Halleluia!

I wrote a post on this very blog (well, it had a different design at the time, and maybe a different name, but it had the same URL anyhow) nearly THREE YEARS AGO, laying out a case for why McDonald’s needed to get rid of its $2.95 wi-fi fee.  And, it appears the reason they switched is the exact reason I laid out in my post.  Here’s what Mashable says:

…McDonalds is hoping to become a hang-out spot of the coffee shop variety — it also plans to start selling frappes and smoothies mid-2010. And given the fact that coffee chains like Starbucks charge customers to surf while they sip, the idea doesn’t seem all that pie-in-the-sky.

…and here’s what I said in my post, On Wi-Fi Hotspots and McDonald’s, on February 10, 2007:

Free web access [...] would open McDonald’s to an entirely different set of customers. If you walk into a Panera Bread Company store in the middle of the day, you’ll see that it’s crawling with business people who are eating and getting a little work done. McDonald’s could combine cheaper food with free Internet, and draw a bunch of those businesspeople in. Parents could even get some work done while their kids catch syphilis from those hamster tube play areas.

It’s nice when a big company reacts to a reasoned argument from a PR guy like me ;)

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Twitter.  I’m not going to stop using it.  It’s not THAT bad.  However, my frustration level is definitely rising.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is auto-direct messages from people who are thanking me for following them and at the same time trying to promote their website.  That’s a gripe for a different day.

The reason for the frustration I’m talking about in this post is the number of people who seem to think there are shortcuts to using Twitter.  These are the people who blindly follow thousands of people, or pay one of these “get thousands of followers in just a few days” services to do it for them.

These people just don’t get it, and it seems like there are more of them than ever.

They don’t get that I can choose not to follow someone who obviously isn’t following me for my content or conversation.  It’s obvious that someone who is pushing alternative medicine from India (for example) and has five Twitter updates and 5,000 followers doesn’t really care who I am or what I’m posting.  I generally post on Twitter about PR, social media, and occasionally sports or some random stuff about my life.  This alternative medicine salesman in India is just using me in a numbers game, and I’m not participating in the game.

They don’t get that having 100 Twitter followers who actually read your Tweets is MUCH more valuable than 1,000 who are completely ignoring you.

I’m taking a pledge:

I do not auto-follow. I will not sign up for opt-in Twitter advertising. If you follow me, I will follow you back if your Tweets are relevant to me, you are posting interesting links, you seem like an interesting person, or you are local to me.

Who’s with me???

Allow me to give you a little background, in case you’ve never been to this theme park. There are two versions of Busch Gardens.  One is in Tampa and is a theme park based around Africa.  The other is in Williamsburg, and is based around Europe.  In Williamsburg, the park is broken into a handful of pieces — England, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Germany, and France.  Each “country” has its own architecture and feel, with attractions that are based on things that might be found there.  I can’t speak for Busch Gardens Tampa (never been there), but I think Busch Gardens Williamsburg has done a very, very good job keeping “on message” with the Europe theme.  It’s also generally regarded as one of the most beautiful theme parks in the world.

Given all of this, imagine my surprise when I find that Busch Gardens Williamsburg has added a new section between Italy and England called Sesame Street Forest of Fun.

I’m a huge fan of Sesame Street, mind you.  The show started right after I was born, so I grew up with Grover, Big Bird, Ernie and Bert.  My kids love the show too, even if my nearly seven-year-old daughter tells us she’s too old for it.  The issue is that no one told me the show was based in Europe!

Wait.  It’s not based in Europe?  Well then, that’s a problem.

Whether this was a decision by the park’s new owners, or this was something that was in the works before they took over, we’re seeing a watering down of a brand.  BG had a clear message that “when you come to this park, you’re visiting Europe”.  There wasn’t a ride in the park that didn’t, at least in its name, follow that message.  Until now.

BG did make an *attempt* to fit the furry monsters and the giant bird into the theme, but it’s an impossible task.  Nothing short of giving the well known trashcan-loving monster the new name of Oscar Von Grouch would fix the mistake.  It’s like Kentucky Fried Chicken suddenly selling hamburgers.  It just doesn’t fit.

When you’re thinking about your own business and considering a change … please think about this example.  Busch Gardens surely will make some money from the Sesame Street characters, but they’ll pay the price by losing their hard earned identity.

Bonus Content
Here are a few funny comments posted on Facebook when I mentioned in my status update that I was confused about Sesame Street moving to Europe:

• Did you see Oscar Le’Grouch and Big Van Der Bird? [Editor's note: Yes, I stole this joke.]
• Did Big Bird speak French?
• Did Big Bird drink any Busch Beer, he might have been speaking French after a 6 pack!!!
• Big Bird is from France. It’s true. Always thought Oscar was British.

Do I need to chill out and lighten up?  Feel free to say so in comments!

As you might know, I recently redesigned the EndGame Public Relations website, moving it from being html-based to php-based and using WordPress as its content management system (CMS).  The site was ranking extremely well for the keywords I targeted, falling in the top five on Google and Yahoo for all of them.  Shortly after the redesign, however, I found that every time Google re-indexed my site, a few more of my pages would disappear from the rankings for my keywords.  I figured they would return shortly and made a few moves to speed up the process.

After two weeks of wondering when my site would return to the rankings, I finally figured out the problem.  WordPress was blocking Google and other search engines from actually SEEING my site!  By default, WordPress is set to full privacy mode.  What this means is that your website will be accessible on the web, but Google and other search engines will be blocked by a file called robots.txt.  This “robots” file tells the search engine spiders which pages they should and should not crawl.  It can be useful at times, but in my case it was a massive SEO roadblock in my website redesign plans.

So, if you build a new site using WordPress, or you convert a site like I did, when you’re done go into your WordPress panel, go to settings, select privacy settings, and make sure it’s set so that everyone can see you … including the search engines.  WordPress will then automatically remove the roadblocks from your robots.txt file.

FYI, if you read this and realize you made the same mistake I did, here’s what you can do: First, download a WordPress plugin called Google Sitemaps Generator.  It generates a sitemap in Google’s preferred format, and then notifies the search engines that the sitemap has been updated.  Once you’ve done that, go to Google Webmaster Tools and make sure Google knows your sitemap is there.  Those webmaster tools are quite helpful, letting you know when your site was last crawled and if there were any troubles.  In fact, my check over there was what finally led me to figure out why my rankings were in the toilet!

[Edited to add on 8/25: My rankings are starting to creep back to where they were! Huzzah!]

I did see that the gas at the station near my house cost $2.54 per gallon when they shot their photos.

I watched the TV with a look of horror on my face on two different days this week. The first time was on Monday while watching news coverage of the mass murder at a school my brother and a number of friends and business associates attended. The second time was tonight while watching NBC Nightly News. NBC made a monumental error in news judgement tonight when they aired video and images sent to them by Cho Seung-Hui.

Here’s the background in case you haven’t heard: In between his shooting sprees on Monday at Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui went to the post office and mailed a package via overnight express to NBC. It contained multiple images, videos, writings, and even an audio recording. The pictures showed Seung-Hui posing with guns, knives, and even a hammer. The videos contained, from all appearances, the incoherent ramblings of a young man who was disturbed almost if not completely beyond repair.

NBC received the package today because it didn’t have the proper zip code or street name on it (The New York City postmen don’t know where NBC is? Really? C’mon…) NBC’s Brian Williams said during the newscast tonight that when they received the package, they immediately contacted the authorities and turned its contents over. What’s more accurate is that they contacted the authorities, made copies of everything, turned over the originals, and then aired the copies on national television.

Not only did they air the tapes and lead their newscast with them … they went back to show more at the end of the newscast after teasing the story during the whole show.

When I was a radio reporter and news director, there were rules that guided my actions when it came to situations like this. They were relatively common in the news business. They were, in no particular order:

• Do not air stories about suicides unless they involved someone well known in the community.
• Do not air stories about bridge jumpers or people threatening to jump off of bridges.
• Do not air the demands or diatribes of hostage takers or murderers.

There are probably others, but you get the idea. These rules were made for good reasons: To try to avoid wackjobs using the media as a way to become famous, and to try to avoid encouraging copycats.

It’s the second portion of that rule that is in play with NBC’s decision to air what’s being called The Seung-Hui Manifesto. The man was obviously incredibly sick. Sadly, there are a lot of sick people in this world. If only one of them saw that newscast tonight and thought, “If I kill enough people they’ll air my message,” what will happen next? Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. I hope I am, in fact.

Apparently I’m not the only person who feels this way Check out this blog entry from John Walters at NBCSports.com. It was written before Nightly News aired, and it doesn’t mention his employer by name, but it states in surprisingly strong language the same concerns I’m expressing here. Here’s an excerpt:

All of which is to remind the producers at these news networks that every extra minute you devote to the murderer from this point on–as opposed to the 32 victims, most of whom we’ve not even seen a photo of thus far– makes you complicit the next time this happens. All you’re doing is assuring the next fanatic that he’ll receive far more than just 15 minutes of fame.

Fact is, NBC had an incredible exclusive. A chance to scoop everyone in the world on the biggest story of the year thus far fell right in their laps. Instead of doing the right thing, such as discussing the tapes and package on air but not actually showing any of it, they jumped at the chance to turn into something akin to Inside Edition in order to gain additional ratings points.

At this point, you might be rolling your eyes and muttering, “Well you watched it, didn’t you?” True. I’m also not a psychopath. I’m not the kind of misguided person that might be given ideas by the indescribable lapse of judgement by NBC. Really, with 99.99999999% of the people in the audience, airing the tapes doesn’t concern me. However, it’s the .000000001% that may have delusions of grandeur dancing in their heads that I’m worried about.

Shame on you, NBC. I knew better as a 27-year-old news director at an all news radio station in Richmond, Virginia. Why don’t you?

Since I don’t get it, I’ll post a few thoughts from people who apparently do:

Ian Curry from frogblog says…

Twitter is perhaps the best example of a new kind of blog that some are calling a “tumblelog.” The tumblelog is a bit like the old link lists: quick one or two-line entries – sometimes just a picture. Twitter in specific allows you to post, through a variety of means (IM, phone, web), short messages meant to describe what you are doing at any given moment. By establishing contacts on the site, you can also get a collected list of what all of your friends are posting.

The blog Library clips says…

Twitter is really increasing in popularity, and people are starting to add so many friends that their phone is a full-time vibrator.

Basically Twitter is social network micro-blogging, and best of all is its accessibility, you can keep in touch in different ways.

That’s a couple. I’m sure there are more. To me, Twitter just seems like the Web 2.0 version of a vanity license plate.

Edited to add on Dec. 13, 2008: Soooo … I‘ve been heavily into Twitter for a while and just realized I should probably do something about this post. I thought about deleting it but decided instead to add this note.  I admit it … I was wrong about Twitter.  It was a combination of not realizing Twitter’s usefulness and simply trying to be funny.  It take a big man to admit his mistakes, and I’m 6’3” and about 220.

1. People like me don’t like to pay $3 to do a quick email check. I’m sure if you look at research, you’ll find that’s what free wireless web access like what’s offered at Panera is used for.
2. If you’re going to make me pay, at least let me use what I’ve paid for. Who the heck spends TWO HOURS at McDonald’s? They need to change the system so that you can use it over a matter of weeks or whenever.
3. Free web access, or at least a system like I described above, would open McDonald’s to an entirely different set of customers. If you walk into a Panera Bread Company store in the middle of the day, you’ll see that it’s crawling with business people who are eating and getting a little work done. McDonald’s could combine cheaper food with free Internet, and draw a bunch of those businesspeople in. Parents could even get some work done while their kids catch syphilis from those hamster tube play areas.

Now, I know someone out there is screaming that I need a Blackberry or something like it. Sorry … I hate monthly fees! Besides, I’m not whining about finding hotspots. I simply don’t understand the McDonald’s WiFi plan. Fire away if you do.