OK, this one is dedicated to my friends in the SCA. They’ll know what I mean. Yes, it’s a billboard advertising a soft drink, but it’s also a deep, deep commentary on The Nature of Engineering.
Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 9
Well unless Heath Ledger is in the news again for some reason, apart from the routine news about his funeral etc, I think the steady decline seen in the traffic over the last three days will continue.
As with the Steve Irwin jokes, though, the traffic will never fade away completely. There’ll always be some level of searching for “heath ledger jokes”, and occasional surges as he enters the news.
There’s today’s graph for now. More detailed analysis and reflection later.
Rebranding America with Obama
When your business’ reputation sucks, what do you do? Re-brand it!
Jon Taplin reckons American business is hoping to revive “Brand USA” by supporting Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. In Reviving Brand America, he says:
It is getting very hard to be an American company in much of the world (see photo). Whenever they are pissed off in Karachi, they burn down the KFC. George Bush’s War has made competing against European and Chinese manufacturers like wrestling with one arm tied behind your back. So like any smart CEO, the elite has decided we need a re-branding of America with a charismatic man of colour at the front.
Exhibit A is the New York Post’s endorsement of Obama this morning. I would take it as a given, that Rupert Murdoch saw this editorial before it was published. Exhibit B is MSNBC. I promise you, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann would not be given the free rein to criticize both Hillary and Republican hypocrisy, unless Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE had not given the OK. I obviously think this is a rational move on the part of American business — and I know its not like they all met at some private club to decide this. I just think this is the consensus vision, well outlined by Andrew Sullivan a couple of months ago.
But is American business that concerned with their nation’s international image? Or is Taplin spot on?
Indeed, was the success of Kevin Rudd in Australia’s 2007 election partially the result of our stagnant image overseas?
Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 8
Given that there’s quite a bit of fluctuation in web traffic from day to day anyway — for all manner of reasons — I’m going to say that it’s been relatively steady through the week so far.
As I mentioned yesterday, the Heath Ledger jokes page is now sustaining itself on Google search results. I think I’ll do a more detailed end-of week analysis tomorrow. I just wanted to publish something about this Experiment today because I know every single reader is awaiting my every word on this important global issue.
Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 7
Another day, another traffic graph for The Heath Ledger Experiment. And once more, contrary to my expectations, there’s another gentle increase in traffic.
Could this be because the Heath Ledger jokes page is now the top result when you do a Google search for “heath ledger jokes”?
Today is about other things for me, not Mr Ledger, so I’ll return to these thoughts tomorrow. But do feel free to add your own comments.
Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 6
Yesterday I reported that traffic for The Heath Ledger Experiment had declined across the weekend. Today I can tell you that the decline has been reversed and we’re slightly up again. Across 6 days, we’ve seen a total of 6,407 unique human visitors to the jokes page.
I have no real explanation for this yet, and it may just be statistical noise. Still, my gut feeling is that we’re moving past the initial feeding-frenzy. Perhaps the early visitors are people who actively seek out a forum for this sort of thing, because that’s how they gain the attention they seek. Later, others stumble across the site once those early visitors have seeded it with content.