Google Airs Super Bowl Ad, Making Rare TV Appearance
Google Inc., the world’s most popular search engine, aired a minute-long commercial during the Super Bowl, marking a rare use of TV advertising for the company. The ad demonstrated features of the company’s search engine, including its translation functions. The commercial, called “Parisian Love,” showed an Internet user relying on Google to court someone in France.
And Google responds...
If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called "Parisian Love". In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.
If you like it too, we hope you'll watch the others. Enjoy.
FBI's Most Wanted: Your Browsing Activity
FBI Director Robert Mueller wants ISPs to track “origin and destination information” about their customers’ browsing habits and store them for authorities’ use for two years, according to a CNET report. That would mean monitoring the IP addresses, domains and exact websites users visit, and then storing that information for months. If officials who support this measure get their way, federal, state and local law enforcement would be able to access the information via search warrant or subpoena.
A year ago we launched the ReadWriteWeb Guide on Community Management with the knowledge that "Community Manager" would become an increasingly popular job title. Since then, the requirements of keeping your customers engaged have become more demanding. According to one report, contests are becoming increasingly popular. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Strutta CEO Ben Pickering, to find out what businesses can do to generate more participation from their contests.
Reinventing John McCain...Dot Com
The Phoenix-based marketing firm Forty has posted a walk-through of just went into the revamping of John McCain's website for his upcoming Senate race. Here's the new site, and here's what the old one looked like. For the design and process geeks among us, these insights into how projects go from conception stage to implementation out in the actual world are like candy. Or bacon, depending on where your tastes lay. More please.
