Overheard in the Office

Overheard in the Office Now for some Friday fun. Do you work in a large office? Do you hate your job? Are your coworkers idiots?

Well, you’re not alone. Take, for instance, the idiots overheard and quoted here on the surreptitiously funny blog, Overheard in the Office. Hours of aural voyeuristic fun! Enjoy!

New girl: Why is the door to the file room always locked?
Veteran: Because someone might steal something.
New girl: Who all has a key?
Veteran: Everybody.
. . .

Coworker packing her stuff as she quits: Jesus will pay my unemployment! I cannot work around you, the wicked!
. . .

Lady peon #1: Chipotle’s burritos are, like, so good!
Lady peon #2: Yeah, I know. Carol*, have you ever had one?
Carol: Uh, I’ve never been out of the country…
. . .

Worker bee: I don’t have his cell phone, but he’s always at his desk… Except when he isn’t.
. . .

Manager: What motivates you to do your best job possible?
Interviewee: Well, I don’t do anything half-assed… Yeah, I like to put my whole ass into everything I do.
. . .

Office hottie #1: Just think of all the stuff we put in our mouths that we don’t think about…
Office hottie #2: Ummm…
. . .

Boss to assistant: Well, I don’t remember what all I had, um, asked you to do before I went on vacation, but did you, like, um, do it?
. . .

Manager: Did you see the game last night?
Coordinator: I was drunk. [Takes bite of Oreo.]
Manager: Huh?
Coordinator: Yeah, I’m drunk every day. S’matter of fact, I’m drunk right now!
. . .

Office girl #1: I don’t like lettuce.
Office girl #2: You don’t eat lettuce? Why’d you get a salad?
Office girl #1: Because I need to lose weight! I’m getting fat!
Office girl #2: What else is that in your salad?
Office girl #1: Chicken.
Office girl #2: Grilled or fried?
Office girl #1: Ummm… Fried…
Office girl #2: Uh-huh… Is that cheese I see in there?
Office girl #1: Yes!
Office girl #2: And are those Bacon Bits?
Office girl #1: Shut up! And no, it’s real bacon!
Office girl #2: And you aren’t gonna eat the lettuce?
Office girl #1: I will stab you with my fork! Go away!
. . .

Coworker #1: Congrats on your bush transplant!
Coworker #2: Thanks!
Coworker #3, overhearing: Uh, yeah, congrats on your bush transplant. I didn’t know that was a procedure. Was it medically necessary?
Coworker #2 to #1: You should have said ‘shrubbery’ instead!
. . .

Female coworker, as another is delivered flowers: Every time I see the flower delivery guy I hope it’s for me. I wish someone would send me something nice like that. Oh, well. I’ll just take a piece of chocolate from the candy dish.
Male coworker: That’s right, decrease your chances even further.
. . .

Sales rep #1: Here’s that spreadsheet. I hid the columns you didn’t need so it would fit on one page.
Sales rep #2: How did you do that? I have been cutting and pasting all this time!
Sales rep #1: Cutting and pasting?
Sales rep #2, pulling out three pieces of paper, cut and taped together to make one big spreadsheet: See? I cut and pasted!
. . .

Office mate on speakerphone: I need to send my printer back. It isn’t working.
CSR for printer company: Okay, I can set up a return shipment and get you a label and address to send yours back. What is your e-mail address, sir? [He relates e-mail address.] Okay, when you get the link on the e-mail I just sent you, print the FedEx label and put it on the box to ship it.
Office mate: Um, well, my printer is broken, which is why I am sending it back…
CSR: I understand that, sir, so what I have done to speed up the process is send you a shipping label all prepared for you to ship the box out.
Office mate: How am I supposed to do that if my printer is broken?!
CSR: Well, you print it up and put it on the box.
Office mate: Okay, when we are done with this, I would like to order an instructional DVD on how to setup my DVD player.
CSR: I’m not following you, sir. I thought your problem was with your printer. We don’t have DVD players.
Office mate: Dude, you’re killing me! Can I speak to a supervisor, please?
. . .

Boss looking at her new laptop: There are too many keys.
. . .

Suit #1: Hey, Jeff*, has there ever been a Friday-the-13th on a Monday?
Suit #2: Uh…
Suit #1: Man, that would be the worst day ever.
. . .

Peon #1: Mmmm… I love these doughnuts. I could even eat them without the icing, the dough is so soft.
Peon #2: Like your flesh.
. . .

Suit #1: What was that?
Suit #2: What?
Suit #1: You just hid something when I came up.
Suit #2: It was my juice box, because it’s… You know…
Suit #1: What? There’s nothing wrong with drinking juice from a box. I love juice boxes.
Assistant, walking up: What are you guys talking about?
Both suits, in unison: Nothing.
. . .

Sales person: Hmmm… Are you doing the billing today since Sherry* is out?
Trainee: I’m going to try.
Sales person: Well, don’t mess up my billing or I’ll kick your ass.
Trainee: Promise?
Sales person: Oh, yes.
Trainee: My pain is your pleasure.
Sales person: You and I will get along fine.
. . .

Office girl on phone: I’m sorry, he’s not in right now. Is there something I can do to you? Shit. I mean for you?
. . .

Male peon: So, where are you guys located, anyway?
Customer: We’re in Guyana.
Male peon: Oh, over in Africa, eh?
Black coworker, yelling from four cubicles over to male peon: Stan*, you’re an idiot!
. . .

Lady coworker #1 reading a website: Here it says, ‘Sleep is the best cure for a headache.’
Lady coworker #2: My boyfriend always says sex is the best cure for a headache… He’s lying to me!
. . .

Boss: Do you have five minutes so I can talk to you for a sec?
. . .

Not For Your Blog

Seth Godin Are you one of those people who can’t resist blogging juicy conversations, chats, or emails? Raise your hand if you are. C’mon, admit it, raise your hand. Right there along with mine. (Heh, yea, I’m guilty…)

Seth Godin must have had one too many of his conversations, chats, and emails blogged. So he came up with “NFYB” (Not For Your Blog):

New times demand new conventions. In a world where twitter and facebook and blogs can spread an idea around the world in a few seconds, how do you have a conversation with someone in confidence?

Just say NFYB (“not for your blog.”)

Just like safe sex, it might not be romantic, but it’s something we need to talk about. So talk about it. The presumption is rapidly changing. It used to be that all emails or whispered hallway discussions were ‘off the record.’ Now, more and more, there is a bias to post/twit or share. “NFYB” clears the air.

When everyone is a journalist, most things are on the record.

I Can Has $4000 A Week?

I m in ur internet cloging ur tubes Now for some Friday fun. As you may know (and silently feel embarrassment for me over), I’ve been not-so-secretly coveting lolcats, especially the site I Can Has Cheezburger?

Well, for you lolparty-poopers, did you know you can make about $4000 a week with lolcats? Yes! At least, according to the Unusual Business Ideas That Work blog:

Eric Nakagawa, a software developer in Hawaii, posted a single photo of a fat, smiling cat he found on the Internet, with the caption, “I can has cheezburger?” in January, 2007, at a Web site he created. It was supposed to be a joke.

This joke, which Nakagawa monetizes with advertising (or, should I say, loladvertising?), now brings in anywhere from $500 to $4000 per week.

While posting pictures of lolcats is fun, it’s hardly a scalable business if he has to find the photos, caption them, select the best ones, and publish them every day.

So Nakagawa intelligently built the ICanHasCheezBurger Factory, a tool that lets viewers submit their own pictures, caption them, and vote on their favorites. The most popular ones are then published on the main blog, while he gets to sit back and collect the money. Talk about automated lolgenius!

In fact, I know a friend who, during one sunny day, uploaded 2GB of photos. TWO GIGABYTES. Holy lolcat!

I don’t know how long the lolcat trend will continue. But if you look at how media and entertainment is going the way of niche markets, perhaps niche blogs like I Can Has Cheezburger and Cute Overload will be around for quite a lolwhile.

Globalism and Racism

Mister Wong There’s been some drama over the German social bookmarking site Mister Wong lately. If you’re in the US, you may be able to guess the controversy. If you’re not, you probably have no idea what could be wrong.

The controversy is over the branding of the site: it’s name, illustration, and slogan. 8Asians, a group blog of Asian American & Asian Canadian bloggers (of which I am a member) was the first that I know of to publicly decry Mister Wong. As written by Ernie, one of the founders:

Maybe people aren’t as sensitive to political correctness as they are here in North America. But seriously, one of their web badges has the slogan “ping pong, king kong, Mister Wong.” Which I, of course, interpret as “ching chong, Mister Wong” and get INCREDIBLY FUCKING ANGRY.

The first few comments were sympathetic. One commenter expressed some confusion though. “Enlighten me. What on earth is offensive about the Mr. Wong website?” he wrote. After a few back-and-forth explanations, the issue died.

Two months later, Kristen Nicole of Mashable wrote about how Mister Wong was launching a US version. In her review, she wrote, “Despite the questionable name, Mister Wong has a lot going for it…” A commenter there also expresses some confusion: “Kristen, can you explain why you think the name is ‘questionable’?”

Another commenter replied, “It’s not so much the name that is questionable, more the cliched stereotyped image of Mr. Wong that comes along with it. I really hope they get rid of that on the US beta at least, otherwise there’ll be some angry Asian Americans out there.”

Then Kai Tietjen, the founder of Mister Wong, removed the illustration from the logo.

It was never my intention, nor that of my company, to hurt anyone with the use of the illustration. We are extremely sensitive to this issue and the feelings of others. We removed the original illustration off the top of the page some time ago, when the issue first arose, in hopes that no one would be offended by it any longer.

Apparently the 8 Asians article and angry comments on Mashable’s articles led to this decision. A short time later, a German newspaper picked up the story and Germans flooded the 8 Asians site. Some politely expressed their confusion and defended Mister Wong. Others haven’t been as polite, unfortunately.

Pete Cashmore from Mashable followed up on the story and succinctly summed it all up:

These kinds of clashes seem inevitable when companies launch globally: what’s culturally acceptable in one place is a hanging offense elsewhere. Often, as in this case, people are puzzled by the fact that they caused any offense at all. The “racist” label, however, is one that all startups will want to stay a million miles away from, even if they don’t fully understand their infraction.

That’s the real takeaway here, especially for any business going global. You may not agree with the controversy, but once you operate in the global arena, you have no choice but to respect the sensibilities of all the societies with which you want to do business. Even if you don’t agree with or understand those sensibilities.

Remember the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy? That’s probably an extreme example, but you get the point. A less extreme example is the Chevorlet Nova and how it didn’t sell in Spanish-speaking countries because “Nova” translates to “doesn’t go” in Spanish. This is actually an urban legend, but it’s a commonly cited example of going global.

Ernie, in my opinion, may have saved Mister Wong quite a bit of heartache and money by expressing his views at the early stages of their entry into the US market. For better or worse, the US society is relatively much more politically correct than other societies of the world. Denounce that all you want, but I guarantee you that if Ernie hadn’t spoken up, someone else would have.

I Tag You, You Tag Me, We’re A Happy Family

MyBlogLog This is cool. Yahoo!’s (YHOO) MyBlogLog just launched a new feature: tagging.

If you’ve read all the press, you know by now how the idea fermented (Yahoo! Research Berkeley, Cameron Marlow, Tagsona – hmm someone’s already taken the domain name).

This is cool because tagging people is a whole lot of fun. As a taggee, you get to find out how friends and colleagues view you (apparently I have madskillz and am an all-around good guy! Cool!). As a tagger, you get to label your friends and colleagues by how you see them. Then there’s the whole organizational utility of tagging. Plus the inside jokes that suddenly get surfaced.

MyBlogLog’s open social network is also another benefit. You don’t have to create a profile in a walled garden like Facebook or MySpace (NWS); you can use any ole’ blog, created on any ole’ blogging tool, and use that as your profile or online identity, so to speak. (Not to say that Facebook or MySpace don’t have their benefits too.) MyBlogLog also differentiates a blog owner from a blog, thereby giving you an online identity that can be tagged.

Which makes me wonder… why don’t traditional social networks like Facebook and MySpace have profile tagging? Hmmm.

There are gotchas though. Surfacing inside jokes that may be misinterpreted by other people could be a gotcha. Unscrupulous people tagging nefariously without abandon could also be a gotcha. But the folks at MyBlogLog realize this and will no doubt have measures to “ungot” the gotchas.

So if you have a MyBlogLog account, tag me! Go on, do it! I’ll tag you back (ooo reciprocal tagging, there’s another interesting behavior).

The Web Is One Big Party

A VC A few months ago, Fred Wilson of All Software Should Be Social. In it, he paraphrased something Clay Shirky said:

Clay Shirky once said that social nets are like parties. When they are small, they are really great, when they get big and crowded, they cease to be useful. Again I can’t find that post, or I’d link to it.

Clay’s right. But a huge social net that’s made up of millions of smaller social nets is likely to be even more useful than anything that we currently have.

This got me thinking, which, I know, is a dangerous thing.

Say the web is one big party. Like Clay says, a party with too many people is no fun. But this party is being held in an enormous warehouse with lots of nooks and crannies. So naturally, groups of people break off into their own niches.

Some people stay with their friends (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster.com, Second Life). Others stick with family (Famster), coworkers (LinkedIn), or even church group (MyChurch). People like to feel like they belong somewhere, and people with similar interests tend to cluster together. Thus you have cliques (Wikipedia, Flickr, Digg, Yelp, YouTube, Last.fm, Kaboodle, Dogster, Fanpop, Gather, FanNation, LibraryThing, Rupture, and on and on and on).

But people don’t stay within a particular group all the time though. They travel between several cliques, sometimes adopting different persona with each one. That’s okay though, because they still have their own identity; it’s just their outward behavior and language that changes (OpenID, PeopleAggregator).

Sometimes people want to share their life story and crave an audience (Twitter, Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal). That can be difficult because this is one loud party; but you’re bound to find a few single people at the bar if you look hard enough.

Other times, people need a little alone-time and privacy, away from everyone at the party. This can be both easy and hard. It’s easy when you want to just leave the party (log off). It’s hard when you’ve been at the party for a while, had lots of conversations, then are trying to hide. If someone wants to find you, they will (Google, Technorati, Wink). At this party, everything you’ve said can last forever.

It’s also easy just to sit back and people-watch at this party (Google Reader, FeedBurner, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, Bloglines). There’s a lot to see and your eyes may glaze over after a few hours. But you’ll also see some really wacky and fun sights.

Then what happens when bullies start to get abusive? It’s tough to police this party; it’s so big that almost anything goes. Fortunately, some kind souls are trying to help (EFF, Creative Commons). Much luck to them. There are lots of predators at this party. I hope they don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

And there you have it. The web as one big party. It’s a fantastic one that’s growing everyday. This warehouse is infinite, save for our imaginations. So come in and have some fun. Just don’t drink too much; the hang-over is killer.

The Battle of Buzzwords

Last month, Brian Clark over at Copyblogger, questioned the value of the term “linkbait“. Linkbait started out as a marketing term to describe “any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites.” The benefit of getting links from other websites is to increase your website’s rank in search engines.

The term has since taken on an almost derogatory connotation, in some people’s eyes. At the same time, a whole niche market as arisen to service this desire.

So Clark asked:

Link attraction is crucial. But is “linkbaiting” bad branding for an important skill? I prefer to call what I do viral copywriting, but linkbaiting goes well beyond the written word and can include blog themes, widgets and web applications.

It may be too late to change the tide, but let’s take a vote anyway. Let the people speak.

Leave a comment to this post with either:

  • Yes, I think the term linkbaiting is OK; or
  • No, I think the term linkbaiting is bad.

I saw this as a battle of semantics and buzzwords. The negative connotations of linkbaiting is certainly bad for copywriters and SEO specialists. It’s like being known as a “spammer” instead of an “email marketer.”

But as a buzzword to help describe it to people outside of the industry? It’s potentially good that way. I wrote as much in Copyblogger’s comments:

While buzzwords can be annoying, I think they actually can be a helpful semantic platform for describing concepts to people not familiar with the industry.

For example, I was a web developer and have been using a technique called remote scripting since 2001. Then the term “Ajax” was coined, which basically meant the same thing.

Scores of web developers were endlessly annoyed at the popularity of this buzz term. Everyone seemed to be using the term “Ajax” – and many times, inappropriately too.

But then I became an engineering manager and began working with product managers, marketers, and designers who were unfamiliar with this technology. And suddenly, “Ajax” became a useful term. I would correct inappropriate uses and wield it as a tool to help them understand how we could build better web products.

So I think linkbait, while annoying, is a useful buzz word. (But for professionals in the industry, “viral copywriting” is a much better term – just like “remote scripting” is a better term than “Ajax” in the web development industry.)

However, after reading Clark’s conclusions, I’ve changed my mind. Especially for a copywriter or SEO specialist. Or, as Clark phrased it, a social media marketer.

The disadvantages of having a negative connotation outweigh the advantages of having a buzzword that many people loosely understand. Since the majority aren’t familiar with, or may misuse the term, why keep it? Why not replace it with a more descriptive and positive term? It’s fortunate that this market is still relatively young; such changes in the lexicon hopefully won’t be that painful.

Linkbaiter vs social media marketer? Hmmm. Spammer vs email marketer? No contest there. Down with derogatory buzzwords!

Thinking About RSS

RSS icon Emily Chang will be speaking on a panel entitled, “Using RSS for Marketing” at this upcoming SXSW Interactive Conference. On her blog, she asks for feedback on insights & topics related to RSS.

This got me thinking (which, I know, is dangerous). Fundamentally, what is RSS?

Fundamentally, RSS is an XML-based stream of data. Or, as Wikipedia defines it:

A family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Okay, that’s not helpful at all.

Conceptually, RSS is a free way to share real-time information with the world. Cool, okay, now it sounds more like radio waves or television broadcasts. Analogies are good.

How can RSS be used?

Currently, RSS is most commonly used to distribute updates from websites like blogs, vlogs, and podcasts. This information is time-sensitive and archives can be just as important as updates. Other real-time information that can be distributed are weather, traffic, and stock prices reports. These are also time-sensitive, though archives are not very important.

Conceivably, RSS could also share non real-time information, like dictionaries and encyclopedias. Or non-textual information like maps and technical diagrams.

RSS readers are currently built to display chronological information, so this would not be a standard way to use RSS. Arguably, it’s not an effective way either. There are other ways to retrieve static information, such as using web services. But possibly, the RSS format could also be used as a web service?

So what is RSS and how can it be used?

RSS is a way to share information, with some kinds of information being better than others:

  • Real-time information = blogs, vlogs, podcasts, news, weather, traffic & stock prices
  • Static information = dictionary info, encyclopedia info, maps & technical diagrams (maybe?)
  • Archivable information = blogs, vlogs, podcasts & news
  • Non-archivable information = weather, traffic & stock prices
  • Textual information = blogs, news, weather, traffic & stock prices
  • Graphical/video/audio information = photos, video, audio, maps & technical diagrams

As a marketer, are any of these information formats useful to your business? Or rather, would your customers find any of these information formats useful?

Perhaps. In my opinion, RSS isn’t just for blogs, vlogs, and podcasts though. With some thinking, perhaps you’ll find more uses for it too.