke at the Googleplex, where he outlined a detailed 21st Century technology plan.

During Senator McCain’s tour of Google, he was wise enough not to refer to the company in Bush-speak as “the Google,” but nonetheless failed when quizzed by Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman & CEO about computer memory configuration. When asked: “How do you determine good ways of sorting one million 32-bit integers in two megabytes of RAM?” McCain pleaded ignorance. Six months later, when Senator Obama was faced with the same query, he replied in fluent tech-speak (“A bubble sort is the wrong way to go”) – for which his quip brought down the house!

Benefiting from sponsored links leading to landing pages, Clinton’s and McCain’s pages made immediate and targeted requests for donations. In fact, it was hard to get away from Clinton’s extended hand. Navigating away from one donation prompt only led to yet another plea to help put her fundraising deficit back in the black!

When compared to all the rest, Obama’s was the first Internet-based campaign to win mainstream success. His online donor base consisted of about 1.5 million, one third of which also belonged to his social network site my.barackobama.com. His campaign also included opt-in mobile marketing, video content, a blog, an e-commerce site for Obama merchandise, and accounts with 16 other social networks (compared to Hillary’s 6 social networks).

Obama’s campaign also designed a number of innovations not used by his competitors. His website used wikis — online collaborative software — to coordinate and churn out precinct captains in both California and Texas. It created a counter-viral e-mail campaign to combat the anonymous e-mail smears that questioned his religious faith and patriotism. It set up policy pages that solicited ideas from supporters, and at one point, the campaign petition for letters from supporters over the Internet to lobby the undecided Super Delegates.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy was considered by some to be the first President elected through the power of television, due to his youthful good looks being in marked contrast to his perspiring opponent, Mr. Richard M. Nixon. In 2008 Barack Obama may become the first President elected in part through the power of search marketing.

Interestingly, according to a report from iCrossing, a digital marketing company, John McCain has spent more than Obama and Clinton on paid candidate-related and issues-related search engine keyword marketing, yet Obama still leads in overall searches conducted.  Now that the contours of the general election campaign are clear at hand, it will be interesting to see if Obama starts to shift more resources towards organic search, and if McCain changes up his approach to more closely resemble Obama’s.

So it looks like SEO is driving the political bus of the 21^st Century and its keywords all the way to the finish line!