Emma Brooks | Digital Media Enthusiast

My friend noticed a neat little Facebook feature as he was playing around with FB today. Apparently, if you want to deactivate your account, Facebook tries to really lay on the guilt trip! See screen grab below:

Not only does it grab some of your friends into this handy little app – it grabs photos of you tagged with your friends! And! From what I can tell, it grabs friends that have recently written on your wall in a somewhat recent past. Whoeever thoughts this up is good.

I was trying to think of why I hadn’t heard of this application before when I realized, duh, all my friends are Facebook Freaks and we would rather die a thousand times over rathe than deactivate our account. So that’s that.

Anyway, the point of this blog post was that I wanted to point out some good strategic thinking on Facebook’s part. I’d really love to know if the deactivation rate decreased after implementing this. I’m sure it must have.

So tell me, bloggy bears, would this deter you from deleting your account? Or would it not make a different at all? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

My lovely roommate wrote a great blog post today lamenting her dear, dear, bike seat that was stolen this dreary morning. I have to say, she certainly has a way with words! And so, I’d like to share with you some of this post:

Dear Asshat,

This is the fourth time within the span of a year you have felt the need to fuck shit up.

Please cease and desist.

Last winter, you felt the need to remove my bike entirely. It was a shitty bike. You could not see the blue for all the rust. It was at least ten years old, but looked significantly older, and not in a cool vintage way. The gears didn’t work. The breaks didn’t work. The seat was most uncomfortable. It was the Courtney Love of bikes. The lock you broke to steal my bike was worth more than my bike. It did, however, have a an exquisite hippo bell.

Please read the rest here and leave a comment or two if you appreciate it. I know she would. :)

I made an ad. Yeah, I know. I am allowing each and every one of you a sneak peek into the genius that is me. My artistic ability, coupled with my intense and brilliant advertising strategies will soon make me a household name in the advertising world.

So I want to warn you.

What you are about to see? May change the way you look at the world. It may shake you to your little advertising core. It may cause simultaneous weeping, laughing and jaw-dropping.

I am warning you because I care. About you. About this industry. About being upfront and honest. About being the best I can be. About only showcasing what matters, what really matters, to this world.

I can’t be any more – or any less – than that.

So, please, sit back and be prepared to change your life. Because of me. Because of how awesome and super-cool I am. Because I… am Emma Brooks: Digital Media Enthusiast.

Okay, so maybe I just haven’t updated in a while and I’m exhausted. And when I’m exhausted I think I’m funny. But really, you gotta admire the mad Paint skillz I possess. No, sir, as I told you before: I am not for hire. $10,000/hour? No sir, the world is not ready for my skillz. Not yet. Call me in 2 years. We’ll talk.

Someone on my Twitter feed today posted about Twist, a site that lets you see stats for trending topics on Twitter.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Twist, or any other sites like it but I was just amused to see “Harry Potter” as a top trending topic.

Not surprised, mind you, just amused. After all, I went to the midnight screening last night (hello, geek alert) complete with Harry Potter-inspired scar on my forehead with my friends:

Like many of my friends, offline and online, we Tweeted about the film before and after the movie. Which is why this graph of the trending topic “Harry Potter” made me chuckle to myself:

You can tell exactly who was Tweeting about this trending topic, as it took a sharp downturn for the 3 hours the movie was playing in most eastern cities at midnight. Then back up again, as we raced to share our favourite moments, lines, scenes and characters.

Back in the day, before Twitter came along, I’m sure Yahoo! Groups, or MSN or even sites like FanFiction.Net would have seen a similar spike around movie premiere times. But thanks to Twitter, we now have an easier, highly addicting ADD way of talking about what we liked:

and what we didn’t:

Good times. I just wish I was running on a little more than 3.5 hours of sleep today!

If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

So today is the last day of The Great Write-Off of 2009! I think it’s safe to say that if there was a “winner” for this challenge, it’s me. Dan kind of dropped off the face of the earth for a little while and hasn’t recovered since. Sorry you suck, Dan. :(

Nah, in all fairness, I think Dan has a lot less free time than I. Still, I’m a busy girl and I’m proud I did my absolute hardest to post every second day, on-time. It’s been fun and hopefully I’ll keep writing here.

One of the reasons I came up with this idea for a blog off was that I knew I needed to populate my website with more content and I also needed a promotion of some kind. I needed new eyeballs. Coming up with a challenge was the solution to forcing myself to create content but approaching Dan and baiting him into a blog off was my solution to getting new visitors to my site and hopefully new readers.

I’d say it worked, wouldn’t you?

In case you can’t see that very well (silly narrow content window!), traffic is up 532% over same time period last month (though it should be higher because, as you can see at the beginning of my month, I changed the layout and as a result my GA code got dropped). I have an increase of 524% in pageviews, and average time on site rose 28%.

Who doesn’t love statistics like that?

As you can see, my biggest spike in traffic was as a result of my interview with Zephyr of CollegeFashion.net. She posted a link to the review on her Twitter account, which has 3,950 followers, so of course some of them wandered their way over here.

I think my favourite post however, was the one about moving to a new city and trying to start over. It’s definitely a subject that is close to my heart (having done it in Toronto and then Sydney, Australia) so I feel I can talk to it with some conviction. Plus I do love Eric’s photo – it’s definitely one of my favourites of all of his.

In any case, it’s been fun and I’m surprised I’ve had enough to talk about, really. Some posts fell flat but some were well recieved and on the whole, I think I came out with some quality content!

Thanks for playing along, folks. It’s been grand!

If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

We’re almost at the end of The Great Write Off of 2009! Tomorrow is the official end date and I’ll be posting then as well. Until now, onto today’s topic: Unsolicited Spam.

Was I ever angry when I logged into my gmail account today to see an unsolicited e-mail from a real estate agent. I rarely hand out my gmail e-mail as a preventative so I am angry and sad that I’ve been blasted. My question is really, “How did she get it?” I wish I could know.

The e-mail in question:

Ha! She left her Twitter account at the bottom – GREAT! I quickly Tweeted at her with this:

Well, I can’t undo the fact that she has my email address now but damn, if I don’t feel better about yelling at her. And who knows, maybe she’ll respond to me and I can figure out how she got it. One can dream…

If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

So I was looking up lyrics today and came across some great Scientology ads on a song lyrics website, Sing365. Just thought I’d capture these for my lovely readers and share them with you! Really not sure why a song lyrics website is the best place to capture potential Scientologists: anyone have any ideas? What’s the demographic of these sites?

In order to answer my own question, I turned to the internets to find out. And according to Google Ad Planner, 60% of the visitors are female, 41% don’t have a high school diploma, 37% are 0-17 years in age and 67% make between $25,000 – $75,000 a year. So basically they’re targeting young, rich kids? Sounds about right. Way to go Scientology!

And here are the great ads for you!

Square Banner Ads

Vertical Banner Ads

How great are these? “Love! Hate! What is the answer?”

Hmm. Tough one. I’ll let you guys decide! Feel free to comment with your ideas on what the answer should be? Love? Or hate?

If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

So unfortunately, I think this contest is faltering in its last few days. Dan hadn’t posted on his day for almost a week I believe, so I was unable to discuss his post. He did recently add something to his blog but I’m not sure if it’s any longer part of the competition. And then the worst thing happened: I didn’t post yesterday! I was so close to the end for perfect record but life got in the way yesterday.

In any case, I thought I would use this time to promote my friend Bill, and his band, Bill Kidney and Complete Control. I’ve known Bill for years now and ever since I’ve met him, he’s been working his ass off to get this band some exposure and fame. He has written many of their songs and spends countless nights performing. I sadly haven’t seen his band play since I moved away in the Summer of 2007 but I want to wish him all the best in his journey. He’s put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into his music and if anyone deserves good things, it is him.

He recently shot a music video for one of his songs, 25 Miles – a song I have known for years and still adore. I thought I would post it here and hopefully Bill will get some additional exposure he wouldn’t have otherwise. Please enjoy.

If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

(Via weheartit)

Today is a monumental day in Canada, or a day of laziness, dependent on how you celebrate. That’s right, it’s Canada Day! As for me? Well, I slept in and have been enjoying doing nothing but finishing up Season 2 of Six Feet Under.

I thought in honour of this day, I would post some history of this day, plus my favourite Canadian-historic comic, done by the fabulous Kate Beton.

Did You Know?

• Canada Day was formerly called Dominion Day.
• Canada Day is a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the enactment of the British North America Act, signed July 1, 1867.
• This act united Canada as a single country of four provinces: the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada (which was divided into Ontario and Québec).
• Up until post-World War II, many people did not celebrate Canada Day (or Dominion Day, as it was called then).
• However, beginning in 1958, the Canadian government made a conscious effort to organized Dominion Day celebrations on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa.
• After Canada’s centennial in 1967, Dominion Day became more popular with the average Canadian as the country began to be seen as maturing into a distinct, independent country.
• After 1980, the Canadian government began to promote Dominion Day beyond the national capital by helping fund local Dominion Day activities across the country.
• On October 28, 1982, Dominion Day was officially changed to Canada Day, a bill that passed in the House of Commons in five minutes and without debate.

(Source.)

And without further ado, I give you my favourite Canadian History comic by Kate Beaton:

Happy Canada Day everyone!