We Are Social’s Monday Mashup #8

Happy New Year! Time for the first Monday Mashup of the new decade. Here we go.

‘Best Job’ winner stung by jellyfish
Loosely translated, the German word ‘schadenfreude’ describes the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.

Which brings me to the news that the winner of Australia’s “Best Job in the World” contest has survived a sting from a potentially deadly jellyfish just days before the end of his dream stint on the Great Barrier Reef.

You may recall that Ben Southall beat over 34,000 competitors to land the six-month job as “caretaker” of Hamilton Island, Australia where he published the Island Caretaker Blog. The campaign gained international notoriety and bagged a number of awards, including two top awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this summer.

Twitalyzer 2.0 Launched
This weekend Twitalyzer shed its BETA status and officially opened the application to the public. This application allows you to analyse an account in detail, and also provides access to a dashboard, which “provides access to great new Twitalyzer features including tracking for multiple accounts, Google Analytics integration, user tagging and segmentation tools.” If you want to get the most out of the app then download and read the Twitalyzer Handbook, a 50 page user’s guide to the application.

Social Media is the New Super Bowl: Pepsi Refresh and What It Means to Marketers
The big marketing news across the pond over the past couple of weeks was Pepsi’s decision to trade Super Bowl advertising for social media activity in 2010:

For the first time in 23 years–23 years!–the brand will not be purchasing a Super Bowl spot.  Instead, it is sinking $20M into a Social Media program called Pepsi Refresh. The Pepsi Refresh site will allow people to vote for worthwhile community projects, and Pepsi expects to sponsor thousands of local efforts via this program.

The Forrester Blog for Marketing Leadership Professionals unravels what it means for marketers, and considers the ramifications for the industry.  The post is worth a read, and Pepsi’s decision is worth following.

Tories ‘would pay £1m for public policy making website’
Tory frontbencher Jeremy Hunt last week told the BBC that the Conservatives would offer a £1m prize in a competition to develop a website that would allow large groups of people to help develop new policies.

If implemented, this would be a groundbreaking approach to create a platform to crowdsource public policy ideas. Although perhaps they could offer 10 prizes of 100k each for 10 different approaches – after all, that’s still a substantial reward for a lone developer, and how are you going to know what works until you put it in practice?

Wipe The Slate Clean For 2010, Commit Web 2.0 Suicide
If you are looking for an online detox, this is for you. Moddr, a New Media Lab in Rotterdam have developed The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine which effectively disconnects you from social networks completely:

Just put in your credentials for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or LinkedIn and it will delete all your friends and messages, and change your username, password, and photo so that you cannot log back in.

A light hearted video describes the benefits of committing Web 2.0 suicide, but this is probably not recommended for anyone working in this industry as this ‘will really delete your online presence and is irrevocable.’

You’ve been warned.

Update: Facebook blocks ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’
Oh dear…