gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

Adage: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.

I wonder how many years workers waste on reading Adage?

A blog-based treasure hunt? Isn't that just one of the "crazy stunts designed to generate word of mouth"? ;-)

Anyway, congrats on the new gig!

It's Step One in a much larger plan, Adrian ;-)

Already posted about it on our blog. We'll definitely do our part to spread the word as this is VERY exciting stuff! Congrats Hugh, and why do I have the feeling you've got much bigger stuff coming up?

Hugh, thought you might find this interesting...
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/24/1322252&from=rss

You've probably heard of "splogs" before; this is my first time. Apparently the new watchword in spam is "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em ...and break 'em." Bottom-rung advertisers trying desperately to game the system, or maybe just to prove that there's no system they can't corrupt.

I might be missing something, but is this blog/competition of any interest to those outside the USA? Indeed, is it of any remote interest to those unwilling to travel too far?

The prize is quite small (£10k doesn't go far in travel these days, especially when you know you probably won't win it but you'll still have to ante up a lot for hotel bills etc) it seems a bit pointless to me.

But then, I'm not in the USA. A shame. As a blogger (and the top one in my tiny niche) I was beginning to feel part of one world community. Now I'm not so sure.

I'm unsubscribing from the blogs that take this too seriously.

Why people are taking this seriously is because its a revoluntary way to advertise and market a company's product/service. If you think people are talking about this because of prizes being hid in 16 US cities, then you are totally missing the point, IMO. Others can likely make this point better than I, but I feel that the excitement about this campaign revolves around the fact that this is something that's never been done before. For the first time, a campaign is launched on blogs, and supported by blogs. Since there won't be any 'traditional' media exposure, it's completely up to the viral tendencies of blogs and bloggers as to whether or not this campaign will work, or bust.

It could easily do either. Either way, there are going to be a TON of people paying VERY close attention to how well this campaign
goes.

Personally I think it's exciting as hell, but that may just be me.

I love Hugh and all his ideas. tip: Fix the typo on the west video clue, Journey not jorney.

To be sure, the idea has a degree of merit. For the most part I agree with Mr. Collier's assessment. The success of this compaign doesn't ride on the noteworthiness of the idea, but on the inevitable trajectory of the blogging phenomenon. However, there is something to be said for being first to capitalize on an opportunity, so I don't begrudge them their fun. In fact, I am pleased to see bloggers experimenting with variable profit models.

Hahhaha, back-to-back contradictory posts. One says 'word of mouth' or 'attention getting' is wrong and not how you market. And then the VERY NEXT post is praising a whole bloggy-word-of-mouth campaign. Irony abounds. :)

And your 'disruptive' post, shows such a lack of basic economics that I am at a sheer loss as to where to even begin. Starbucks is about the SOCIAL, not the Wifi (as just a few miles outside of the Bay Area you hardly see any notebooks or giddy gadgets). Ford's revolution was the assembly-line, which enabled massive consumer production (not a disrupter, rather an enabler). And Harley disrupted nothing, they are all about image, the originals. And you got the timeline wrong, the first bike Harley made was in 1903, with the company being incorporated in 1907. Jap bikes didn't really become a force until post WW2. And Jap bikes certainly aren't cheap, they just have a differing focus, streamlined, smooth and fast, high-tech which can be EXPENSIVE tech. Harley is All-American 1950s Diner feel-good Power Rock muscle. iPod didn't disrupt paying for downloads, people have been paying for many downloaded things for years, iPod just made it cheap and easy and beat back the Industry naysayers. And the Boca guys from IBM actually themselves did more to "disrupt" the mainframe than Apple. But with Big Iron as strong as ever the key phrase is not 'displace' rather 'in addition to'. And Linux didn't disrupt the freeware idea, it made it more popular perhaps, but then look -- the leading Linux versions, if used in Enterprise spaces still cost, of course, up front is cheaper. But it's a grand gloss-over to assume Linux is 'free', as costs can be measured in many ways.

(PS - Lately this blog has entered the Rubel-Scoble-Searls [RSS] tech-utopia new-agey buzzworded twilight zone. Take two and call me in the morning). ;)

"Lately this blog has entered the Rubel-Scoble-Searls [RSS] tech-utopia new-agey buzzworded twilight zone."

Lately? I'd say I've been there for a while. Take two and call me in the morning ;-)

Can you get the IT guys running the Budget thing to start paying attention to their email? Their registration is still broken for people with apostrophes in their names. I even sent a suggested fix with my reply to their "it's fixed" message, which was wrong. I would very much like to enter--I have a sneaking suspicion that a city very near to me may appear at some point during this promotion.

Nice cartoons, though.

Wow, the company that employs staff that are willing to bad-mouth customers on their own blogs now runs a blog and hires blog types to give themselves a better image.

http://foo.ca/wp/2005/07/26/budget-post-the-third/

Maybe they've learned not to call people morons when they call in or comment on the blog...