Tom Smith wrote a smashing article that really gets why big brands are having such a big problem with social media.  The article is over at Mashable and deserves a read because I am only excerpting the list here,  Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media.  Number one, “social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel,” deserves number one because the biggest mistake that brands and their agencies of record constantly make is they forge that these social media “marketing channels” are real people with real lives and real friendships and a real voice.

1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel: It is of course so much more; it is a completely different approach to interacting with consumers and customers. Of course, you can advertise in a social media environment, but the true return on investment comes from developing communities, creating content to be shared, and talking and listening directly with consumers.

2. It does not fit into current structures: True social media falls somewhere between marketing, PR, communications, content production and web development. No one is quite sure whose responsibility it is and who should ultimately deliver their organisation’s social media strategy.

3. Communities and content are global: Users of social media connect, consume, and share content globally with little care for international borders. Marketing and PR departments and objectives are set up nationally or regionally. Very few organisations have a truly international structure and perspective.

4. Social media needs a long term approach: To build community, distribute content, or get people actively involved in an application takes time. Marketing and PR work on short time frames and are wedded to sets of individual campaigns or short term objectives. Social media is not a campaign, it’s a permanent approach.

5. No guaranteed results: You book advertising and it’s guaranteed to work. For, example you book a web campaign on page views and you keep going until you reach your goal. This is what advertisers call a push medium, i.e. you choose when people see it. Social media is a pull medium; usage and interaction is totally dependent on the user choosing to do so. If it’s not relevant or lacks creative brilliance it will not work. This makes it hard.

6. The metrics are new: Companies are used to the big numbers of advertising, but these numbers are different. Advertising is measured in booked exposures, i.e. page views, while social media is measured in direct interactions, i.e. number of friends, number of views or number of users. These numbers will always be smaller, but not necessarily any less measure of success.

Kris Meister and I are always up at the most obscene times of the day and night — he’s the only man on the planet who works longer hours than I. Well, this morning he introduced me to DaveBGimp. Funny stuff, especially his rant on how Morrissey doesn’t deserve to draw breath, I Want To Make Morrissey Cry For Real.

Well, I was a super-huge fan of The Smiths when I was an art fuck and new wave kid back in Honolulu in the 80s. Worse, I continued to listen to Morrissey after the Smiths came apart when I transitioned to college and even during my year abroad to the UK, when I was pretty excited about collecting the CDs I couldn’t get in the US.

You think this all isn’t bad? Well, I dare you to watch this YouTube video all the way through. I couldn’t, and I really loved the song when it came out.

A dear friend, who will remain nameless, enjoyed the lucky blessing of the bite of a wild rat while indulging in blatant noblesse oblige. Will he go mad from rabies?

Are wild rats ever found to carry rabies?

Very few rats infected with rabies have ever been found in the United States. Winkler (1973) reviewed the literature on rodent rabies in the United States. He found that during the 18-year period of 1953 and 1970, a small number of rabid rats (39 rats) were found in the United States. The numbers were extremely small: only 11 rabid rats were found in the U.S. during the three year period of 1953-1955. The number of rabid rats declined during the period of time covered by the review, and by the three year period of 1968-1970 only 2 rats were found to be rabid. This decline in the number of rabid rats is probably due to an improvement in diagnostic techniques which led to fewer false positives.

In other countries, no rats were found to be infected with rabies in surveys of wild rat populations in Sri Lanka (Patabendige and Wimalaratne 2003), Poland (Wincewicz 2002), and Bangkok, Thailand (Kantakamalakul 2003). In Thailand, 4.7% of Norway rats (9 rats out of 192) were found to be carrying rabies (Smith et al. 1968).

Have rats ever caused rabies in humans?

Rats and other small rodents have never caused a single case of human rabies in the United States (CDC).

A very few cases of humans infected with rabies by rats have been reported in countries such as Poland, Israel, Thailand and Surinam. In Poland, out of 9,998 cases of human rabies from 1990 to 1994, four were caused by rats (0.04%), while the vast majority were caused by foxes (Zmudziñski and Smreczak 1995, described in Wincewicz 2002). In Israel, one case of human rabies was caused by a bite from a small rodent — possibly a rat or mouse (Gdalevich et al. 2000). In Thailand, out of 7,000 human rabies cases reported each year, 1% are caused by rat bites (Kamoltham et al. 2002). The majority of rabies cases in Thailand are caused by dogs (86.3%) (Pancharoen et al. 2001). An outbreak of paralytic rabies in children in Surinam was attributed to rat bites (Verlinde et al 1975).

Why is rabies so rare in rats?

The answer is unclear. Currently, it is presumed that rats are so small that they almost never survive the attack of a larger rabid animal, like a raccoon, skunk, or fox.

Ultraviolet is a visually exciting and not just because of Milla Jovovich’s bare belly, either.

Milla Jovovich is perfect and fascinating and has been the fabric of post future films like The Fifth Element.

She is a legit cyberpunk. Milla Jovovich might be the most beautiful woman on the planet; Milla Jovovich can act well enough to rock the film.

Milla Jovovich’s body looks capable and she fits the role of Violet much better than Charlize Theron’s awkward interpretation of Aeon Flux.

Unlike Angelina Jolie who is too skinny and too busty to actually be Mrs Smith or Lara Croft. The capability of her skinny arms and skinny legs to accomplish any of that with the assorted weaponry (and weapons kick) is unlikely.

Impossible.

Carrie-Anne Moss is a capable badass is the Matrix trilogy. Carrie-Anne Moss appears capable of handling weapons and gear. And so does Milla Jovovich.

So, any of you who have heard awful things about Ultraviolet, don’t listen to them. The movie is visually stimulating.

Oh yeah, and I think there were other actors in Ultraviolet, but they’re really just corpses.