Tiny Gigantic

Have you checked out LinkedIn lately? It’s become seriously good.

Three points:

1. No walled garden.
By far the best thing about LinkedIn is that I can export my contacts. All the connections I make belong to me, and I can take them with me. All the value I create in my social network is fully accessible to me, as it should be. This is not possible on Facebook, and this is the number one reason I’ve stopped investing time into Facebook.

2. Super smart partnerships.
LinkedIn has recently launched a bunch of apps that are actually useful and interesting. For example, when I read the nytimes online, the right hand column has a LinkedIn-sponsored sidebar that sugges ts articles relevant to my work. It’s really good. And there are some new apps/partnerships that facilitate greater collaboration and biz dev, such as ftp dropboxes and portfolio presentation platforms and embedded google docs. All of this suggests a trend that makes a lot of sense to me: the contact list is becoming the hub of web-based collaboration.

3. Niche focus.
LinkedIn has a clear purpose: work-related social networking. Every aspect of their offering is aligned with that focus, and everybody is the network for the same reasons. As a result, there’s way less clutter than you’d find on FB or MySpace.

So yeah, check it out. And while you’re there, go ahead and add me and Josh (and select “friend” when prompted). We’re always psyched to make new connections:

My (Axel’s) profile
Josh’s profile

There’s an article in this month’s Fast Company in which the founder of Interference Inc, a guerilla marketing company, says “honesty is the new killer app.” Two things rubbed me wrong about this:

1. Honesty, especially in marketing and branding, and especially if you do it right, has always been a killer app. And in every new generation, it’s again seen as a hot new thing: Authenticity, anyone?

2. Interference Inc., is a company that trades in stealth tactics, not honesty. Remember that little LED bomb-scare in Boston? Yup, that was them. The same company hires actors to play tourists who ask passersby to snap their photo with the latest cell phone camera.

Here’s the thing about honesty: you have to tell the truth. Otherwise, you’re not being honesty. Sounds obvious, don’t it?

Play around with monoface for a little while. Weirdness will ensue.

I got this in my inbox today, from Sharif Ezzat, a smart, smart designer who runs an interactive studio called Good Food Productions:

Dear Friends,

One of the most important elections in United States history will take place this November 4, 2008. While only US citizens may vote in this election, much of the world is watching the race very closely. Faced with a growing financial crisis, climate change and global energy challenges, we all know that an uncertain future will be greatly defined by the next US president. For better or worse, we are all interconnected.

With this in mind, we have created TheWorldFor.com, an interactive web site where people all over the world can cast a vote for the next United States President. We invite all citizens of the world to participate:

http://www.theworldfor.com

We ask that you please share this site with all of your friends and family around the world. In the coming weeks, the site will feature an increasingly diverse and living visualization of world opinion, ultimately aimed to inform US voters as they make their way to the ballot box on November 4.

TheWorldFor.com was developed by a few concerned and hardworking Americans who made this project as a labor of love. We are not affiliated with any group, campaign, or government agency.

Thank you for your attention, your voice, and most importantly, your vote.

Sincerely,
Sharif Ezzat
TheWorldFor Team

Check it out!

Here’s to hope and grooviness. Have a great weekend all.

This pirate poster from 826 Valencia made me chortle.

Wow. Fucking wow. Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has launched an exhibit of gorgeous images of the earth from above.

More pics here.

It’s not the Banksy we know and love/hate, but it’s got some interest.

So our food activism project, Replate, is nominated for the People’s Design Awards. If we’re gonna win, we need your votes. So give it some love and we’ll be ridiculously, almost disgustingly, appreciative.

The project and the book got a big spread this weekend in the Independent UK.

Here’s the article.

And here’s the gallery.

Wo0tz!

Here’s the thing:

Post cereal wants me to know that Grape Nuts is an authentic brand. But what they’ve done instead is make me angry. Why? Because the ads themselves are bullshit. Because in the quest to be authentic, they’ve gone and revealed themselves as stunningly inauthentic. If the underlying theme of this campaign is, “It is what it is,” you’d expect Post to stop and think about their product, which has no grapes, and no nuts, and is very obviously not the thing it says it is. Sure, you could argue that they’re being self-referential, and that that makes it okay. And you can bet that’s the angle they’re ad agency took to sell this concept to ‘em: “People want transparency, see? And if we do it tongue-in-cheek like so that people know we’re being playful and holding the mirror up to ourselves as well as our culture, they’ll buy in.”

Nonsense.

Because you can’t get cred by simply admitting you’re a faker. You actually have to stop faking it.