Cocktail Hour: May 18, 2012

It’s officially here: Facebook IPO Week. GM started off the Facebook announcements by stating that it would be pulling $10 million in paid advertising from the site, saying that the investment was ineffective in terms of sales. Many people wrote articles about being sick of hearing about Facebook. Unfortunately, readers proceeded to “Like” and “Recommend” those articles thousands of times. Yahoo again showed us how not to succeed in the work world — don’t cuss out everyone you meet and don’t lie on your résumé. Twitter showed that it respects your privacy by working with Firefox's Do Not Track feature, and the world’s first Wikipedia town — Monmouthpedia — was founded.

Google Knowledge Graph Could Make Clicking Unnecessary (Huffington Post): Google updated its search results with the launch of Knowledge Graph, which appears to the right of search results and includes information deemed important or possibly most relevant to the search. While the search giant announced it’s attempt to create a more “human” search engine, some wonder whether the change is to promote more of Google’s proprietary information. Should we be asking whether these tools deemed seemingly “human” are instead causing us to miss out on the human act of discovery?

The Great Banner Ad Debate (Digiday): What could possibly be wrong with blinking, neon-colored, emoticon-filled, bouncing display ads trying to convince you to “Click Here”? Even though the IAB has published new display ad formats, and publishers push more creative ways to get the click, many advertisers wonder how long it will take for the industry to come up with a solution that will end the era of disruptive and non-targeted online advertising.

Renny Gleeson: 404, the story of a page not found (TED): We’ve all stumbled upon one. A page not found, moved, not available...simply broken. Gleeson shares with us how a “broken experience” gives us the opportunity, whether online or offline, to make a consumer fall in love with how we handle an error.

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet (Gizmodo): Flickr was once the best place to upload, file and share photos online, but after the Yahoo acquisition, the company became focused on hitting integration and engineering milestones instead of continuing to innovate and improve it’s service in support of the community. The story of Flickr and Yahoo’s failure to its users proves again how a online community can be the most powerful advocate of a service, but, just as easily, those users can disappear if the product’s quality is sacrificed by board room decisions.

Are You Falling Into the The Pit of Mediocrity? (Under 30 CEO): We’ve all felt the disappointment. Our roles as marketing professionals don’t make the influence of advertising claims any less alluring. You bought those shoes that claim to make you run faster. You rushed to the new restaurant that said it had the best burger in town. False claims can make that mediocre burger seem downright plain, and unmet expectations will only work to speed up the downward spiral of a brand. As an advertising professional, do you create campaigns that simply attempt to persuade, or do you convince your client’s brand experience to change in order to create messages that clearly ring true?

What have you been reading?