New Nine Inch Nails Lyrics Leaked

I’ve recently acquired, from sources unknown, lyrics to the new Nine Inch Nails album.  The album is titled, “Life Support.”

The album is pretty deep, yet surprisingly romantic.  Coming from Trent Resnor, that is saying lots.  So I have the Lyrics to the first song of the new Nine Inch Nails album called Lost in Love:

I realize the best part of love is the thinnest slice
And it don’t count for much
But I’m not letting go
I believe there’s still much to believe in

So lift your eyes if you feel you can
Reach for a star and I’ll show you a plan
I figured it out
What I needed was someone to show me

You know you can’t fool me
I’ve been loving you too long
It started so easy
Your want to carry on, carry on

(Chorus)
Lost In Love and I don’t know much
Was I thinking aloud and fell out of touch
But I’m back on my feet and eager to be what you wanted

So lift your eyes if you feel you can
Reach for a star and I’ll show you a plan
I figured it out
What I needed was someone to show me

You know you can’t fool me
I’ve been loving you too long
It started so easy
You want to carry on, want to carry on
You know you can’t fool me
I’ve been loving you too long
It started so easy
Your want to carry on, want to carry on

(Chorus)

Now I’m lost, lost in love, lost in love, lost in love
Now I’m lost, Im lost in love, lost in love, lost in love
Lost in love, lost in love, lost in love
(Repeat and fade)

Abusing the New DiggBar

If you frequent Digg.com, you will soon notice that they’ve recently implemented a stupid tool bar, which essentially is a URL shortner (is it going to replace tinyurl?).  What is flawed about it, and thanks to Michael Gray for the tip, is that it can easily be abused!

The tool actually frames your website with the DiggBar at the top and a screen shot of yours at the bottom.  This apparently was done to “artificially inflate” user metrics. I have no idea why they would do that.  I mean come one, Digg is such an open minded place, why would they want to artificially inflate things? yeah right…

By framing everyone elses website you never leave digg, so the length of their user visits goes up, and it looks like their site is improving, and they con more clueless VC’s that Digg is actually a valuable website, they want to keep wasting money investing in.

Pretty interesting concept…it just goes to show you that social media is now officially turning back into the hands of the big corporate pocketbook. (Similar to when e-commerce was kick-started in the late 90s).

You can read more on how to abuse the system here.  Too much fun stuff to post, and I am not going to reveal secrets ;)  Have fun abusing Digg. 

Now, Brian Cuban? Where are you man…here is our chance at revolution…again :)

Winning an Election with Social Media

I was able to watch a presentation by Obama’s Campaign Manger, David Plouffe on what they actually did.  Whether you like Obama or not, this guy was on the ball! Really impressive…take a peek at my notes.

They leveraged the power of people to deliver the message of the Obama Campaign.  This is huge evidence that social media is changing traditional marketing and promotion concepts. 

They’ve also embraced the idea that people are seeking their own information.  Customer base is more cynical of traditional media, but more accepting of ideas and concepts presented by individuals.

Their Success Came from 2 Major Items

1. Keeping the campaign message consistent across all platforms (web and other traditional media outlets)
2. Repetition – They would talk to supporters 5-6 times to help them arrive at a decision

They were able to maintain the grassroots-level by usage of:

• Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, coupled with Door knocking
• Cable On Demand outlet for an Obama Channel
• Tried to meet people where they "lived," be it home, website, SMS messaging, Facebook, email

The big challenge was to maintain brand control, all while empowering people to deliver the Obama message

• They provided supporters and campaigners with Art and Music
• But still wanted to make sure that the core integrity is maintained
• Supporters made their own videos on YouTube, posted images to Flickr
• Essentially catered to their audience

Lead gathering was utilized to keep track of what every supporter was up to

• Utilized Google Adwords to point to regional landing pages to gather supporter data
• Used that data to see if those supporters could be used to help with campaigning
• Kept track of data to see if they were meeting registration goals

Maintain a Relationship with your Customer Base

• Always seek feedback from supporters
• Always question how your supporters will respond on certain things
• Understand what motivates your customer base
• Value their input
• Providing a "partnership" mentality is important.

Learn more about the social marketing here.

Facebook “Update” Killed My App

Yesterday a few of my Facebook apps suddenly stopped working.  I did some digging and found something interesting. Facebook has recently been making updates to how their platform communicates with their applications, both on Facebook and externally, through Facebook Connect.

In doing this, they now require any iframe applications running on Facebook.com to include the callback url (the url where your application is being hosted from) to exist in two places in the application’s settings; in the "Canvas" settings page, and the "Connect" settings page.

Placing it on the connect settings page is where the application now references and looks for the cross domain reciever file, which ensures that the iframe app will render xfbml.  Thanks for Matt for finding the fix for this (this dude knows his stuff)

Anyways, we’ve fixed the problem before it became and issue.  Let me know if you need to build any Facebook Apps.

Facebook claims they have been running scripts to update any application that has referenced the file in your xd_reciever.htm file…but they lied. So check your app.

Developing Facebook Apps in .NET

Developing Facebook applications in .NET is simple, but you must keep this one important thing in mind.  Make sure you have .NET 3.5 installed on the development server.

The Facebook .NET API makes use of LINQ which is a part of .NET 3.5, so if you don’t have it, you won’t be able to build any cool integrated Facebook “gadget” apps.  

The API contains quite a few Facebook gadgets, such as multiple friend invite dialog an others.  But, like I said, make sure you have 3.5 installed before even attempting to think about building a Facebook app in .NET.

Once you get that out of the way, take a peek at this site for the Facebook.NET website to download the latest .net library for developing Facebook applications that can access the Facebook API.