Wednesday, January 09, 2013

1895 Techno Irony

I love the march of technology. And all the ironies it brings. Like recently I was listening to an ad on the radio. Radio ads are supposedly a dying enterprise. Slated to be replaced by social media offerings right and left. One of which is an outfit called Constant Contact. Which for some reason always reminds of tea.
In their radio ad, Constant Contact promised to deliver an email service, complete with internal analytics, directly to your direct customers. "Internal analytics" means that, with every email they send that gets opened, they'll deliver spy stuff back to you. (And who knows what they'll keep for themselves.) They promise a fantastic advertising response. Which they ought to, since your emails are only going out to your pre-defined list.
But that brings up the basic advertising question: How do you get new customers? Constant Contact has figured that out too. That's why they're advertising on the radio.
To get some new ones of their own...
On to building that social network. Numerous of my friends and acquaintances, weary of asking me to join Facebook---cause, you know, I refuse to turn over all my personal information to Mark Zuckerburg for him to do with however he wishes---have asked me to join LinkedIn instead.
So I noticed something the other day. LinkedIn, modern as it is, is still stymied by the ancient limitations of our language. Their invitation says, "This is a reminder that on December 3rd John Smith sent you an invitation to be part of their professional network on linked in.
That damn impersonal personal possessive pronoun.
Making all my individual friends plurals.
I guess it's a lot quicker to build a network if all your individuals are multiple personalities.
Tougher to stay in constant contact with them though.
America, ya gotta love it.

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