Tag: Mark Zuckerberg

Is Google Rebranding or De-branding?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

Resolved: People, for whatever reason, tend to view Google as less of a brand and more of a utility.

Suggested reasons: Google is, in fact, utilitarian. It’s under-branded to the extreme, and even its logo is generic.  Before anyone had Google accounts or Gmail, we were already using “google” as a verb.  The lack of flash, the absolute dearth of iconography…the lame font and funny multi-colored name, these things are disarming almost to the point of making you forget that Google wants each and every bit of your personal information even more (perhaps) than Facebook.

Facebook is nothing if not a brand.  Rightly or wrongly, we think we get what Mark Zuckerberg is all about, and that necessarily flavors our understanding of his company’s ethics, ambition, and culture.

I said last week that when I’m using Google+, I don’t feel like I’m in some proprietary fishbowl circa 1990s AOL.  Google looks and acts like a utility, and we’ve come to think of access to what Google does best (search) as precisely that.  Facebook is a fishbowl by design, and Zuckerberg’s quest to keep you in/on Facebook for all your webly needs shows that he’s bound and determined to validate and more effectively monetize Steve Case’s old vision. Maybe Google+ does, as Zuckerberg claims, validate Facebook’s (old) vision, but only in terms of ambition.  Plus is built with the relationships grown-ups have in mind, and Facebook was built as a college network.  It has adapted over the years to fit the needs of adults, but it still feels like your last visit to the pediatrician.  Early adopters are hitting 30 and needing a social network that’s intuitive and easily customizable, something more akin to real-world connections than “friending” and more useful and dynamic than boring old LinkedIn.

Last week we learned that Google will retire the Blogger and Picasa brands as they begin to roll those services into Plus.  Is everyone starting to understand that Google+ is Google, and Google is Google+?  Blogger.com is the epitome if Web2.0 branding, and if you’re not already using Picasa, it just feels like another thing.  So Google is rolling these brands into itself, making them more useful and more generic than they’ve ever been.  The lighter the brand recognition, the more likely we are to trust you with our data.  Silly, isn’t it, given Google’s size, influence, and sometimes-faltering commitment to publicly stated values?  Sure is.  But it’s also true.

Don’t think so?  Check out Delloitte’s recent study proving that we already hate branded apps.  While Facebook is busy becoming the largest branded app in history, Google is de-branding everything but YouTube (which also doesn’t feel like a brand).  Interesting, isn’t it?

Chris Cocca Is Wrong About Everything + Novels + Hess’s Department Store + Paul Ceglia and Facebook: Search Term/SEO Answer Bag #57

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

I’ll start this edition of the Search Term Answer Bag by admitting two things:

  • It’s not really, sequentially, #57.  That’s just its name.  Probably because I like ketchup.
  • I stole the whole idea from David Letterman’s old “CBS Mail Bag” routine.  “Letters, we get letters, we get lots and lots of letters! LETTERS!”

and a suspicion:

  • I am approximately one half of this blog’s audience who gets a kick out of this bit.  Good enough for me.

Now, on to the search terms!

First, my favorite:

chriscocca is wrong about everything?

Even here, I was only wrong half the time.

Classic.  There are a few other Chris Coccas out there in the world, so I won’t be big-headed enough to claim that this was a query about me as a matter of fact.  But for the sake of this post, we’ll go with it.

I appreciate that this was searched with a question mark and not a exclamation point or, even worse, a period. As far as an answer goes, I’m willing to say that I’m probably not wrong about every single thing, but we can’t really be sure.  I also think chriscoccaiswrongabouteverything would be a great name for a website not called The Daily Cocca, and it would be an excellent follow-up album to the still-on-hiatus uppityupalexvanderpoolera.

Searching for verbs and/or prepositions:

what to when you are almost finished a novel?

It’s unclear here whether the asker is almost finished reading or writing said novel. If reading, I’d say get ready to pick your next book. If writing, I’d say get ready to revise. That’s when the real writing happens.  If you’ve done that, and have met with good writers groups and gotten feedback you trust and then revised again and then again and are sure you manuscript is exactly what it should be, then I guess you start sending query letters to agents and try to start publishing excerpts.

A get a lot of hits from people looking for information about Hess’s Department Store.

Behind the South Mall in 2011. Image by Frank Tienstra.

And rightly so. It was an amazing place.  Today’s proper question:

when did hess’s dept store allentown pa remodel the front of the store

Sadly, I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m guessing it was before I was born (1980).  Can any Allentonians/Lehigh Vallians help me out here?  I’ve been getting a lot of hits from people looking for the famous rainbow-colored sugar from the Hess’s Patio Restaurant.  I know you used to be able to buy it at MusikFest, and I’m willing to bet you can find it on ebay if not at places like the Moravian Bookstore or the Lehigh County Heritage Center.  Sadly, I can’t be much help with those seeking strawberry pie recipes.  But I can share this post, with 30+ commentators sharing their favorite Hess’s memories. Really a special place. I can also share this bittersweet, recent image sent to me by Frank Tienstra. It’s one of the old Hess’s trucks still sitting behind the South Mall as of January.  Sad for anyone who knows what Hess’s was all about.

Lastly, a question about Facebook:

is facebook layout changing again for the summer 2011

I really don’t think so, but this could be one of the things I’m wrong about.  Mashable has some of the best coverage of social media developments: here’s the Facebook news aggregator-inator.   Soon, you may have better luck asking this guy:

Not Mark Zuckerberg

Never heard of Paul Ceglia?  He’s the chap that might (ooops) own half of Facebook.  So who knows?  Maybe Paul has a few design ideas stashed with all those old emails he keeps finding.  When I first heard about this case last year, I thought it was a long shot.  But the plot keeps thickening. When I try to imagine what might be the next big thing to come along and knock Facebook off the block, I have a pretty hard time.  But you know what?  It might just end up being Mark Zuckerberg.

His Grandfather Drove a Covered Wagon. He Walked on the Frickin’ Moon.

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments
Mark Zuckerberg
You have nothing to say.

“My great grandparents came across the southern United States in the 1870s to start a new life in the western territories. They were in a covered wagon drawn by horses, driving a few cattle to start a new herd. The railroads had not been completed, automobiles had not been invented; the electric light had not been invented. My father was born shortly after the Wright brothers made the first airplane flight — and I went to the moon…In less than a hundred years we went from covered wagons to going to the moon.”

I haven’t read the rest of this article yet, but go ahead and re-read the above paragraph.  Forty years ago today, Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon.  His grandparents were honest-to-goodness pioneer pioneers, coming across the US when the US still had continental territories and things like horses and herds.  Two generations later, Edgar walked on the effing Moon.  How crazy is that?  This is something that’s always intrigued me about the 19th and 20th centuries…how someone born before the airplane was invented could live to see lunar landings.  Mitchell’s family history makes the point poetically.

In less than 100 years, we went from Conestoga wagons to walking on the Moon.  What have we done in the last 40?  Focused on the vastness of the microchip’s inner space, which is all well and good, but (and you know I’m serious) where are our jetpacks? Where are our Lunar and Martian settlements?  What’s the hold up?

Mark (Where’s Your Jetpack?) Zuckerberg image by jdlasica via Flickr

Wherein I Attempt to Answer Questions My Readers Asked Google Yesterday

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments
Things I know about.

I’m pleased as punch about the first search term.  I love Kris Kristofferson, and I not just because I covet his name for my own nom de plume.  I’m going to have to go with Chris St. Christopher when I start writing hard-boiled crime novels.

The second search term is here because of my quote from this week’s “The Office,” and I’d like to try to answer it if I could.  Mark Zuckerberg’s jet pack is the same place yours is: the government-confiscated files of this guy.  That’s the only possible explanation for why this world hasn’t happened yet.  I’m pretty sure I have a post somewhere in archives here simply titled “Where is My Jet Pack? Where Is My Flying Car?” (Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down.)  Blame Thomas Edison and his smear campaign against Alternating Current. Blame whoever is holding on to those designs for the ion-repulsion flight apparatus. We should have jet packs by now.  We should have flying cars.  Mssrs. Hanna, Barbera, Disney, and Verne: you promised.

“The Office,” “Community” and “30 Rock” Notes + A Great Post Inspired by “The King’s Speech”

~ Chris Cocca ~ 4 Comments

Happy Friday, friends.  Just a few things I want to talk about today. If you’re a fan of the shows mentioned in this post’s title and haven’t gotten to your DVR yet, be aware: there are spoilers after #1.

  1. First, this great post by K at the My Business Addiction blog.  It’s about  “The King’s Speech” and “not letting imperfections keep [you] from taking chances and seeking out opportunities.”  I really liked this post and recommend it.
  2. I’ve been hoping that when Ricky Gervais made his inevitable “Office” cameo, it would be as David Brent.  And he did!  Non-Michael/David line of the night: “Where’s your jet pack, Zuckerberg?”  Was the interaction believable?  In some ways, yes, since for the storyline to pay off, it had to happen.  But I tend to think that people reconnecting as adults are a lot more gracious to each other than TV would have us believe.  I tend to think that after a certain point, we all realize that life is hard, things don’t always work out the way we plan, and we’re all pushing on.  That’s not just me, is it?
  3. I feel like “Community” got its heart back last week.  Heart and sincerity are what made season 1 so good.  Yes, it was outlandishly funny, but that only worked because it was balanced by heart.  The first half of this season missed a lot of that. Last week’s episode found it, and last night’s kept it going.  Good good good.
  4. 30 Rock was all about “Uptown Girl.” Must be something in the air.

Have a great weekend.  Check back tomorrow for a new video blog.