Who would have thought, as 2012 dawned, that a piece of cotton could become so political?
First, of course, there was the shock of the Trayvon Martin case, where a Florida teen clad in the offending garment — and carrying nothing but soda and Skittles — was shot to death by a man who took one look at Martin’s garb and thought him suspicious.
Suddenly, it seemed, wearing a hoodie was the most controversial statement you could make — one that cut across lines of age and race. Youths participated in hoodie marches, demanding justice and an end to profiling. Rep. Bobby Rush wore one on the floor of the House of Representatives in solidarity with Martin, and was booted off for doing so. Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera urged teens not to wear them, then backed down in the wake of stinging criticism from his own son.
Now, less than two months later, it’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who is making a cultural statement with his hoodie. And he isn’t about to back down. Perhaps without realizing it, Zuck has stepped into the vanguard of a wider cultural war — one of young against old, Silicon Valley against Wall Street.
As numerous outlets have reported, Zuck wore the hoodie — his signature garment — to several meetings with large banks and other institutional investors this week.
Was that a problem? It was for at least one of those investors. Analyst Michael Pachter of the firm Wedbush Securities, who is generally bullish on Facebook stock, went on Bloomberg TV to complain about Zuckerberg’s attire. He suggested it spoke of immaturity, and went on to state that Facebook would do better without Zuck as the CEO.
Cue laughter, outrage, and a couple of dueling satirical Twitter accounts — @Zuckerbergshood and@Zuckshoodie.
Pachter, responding to criticism across the blogosphere, has since clarified his statements. He wears a hoodie too, he has said, on occasion, out of the office. He just thinks that when you’re presenting to bankers, you wear a jacket as a mark of respect. He pointed out that Zuck wore a suit to meet the President last year(ignoring the fact that Steve Jobs, seated on the other side of Obama, was proudly displaying his signature Jobs gear — black turtleneck and jeans.)
Interestingly, Pachter thinks it would have been okay had Zuck worn a jacket, a T-shirt and jeans. How times change. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt would have prevented you from getting a loan in a bank in 1972, let alone presenting to its top investors. Can we assume, then, that stuffy Wall Street types will routinely wear hoodies to work by 2042?
Clearly, there is a culture clash at work here. On Wall Street, clothes still maketh the man. I get that. (As I write these words, I’m wearing a suit for the purpose of a panel discussion later in the day). But that doesn’t make suit-wearing the dominant culture.
In Silicon Valley, nobody cares about what you wear. They care about how good your code is. Who’s to say they’re wrong, or that they shouldn’t take that ethos with them when they travel?
By sticking to his hoodie — and we hope he does — Zuck is indeed sending a signal. Not that he doesn’t care about big investors, or else he wouldn’t be there. But simply that he isn’t going to change who he is, or what Facebook is.
The company has a proud hacker culture, as is clear to anyone who visits its new headquarters. Employees are not only encouraged to wear what they please, they’re encouraged to “hack their space” and graffiti on the walls.
Wedbush Securities should be glad that Zuck refrained from taking a sharpie to their conference room, at least. And perhaps it’s time for them — and investors like them — to show a little respect to the hoodie generation, and the massive, interlocking virtual world of social media it has managed to build.
While there has been a large scale movement to online marketing, there’s still big business in promoting your business offline as well as online. Here’s some brilliant outdoor marketing adverts that I stumbled across.
Google defines the +1 as a feature to help people discover and share relevant content from the people they already know and trust. Users can +1 different types of content, including Google search results, websites, and advertisements. Once users +1 a piece of content, it can be seen on the +1 tab in their Google+ profile, in Google search results, and on websites with a +1 button.
The plot thickened last month when Google launched Search plus Your World. Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google Search, explained that now Google+ users would be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.” According to Ian Lurie from the blogConversation Marketing, in Search plus Your World, search results that received a lot of +1s tend to show up higher in results.
Google has come out and described the purpose of a +1, but hasn’t necessarily explained the direct effect a +1 has on search ranking. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know. Since the days of Google Buzz, the +1 button has been a mystery to users and content producers alike. It’s different from Facebook’s “Like” button, in that it doesn’t directly share content to a user’s social stream. But the cultivation of a social graph has long been the goal of Google, and its connection to search was likely inevitable.
The +1 has an indirect effect on your site’s search rank. This does not mean the more +1’s a link has, the higher rank it achieves in traditional search results. Take this scenario:
When a Google+ user +1’s a piece of content, he gives it his “stamp of approval.” Then, say one of his connections from Google+ searches for the same or related topic. Because of Search plus Your World, his friend is more likely to click on the same link the original user +1’d (when a signed-in user searches, his Google results may include snippets annotated with the names of connections who have +1?d the content). This is because content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers, according to Google - Read the rest of the article at Mashable
For those of you who wouldn’t be familiar with SEO and how Google ranks websites in search engines, I’ve found this great infographic which explains pretty much everything you need to know about Google Panda, the way Google ranks sites in search results.
Social Media, The new entity thats neither costly nor daunting. The digital movement to cyberspace is no longer a thought pattern but a massive movement in our society’s culture. Technicians code is now being represented in simple platforms for the non technical operator to create magic. The new age of technicians are artist’s rather than code inhabited elite trained college monkey. Responsive websites are the new dawn, another minor movement is to portable devices. The move encouraged by the new generation of student’s,children & even mature that are influencing the transformation to the mobile devices “Tablet’s”. The digital move in advertising is & has been nicknamed “Social Media”, In simple terms & personal opinion the coined term is the revolutionized form of word of mouth. It’s ability to spread news & opinions freely through the medium that is the web. Zuckerberg’s facebook now quickly approaching one of the largest social mediums in the world has the ability to transform & is transforming our social network. Watch this space. Dillon.J.K.
