The Olympics: Low Tech Vs. Hi Tech

I was writing for my company blog this afternoon about how social sites such as Twitter and Facebook have changed the Olympic games for the athletes and for the spectators. We can now get first hand commentary and pictures from those participating, which is really cool if you are a television spectator, but not as cool if you are a coach trying to get your team to focus, or someone on the international olympic committee trying to figure out where to draw the boundaries between information that is fine for publication, and that that you want kept to those at the games (the verdict there seems to be that anything during an event or the opening or closing ceremonies is off limits, but that behind the scenes stuff is fine).

Also, I noticed that during the snowboarding events the other night some of the boarders were listening to ipods during competition (or at least were listening to their ipods during the waiting time before competition, but it really seemed like they still had the ear buds in when they started to compete), and I remember that Phelps did a bit of ipod listening to get himself geared up for a swim. I think that being able to sort of zone out and listen to your music before or during competition would give you and edge over olympians from days of ol' because getting psyched out by the crowd, by the other competitors, by the sheer pressure of the games is all part of the competition.

And I read somewhere (wish I could remember where) that some olympians were playing video games during the olympics, which seems like an extremely weird and sedentary thing for a bunch of world class athletes to do, but seems par for the course for anyone from this video-game-crazed generation.

Anyone who saw any or part of the opening ceremonies (or at least who saw the awesome whale part) would have been at least a bit impressed by all of the projected motion graphics they are using these days. And anyone who's ever watched swimming in the last few years and noticed those crazy full-body swimsuits that supposedly make you faster, or read about the speed given to some athletes by their prosthetic legs would no doubt be amazed by those feats of technology and engineering. And you sort of begin to wonder when will it stop? When will we reach the peak of technological innovation for improved performance, or the fastest mode of communication, or the social tool that will give the most direct and constant level of access to the athletes even after competition, and will we want all of that?

So there I was, thinking about how much technology has pretty much taken over the sports of the Games and hard it would be to be a super tech savvy athlete and how the pressure must be greater these days because now you not only have to be amazing during competition because you've been given all this specially formulated gear and training, but you have to find witty 140-limit things to say to your fans, and I was about to decide that I didn't want to be an Olympian at all with all that pressure ... but then I watched the curling competition between Denmark and Canada.

Now at first glance this sport is just as overrun with technology as any other, a few of team USA's Olympic curlers have twitter accounts from which you can hear all about the sport (and maybe even ask them what the exact rules are). But the Danish team also had something incredible low-tech, a 3-D model of the curling rink. It was more like a clipboard of the curling rink, something like what a football coach might draw out a play on, with little moveable curling rocks so that the coach could show the curlers exactly where she wanted them to direct their next rock. Watching the Danish team take a time out and use that model, then go back and execute a near perfect curl made me realize that even with all the twitter, all the fancy uniforms or equipment, that sometimes the old ways of doing things (like the drawn out game plan - they'd never tweet that to each other) are really the best ways of doing things.

I doubt we'll get to a point where competitors can telecommute to the olympics (I really hope we don't get to that point), and I have a feeling that we'll reach a point where we've gotten as much direct access to the every thought of the athletes, and I know that we'll always be working on some uniform, some method of training, or some something else to help break records, but when all athletes have access to all of that the basic principals will remain the same - and the best competitor on that day will win.

Facebook: When Good Ad Space Goes to Bad Advertisers

Ah if only the internet could talk. The stories of bad ads it could tell. Lose 20 lbs of belly fat, reduce your mortgage, get free prescription meds, hit the monkey.

I'd like to believe that in most cases the advertisers behind these ads have no way of knowing who is seeing them (no cookies, no user profiling, etc) and that they are just using a wide network of anonymous ad space, so I may extend a special pardon for those instances (a pardon for being irrelevant to me, but not for promoting horrible products).

Facebook is another beast. Having used facebook as an advertiser I know how the ad setup works, and let me tell you, I can target some pretty specific users. Almost anything you put in your facebook profile has the potential to be used by advertisers, school attended, major, age, location, marital status, even things you write down as interests. Advertisers can create specific combos of those factors as well (ex. only 19 year old men who graduated from yale and are listed as married).

Social networks have the potential to be an advertisers dream. It is an amazing way for advertisers to target very specific (and potentially very likely) customers. Any girl listed on facebook as "in a relationship" can attest that they get wedding ring ads on a semi-daily basis. And while not all of us are looking for wedding rings, there are probably a good number who are (or at least who aren't opposed to browsing every once in a while).

For this targeted ad system you do pay a premium, I've noticed that my ads on facebook cost me quite a bit more than the ads I've placed on search or content based ad servers. But I've also found that the right ads put in front of the right users can bring me much better results, so I'm willing to pay more.

So when I see those generic ads show up on facebook I have to wonder, what idiot is wasting his/her money on this? Are the acai berry diet people rolling in so much dough that they just want to throw it at facebook ads that probably wont deliver? Or are these advertisers just flooding the web space with ads in hopes that someone will accidentally click on them and get sucked into buying whatever useless product they are selling? (free laptop ad that means you) Or, the worst possible reason, are the ads actually working?

I've been trying to vote against these ads with my wallet - er - mouse, and not click on anything with a disco-dancing, poorly-illustrated, sort-of-3D person or any mention of a miracle diet, way to work at home and earn millions, or offer of a free this or that. But since the ads keep appearing, I have to feel like perhaps I'm the only one "voting" this way - is everyone else is refinancing their mortgage and getting free viagra like there's no tomorrow.

Anywho, in case you were wondering, It was actually Richard Branson who inspired this post tonight

Don't wait by the phone richie, I'm keeping my million dollar idea to myself, you can take your billions and advertise to someone who cares.

The Reasons StumbleUpon Advertising is Ineffective

I think StumbleUpon would like to make all stumblers believe that it is advertising-free, and that the way in which you come across the sites in the database is completely serendipitous, but it simply isn't true.

Now, I'm not knocking the StumbleUpon folks for using adverts, they have to make money just like the rest of us, but the way in which the adverts are displayed is a little sneaky, and a lot ineffective.

For just pennies a view, you can pay StumbleUpon to show your web page to stumblers; you choose the number of views you want a day, and the categories for which you want the ads to show.

The problem is, as a user, I find it very easy to spot the ads. This is simply because stumble allows too many pages from one advertiser to be shown to a user per day.

I stumble a lot, and so sometimes during one day of stumbling I'll come across pages from the same advertiser three or four times. Different pages, mind you, but pages boring and not stumble-worthy enough to keep coming up. I've stumbled enough to know what is interesting enough to sift to the top of the stumble community, and these ads are not it. A parenting site, a crafty blog/site, and a womens magazine are among the most common culprits.

Now, I would appreciate it if stumble simply made a notation on these pages that they were ads, and didn't try to parade them as random acts of stumble, but I know that advertisers want to try and blend in with the usual stuff and would probably reject that idea.

So maybe instead Stumble could limit the number of ads from one advertiser that are shown to a user per day, or maybe Stumble could have a tiny sidebar that is always open that displays "similar" pages to the page you are on that are all sponsored - I could get into that.

Whatever the solution, the current system doesn't work (and I'm too cheap to pay for a stumble account to avoid the ads) and I doubt that it works for many of the advertisers who flood the stumble system with similar boring pages.