If you ask me where the future of the web is it is here, when digital agencies can inspire people to think about their clients’ brands in an offline setting they become worth their weight in gold. Elf Yourself is a great example of a campaign achieving all of the commonly accepted hallmarks of digital media success but achieving absolutely nothing. How many people had memorable offline experiences from being able to paste their faces on a dancing elf.

If the acquisition rumors do have any real footing, I’d be surprised if Rose and the rest of the Digg executives don’t accept one of the bids. Consider that Rose has to deal with a rabid user base, aggressive internet giants banging on the door, and VCs looking for major returns on their investments. All together that’s enough to drive anyone mad.

On the one hand he notes that infomation wants to be free saying, “Some wants to be free and some wants to be really expensive… Commodity information [the type Wsj.com offers] needs to be free, or they’re not in the conversation.” On the other, he notes that the WSJ’s culture may not be ready for a free web offering. Both points are valid, but to what extent? Is it more important to adhere to the rules of the web and offer a useful product (he goes on to say that, “The job of every print publication is to add value to the web”), or do you stick to your brand?

Wall Street Journal is for all intents and purposes a luxury brand. With that realization, the question that must then be posed is: how do you port your customer’s/subscriber’s real-life experience to the internet? It seems that Wsj.com has decided to attempt to retain some of their core sensibilities by keeping their content subscription based, and thus out of reach of most heavy internet users who are by nature averse to paying for content. The NYTimes on the other hand has taken a much more populist approach and kept the bulk of their website free, thus dominating Wsj.com in most site statistics including: Google Page Rank, Traffic Rank, Blog Rank, Inbound Links, Google Indexed Pages, and del.icio.us Bookmarks (via Website Grader).

Side Note: At the very end of the interview, Anderson mentioned the future of America’s economy/competitive edge. In the most concise way I’ve heard yet, he summed it up saying, “Everything I believe is written on the back of the iPhone, ‘Designed in California, made in China.”

What worries me about this is that I’m beginning to think that Google has come to think of themselves mainly as a Microsoft Competitor, rather than an innovator and market disruptor. That’s mildly unfortunate as Microsoft is not known for their innovation either, making the fact that Google is pacing themselves against the other internet (PC/Gaming/Electronics) Titan preposterous. Take for instance Google’s ridiculous reaction to Microsoft’s proposed hostile bid of Yahoo. While it’d be unwise to let Tech Bloggers run your company, why not listen to the cascade of opinions telling you to “Simmer down”. You still have emails’ best product with Gmail, as well as footholds in almost every internet sector, subsector and burgeoning market. Why not just sit back, see what happens and if they do merge, watch the inevitable clash of cultures.

You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

As adapted from Matthew Matthew 7:7-8, in which Jesus encourages his followers that he is a generous God who will provide for them:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

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901a9cb3, originally uploaded by The Fly Girl.
Shawn Carter has built a name for himself by staying on the pulse of movements within the urban demographic. Frequently he’s lent his cache to major companies in the hopes of taking a slice of the returns. Now, with the launch of Translation Advertising, Shawn Carter hopes to build his own empire from the ground up. Obviously, I’ve been reading a bit too much of the NYTimes but this is something you can’t ignore. A frequent focus of my education thus far has been the influence of minority culture on the mainstream, and with the recent influx of minority driven advertising, the continued dominance of Hip Hop and an estimated $2 trillion in minority buying power I firmly believe it is time not only for minorities to be taken seriously but to control their own destinies (shiver). And who better than to start the trend than the man popularly known as Jay-Z? He has such a cache in the urban markets that his word is taken as the will of God (not much of an overstatement). Translation Advertising will be successful if only for the fact that major companies will sign on just to have a piece of Jay-Z’s magic.