Facebook Store: Most brands and retailers have a Facebook presence in the hopes of increasing brand awareness, engaging and gaining new customers, and ultimately increasing sales. Pepsi, for example, posts contests for user-submitted content on its FB page, and Ticketmaster offers “Fan Deals.” A recent report from Forrester says that Facebook will not be a driving force in ecommerce, contrary to all the buzz about social media marketing, social shopping, social everything. Do you “like” brands or stores on Facebook? Has that made your life any better besides getting a small discount or a free t-shirt here and there? I definitely don’t “like” companies (besides DIGIDAY) or retailers on Facebook for the same reasons I don’t accept Facebook group invites or Fanpage invites: it’s all crap I don’t want in my newsfeed or anywhere else. It’s clutter and it’s annoying. Facebook is Facebook for a reason, it’s a social network for, you know, people. If I want to do some shopping online, I’m not going to look on Facebook first. I also don’t care if one of my Facebook friends bought a certain product or went to a certain store. But um, I guess good luck with the whole online retail platform thing. WSJ
Photoshop Wizardry: Who needs da Vinci when you’ve got Photoshop and Chinese laborers? Ah yes, the wonders of the globalized modern world. Artist Mike Ruiz took a high-res photograph of the Mona Lisa and used content-aware fill in Photoshop CS5 to remove the grinning dame and fill in the space with landscape. Ruiz sent the resulting landscape image to China, where artists used the image to recreate the oil painting in the same style as da Vinci. Gizmodo
Wiki Woops: If you are a congressman, don’t have your press secretary strategically edit your Wikipedia page by removing the entire “Controversies” section, like Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) did, otherwise that little PR snafu will be added to the (restored) “Controversies” section too. Gawker
Video of the Day: Internetic
Tumblr of the Day: Fiddy’s Biddies. Meet the lucky ladies 50 Cent flirts with on Twitter. So good when he lol’s after dropping the f-bomb.
More in Media
YouTube is under fire again, this time over child protection
Adalytics Research asks, ‘Are YouTube advertisers inadvertently harvesting data from millions of children?’
Media Briefing: Publishers pump up per-subscriber revenue amid ad revenue declines
Publishers’ Q2 earnings reveal digital advertising is still in a tight spot, but digital subscriptions are picking up steam.
Lessons for AI from the ad-tech era: ‘We’re living in a memory-less world’
Experts reflect how the failures of social media and online advertising can help the industry improve the next era of innovation.
Ad position: web_bfu