Two hard rock bands who haven’t been on the scene for years — AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses — each have new albums out. The difference, though, is that one has come back with a vengeance (AC/DC) and the other with a whimper (Guns N’ Roses).

In the first week of release, Guns N’ Roses “Chinese Democracy” sold only 261,000 copies. Compare that with AC/DC, whose new album “Black Ice” moved 784,000 units in its first week. Each band had exclusive distribution deals — Guns N’ Roses with Best Buy and iTunes, AC/DC with Wal-Mart.

Without judging the musical quality of the albums, publicity accounts for a substantial amount of the difference in sales. AC/DC did numerous media interviews and is on tour. Axl Rose and co. are neither offering interviews to the media nor touring. Wal-Mart established a store-within-a-store display for “Black Ice”, focusing on AC/DC’s entire catalogue; Best Buy’s promotion of “Chinese Democracy” was on a much smaller scale.

Perhaps Guns N’ Roses will eventually catch up with AC/DC in sales. After all, Axl Rose could eventually decide to tour and could eventually give media interviews. He did eventually come out with an album — after 15 years of waiting.

Of course I would never ask anyone — especially a woman — how much he or she weighs.  But since Oprah Winfrey recently revealed that she weighs 200 pounds, let’s see what she gains by letting the secret out:

1. Publicity.  Many news articles have been written about Oprah’s weight, from “just the facts” articles to opinion pieces.
2. Sympathy.  This is one of the key reasons why Oprah is so popular.  She comes across as a normal person, complete with inadequacies.
3. A New Year’s resolution.  The timing was perfect for Oprah’s revelation (naturally).  Now she has a New Year’s resolution for 2009, and her fans can see how Oprah fares in the battle of the bulge.
4. Story ideas. Oprah’s already all over this one.  She plans on talking about her weight on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in January.  She will be discussing the topic on XM satellite radio station’s “The Gayle King Show” and will host interactive live webcasts on Oprah.com.  Of course, it’s also in the January issue of “O” magazine.

I personally weigh more than I would like — I’m clocking in at 210 pounds.  Let’s see what I gain by revealing that fact.  I know at the very least I’ll have a New Year’s resolution.

This is the true story of two individuals, chosen to work on the same team at Risdall Marketing Group. What you are about to read is not only true, it’s real. Find out what happens when two people stop using traditional methods of communication and start using social networks.

I got a date via twitter. By Jason Douglas

Yes, the above statement is no lie.  This past weekend, I drove to Iowa to go on a date with a lady I met on twitter.  Let me give you the background on how I came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to drive 250 miles away from home to meet someone I’ve never met in person for a weekend.

My twitter account has become increasingly popular within the last two months.  Rarely do I go a day without gaining at least one new follower.  It took some time to get going, to establish myself as someone who wasn’t ‘tweeting’ about what I had for lunch, how someone stared at me, or how I stared at them back.  When I gain a new follower, I try to send a direct message to the new follower thanking them for following me, and ask them why they started following me.  Was it an interesting tweet I posted?  Was there something in my bio that we have in common?  When I was writing my message to this lady, I thought nothing of it; she was another follower that I was glad to have.  She, along with everyone else who I’ve sent a message to, never replied.

A few days passed; I would see her tweets mixed among the many others I view on my profile.  At this time, I was trying to create conversation with my followers by sending @ messages to see how many would reply.  I remember that she tweeted about going on a date.  I sent her an @ message wishing her good luck, and assumed I wouldn’t receive a reply; figured that I wasn’t the only one sending that same message.   Later that night, she sent me a direct message telling me that the ‘date went ok-I’m just not interested.  Oh well. Bummer.  Next!’  You might think that this is where I found my opening, thinking this is my chance to finally incorporate dating into twitter.  This was the beginning of our communication; I never thought it would lead to a future date.

The message began a friendship; we would send a couple messages to each other, getting to know each other a little better with each message.  Direct messages eventually led to facebook friendship, where we would communicate through their chat client.  The next step was text messaging; which became increasingly regular.  We finally thought that going ‘old-school’ and talking on the phone would be the natural next step to get to know each other.  I started to think at this point ‘is this how all twitter relationships: friend, more than friend, progress?’  I liked how things were progressing with this lady; she seemed smart, she looked very pretty in the pictures I had seen; so I was becoming more willing to see what was there with her.  After our first phone conversation, which lasted nearly three hours, I felt more assured that she was 100% real, and that going out was inevitable.  We continued to talk on the phone on most nights, and planned out a time we would get together.  I decided that I would go down to Iowa to visit her for the weekend.

Upon telling co-workers, friends, my roommate, their reactions were mixed.  Some were very open and receptive to my plans; others thought I was completely nuts.  With online dating, there is that small risk that who you’ve chatted, texted, talked to on the phone, is not who they say they are.  I had an experience a few years ago where a girl I met online gave me a couple pictures of ‘herself’.  Upon meeting her, it was very clear that the girl I met and the girl I saw online were two completely different people.  I felt that with this lady, there was zero chance of that happening.  It’s much easier to do research on someone if you have any doubts; checking a facebook profile, myspace, google searching their name.  Sure, Iowa isn’t 15 minutes away; I had developed a relationship with her enough to feel comfortable to make the 250 mile trek each way to see what was there.

How did the date go?  It was awesome!  We went to lunch, shared a ‘far out’ car wash experience, went to an Iowa Chops hockey game, then to a place that’s similar to Dave & Buster’s; I found out she’s pretty good at air hockey. Final analysis: she is prettier in person; an absolute sweetheart.  We had good chemistry throughout the day/night.  The trip was very much worth it; I would do it again in an instant.

Some questions to consider: even though there are sites like match.com, eHarmony.com, and chemistry.com; don’t sites like myspace, facebook, even twitter have the potential to become another way of dating?  With the ability to search for people, search by interest, location, etc., look at their profiles, you can get a lot of the ‘first date’ attributes out of the way before directly communicating with them.  Twitter makes perfect sense.  Already, there are many social gatherings planned via ‘#tweetups’, where you get people from a certain area together to put faces to their twitter handle, and talk in person as you would online.  If ‘#tweetups’ are acceptable, why couldn’t twitter dating be considered a viable option?

That’s my story on how I got a date via twitter.  I’m glad it happened, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.

My questions to you:

• Have you ever been on a date with someone you met online?
• If yes, what site did you meet on?
• If no, would you consider online dating?
• If no, why is online dating not an option for you?
• Would you consider twitter a place to meet people for dating?

follow Jason Douglas on Twitter: @jasondouglas

This is the true story of two individuals, chosen to work on the same team at Risdall Marketing Group. What you are about to read is not only true, it’s real. Find out what happens when two people stop using traditional methods of communication and start using social networks…..

I quit my job via Facebook by Cydney Wuerffel
Right before I graduated from the University of Minnesota I got a serving job at a local, organic restaurant in Roseville (figure it out) as a fall back in case the economy delayed my employment dreams. Lucky for me, no such delay occurred. Nevertheless, I kept working at the restaurant because they took the time to train me, I didn’t want to quit right away and the extra cash kept new clothes appearing in my closet. However, for most of the people working at the restaurant, that was their job. That was it. Making money to feed their kids, pay their mortgage, this was it. To them, I didn’t need the money, and even the managers saw it this way- and I was always the first person to be sent home. This got old fast and basically I should have quit way before I did.

I was scheduled to work from 9am-3pm on Sunday, November 30th. On Saturday night I stayed up with friends until 4AM (let’s just say time crept up fast). I set the alarm for 8am, and woke up on my own at 11am. Oops. I really wasn’t in the mood to call the restaurant and get yelled at, and considering my other write ups for missing monthly meetings, I figured I was fired anyways. Back to bed. The following day I was preparing to call the restaurant, apologize and set the record straight. The problem: The manager I needed to talk to was not in until 4pm, and I wanted to give her ample notification. The solution: I saw she was logged into Facebook. I quickly composed a lengthy Facebook message letting her know what happened, how much I enjoyed working with her (when it was good, it was good) and other accolades. I never want things to end badly with with anyone- it’s not my style. I followed it with this: “If for some reason I was not terminated, please consider this my informal resignation. I know it’s silly to do this via facebook and you should receive my formal letter of resignation in the mail soon.” Just to be slightly more traditional!

That is my story of how I quit my part time job via Facebook. For the record, I received a very kind reply message and I wasn’t going to be fired! Over all, Facebook came in very handy and saved me an awkward phone call. Thanks Facebook for helping me get my Saturday nights back!’

Stay tuned for Part 2: I got a date via Twitter by Jason Douglas
Which ways will we use social mediums next?!

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about SearchWiki making a return to Google on a permanent basis.  Many people in the online marketing world, specifically SEO’ers, were showing concern about how this would affect how SEO was performed.

I, being young and naive, tried to stay positive, even saying ‘With people able to promote or remove your listing based on relevance, the goal doesn’t change.  Good websites will be rewarded with high rankings among people, and hopefully people will write plenty of positive comments for all to see.  This should only make SEO’ers become better at their job’

There were plenty of SEO’ers toying with the thought that it the death of SEO.  Maybe that wasn’t such a far out of a thought.

Today, a blog post in Tech Crunch highlights that in the future, that the results from people ‘promoting’ or ‘removing’ certain sites will be added to the search algorithm.   The example given in the article by Michael Arrington is a scary one: ‘if “thousands of people” were to knock a search result off a search page, they’d be likely to make a change.’  This has the high potential for black hat activity.

Is it necessary for this information to be added to any algorithm that Google has?  This takes away the whole point of the SearchWiki: to make the search experience more personalized for the one user.  I don’t necessarily think that SEO will be dead because of this; I feel the odds are high that this will promote black hat activity.

What are your thoughts on this in the SEO world?

I have a feeling that if you wanted to, you could dig around online and find out a lot about me (feel free not to prove me right!)

Via my Facebook profile, you could know that I spend my money on vacations and that i am currently enjoying the new Britney CD. LinkedIn will tell you that I graduated from the U of M, and am currently employed at Risdall Marketing Group. Twitter will tell you that I am looking for a cheap Mexico vacation (reinforcing what you found in my photo albums on Facebook).

You can't see me.

And those are just the beginnings.

Last week the issue of sharing information online and whether it was generational was brought up several times. I would argue that while younger generations are more likely to have no problem with sharing personal information online, a large portion of it boils down to comfort.

How comfortable are people in the communities where they are being asked to provide information? I could navigate my facebook profile with my eyes closed, and wouldn’t hesitate to say that I’m going to the Timberwolves game tonight- Row 2 (courtesy of Mr. John Risdall!) On the other hand, I have only been on brightkite a handful of times, and am not so hot on the idea of posting pictures and locations of where I am at that very moment. My friends (real world friends!) are not on brightkite yet and I don’t need a 42-year-old “consultant”, ID: ‘urMSPdaddy’ knowing where I am. To me, that’s creepy.

Where are you sharing your personal information? Where are you not?

Since last Thursday, I have been thinking about food. How three pieces of pumpkin pie was probably two (or three!) too many. How I shouldn’t eat any of the grasshopper cake that’s in the kitchen at work. How I really should be working out. . .which leads me to think about how blogging is like working out.

In talking with bloggers, I have noticed that people who start blogs begin very energetically, then have a difficult time keeping up with posting on a regular basis. This spring I attended the Social Media Summit in Toronto. During a session led by Jim Estill, the CEO of Synnex Canada and a blogger himself, I asked him if should people should get discouraged because they can’t keep up with blogging on a regular basis.

His response was, “Blogging is like working out. No one says, ‘That’s it. I’m going to quit working out.’ People just fall out of it (writing) for a while, then get back to writing when they feel like it.”

I like his response. I haven’t worked out in a while. Maybe I’ll get back into it soon. Now for a piece of that grasshopper cake. . .