The agency I work for; Sitewire are currently conducting a link bait experiment. They have created a post on parents connect. The post in question asks when a parent should tell his/her child that Santa isn’t real, if at all? Personally, I think he is real, but who am i to force my beliefs?

Here is a link to the Sitewire blog, talking about the experiment.

So what do you think, Is Santa Real?

When I first heard that LinkedIn had decided to allow applications on their platform, my initial feeling was that they had “missed the boat” with this and were too late to make it meaningful. However, I must admit, I am pleasantly surprised by the applications. There are nine applications that you can add to your homepage and profile. They are:

• Blog Link
• Box.net Files
• Reading List by Amazon
• Company Buzz
• Google Presentation
• Slideshare Presentations
• Huddle Workspaces
• My Travel and
• Wordpress

I am not going to go into details and describe what each one does as you can do that on your own. The one that interests me the most is Blog Link. This allows any of my connections to see the updates to my blog as they happen and vice versa. I was thinking about the potential uses for this as a Media Planner and Strategist. The first and most obvious use I could think of was using it to position myself as a thought leader. The only drawback I can see is that only your connections are able to see it. So unless you actively try to seek out industry insiders or try to get people to connect to you on LinkedIn, your audience may be limited.

I would be interested to see how many people have used the LinkedIn applications and what for.

I read a blog post today talking about an Unconference of sorts that took place in phoenix AZ. It seems that a friend/colleague of mine Katie Van Domelan attended a session entitled “Kids & their new networks”. What Katie thought would be something of great interest to her turned into a lecture about parenting skills and the lack thereof. In Katie’s words it seemed that parents where trying to get marketers to do their job for them by only putting certain types of content online knowing that kids would view them.

This got me thinking, as a parent, I would appreciate it if when my son is old enough to go online and find his own way around that he would be safe from viewing ads that are definitely not age appropriate. But is it the responsibility of online marketers to make sure that kids are not viewing ads they shouldn’t be? I would say it isn’t. It is the parent’s responsibility to know what there kids are doing online and where they are doing it. I like my father in laws example of how to control what his kids are viewing online. It is so simple; I don’t know why more people don’t do it.

PUT THE COMPUTER IN THE FAMILY ROOM!!!

The computer is put ion the room that gets the most foot traffic, with a house as busy as theirs it is unlikely that somebody would purposely go and view something that is not age appropriate. In addition, it is password protected so he controls what is downloaded and if they view things they shouldn’t their privileges are withdrawn.

But back to media, I wonder if there are many marketers and brands out there that would take advantage of ensuring that their content and ads are age appropriate. I as a parent would react positively to companies that try and promote a positive image.