Let’s face it, kids are barely kids anymore. When they aren’t being protected by their helicopter parents, they are inside with games or on the computer and living otherwise awful ‘safe’ lives.
When I was a kid, some of the greatest times were playing “War” with the kids in the neighbourhood up at the park in our backyard. My parents didn’t let me have guns like Nerf or even a water gun, but a Hockey stick made for a very effective shotgun or sniper rifle if we used some imagination. Imagination was incredible! Pinecones would result in giant grenade explosions, a chain link fence was always electrified and would kill you if you touched it, and sometimes in winter, the exposed ground became lava. There was so much chaos… we didn’t ever adhere to the Geneva Convention. Our wars were about destroying the other team.
So when I saw this music video I was instantly transported back to those days…. and with cartoons this is pretty accurate to how I envisioned things when these battles would occur.
But I know a bunch of people will complain about this music video… they’ll say it’s sick or twisted or something… shush you helicopter parents! This is the mind of a 7-12 year old boy, back then anyway…. I dunno if kids still go out and play? Too concerned about stranger danger I guess.
Enjoy! Is Tropical By The Greeks
As of about 15 minutes ago, Twitter tightened up their web interface. You might not see the changes… so here’s the comparison of the old and new looks. Thoughts? The biggest change that will need to be remedied is the lack of showing which lists you’re on.
Update: The main column has remained the same width, but the right column has been reduced in size by 25% (500 pixels to 375 in my case.)
Old
New
Old
New
You gotta love Groupon, the created a medium that allows you to save money on things that you do or eat or have done to you (down boy!). You can get your teeth whitened which typically cost like $400 bucks, but with a groupon it costs you a nickel! Want to take some yoga classes? Don’t you dare pay the $30 bucks that costs… instead hit up the ole groupon and it costs you a quarter of a penny! Ever tried cutting up a penny?! You’ll get so frustrated that you might as well pay the $30!
In all seriousness though, these Groupons are great… though with only one daily deal it gets stale so you need other offers… step in the competitors, which is good… but then there’s a billion of them and now your email inbox looks like this every god damned morning!
It’s enough already! I just mass delete this stuff now without really looking, which bugs me because I do like saving money. But come on, look at those Groupons… 71% off Salt Therapy. The hell is that?! 76% off Auto Detailing? Great, I don’t drive. 50% off a live blood cell microscopy… uhh that sounds fun. The worst groupon I got (I wish I’d saved it…) “Buy a house with Miss Real Estate Agent and when your house closes I’ll give you $1000!” Anyone who bought that one was a sucker, also candidate for worst group deal ever?
These things are too much! There needs to be a way to filter this stuff (because sometime these places have good deals that I’m interested in). I don’t want salt therapy or liposuction. I want things that interest me!
Step in Dazzle.me. Ahhh now this is a good idea! These guys pull together (I believe they are adding new sites all the time) all sorts of different groupons and allow you to filter based on what you’re interested in! As the boys in Epic Meal Time would say “Fucking Smart!”
These guys are creating a solution to the spam by bringing it altogether in one spot! That’s something useful which lets me unsubscribe from the companies spamming me with penis enlargement for 70% off and Viagra at a huge discount… Wait, no that’s spam… or is that Groupons? I have no idea at this point. They all look the same. Heh salt therapy… I want to get that just to complain the entire time. 
Dazzle.me are a Toronto startup and look to be launching in all sorts of markets. I like to support these Toronto companies… the better they do, the better we all do here in the tech scene. They are also doing their official launch party on June 2nd at that ING Cafe! I already reserved my spot! (I’m going to contact them and see if I can bring a few friends, if so, a comment below will reserve that spot if approved!)
Go sign up with Dazzle.me guys (Ahh and they interact on Twitter! Go follow them too! So great to see!). Unsubscribe to all these spam sites and get the deals that are relevant to you… all on one site! Sidenote: First deal site to offer ‘discount viagra’ wins major hilarity points from me! I’ll even buy it! I kinda wonder what it would be like… uhhh we’ll stop there.
*The ad on the right is paid for after this blog post was written.*
You gotta love Groupon, the created a medium that allows you to save money on things that you do or eat or have done to you (down boy!). You can get your teeth whitened which typically cost like $400 bucks, but with a groupon it costs you a nickel! Want to take some yoga classes? Don’t you dare pay the $30 bucks that costs… instead hit up the ole groupon and it costs you a quarter of a penny! Ever tried cutting up a penny?! You’ll get so frustrated that you might as well pay the $30!
In all seriousness though, these Groupons are great… though with only one daily deal it gets stale so you need other offers… step in the competitors, which is good… but then there’s a billion of them and now your email inbox looks like this every god damned morning!
It’s enough already! I just mass delete this stuff now without really looking, which bugs me because I do like saving money. But come on, look at those Groupons… 71% off Salt Therapy. The hell is that?! 76% off Auto Detailing? Great, I don’t drive. 50% off a live blood cell microscopy… uhh that sounds fun. The worst groupon I got (I wish I’d saved it…) “Buy a house with Miss Real Estate Agent and when your house closes I’ll give you $1000!” Anyone who bought that one was a sucker, also candidate for worst group deal ever?
These things are too much! There needs to be a way to filter this stuff (because sometime these places have good deals that I’m interested in). I don’t want salt therapy or liposuction. I want things that interest me!
Step in Dazzle.me. Ahhh now this is a good idea! These guys pull together (I believe they are adding new sites all the time) all sorts of different groupons and allow you to filter based on what you’re interested in! As the boys in Epic Meal Time would say “Fucking Smart!”
These guys are creating a solution to the spam by bringing it altogether in one spot! That’s something useful which lets me unsubscribe from the companies spamming me with penis enlargement for 70% off and Viagra at a huge discount… Wait, no that’s spam… or is that Groupons? I have no idea at this point. They all look the same. Heh salt therapy… I want to get that just to complain the entire time.
Dazzle.me are a Toronto startup and look to be launching in all sorts of markets. I like to support these Toronto companies… the better they do, the better we all do here in the tech scene. They are also doing their official launch party on June 2nd at that ING Cafe! I already reserved my spot! (I’m going to contact them and see if I can bring a few friends, if so, a comment below will reserve that spot if approved!)
Go sign up with Dazzle.me guys (Ahh and they interact on Twitter! Go follow them too! So great to see!). Unsubscribe to all these spam sites and get the deals that are relevant to you… all on one site! Sidenote: First deal site to offer ‘discount viagra’ wins major hilarity points from me! I’ll even buy it! I kinda wonder what it would be like… uhhh we’ll stop there.
*The ad on the right is paid for after this blog post was written.*
The reverse Rapture happened! Instead of people disappearing there’s now new ones… and this one has my name!
Today I was alerted to the fact that I’m not the only “Zach Bussey” in the world nor on Twitter. Now granted this other Zach Bussey is no where near as interesting as me with tweets like;
Who the hell gets that excited about a pizza?! I hate Zach Bussey, I mean me… or him. GAGHRHGAGARGFFGRRRRR!
The above is his second tweet ever. Who exactly should be eating the shit? The exams? The profs maybe? He should #eatshit!
You know, people deal with this all the time I’m sure. A lot of people have common names that they share with other people… but let’s analyze my name for a second? Zach… first off it’s with an H. If anything a Zack Bussey would be fine with me! But with an H?! Ugh. Then ignoring that, BUSSEY. No one has this name. There’s like 60 of them in the World!
See I’m concerned that when I’m rich and famous this guy is going to be bottom feeding on my good name! What are the rules on promoting namicide?
The ultimate name stealer experience is Howard Stern… remember all the controversy with Howard K. Stern and how he was accused of killing Anna Nicole Smith? I don’t have time to deal with you killing Anna Nicole Smith Zach Bussey (1). So don’t do it!
Though, I bet this guy can’t fly in the States… pretty sure some of my tweets have put me on the No Fly List. Haha. Sorry dude. You’re on your own with that one. Change your name!
I can hope he drives right into the Ocean right?
Ever have any problems with someone who had the same name as you? If so, what happened and how do you deal with it?
Tomorrow is the Rapture according to like 3 people and everyone’s just kinda gone along with it. I can’t wait for 2012 when that’s what the entire year will be. (By the way folks, there’s such a thing as a self fulfilling prophecy).
But I figured what better opportunity to watch some end of the world movies to get you right into the spirit! Oh, and quick funny story… when I was searching for images for this post, I found a lot of similar images to the “Rapture” as shown above… doesn’t it look suspiciously like the image from Skyline? Maybe Jesus is an alien wanting to drink our blood? Haha. Had to add SOME controversy to this right?
These are the 10 movies I’m contemplating watching this weekend!
28 Days Later, does it get more ‘real’ than seeing the streets of London completely empty? Waking up to a silent world has to be the closest thing to a post-raptured world if we didn’t have Twitter to inform us of what’s going on.
The Core, Birds start going nuts, major storms… all because the Earths core stops it’s rotation. Birds dropping from the skies, magnetic pole shift, major storms? Where have we heard this before….
Miracle Mile, You pickup an accidental phone call, who’s caller tells you there’s 70 minutes until nuclear missiles hit… you know before everyone else… But not for long. How will you react tomorrow at 6PM if the Rapture happens?
2012, When everything that could go wrong does… The Rapture and the buzz around it will pale in comparison to what the buzz will be for all of next year!
I Am Legend, Ugh, if Jesus Raptures everyone tomorrow except for me… I’m going to be slightly pissed. But slightly happier that I don’t need to deal with rabid zombie humans.
Knowing, Should we consider ourselves in the know? The Rapture is a religious event and all, so I kinda consider this one of the better religious ‘event’ movies. Is there a better ending?
Ever Since the World Ended, Documentary style and the first movie post apocalypse. An interesting take… though, I imagine the first movie post Rapture will be pretty good… I think it’s The Hangover Part 2.
The Day After, there is no Tomorrow in this one. Well, there kinda is actually… how would we survive a nuclear strike? Pre-Twitter? Not great. With Twitter? Probably worse heh.
Escape From LA, If the Rapture happens tomorrow, I’m planning on taking on Snake Plissken’s attitude. So world watch out, because Zach Bussey will not be taking any shit lol.
The Road, It doesn’t get much more grim and realistic than this… with a lot of the disaster footage taken from the Aftermath of Katrina. The book is better (I may have shed a tear), but this is pretty real. A world I don’t want to live in.
An interesting thing happens when you do something “controversial” like compiling a list of the top 150 influencers… you get a lot of different characters that suddenly have a unique voice and they aren’t afraid to voice it. It’s also a great source of personal joy when something I spend time on creates that kind of reaction. Besides the fact that it trended Toronto and Canada wide, it revitalized a discussion that made me think.
“Do social media scoring sites, like Klout, matter?”
After reading all the various tweets and blog posts that were spawned from the list, and some personal debate I now have an answer for you.
Yes, social media scoring matters.
Uh oh, I sense a new slew of comments complaining about this fact. But the reality is, despite many of us (myself included) who have said in the past that the scores Klout provide aren’t really that important, are wrong. They do matter, and while they may not be perfect at the moment (the whole “what are they really scoring anyway” argument), they can only improve.
In this new and ever evolving realm of “Social Media” where anyone with a thousand followers and enough tweets to rewrite the Bible can be considered someone who ‘gets it’, a way to actually determine who is doing things ‘right’ in terms of what happens on Twitter is a logical step.
People who are, or want to be involved in the social media industry – whether that’s community management, social media marketing, social media recruiting or all the other recently created job (I’ll avoid Social Media Ninjas or Pirates…), have to be vetted to ensure they aren’t just walking and talking the walk and talk. Social media is an industry where it’s easy to pretend to know what you’re doing. “99.5% of social media experts are clowns.“
But hold up, there’s no right or wrong on Twitter is what everyone says. As long as you’re tweeting and interacting, you’re doing it right! Well, this seems to be some misinformation passed along as truth by people who’ve capitalized on buzz words. But this is a topic for another blog post…
Klout is the first serious tool to put a value to what you’re doing online. A way in which we can begin to filter some of these people out. It’s a logical step in a young industry, a classification system which can remove some of the guess work. We have education which makes us eligible or disqualifies us from different industries; an accountant isn’t qualified to be an engineer. But we don’t have the same qualifications in social media. Someone on Twitter, isn’t inherently qualified to be paid to be responsible for a Twitter account. They can learn and become qualified over time, but they have to put in the work required and have successes to be able to take it to the next level with ideas on how that’s going to be profitable for the company.
Think of Klout as a early form of a credit score. Credit scores are based on what you do with credit. Do you pay your credit back? If so, your score goes up, if you don’t, it drops. With Klout, you interact online, people interact with you, retweets occur, following etc., and after all those different calculations it spits out a score on how you’re doing.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But, it’s a start.
“But what are they really scoring anyway? It’s a bunch phantom algorithms we don’t even know!” Let’s go back to credit scores. What’s the algorithm to your credit score? Hmm, guess I got you (and me) on that one. I have no idea how it works exactly. If I don’t pay back $10 compared to $12 on time, what’s the credit score effect? I know the different components it uses such as credit, payment history etc., but the actual algorithm, I have no idea… yet we don’t question it. We accept it because it is what it is.
And it’s damn good that we accept not knowing! If we knew the different ways in which a credit score was calculated, we could game it. If you know that 19.5% interest rate credit cards with $5000 credit limits generates a higher credit score than 12.0% and a $20,000 credit limit, it would alter your decision to increase your score. In doing so, we would render the credit scoring system inaccurate and invalid.
The same applies to Klout. If Klout announced the exact metrics on how they calculate scores people will game the system to positively influence their rating. It’s a natural reaction. If you want to be good at something, you want to be good at something!
Now there is a BUT.
Klout doesn’t matter if it’s not your industry. If you’re someone who just uses Twitter casually and your day job is to code software, or you’re a mechanic, or you work for a grocery store – then your Klout score is something for fun. It massages your ego. It’s not something of value to what you do though. So being on a list of influencers isn’t something you should be striving for.
I think with this in mind we can classify people who complained about the list. There are people on the Top 150 list who laughed at it, and were annoyed that it was compiled. He won’t mind me calling him out, by @tylerconium is a huge detractor of Klout, yet he’s a major influencer on Twitter in Toronto. Social media isn’t his industry. He’s not looking to be a community manager, so to him his score isn’t important.
Meanwhile, some people who are working in social media and were not listed were mad or upset because it directly affects them. Some of these people are paid great salaries with the belief they know what they are doing, that they get what’s going on and that they know how to convert a Twitter follower into a sale (or keep a follower as a buyer). The assumption on which they were hired is that they aren’t just making it up as they go. Naturally, when not included on a list of ‘influencers’, it feels like a shot across the bow.** The natural reaction is to play defense and dismiss the list or disagree with Klout. Their redemption is if the company they tweet for has a solid Klout score. If not, I’d be careful.
Klout matters to the people in the social media industry. As these grading systems improve and become more accurate, you can bet that the people doing the hiring will include them as part of the hiring process. In a young industry, anyone can get into it very quickly without much thought… it’s called a bubble. Eventually the bubble pops and only the true characters emerge from the ashes.
Klout is just the first to put a pin nearby.
**This wasn’t the intent when I created the list.
I’ve seen crazy stuff like this go down on the TTC before… It always seems worse in New York, but this is one of the reasons I hate the Subway. Clearly the guy has some mental issues…
The best part of the video isn’t even the guy licking his shoe… it’s the guy beside him, that’s the best reaction ever! He’s just pretending nothing is going on haha. If you get a seat on the subway, you accept any kind of insanity going on beside you.
THE LIST HAS BEEN UPDATED – I have people ask me all the time (literally daily) who has “Klout” in Toronto. I usually first let them know Klout is not *THE* indicator of influence. Then after they ask again, “Who are Toronto’s Top People on Twitter?” “Who has good Klout?” I say I don’t know.
But considering so many people want it… I’ll take the time to do it because that’s a small token of how much I care about you people. I’m trying to be impartial and include everyone, even if I dislike them… Lol.
So I have scoured Toronto’s Twitterers to create a list of the top 150 people according to Klout! The list consists of people only. No brands, no companies and no celebrities. Once we hit 150, and you have a higher score than one of these people, the bottom person will get knocked off (after a double check on their score).
Disagree with the list? Take it up with Klout I guess lol. **The list is now closed to updates until next month! The only way I’ll add new people to it is if someone personally requests to be removed. So this is the FINAL Top 150 in Toronto for this month!**
It’s obviously been a hectic month for me with Canada’s Sexiest Election Candidate and, of course, the Doritos thing. So when I got an email saying “Hey, we think you deserve a Carlsberg,” I immediately replied, “Yeah I do!” I’m a huge fan of football, the real kind of football where your feet are actually touching the ball, so Carlsberg is always my beer of choice when watching a game!
As soon as the name Carlsberg was mentioned though, I was flooded with memories from college. As most people know, I’m not the biggest drinker anymore. In fact, I’ll typically have a beer or two (or three if Carlsberg is available. BE MORE AVAILABLE DAMNIT!!) and that’s it. Most people just think I’m a shitty drinker and can’t handle my liquor. Well, that’s probably true now seeing as a couple drinks gets me buzzed… but it wasn’t always the case.
First year college I was pretty into it… my first time purchasing beer for this house party I was going to, was a disaster. Now if you’ve seen any pictures of me from 1st year, I look like I’m about 16. Hell, look at me now and people believe I’m 18-20 by looks alone (I guess it’s a benefit for later in life when I want to score that 20 year old trophy girlfriend! See above.). This was the first time I’d gone to The Beer Store to purchase alcohol for myself as I’d just turned 19. So I’d decided on getting Carlsberg.
The guy asks what I want, and I said “Lakeport”. FUCK, what the hell did I just ask for?! He asks what kind, I reply “Umm, just the regular kind.” He shakes his head, I guess there’s other types of Lakeport (haven’t drank it since for good reason, coming up) and brings me a case of Lakeport. I pay in total panic, just wanting to get out of the store. I get back to my friends car and I get goofed on for getting Lakeport. (After searching for pictures, this was what it was! Lakeport Honey Lager. Blah.) Nerves damnit… nerves.
So, we head to this house party and I down a few Lakeport. Then a couple more. And then a few more for good measure. Completely hammered and thinking I’m Mr. Sexy now I start talking to people I don’t know… and I end up hitting on some girl… well, not so much ‘hitting on’ as offering her money to fool around. She’s obviously offended and proceeds to take the two bottles of Lakeport I’m holding and pouring them all over me.
I haven’t had Lakeport since then and am insistant that had I been drinking Carlsberg, none of the bad stuff would have ever happened… hell maybe that girl would have ended up my wife and we could have had kids by now! Heh… Lakeport wouldn’t be looking too bad then if that were the case!
Anyway, the reason I tell you all this is because Carlsberg just launched this really great Facebook app. It pulls information from your Facebook profile to create a video about you. It’s actually pretty fun and very clever! In terms of marketing, it’s probably one of the more clever promotions I’ve seen run through Facebook.
But hey, don’t take my word for it… no, actually take my word for it… and then go see it for yourself and report back to let me know what you think. There’s some prizes too! Prizes never suck right? Haha.
http://apps.facebook.com/ideserveone
Maybe Carlsberg will see this and be willing to hook up some people in the comments with something? You never know! But for safe measure, why do you deserve a Carlsberg?