Twitter and Facebook bring on the grumps

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday January 28, 2011

Oh dear I'm going into one of my Top Gear meets Grumpy Old Men phases. A sudden loss of patience with what the rest of the world thinks of as wonderful.

It started when I read about Seven Group's new "Augmented reality phone app for Kia". It seems that with this world-shaking advertising invention: "You can stream a 3D animation of the Kia Optima from the television screen onto your mobile iPhone in order to interact with the car's features." Just point your phone at the logo on the TV screen and you'll be able to turn the car's lights on and off and change its colour or something.

I'm afraid I cannot for the life of me think of any reason why I would want to do such a thing - but then maybe I'm just not their market.

I flunked on Twitter too. I registered for it when it first came out, nearly five years ago.

After a few days of trial, the prospect of receiving the minute by minute random thoughts and banalities going on in the heads of every other being on this planet just gave me a headache.

I have enough trouble dealing with my own banalities and am quite capable of generating streams of random thoughts without any outside assistance.

Recently I thought, now time has passed, maybe I'd misjudged it and should try again. I logged on and started twiddling.

I find that my Twittersphere allows me to know that Britney Spears is shooting her new video, what Stephen Fry had for dinner last night, and an hour by hour recounting of the activities of the PM. Almost makes you sorry for our leader as she trudges from one boring meeting to the next.

I decided I was right first time, and disengaged.

I'm a little warmer to Facebook, mostly putting up family photos and events from time to time. But then I find dozens of messages there from people I hardly know - usually the less you know them the more the messages.

I think maybe I should delete them off my list of friends. But what if they found out and got offended? Oh dear, if this social media is the future of human interaction it's no easier than the old kind.

My marketing news is that Oprah has been the winner of all the TV ratings earlier this week, with 1.3 million viewers on Friday and 1.2 on Sunday.

Sorry to be a grump again but I really did sit down to watch the show, with the best intentions.

But all that American gee-whiz enthusiasm, ladies wetting themselves when Oprah walks into their shop, and Aussies at their most sycophantic barbecuing worst was just too much for me. In a spirit of patriotism I lasted an hour but that was enough before my stomach rebelled.

Don't get me wrong, I fully expect this Oprahtunity to fulfill all that it promises. Most definitely as an ad man I'd recommend my client pay the necessary millions to get the huge amount of publicity and exposure that will follow, and it will be a bargain.

Just don't ask me to watch it too.