Month: October 2010

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At Least Online Marketing Seems to Be Doing Well…

Is it just me? I’ve just gone to over a dozen Sales Engineer job postings/reqs, and every single one of them is for a company in online marketing. From startups at VentureLoop to [x+1], business is obviously good.

The problem is, that morally they are virtually all making the Internet, and by extension the world, worse. From privacy concerns about tracking and location to out and out malware/virii in 1 pixel hits and banners, they are the bottom of the barrel for those with a conscience. They are constantly in court over their practices, and their motto is “It is easier to get forgiveness (lawsuits), then permission (which they would never get)”.

If you are willing to look past all of that, and you have so few scruples, or are just plain desperate for a job, then this is a good time to be you. As for me, I’ve built a solid reputation over the past decade, and in countless ways I’ve made the world a better place. I’ll wait for the right employer; One that stands for making life easier/better for people.

After all, I have to sleep at night.

Do you? Can you?

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How to Write A Viral Internet Post

Excellent post from Pleated Jeans

Every once in a blue moon, a post here at Pleated Jeans takes off on the Internet. Because of this, I get the occasional friend or acquaintance asking me what the secret is to creating a viral Internet post that will eventually be viewed by hundreds of thousands people. Well if you’re expecting me to give you some magical formula for success…then you’re in luck! Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do:

Refer to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Internet Needs, and you’ll see that Internet users require pictures of cats more than anything else. As such, you should go to great lengths to make cats the primary focus of your Internet post – even if this means ditching your original topic of choice (sorry, AIDS prevention, you’re outta here).

For well over a year, Pleated Jeans was a site devoted completely to text posts. It took me a long time to realize that no one goes to the Internet to read (that’s what libraries and master bathrooms are for). In fact, I’ll wager 95 percent of my “readers” have skimmed over all the text in this post and only digested all the adorable pictures of cats – which means I can say pretty much anything I want right now and it wouldn’t really matter. Hail Satan banana zombie pizza.

If you simply HAVE to write something, do yourself a favor and find a way to work the most important points into graphical form:

See, that chart right there pretty much sums up what all these dumb words have been trying to say.

In my experience, topical posts tend to do better than non-topical posts (example: Inception Flowchart is one of my most popular posts of all time). When looking to bolster interest in your Internet post, consider asking yourself these questions:

  • What movies are popular right now?
  • Any holidays coming up?
  • Has Justin Bieber said anything stupid today?
  • Have any cats made the news recently?
  • Has someone recently given the advice to “hide yo kids, hide yo wife, becuz they rapin’ errybody up in here?”

from Pleated Jeans

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The 50th Anniversary of the First Cartoon in Prime Time

Starting with “2 couple” shows, The Lucy show was the first (in “Desilu” studios, from “Desi” Arnaz and “Lu”cille Ball), to use the 3 camera setup that every show-even today-uses.

Only later, with the new multiple storyline plots did they require more family, as in “My Three Sons”, “The Donna Reed Show”, “Leave it to Beaver”, “Dennis The Menace” (sorta), and a host of others in that crossover time between B&W and Color.

It was a really interesting time for TV, as you had the “adventure” formula (Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive, etc.) alongside the “entertainment” formula (The Red Skelton Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Bing Crosby Show, The Perry Como Show, Candid Camera, What’s My Line, etc.) with the then new formula “game show” (Name That Tune, The Price is Right, You Bet Your Life, To Tell the Truth, I’ve Got a Secret, etc.) that defined the era, at the same time you could watch the “family drama”, which evolved from more than one family. Just have a lot of weird characters, and play them against each other (The Beverly Hillbillies, The Donna Reed Show, The Patty Duke Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, My Favorite Martian, My Three Sons, etc.). But you weren’t done with first run, excellent television.

You also had the emergence of the “30 minute comedy”, which took it’s lead from skits on the “entertainment” shows above, and took sometimes a single character and built a world around them in the new 30 minute format. These pioneering shows included My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, The Addams Family (from a comic strip), McHale’s Navy, Bewitched, Gomer Lyle, U.S.M.C., Car 54 Where Are You?, etc.). And for the grown-ups, you had all the serious stuff, the classic “drama” which came mostly from translating books into short stories for screenplays, as with The Fugitive, Combat, The Virginian, Dr. Kildare, Lassie, Ben Casey, The Untouchables, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, etc.

So the only thing missing from that outstanding era is the one type of show that the era is defined by: “cartoons”. The Flintstones weren’t alone, as there was Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (which often ran cartoons). But that was it for prime time cartoons in 1960. It was all new, and the tried and true westerns and dramas were easy tools to get dollars out of sponsors’ pockets.

In 1962, the next cartoon to hit prime time was The Jetsons by Hanna Barbera. ABC waited to see what would happen for 2 years, then released Johnny Quest. Either you didn’t know about the show, or you worship it. A friend of mine named his kid Race after Race Bannon, Johnny’s bodyguard. You could say that Venture Brothers owes it’s formulaic success to Johnny Quest.

Anyone remember Aeon Flux on MTV’s Liquid Television?

So the next time you watch an episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Ren & Stimpy, Home Movies, Family Guy, Futurama, The Simpsons, South Park, Samurai Jack, Rocko’s Modern Life, or even SpongeBob SquarePants, consider the way television was changed from the year The Flintstones first aired until today.

Just a thought…