The latest from TechCrunch
- Microsoft Determined To Ruin The April Fools Party
- Ex-Bebo CEO Joanna Shields To Lead Facebook's International Assault
- Topeka? Come On Google, You Can Do Better
| Microsoft Determined To Ruin The April Fools Party | Top |
| Oh, Microsoft . I hope this is just a very elaborate joke and I simply don’t get it. If it’s not, then please let me be the first to tell you that spreading a press release in an attempt to debunk the myths surrounding software piracy on April Fools day is really, really lame. You’re like the guy who walks around at a party and suddenly blurts out: “Careful, people. The long term effects of alcohol range from possible health benefits for low levels of alcohol consumption to severe detrimental effects in cases of chronic alcohol abuse!” All that guy is going to get is heaps of blank stares and probably some offensive name-calling as soon as he turns his back. This is the digital equivalent of said behavior: “There is a sense of relief when a cruel joke is quickly followed by a wisecracking "April Fools!" But when consumers fall victim to software piracy, you can be sure a pirate won't relieve their misery with humor.” Blank. Stare. CrunchBase Information Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Ex-Bebo CEO Joanna Shields To Lead Facebook's International Assault | Top |
| Facebook has been famously thin in terms of it's international organisation. Visiting their London officies recently impressed upon me how few people they actually have in Europe. A few sales staff, a PR, receptionist etc. As far as I could tell, only the affable Christian Hernandez was doing anything in wider Europe, as Facebook's international biz dev guy. So it's not before time that it's expanding its global sales organisation. Joanna Shields has re-emerged after recently exiting from her role at AOL, as Faceboook's new VP of Sales and Business Development for EMEA. Joanna was previously CEO of Bebo and President of People Platforms at AOL. Joanna was also the person who got advertising agencies to buy into Bebo , thus triggering it's sale to AOL. We are talking one persuasive person here. | |
| Topeka? Come On Google, You Can Do Better | Top |
| Everyone agrees that April Fools is the best day ever . Especially if you’re a blogger because you can pretty much write anything at all and get away with it. Google wants to nuke China? Yep, you can write that . Want to accuse the next attorney general of California of assaulting you? Check . Etc. And Google takes April Fools very seriously . They launched Gmail on April 1, 2004, which is totally meta. And there are so many good Google jokes from April Fools past: Google Paper , Google TiSP , and Google Romance were all winners. One Google joke even erupted into a minor Wikipedia war over time travel. Google Topeka? Not so funny. They’ve changed their logo on the Google homepage to Topeka and give this link as an explanation. They’ve changed their corporate name, they say, to Topeka for the day. The problem is the whole joke is really just a way to promote Google’s experimental fiber network . 1,100 cities are begging to be part of the program and doing crazy things , like renaming their city name to Google, to get picked. We didn't reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka's municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains. Anyway, if you’re promoting your own stuff on April Fools you need to be extra funny. This isn’t extra funny. And what happened to Google Jail? As far as I can tell it remains unannounced. Maybe they got mad that Fast Company scooped them on their own joke. Or maybe someone at Google decided it was a bad idea to mock the horrific prison situation here in the U.S. We’re grading this one an “D-” on our list of 2010 April Fools jokes . I need Google to go back to basics and get April Fools right again. This is too important not to do it right. | |
CREATE MORE ALERTS:
Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted
Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope
Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more
News - Only the news you want, delivered!
Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more
Weather - Get today's weather conditions
| You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. |
No comments:
Post a Comment