Via oreillyradar:

Some lovely bits from Paul Ford’s excellent piece, “Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?”

“There should be a word for that feeling you get when an older person — and not much older, so quickly are things changing — shames him or herself by telling young people how to live. I’d vote for Bedeutungslosigkeitschmach, or ‘irrelevance shame,’ (made up with the help of Google translate) or perhaps Rünschmerz, the horrifying gut pain one experiences watching Andy Rooney.”

“Google regularly announces initiatives to ‘save’ the newspaper and book industries — like a modern-day hunter who proclaims himself a conservationist.”

“I keep sensing some serious hurt feelings from the older-media side — ‘Why would you love that thing instead of me?’ They act like my wife would if I brought home a RealDoll. But it’s not like that. I don’t think people love Twitter or Facebook in the same way they might love Parks and Recreation or Twilight. Rather, we like the beer and tolerate the bottle. And even if we have those other browser tabs open, we’re still hungry for endings.”

Those are just highlights. This is a phenomenal essay.

I added this as a comment to Megan Garber’s post:

The run-and-gun style of the videos is certainly notable, but let’s not forget that these clips are also entertaining as hell. The guy’s delivery is fantastic (so much so, he landed a talent deal with NBC).

How is that relevant to the news business? It all comes down to value: Was I informed? Was I entertained? Did this content justify its existence in my world? Had these clips employed the same production value without the humor, no one would be talking about them.

The embed feature on YouTube (and countless other sites) is one of the most important innovations in the history of the web. It unlocks content and allows it to gather attention in an organic and powerful way.

This FastCompany Q&A with Iain Tait, creative director for the ad firm behind the Old Spice campaign, is a great read. I found this segment to be particularly telling:

Q: Why did you choose to respond to Twitter tweets using video and why employ YouTube versus a dedicated Old Spice site?

By locking the campaign into any proprietary place would have just severely limited the exposure it would get and diminish it. This whole idea of responding to people and being very smart about who we decided to respond to, and in what manner, that wouldn’t have worked if we hadn’t done it in a format like YouTube where we are able to embed it. People are very familiar with the ways of sharing it, liking it, and favoring it, and just the fact that it can go everywhere very quickly was a huge positive. [Emphasis added.]

Jennifer Leggio offers a solid round-up of social media miscues. The full column is worth a read, but here’s what I took away from it.

• Suicide isn’t funny
• Don’t make fun of moms
• Brand managers are rarely as clever as they think they are
• There’s no such thing as a “Twinturn,” even if you say there is
• CNN should know better

Oliver Blanchard coalesces an uneasy feeling I’ve had for quite some time: most social media gurus are nothing more than wind-baggy motivational speakers:

But if you want to help your business – and I mean REALLY help your business – make sure you don’t fall into the Social Media “expert” trap: 99% of them are basically just motivational speakers with a Social Media theme. Find someone who knows how to a) measure real ROI and b) tie those metrics to engagement programs. [Emphasis included in original post.]

I’m looking forward to the death of social media hype. When all the hysteria is buried, good work and great ideas will fill the void (see “Blogging, 2000-2006”).