Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-01-28

  • @rtanglao Tried the link but it was choppy. I entered my name, but could not add a message. #
  • Thought I was done for the night. Reading a contract, yet again. #
  • Sorting through email at work. So much over the weekend. #
  • Where is the day going?! #
  • Northern Voice 2008 now has the schedule for Internet Bootcamp http://wiki.northernvoice.ca/InternetBootCamp available. #
  • I will present a session at Northern Voice 2008 on Liveblogging 101 http://tinyurl.com/29ehjm with my colleague @RobinYap #
  • @macboyx Hate when that happens. #
  • @RobinYap Sorry about your MT problems. Another reason why I threw in the towel for MT and installed WordPress. #
  • @macboyx Always more difficult to do when you need it. #
  • Going to the opera tonight to see Wagner’s Die Walküre http://tinyurl.com/2aylf2 #

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Target Does not Care About Bloggers?

It seems bloggers are not welcome shoppers at Target.

One of my colleagues at NYU Stern pointed out a disturbing article that is fit for a discussion within a communications course. Today’s New York Times reported that Target snubbed a blogger from Shaping Youth who complained to the retailer about its seeming insensitivity to women in one of its current ad campaigns. Rather than provide an informed and sympathetic response to this audience of concerned shoppers, Target appears to have replied that it does not communicate with new media.

Huh? With all the edgy commercials and friendly feel of its stores that it tries to promote, it seems customers who question innuendo within its advertising just do not matter. With all the work and cost involved in television media advertising, is there such a thing as an accident or something that is not planned? Doesn’t the Target symbol of a bulls-eye have several connotations? Since when is it good policy to offend your customer audience and then not want to discuss it? Smells like a potential public relations nightmare. Doesn’t Target realize how online communication can spread in ways far more widespread than traditional, static media?

Too bad my Business Communication course just ended yesterday, as we could have had a field day with this one!

Tagging: The Book

taggingbook1.jpgWell, it should not come as a surprise that a new book on tagging was just released: Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web. I have not read it yet, but thought the review on LibraryThingmade the book seem interesting enough to warrant my ordering it. As tagging is something about which I am both very interested as well as somewhat confused. Perhaps Gene Smith, the author, will be able to help me demystify it.

I wonder if he is planning to attend Northern Voice 2008, too?