You may remember this giant piano at FAO Schwarz from the movie Big with Tom Hanks. Looks like FAO has stepped it up a bit from Chopsticks with these two ladies.

My blogging this week is going to be sparse. Between the holiday and moving this week, I think I'll be lucky to just get the weekly video of the week in. I do have one thought for today, however.

Why do marketers and advertisers use the phrases "and more" or "wait, there's more" or "and much, much more" when they're listing qualities of something? This has bugged me for a long time but I've seen it several times recently. Do people really think that there are so many good things about a product that the company can't figure out a way to tell you all of them? It cracks me up when a commercial or ad will rattle off twelve things their product does and then add "and more" to the end of it. If they just told me about twelve of the product's qualities, go ahead and tell me the last few.

If there's more, give me more. If not, don't tell me there's more. We live in a full disclosure, transparent, get it all out there kind of a world now...particularly in marketing and branding. Infomercials always tell you there's more, and there is. They tell you about it. I'm not a huge fan of infomercials, but at least when they tell you "there's more," it's the truth.

The bottom line is this: If there's more, just tell your customer. Don't tell them "there's more" when you can just tell them what the "more" is. Don't be tempted to use one of those phrases to make your product or service sound like it does more than it really does. If there's not more, that's fine. Just do what you do and be proud of that.

It's been a while since I referenced Rhett and Link, so they were due to be a video of the week. Their recent video of the Fast Food Folk Song is another good one. If you're not familiar with the drive thru rap phenomenon, check out the original Drive-Thru Rap from a few years ago for a little Internet history.

The best surprise of this whole video is the guy who takes the order nails Rhett and Link and repeats the entire order to them. In the end, the joke was on them.

A few weeks ago I went to social media purgatory when my blog was flagged as an attack site by Google. The problem, we finally learned, was a bad Wordpress plugin for embedding YouTube videos. What I didn't know was that Twitter takes it's cues from Google about which sites are legit (or not legit as the case may be.)

The link to my blog is the one I use in my Twitter profile. Since my blog was flagged by Google, Twitter suspended my account. Who knew? Google can shut down your Twitter account...or maybe it's more correct to say that Twitter will permit Google to tell them whether your account should be suspended.

I talked about the entire episode on a recent episode of The New Mediology and a bit in a short post after the blog got back online.

The bottom line is this: Google has more power than you think. Don't make them mad.

I had the chance to sit down with Bayard Saunders last week to talk about some social media marketing campaigns he's worked on in the past. In this video, Bayard gives some insight into social media marketing campaigns he's worked on with companies like cell phone carrier Cricket, Fazoli's Italian Restaurants, and the United Methodist Publishing House.

Special thanks to Wired Coffee Company for letting us shoot the video in their new coffee shop.

One of the most common statements I hear from corporate executives and business decision makers who are skeptical about social media is this: "If we get into social media, people might say bad things about us."

This statement has several weaknesses, but primarily it assumes that people are not saying bad things about the organization as along as they stay out of social media. That couldn't be further from the truth. If people are saying bad things about your company, they are doing so regardless of the company's social media presence.

To further invalidate the original statement, I'd also like to submit exhibit A:

I took this picture in my neighborhood a few days ago. It was on the back of a truck parked in the street. Clearly this truck's owner isn't a happy customer. Something happened with his experience with the local Nelson Mazda dealership and it wasn't reconciled to his satisfaction so he decided to let the world know in the form of this large sticker on his truck.

The only difference between this guy and anyone saying something bad about your company in social media is the amount of effort it takes to complain. This person went through some significant effort to create a sticker (or maybe it's a magnet) for the back of his truck. With social media tools like blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., the average person can complain with a mere fraction of the effort it used to take. And that's why companies can't ignore it anymore.

It's too easy for unsatisfied customers to complain and for their complaints to find an audience now. The statement that "people will say bad things about us" has nothing to do with social media tools. It has everything to do with the company itself. Social media tools just let people complain with less effort. The opportunity, then, is that social media tools also let companies identify and reconcile the problems with more awareness and potentially less effort.

With social media tools, companies actually have more influence over what people say about them than ever. It may not feel like it at first, but they have the chance to find more unsatisfied customers and reconcile more issues in less time. Companies can choose to bury their heads in the sand if they want, but they're just missing opportunities to turn some of their greatest problems into significant victories by responding to the people who are talking about them the most.

This is the new frontier of customer service, public relations, and corporate branding...and it's not going away. If you're not monitoring what's being said about your company, clients, products, services, and brands, you're missing some of the best opportunities to win with the complainers. The funny thing about social media complainers is that when you help them out they regularly turn into social media complementors. I bet you can find some today. Start with Twitter search, Techorati (for blogs), and Blinkx (for video).

I'm not sure how someone looks at an exercise ball and says, "Hey, I bet I can roll this ball, jump on it and then do a backflip." Seems like famous last words, unless you're this guy, in which case you make it look really easy.

Today I was with a friend when we parked behind a most unusual car on the street outside his house. I wish I had taken a picture of the car. The only way to describe it is that the back of the car was completely covered with stickers, and not big bumper stickers, but thousands of little stickers all over the place. [UPDATE: there's an old picture of it on Google Maps...it has more stickers now it seems.] It was crazy and memorable. Then my friend said, "Oh, he's added a new one." He then pointed out the new sticker. I'm not sure how he knew, but he sees the back of this car every day so I guess he would know.

This got me thinking about marketing and Purple Cows. I came away with these three thoughts/questions for my own business and for the companies I work with:

1. I've probably seen a thousand cars in the last week, but I only remember the one with the stickers. I remember it because it was different. How can our businesses be more memorable?
2. I can't recall what kind of car it was. It might have been a van or minivan. I was so focused on the stickers I didn't even pay attention to the type of car, and it's not like stickers are expensive. A small inexpensive thing made me see the car very differently. Heck, they made me look at the car at all. Are there inexpensive things that can make the business stand out or be viewed differently?
3. My friend noticed the new sticker. To me it was all new. To him there was just one new one, but he obviously pays attention. What are we doing to keep things interesting and noteworthy for the people who have been around for a while but still pay attention?

Today Charlie told me about the site HowToNailAnInterview.com. The site contains a list of observations and hidden video clips of Steiner Skipsness' attempt to learn the best (and worst) interviewing practices. This video is my favorite but several of the others are quite good as well. Watch and learn.

For all the talk about social media use and growth over the last several years, it's always good to get a look at the numbers to see how far it's come. A recent report by Harris Interactive has some interesting stats about the adoption of social networking sites Facebook and MySpace as well as the number of Americans who are on Twitter.

I took the stats (detailed below) and put them on Seth Godin's product adoption lifecycle. As you can see from the image, Facebook is about to cross over the hump while Twitter is just past the innovator phase and into the early adopters phase. With all the hype over Twitter in mass media, it will be interesting to see if Twitter moves into the orange section more quickly than other technologies.

Here are the numbers. According to the study:

• 49% of all Americans over the age of 18 are on Twitter, Facebook, or Myspace

Specifically for Facebook and MySpace use:

• 74% of 18-34 year olds are on Facebook and/or MySpace
• 47% of 35-44 year olds are on Facebook and/or MySpace
• 41% of 45-54 year olds are on Facebook and/or MySpace
• 24% of 55+ year olds are on Facebook and/or MySpace

As for Twitter...

• 8% of 18-34 year olds use Twitter
• 7% of 35-44 year olds use Twitter
• 4% of 45-54 year olds use Twitter
• 1% of 55+ year olds use Twitter

Well, after five days of a hacker induced hiatus, MicroExplosion is back. I'm very excited the site no longer has the quite unfortunate "attack site" label on it. I'd like to thank Nathan for his time and attention to get everything restored as well as a long lost friend, John Rader, who stepped in to help troubleshoot the issues.

Long story short there was some malicious code on at least one item embedded on the site. We don't know how it got there but it's fixed. Thanks again Nathan and John!!

So that's one down, one to go. My Twitter account which was hacked the same evening last week (still trying to see what, if any, connection there is to the site issues) is still inactive. Basically what happened was I had been using a very (let me stress...VERY) insecure password and someone hacked it and tried to do something malicious. Twitter responded appropriately and suspended the account...probably before any major damage was done, but the account is still suspended.

I've emailed Twitter a few times since last Thursday but haven't heard from them so I'm going to ask a few of you who happen to be on Twitter to try to contact Caroline or Del at Twitter support. They seem like the proper ladies to help get it fixed. Just tell them, "Bill was dumb. Bill needs help. Please help Bill get his account back: @billseaver." That might do the trick.

We now return to the regularly scheduled blogging.