What Québec Wants™

Not big on conversation

This blog is almost two years old, has 238 posts, had 19314 lifetime pageviews and a fair amount of comments.

The post that generated the most visits?

A post entitled ‘Playing computer games in the nude.’ The referring site most often responsible for taking visitors to this post was Google Images.

Either my other posts are not as arousing and won't ignite conversations or I should somehow embed the word ‘nude’ in each title.

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Talking about limited conversations, there's an interesting admission by Harry Rosen's Sandra Kennedy in the Globe and Mail today. Remember the 'new confidence' campaign for the retailer featuring, among others, Robert Deluce and Rob Guenette? It seems only about 1,000 people had visited the blog by the end of the campaign. I guess the word 'nude' didn't fit the strategy.

It’s about the bike: when fake friends create buzz.

It was only a matter of time before fake bloggers and fake friends on Facebook became a marketer’s tool.

The story goes like this: three Montrealers create a blog about cycling. They met because of a shared passion – riding their bike – and chose to write to promote bikes as the main mode of transportation in Montreal. Mélanie Gomez, Jean-Michel Simoneau and Pénélope Riopelle wrote often and well about their passion on their blog: “à vélo citoyen” (On your bike citizens).

To promote their blog, they created a Facebook page. 1300 friends signed up.

Their blog was so popular that in July 2008 it got an exclusive from a good source; a photo of the prototype of the new Bixi, the self-serve bicycle sponsored by the City of Montreal (being officially launched today). A few days later, the City of Montreal confirmed on the blog that this was in fact the prototype.

Great buzz for the city. But also a great controversy since we now know that Mélanie, Jean-Michel and Pénélope do not exist. They’re the creation of Montreal Parking and its agency Morrow Communications.

Some are quite upset over this. Get over it. And make sure you collect real friends on Facebook or accept the social network for what it has become; a public marketing tool where people continue to share their private lives.