Piece By Piece Facebook Is Dying…& Promoters Are Killing It

Promoters are killing Facebook. Someone make them stop, please.

One of the greatest features about Facebook which I use above all else on the site is the Messaging/Chat app and feature. But promoters seem to want to kill it and drive it to irrelevancy as quickly as they did Events. Exhibit A is above. This really happened and I am still waiting for his response. (I don’t actually expect one.)

In February 2011, @unmarketing aka Scott Stratten wrote a blog post “How We Are Killing Facebook” which talked about how people are killing Facebook by creating what he called “event apathy.” Essentially, event apathy is caused by people using Facebook to invite others to events that are just completely not targeted towards them (be it due to them living thousands of miles away from the event, being not interested in the topic, or being outside the target demographic, among a host of other reasons). Because of this, as Scott mentions, many people have begun to ignore Facebook Event invites to the point that the function may not as well be on Facebook at all. I know I turned my event notifications off months ago because, quite frankly, they were getting too darn annoying and were draining my cell phone’s battery. I’ve had people miss events that I invited them to that I know they would have loved coming to because they simply didn’t see the invite. I know a number of people who have once again begun using services such as Evite or Paperless Post because they know we still check our emails but ignore Facebook events.

Who is to blame for this? Scott doesn’t really narrow it down in his post but I am going to because they are the worst offenders: Promoters.

Before I go on let me be clear I have nothing against promoters. Heck, I am currently partially responsible for running one group’s Twitter account: @ElevateUrNight where I am making it more awesome and less spammy than any other promoter’s Twitter feed I have ever seen. Go on, check it out, I’ll wait right here.

Repurposed Art Deco Allenby Theatre On The Danforth: Exploring Toronto Part VIII

A while back I was driving down Danforth Avenue and I passed an Esso & Tim Hortons which was – to say the least – different from most every other I have seen. The address for this building is 1213 Danforth Ave (map).

I grew up in North York and didn’t spend a lot of time in The Danforth area of the city so seeing this structure was completely new to me. What struck me was that it clearly was no longer a movie theater even though the facade appeared to be one. And those movie titles…”Tim Hortons”? “On The Run”? Those weren’t movie titles, they were store names! I looked into it some more once I got home to a computer and found this document from the City of Toronto - 1213 Danforth Avenue (Allenby Theatre) – Alterations to a Designated Heritage Property (PDF Link) - which identifies the theater building as a “Designated Heritage Property” as the title indicates. It also gives some great details into the history of the building which you can find quoted below the next picture:

Looking from the east side of the building.

The Allenby Theatre (more recently known as the Roxy Theatre), was constructed in 1935 by the partnership of Kaplan and Sprachman, the firm responsible for between 70 and 80% of all movie theatres constructed in Canada between 1921 and 1950.

The Allenby Theatre was designated by the City in 2006 as a representative example of the style of theatre constructed between World War I and II with notable Art Deco / Art Moderne detailing…

 

For more on the theater and for more pictures check out this article from Torontoist dated October 19, 2010: “From Double Feature To Double-Double.”

Pretty interesting redevelopment of an old building isn’t it? I love finding these cool little things in a city and if you know of any in Toronto/The Greater Toronto Area you think I should check out let me know!

Also, if you or your family members have any memories of going to the Roxy/Allenby I would really love to read them in the comments below.

 

New York Public Library: I Have A Slightly Overdue Book… Part II: The Return

People who have read my blog for a while will remember that in June 2011 I wrote about a book taken out of the New York Public Library in 1971 which I found in Toronto. For those who don’t remember the post, here’s a link to it. As I mentioned in the previous post, the book was The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and it was due back at the library on June 23, 1971. I wrote of how I intended to take it back to the Mid-Manhattan Library: Literature & Language Department at 5th Ave & 42nd St in Manhattan the next time I was in New York City but I didn’t foresee it taking this long! 

Official imgur for Android App Beta Released in Canada!!! W00t! W00t!

In the Google Play Store on Fido Network in Canada

Canadian imgurians rejoice! As you can see in the above picture I have installed the newly released beta version of the OFFICIAL imgur app for Android from Google Play and I’ve done it on my Motorola RAZR HD LTE (official model number XT925) which is on the Fido network.

The app is being released in beta slowly but surely with Australia getting the first taste. After Australia had it, it was released in “Europe” (not sure which countries in Europe, I am just going by what the @imgur Twitter account said) and then, today, Canada got it. We’re told that the USA is up next for the beta after Canada and that the full version is slated to be released in around 3 weeks.

Battle Of The Sexes: The Toilet Seat Debate

The battle of the bathroom between the sexes has raged since 1927 when Tom Bradney invented the toilet seat. The question:

Should The Toilet Seat Be Left Up Or Down?

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Women argue that it should always be left down because they don’t want to have to look before they sit down. They say that because men stand in front of the toilet and have to aim they are required to look down so the onus is on them to notice if the seat is up or down and adjust accordingly. Men more often than not acquiesce to the ladies in their lives and leave the toilet seat down only to find themselves getting in more trouble when a few drops end up on the seat because they can’t be bothered to raise the seat before relieving themselves or to check the seat for drops after the fact. When this happens the argument starts right back up because the man’s point of view is that he wouldn’t have gotten the seat sprinkled if it hadn’t been down in the first place.

Toilet with the seat up. The bane of every lady’s existence.

Guys, I know that essentially the female side of this debate boils down to a reality which finds them walking into the bathroom backwards, never actually looking at the toilet before sitting down. Unfortunately, though I don’t agree with their logic, I have to side with the ladies here. The seat should be left down. Here’s why:

Why The Seat Should Be Left Down

1 Simple Way To Increase Potential Clients Picking Up The Phone When Your Business Calls

Ensure your business has a name displayed that shows up on caller ID when they call out.

Boom! You just increased the likelihood that people/clients/potential customers will answer the phone when you call them. Seriously, that’s all there is to it. Read on to find out why…

If this is a business calling they’ve lowered the chances of me answering by 87% by not having a name showing.

The other day I got a call from what seemed to me to be a random number. The phone number showed up but I didn’t recognize it so I ignored it because I was busy with other things. They left a voicemail which I didn’t check because who checks voicemail these days? Further, who checks voicemail if you don’t recognize the number?

SkillPages Email Spamming: A Warning, a Story, an Apology, & a P.S.A.

First, an apology to all of my contacts who I inadvertently spammed. I got taken in by SkillPages a service that is gaining users by spamming contacts of new members as soon as they sign up to the site.

I guess this is going to happen to the best of us sooner or later and it happened to me today. Even though I am generally super, duper cautious about what apps and sites I allow to access my data today I slipped up and the results were…horrible.  I received the below email this afternoon and thought to myself “Cool! A new site for connecting from a business perspective. Being the social media addict that I am I’ve got to check it out. As well, I know Jamie and he is a good guy who I trust not to send me spam. I am going to have to check this site out.”

What I should have done was google the site. If I had, I would have seen these autocompletes*:

The above does not look like the kind of site I want to be associated with or allow to have my information without a lot more research. The third result is VIRUS for crying out loud! That is not promising but it gets worse.. Below is a screenshot of the Google search results for just the word “SkillPages”*: