The value of a celebrity spokesperson is now rooted in their social eminence.

Brands have used the power of celebrity to promote their products with varying degrees of success over the years. Michael Jackson forPepsi, Michael Jordan for Nike, David Beckham for Burger King, and Katy Perry for Pop Chips.

The brand is hoping more people will pay attention to its message because it’s being delivered by somebody that consumers ostensibly care more about than the brand being pitched. Odds are that, because audience members are interested in this celebrity, they will at least pay closer attention to the commercial or, even better, take the spokesperson’s word and go buy the product. In short, celebrities are hired by brands for their power to influence.

The Problem With Celebrity Spokespeople

The trouble is, the expectations of celebrity endorsement deals must be re-imagined in the age of social media.

It’s going to take more than just looking good or sounding good to make a true impact. Just shooting a couple 30-second spots and posing for some print ads was fine in 1995, but it’s not going to cut it today when the potential to quickly connect with customers is so much greater via digital media. That means that we, as marketers, need to take a longer look at who we decide to hire and focus more on those folks that have diligently built their own social following.

An Example

For example, a client of mine, a major CPG player, maintains a cadre of celebrity spokespeople across sports, music, and entertainment. Let’s take a look at two of these spokespeople: one a prominent athlete, the other a famous recording artist/musician. Each is arguably as famous as the other, but our athlete has zero social presence while our musician as almost 10 million Twitter followers.

Over the last couple of weeks, my client was able to activate the recording artist in a way not possible with the athlete by having her talk organically about the brand across her massive social following. According to Sysomos, her mentions helped my client to reach over 12 million people over a very short period, up sharply from normal. What’s more, this kind of reach is even more powerful as her fans are highly engaged and more likely to take a cue from her than they would from the brand itself.

Meanwhile, our athlete has been making news for remarkable performances on the field, but we’ve not been able to take advantage of this groundswell because he is completely absent with regards to social. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram, no following, and as a result = no social value. The best we can hope for is a fortuitously planned TV buy coinciding with a strong game-day performance.

What Changed

Social is beginning to become more and more foundational in a brand’s overall media mix. Our musician has equipped herself to be more influential for

the brand and, as a result, must be considered more valuable.

In a previous role, I helped oversee sports sponsorship strategy. I always struggled with the value of these sponsorships because—aside from a logo on the wall at Fenway, a few free tickets and related perks—it was hard to truly measure the impact of the deal.

Now, social is starting to make ROI for endorsement deals easier to quantify and place a true value on the partnership. Social listening tools can tell us how often our spokespeople are mentioning our product, how and in what forum they are doing so, how many people were exposed to these mentions, and most importantly, how many conversations were generated as a result of those mentions. These mentions equate to storytelling and powerful storytelling sells product.

When evaluating and exciting and glamorous list of celebrities to help spice up your next campaign, do a little digging into their social eminence. Will their influence fade as soon as the viewer fast-forwards through your TV spot? Or will they cast a longer shadow for your brand via their social clout?

So, when my daughter came home with a school project about understanding “motion” it hit me that this was MY first chance to go completely overboard and and show my daughter this is how we do it in the Mataraza family. The assignment was to build a game that helps explain “forces”, how gravity and friction etc. impact an object in motion. Serendipitously, during this time, one of the engineers, Steve H, at my company left a copy of the magazine “Make” on the lunch table. For those not familiar with this publication, it helps show you how to build your own “stuff”. It’s a brilliant magazine, especially if you are a little geeky, and I’d encourage anybody to check it out.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, on the cover was a story about how to build your own Trebuchet. I knew right away that I was going to build this with my daughter and that we would make the game into a real life “Angry Birds”. Thus the Angry Birds trebuchet was born. After about 20 trips to home depot, strange looks from the neighbors, a wife that worried we wouldn’t finish in time – we were ready to roll this down the school. Great success, lots of fun, lots of time with my daughter teaching her how to build and use tools and such. It worked great and the kids at school all loved it – almost as much as the other parents.

Unfortunately, I didnt have the same luck getting my NextGen image gallery  to work as I did building a Trebuchet. Apologies in advance for the hacked feel of these pictures.

Complexity kills. Don’t let the propensity for pontification undermine your strategy.

(This article was first published in Marketing Profs HERE)

We’ve all done it. We’ve made the association that bigger is better. That just saying more means you have more to say. That the more we pontificate the more likely we are to eventually say something smart. That the longer our PowerPoint presentations are the more astute they are going to seem. That a 100 page deck with complex measurement readouts and vague meaningless “results” is better than a distilled focused one page dashboard.

The truth is, a great idea is only great when others can actually understand it and easily take action against it. The best ideas are similar to magic, they should be at once amazing and concurrently self evident on the surface. In a time of an overwhelming abundance of information, data and options, the more efficiently you can explain your strategy, the better it likely is.

Strategic elegance is critical to how well your ideas or strategies are received.

My own take on how to explain elegance with regard to strategic storytelling is related to the formula for density (below in grey) which basically defines how much stuff is crammed into a defined space. I’m defining elegance as how much “space” you need to convey your thinking. Examining the red formula below, strategies (m) told without the need for a ton of pontificating (V) equate to ideas with a high elegance factor and tend to be more understandable – the first step of making them actionable, not to mention sellable.

Building in contrived complexity for the sake of making it seem like you “put a lot of work into this” serves only to keep your ideas from becoming actionable. It makes your idea seem too “hard” and casts doubt into how feasible it is to actually implement your idea. Ever notice people don’t like ideas which they perceive will result in a lot of work for them?

Paradoxically, it’s actually easier to make something complicated than it is to make it simple. Making brilliant ideas seem simple is a unique an invaluable talent. It requires much more thought however, because you not only need to conjure up the brilliant idea, but you then need to do the thinking for the folks to whom you are going to present this idea, so it’s clear and simple for them to understand.

Another common forum for this bombastic behavior is the readout on how a campaign performed. It’s easy to just throw all the charts and words you can together and submit a 100 page measurement deck because “hey, here’s everything, I’m sure you will find something of value in here.” A 100 page deck betrays an incredible lack of confidence in what you are saying, because in a long winded presentation, you really aren’t saying anything at all. Details are critical but should never be used as a crutch. Elegance with respect to analytic storytelling continues to be an anomalous occurrence.
This propensity for pontification is in part tied to fearful corporate cultures where actually taking action seems really scary. There is comfort in size – the notion that a deck should have a “thunk factor” (named as such for the sound your ridiculously bloated presentation makes when dropped on a desk) only signals you didn’t invest the time on your reader’s behalf to determine what was really important. Instead, you crammed it all in hoping it would give the impression you must know what you are talking about.

It won’t.

Distilling simplicity from complexity is not easy, but not being afraid to commit to a clear point of view is true thought leadership and we need more of it. Nobody has the time or desire to wallow in a sea of unnecessary details which only obfuscate your strategic intent.

Sure, there is safety in numbers, but there is power in paucity.

Geeks Love Zombies: What is behind this strange phenomenon?

Before you begin reading this, it’s likely a good idea to have a look at this infographic detailing the differences between Nerd vs. Geek personality types – will add some clarity to the post that follows.

This week is the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead and the buzz is starting to crescendo rapidly. AMC has put some great interactive muscle behind this Sunday’s premiere and why not, their target audience is online. If there’s a perfect pairing for us geeks it’s got to be zombies and the interwebs. Perhaps it’s just me (and it probably is) but have you ever considered the universal love of zombies by tech geeks?  There’s simply no question that geeks loves zombies, it’s everywhere, you hardly have to look for it. So let’s move beyond if geeks love zombies and start considering why they do.

I’ve a few hypotheses to consider. Most Americans love a good underdog story. Quite often this is manifested by some kind of sports underdog, the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, some 6’6” Neanderthal wearing a Yankee’s hat throwing 120 mph….. That said, the jock underdog situation is not for everybody.   On the other hand, The Zombie “fantasy” if you will, serves up the perfect cerebral underdog scenario.   Zombies offer techie geeks the ability to have the “save the world” fantasy using a combination of brains and brawn in a 90:10 ratio (in favor of brains of course).  I mean, let’s face it (no disrespect meant at all to the geek world, I mean, I think I fall pretty high into a the geek camp) but geeks aren’t the quintessential hero types.  They’re stereotypically, well….geeks.  Not necessarily someone you’d go to if a big scary bad guy busted into your home to get you (thus why Clark Kent the “geek” was the perfect cover for Superman – other than the fact he looked like Hercules in a suit and glasses but that a discussion for another day.)

So, why are zombies are the perfect bad guys for geeks?  Well, we can consider how zombie movies are metaphors for the mind-policing of the world. There’s this subtext that when things go bad in the real world most people will fall into a lemming like mob mentality (like zombies) and you need a smart good guy or gal to rise above that. Plus, zombies are normally manifested as an amalgamated depiction of all the classic geek tormenters. For example, geeks love being smarter than dim witted creeps, jocks, high school principals, professors, rich and popular kids etc that have somehow made their lives miserable at one point or another. They’re scary, propagate quickly, plus hey, they want to eat your brains which is quite unpleasant particularly if you consider your brain your finest organ, and most geeks do. So ya get a geeky kid (like in Zombieland) who uses his geek smarts to outwit the zombies and engineer some solution to take over the mindless bad guys and save the whole world. Plus, the zombie movie often feature geeks expanding beyond just their normal capabilities to learn new non-geek related skills like accidently firing a shotgun and then within 10 minutes being able to wield this zombie blaster like a Marine.

Let’s take it one step further and turn this around. Put a geek up against Wolfman or Dracula and the geek is likely in more peril.  Dracula is strong AND pretty smart.  Wolfman, lacks smarts, but he’s a terrifying furry brute.  Odds are stacked in favor of Drac and Wolfy here.

Zombies give you some time to come up with a “master plan”, avoid falling into the zombie-pack mentality, be smart, and save the world. Oh yeah, and probably impress the girl – showing her you don’t need to be Captain friggin America to demonstrate your “awesomeness”.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to imagining the impending Zombie invasion and how I’m going to be the last man standing.

Zombies are everywhere these days. While their popularity seems to have been more constant over the years vs. the recent complete and utter obsession with all things vampire (especially by females, odd) zombies seem to be on the rise again. Ha get it, rise again, ok. Here are a few helpful zombie related links:

AMC’s Walking Dead Promo (Worth checking out)
https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=320886124619305

Hey even the CDC got in on the fun:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

Boston.com on the top Zombie movies:
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/bestzombiemovies/

Note: This post first ran on Bostinno here: http://bit.ly/xGWvcM

Over the last couple weeks we’ve seen an absolute frenzy of media activity around Google+ regarding implications for search, massive spikes in traffic and users late in 2011, and more. All that said, if you’ve been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately (it’s OK, I know you probably haven’t been… you want to say you have, but you haven’t) you may have noticed something completely uninteresting – the content. I suppose I have nobody to blame but myself, after all I specifically asked for all this lame content – I asked for all the updates I could ever want from my “favorite” brands, SEO optimization posts, the latest and greatest social media measurement strategies, pictures of donuts (Dunkinis pretty active), two million updates from CES, Pete Cashmore’s giant face… the list goes on.

Perhaps “lame” is a little harsh – I mean it’s work stuff really. It’s content that I need in order to be better at my job so it’s important. Problem is, that seems to be the only content on Google+ — work stuff. Listen, I am passionate about what I do, I love to learn new things every day and then apply that knowledge to create strategy for our clients, but after a while Google+ starts to feel like a virtual
trade show where people are constantly yelling at you to come to their booth and learn of the latest “game-changer” and you end up slinking through the trade show floor avoiding eye contact or needing a drink to sit through a sales pitch. Where is the interspersed story about my upcoming high school reunion, the pictures of my nieces and nephews, mildly humorous links from my friends, information on new music? Alas, it’s not on Google+.

This leaves us to wonder, what is Google+ really? Everybody, including Google, still seems to be figuring it out. It seems to be volleying for a position somewhere amongst the following four platforms:

1. Twitter: Mostly comprised of people posting links to other stories that they didn’t write (myself included) with headlines that are creative or smart enough to get noticed and make them look good. Exhausting!

2. LinkedIn: Sort of similar to Twitter but with more information about the person posting said links to other people’s creations. Oh and a resume… and a picture.

3. Quora: I’m an expert, see I can prove it here with this long winded answer.

4. Facebook: Here’s my kid. And my dog.

Alright, so it’s not as simple as that, but Google+ does feel like a Facebook wall with nothing but a business Twitter feed and some stock photography. One can essentially do this today via LinkedIn but your content will only appear to folks that you are connected to, already limiting the opportunity to virtually introduce your brilliant thinking to a bunch of strangers that you want to get to know.

I’ve said many times that Google+ could very well be a better foundation on which to build the next great social media platform. I’m truly grateful Google+ is around — competition is great and will keep Facebook “honest” so to speak. However, without the right user generated content, there is a limit to how much that even matters. To illustrate, consider Verizon FiOS. They overbuilt a new fiber-to-the-home network touting all sorts of technological advances over the legacy cable providers. None of that would have mattered if they didn’t secure content carriage deals with the likes of ESPN, NBC, HBO, CNN, ABC, etc. If there was nothing to watch, see, consume, there’s no reason to even turn on the TV.

So why isn’t there great content on Google+? Part of the problem is motivation – if you aren’t out to make money on Google+ there isn’t much of a reason to post content right now, which is why it’s crowded with brand pages and people essentially trying to sell themselves. Trouble is, that type of content is not something I’m going to “lean in” to listen to – instead it’s encouraging me to lean back. It’s the kind of content that is interesting for a while but eventually I want to get away from. The only true indicator of the future health of a social media platform is the engagement level of its user generated content. Technology is a distant second at best.

Perhaps Google+ evolves into a social networking platform for work, a sort of intranet / extranet situation. A LinkedIn meets Outlook, meets Skype, meets Twitter kind of deal. That said, that sure is a lot for one platform to handle and handle well. Probably too much. In the meantime, I’m going to log back into Google+ and see if there are some new infographics, a SOPA update, or perhaps another social media prediction for 2012.

Where’s that martini?

Think of this whole social platform migration as moving your home. Today you live in a house, in a decent neighborhood, is it the greatest neighborhood of all time? Not really, but ultimately it works for you because your family is close by and your friends are generally there. Sure, some of your neighbors are a little pesky – you can seem them watching you out their windows, and you wish they knew less about you but you sort of just deal with it as a trade-off of living in this neighborhood. On top of all this, after a few years you’ve finally got all “your stuff”  in mostly in the right place in your home. It really took a long time for all that stuff to get settled where you wanted it. It wasn’t easy to find it all, look at it, sort it, figure out where it should go and if you wanted people to see it when they came over. What a huge pain, but now you’re done with all that effort and it feels good to have your home all decorated and set the way you want.

Now…

Imagine you have an opportunity to move to a new neighborhood. The developer of this place says he looked into all the things about your current neighborhood that you dislike and he’s fixed it! The house is a little nicer, there’s some additional amenities thrown in there, more square footage, a three car garage, a pool, an ingenious way to prevent those nosy neighbors you aren’t “really” friends with from poking around your property. There’s even a huge back yard with a high stockade fence where all your friends can hang out, and have a grand old time sharing stories about everything that is going on in your life without people you don’t know seeing what you are up to. There’s only one catch, there is almost nobody else in this neighborhood, it’s vacant, abandoned, crickets and tumbleweeds. So you’ve got to do two things:

1. Convince all your friends they should move into this alleged utopia with you
2. MOVE ALL YOUR STUFF

Oh dear, this new gleaming metropolis isn’t looking as exciting all of a sudden. Move? Who likes moving? Nobody, it’s one of the most painful activities you can subject yourself to. What seems to be lost in this whole Google+ / Facebook death match is that features really don’t matter all that much when compared to the benefit you are seeking in a social platform. As with every other aspect of humanity, it all comes down to content content content. Perhaps if Google+ and Facebook were built concurrently, the conversation would be different because it’s possible that Google+ is truly a better platform. But since Facebook has such a head start, it just doesn’t matter because people don’t want to take a month to move all their “stuff” to a new platform when after all that work, their friends probably won’t even ever live there. Facebook may be the equivalent of an online ghetto but it doesn’t matter because it’s still home for the people you care about.  In other words, there is no motivation to break the inertia. In this case the inertia is massive because it’s not simply co0njuring up the energy to move your stuff, you have to get many other people to do the same thing. Honestly, it’s about as impossible a task as I can think of unless Facebook makes some sort of catastrophic mistake that infuriates people to the point of action. This, also, is unlikely.

Google+ is a marble museum, it’s built well, it works, it’s efficient, it seems to be more set up for future success and expansion…. but it’s cold. Facebook is cluttered, and noisy, it’s loaded with crap you don’t care about, and it’s hard to figure out how to keep your boss from seeing your posts but it’s got more of a speakeasy feel, it’s just warmer.  Of the 800 million or so Facebook users, that counts for something.

History has shown that the best product will not always win out which is infuriating on one end but usually simply a matter practicality. Most folks don’t care exclusively about features a features arms race excites only a small subset of users. Folks care about the people that are important to them and until there are more if them  in the G+ neighborhood, they aint movin.

There was a lot of great music this year and thanks to my friends over at Spotify, I was able to spend even more time discovering stuff I might have sadly otherwise missed. This may read a bit like some sort of indy’s greatest hits of the year, but well, they are good songs and I’m not just gonna throw a bunch of esoteric B sides just to seem like I’m more in the know. Here’s a sampling of what you should have taken a listen to in the past year. This list is not in any sort of rank order, that’s really too much work and although lists are good old fashion fun, I don’t even know if I’ve really got that specific of an opinion to do that.

Here’s a link to the playlist via Spotify if you don’t feel like clicking on every damn video but know that some of these videos are quite excellent.

Music To My Brain – 2011 Playlist

1. YOUTH LAGOON: Afternoon - Apparently this is some kid that made an album over his college Christmas break or something ridiculous of this nature. Good for him. It’s got a bit of a dreamy feel to it and I like the how it builds and gets louder but never gets angry.

2. THE ANTLERS: Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out: One of those songs that you feel like you’ve heard before – before you actually hear it. Also, have you noticed how many bands these days are named after animals or animal parts? OK might be just The Antlers that qualify under “animal parts”

3. REAL ESTATE: It’s Real – No, not the masters of male repressed weepy angst Sunny Day Real Estate, it’s just Real Estate who, ironically, are much more sunny. This is such a nice little song, love the jangly guitar and the video – who doesn’t love a dog video. Plus I think I had those glasses the singer had in 1989 so I could see the board in math class and the bass player may have sold me an oriental rug last week.

4. KURT VILE: Jesus Fever: Hey what better time to catch a little Jesus Fever than right before Christmas right? Right. Anyway, love the odd chord changes in this one and it doesn’t have a whole defined and separate sounding refrain which I like on occasion. Besides, Kurt’s from Philly and reminds me a little of the late great Kenneth Keith Kallenbach.

5. OTHER LIVES: Tamer Animals: Haunting sound, that piano rattles around in your skull for a while after you hear it. Love when it kicks in a little

6. NEON INDIAN: Polish Girl – A few years ago I got the first Neon Indian album in part to annoy myself because I figured I could not possibly like something so electric. But damn it all, I started liking it and this second record is no different. Bastard writes some catchy songs:

7. DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR: Simple Girl – Hey who doesn’t love a little whistling right?  Simple girl simple song simply good.

8. M83: Midnight City – Well as far as I’m concerned this is the best song of the year. Love the synths and mostly the crazy 1980′s  / INXS style sax solo at the end. So good to hear the sax make an appearance in a pop song after about 25 years. Plus the video has this cool X-Men thing happening.

9. WASHED OUT: Amor Fati – I guess im finding myself listening to a lot of  electronica here. Where’s the Fleet Foxes? Why all this computer generated stuff? Why is there a guy in tightie whities in this video? WHY!

10. FEIST: How Come You Never Go There – Feist manages to summon the spirits of Stevie Nicks, Tori Amos, and Crystal Gayle all in one video. Also, this girl can sing.

11. EMPIRE OF THE SUN: Walking On The Sun – Great song, should be turned up loud, but Bevis and Butthead would have a field day with this video:

12. BEIRUT: Sante Fe: This is such a great song and the video – ah the video. I cant tell if it’s sad, disturbing, traumatizing or hilarious. I think I’m landing on hilarious. Got to love a dog that eats pizza. Great stuff here

13. PHANTOGRAM – Mouthful of Diamonds: OK I may have lied, it’s possible THIS is the best song of 2011. I love every part of this song, the low synth, the verse, the refrain, the bridge, her voice, the lyrics the way the song kicks back up after the refrain, the sort of sad desperate tone of the whole thing,  and of course that crazy high pitch “caw” sound that keeps playing. Brilliance.

14. UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA – Ffunny Ffrends: Yeah so is 4 minutes of low-fi messed up insanity. I don’t know if there are really any words here but, well, it’s pretty catchy.

15. THE BIRD AND THE BEE – Sara Smile: Ok, ok, ok, this didnt come out in 2011 but I started listening to it in 2011 so I’m counting it (this happens on this this list at least one more time). Anyway, I think Hall & Oates is insanely underrated as a legit pop/soul duo (yes, I’m serious). The Bird & The Bee decided to do a whole record of H&O covers and it is outstanding. Inara has a great voice and whole thing sounds great.

16. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - I Can Change: Also, yes, 2010. I know. Somehow I missed the boat on the whole LCD soundsystem thing while they were still a band. There was a ton of hype around their fairwell show at MSG this year, I didn’t get it. Well, I do now. Sorry I missed them. If you don’t like this song and turn it way the hell up, there is something wrong with your brain.

17. BEST COAST: Our Deal: So this song is also not a 2011 release but the video for this is. I think I like it despite not being sure what I think of Drew Barrymore making this into a little west side story thing but who cares, it let’s me shoe horn in a Best Coast song and so I say yes to this video.

18. HOLY GHOST – Wait & See: Great groove to this one and the video is almost the best ever. The boys from Holy Ghost actually cast their dads in their place as they make their way through their cool hipster lives in NYC. One of the best ideas ever. See the story here.

19. YACHT – Dystopia: Couldn’t much get into the rest of the record but this song is a jam. Plus people just cant stop talking about that roof being on fire can they?

20. THE ROSEBUDS – Come Visit Me: Fell in love with this record this year. One of the better records I’ve heard in terms of listening straight through from cover to cover, great songwriting, very original, flows well together.

21. CULTS – Go Outside: I love me some Cults. Part of this lo-fi retro movement thing that seems to be going on, you cant tell if this song was penned in 2011 or 1961. Is that Ronnie Spector or a 20 something year old kid singing? Also, who doesn’t love a little xylophone in their rock and roll?  It’s summertime fun. Missed them TWICE in Boston and am not happy about it.

22. DUM DUM GIRLS: Bedroom Eyes: Hey while we are pretending its the early 60′s how about this little ditty from the Dum Dum Girls. It might be for girls. I don’t care. I like it too.

23. BON IVER – Holocene: I could probably put their whole record on here but this one sticks out a little more for me. I hear this guy and I can’t believe how good it is, it’s pretty much prefect music for me, uplifting no but its beautiful in it’s own simple introspective way. Thought the visual here was a perfect accompaniment for a cinematic auditory experience. Besides, I used to wander around and explore the outdoors like the kid in this video when I was younger, looks like he’s having fun.

24. TWIN SISTER – Bad Street: Sometime I hear songs like this and I have no idea why I like them. But I do. Plus I like this video which is essentially a bunch of regular nice looking folks having a birthday party in their backyard which is so different from the glossy, city, clubbing, overproduced, and too cool for school visual representation I expected.

25. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE – Codes And Keys: This wasn’t my favorite DCFC record but I thought it was pretty solid nonetheless. I like the piano and the odd drumming and that creepy strings overlay. Very non conventional sound to this one and that has to count for something.

26. THE DECEMBERISTS – January Hymn: This is one of those songs I heard the first time and instantly loved it. Heard him play it live up here and he did such a great job with it that is stuck with me right away. A little bittersweet winter anthem, and I like that combination of concepts.

27. RADIOHEAD – Seperator: Radiohead released this record in 2011 in a way only they could – essentially in secret. Turns out to be a pretty great album. While there are a bunch of songs on this (see ‘give up the ghost’) that I thought qualify right up there with some of the great Radiohead songs of the past, this one is super listenable and similar to how I judge most of my music, you can drive to it.

28. FOO FIGHTERS – These Days: I remember walking past the record store while I was in college and seeing that ray gun poster from the Foo’s first record thinking ‘hey that nirvana drummer actually made a record’ – It’s still hard for me to believe how talented this goddamn guy is. In a sea of great songs from the foo fighters over the years this is right up there as yet another completely unabashed crank it up to 11 anthems that make you want to scream the lyrics and play air guitar or air drums. I love the construction of the bridge/refrain as well, it’s a little different and a little more complex than you expect it to be, the chord changes and such. Then just when Dave lulls you down he grinds right back into it. I missed them in Boston this year and I regret it. Loved this B&W version of the tune with the nod to a famous Ed Sullivan appearance. I dare you not to yell “easy for you to say” when the refrain starts.

29. STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS – No One Is (As I Are Be): This is a good one from our old Pavement friend, simple but I love songs like this. They don’t need a ton of effect to be great. Minus 1 for using bourgeoisie in the middle of a great song but I’m giving him a pass.

30. TENNIS – Origins: Technically this record isn’t coming out until 2012 but I’ve heard this song here a few times and its super catchy so I’m going to add it here. I’ve been on and off with Tennis but this record has the fingerprints of Patrick Carney from the Black Keys and you can hear it in this track – slightly more rough, lo-fi, and edgy.

31. JOY FORMIDABLE: Whirring: You can’t listen to this and not wish you could plug in an electric guitar to a wall of amplifiers powered by plutonium. This song kicks major ass.

32. ELBOW: The Birds: I challenge anybody to find a better voice in rock. Saw Guy and company in a tiny rock club in Boston this year (The Paradise) and they were brilliant.

33. THE BLACK KEYS – Sister: So technically The Black Keys aren’t letting people stream this record but here seems to be a link (at least at the time of this publishing) that will get you to a great track from their new record: http://hypetrak.com/2011/11/the-black-keys-sister/

As you may know, Klout recently changed its algorithms for ranking social media influencers—and there has been a lot of fallout. (If you don’t know about these constantly changing metrics, it’s probably time to look into Klout, if for no other reason than to determine your own Klout score).

My favorite part about all this Klout Komplaining is that almost every blogger, pundit, critic, journalist always comes back with the faux aloof retort “I don’t care about my Klout score” or “nobody cares about their Klout score.” Oh… really? Something about their impassioned essays about how much they think Klout is irrelevant makes me wonder how irrelevant they actually find Klout to be. Let’s face it, this point of view is the grown-up equivalent of not getting invited to the cool kids party you “didn’t want to go anyway,” right? Like it or not, Klout, at least for now, is completely relevant and interesting and worthy of discussion.

Our anger over Klout is in part derived from the built in human emotion to want to be accepted and influential. We all at once crave and loathe being categorized, labeled, and scored. We “hate” it so much that we check in to see our score every day. It’s hard to find places in the world after college to get a “grade” to know how you are doing, to get a sense for how people feel about you. I suppose there are titles and such in the workplace but titles are really only an indicator of past performance, not a measuring stick against your present worth.

Alright, so Klout changed the rules a little on us mid stream (insert sound of baby crying). Was that fair? Of course it’s fair, why isn’t it fair, because we learned a way to game the system a little to inflate our scores? The alleged point of Klout is to measure how impactful you are socially, not how good you are at tricking Klout into believing you are more socially eminent that you actually are. Another complaint echoing around the social-sphere these is that Klout’s algorithm is shrouded in mystery. Well, how about that, a company that doesn’t disclose how it makes its special sauce, oh the nerve. Hell, if we are mad that we aren’t being told how exactly a company does their “thing” we should start going after Google, Coke, and that plotting and secretive Colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken. If there was a mistake Klout did make, it was not just making a more clear declaration of what they were doing and standing behind it. “Hey, our data jocks over here at Klout realized we could do this better, so starting tomorrow we are tweaking our recipe for determining influence. Some of your scores will go down. Please don’t get too mad, it’s just the Internet. The end.”

There is a lot of anger as well over the fact that Klout went back in time and normalized scores to account for the new algorithm change. Why is this so annoying? I guess it’s just me but I don’t want to see my old “wrong” score like some sort of nostalgic trip down eminence memory lane. Hey put up the score that seemed higher because my ego is so fragile that I need to be reminded of a more pleasant time and place where I was cooler.

Alright so there are a number of potentially nefarious things also happening related to Klout. There are some alleged privacy issues, some concerns about sharing of minors’ information, it’s been hard to opt out, they might be selling information about you. All that said, what about any of this is new? I’m not saying it should be accepted as OK; it should not, but let’s not pretend any of these concerns are unique to Klout. Additionally, if companies are going to hire people, pay them, and not charge the user, they do need to actually make money somehow. This last piece always comes as a shock to notoriously miserly social surfers.

It’s true, nobody should be revolving their online lives around some kind of score or ranking. As with SEO, the best way to perform well is to just do what you do to the best of your abilities. Write good content, share good stories, stay relevant, and most of all, enjoy and be passionate about what you are talking about. Look, if you have a lot of extra energy laying around that you don’t know what to do with, you can use it to hate Klout, I guess. Trouble is they are the only ones really doing this right now—which makes it, for the moment, a de facto standard of sorts.

This leaves you with a few options; you can wait around for a better provider, provide feedback to improve Klout or just opt out. However, that last option involves not checking your score. Every. Day.