Technically Incorrect

The stars are dancing away from Facebook. And it's a quickstep.

After Bill Gates recently admitted that he had given up on Facebook because he couldn't work out which of his friend requests came from friends and which from very sad people, another of the world's great famous people has declared her Facebook unfriendliness.

Yes, Martha Stewart, perhaps one of the most iconic cooks, has decided that she is firmly in the Twitter camp and that Facebook just has to face her rejection.

"I just love it (Twitter) so much more than Facebook," she told the Daily Beast.

Stewart claims she gets more bang per tweet. But why knock Facebook? It's so homely, so friendly and so very inclusive of every possible political and social view, even frightfully repulsive ones.

It seems Facebook's recipe is far too complex.

(Credit: CC Art Comments/Flickr)

Stewart explained quite fully: "First of all, you don't have to spend any time on it, and, second of all, you reach a lot more people. And I don't have to 'befriend' and do all that other dippy stuff that they do on Facebook."

The other dippy stuff? Perhaps she means the throwing of sausages at each other or whatever it is Facebook people love to do. Or perhaps what irks her is people posting hundreds of pictures of their friend's wedding in Tennessee. The one where the catering was terrible.

Her words, however, seem to have pained the Facebook fraternity.

The Daily Beast quoted Facebook's communications director, Brandee Barker as hoping that the culinary queen "finds more ways to use Facebook." Suddenly, the Beast's Lloyd Grove had a second phone conversation with Stewart, in which she said:

"I'm not knocking Facebook. We use both Facebook and Twitter [at MSO]. They're very different tools, and I personally don't use Facebook. I prefer Twitter as a means of mass communication--it's the Wal-Mart of the Internet."

The Wal-Mart of the Internet? Is that similar to "the Pulse of the Planet," which is, according to hacked internal documents, one of the possible aims of the Twitter brand?

While Stewart's Twitter page is a sight to behold, I am extremely concerned that she may have happened upon some very inside information when she commented on the future of Facebook and Twitter.

She told the Beast: "They're all going to be owned by the same company eventually."

But which company, Martha? Which company?

I've never died, but I can't imagine it to be a terribly enjoyable experience.

So I can't imagine why death's proximity might encourage someone to go on working until they are grimly reaped.

That seems to be the case with Steve Jobs, however. His work seems to be his life. The Apple logo seems to be his heart. And, even with several bites taken out of his health, he appears to want to carry on being Apple until he enters the second life.

The hopeful, perhaps mythical one, rather than the virtual one.

After his pancreatic cancer surgery in 2005, Jobs gave a speech to Stanford University students who were about to embark on their own journeys through life's inequities.

He told the audience: "Remembering I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"You know, Steve, it's only gadgets."

(Credit: CC Joi/Flickr)

I was always told by those who claimed to know (which would be people at Microsoft) that Bill Gates was an obsessive, ruthless automaton whose need to crush all before him (in a business sense) was limitless.

Yet somehow this supposed machine in a man's body decided to unplug his working life at Microsoft while he still had his health and to dedicate himself to philanthropic pursuits. He even managed to laugh at his own supposedly cold persona in a couple of excellent ads for his old company.

It all makes one wonder whether Gates would have bothered to return to work, if a life-threatening illness had befallen him.

Some might say that when he walked into a calming sunset, Gates had nothing left to prove, while Jobs still has.

To which my question would be: "What?" He's been largely responsible for directing technological innovations beyond many people's imaginations. But much as one might love what he has created, at heart these are only gadgets.

They cure nothing but boredom. They take time just as much as they make it. And while they help people communicate with each other, they also contribute to helping people be a little more obsessed with their beautiful selves.

Is spending your time creating another lovely gadget as valuable, as enjoyable, as satisfying as, say, wafting up Mount Kilimanjaro? Is it as challenging as waking up in the morning, looking out at the dawn and having no idea what you might do today?

Of course, now that Jobs has been declared healthy, the worldly and the wise have felt free to write of his supposedly old-fashioned, dictatorial management style, even, in the same Harvard Business Publishing article, his utterly disrespectful attitude to parking.

At the core, though, is one man's heartfelt need to continue making gadgets. You can call it art. You can call it obsession. You can call it madness. Perhaps it's all three.

The first blow deafened my ear as if a thousand Woody Woodpeckers shouted at me all at once.

"You've been writing about piffling frivolities!" screamed my CNET handler, cuffing me like a pekingese who had just piddled on his presidential rug. "Can't you just do something serious for a change?"

Then he threw a book at me and shouted: "Read this. You might learn something." The book was Malcolm Gladwell's new bestseller "Outliers." Subtitled "The Story of Success," it is a pithy commentary on some of the entirely understandable (when you think about them) whims that contribute to huge successes.

The Canadian hockey team, for example, is comprised of people born in the early months of the year because they were physically advantaged when they were but little pucks. Bill Gates was fortunate to have access to just the right equipment at just the ripe young age to hone his skills and put him ahead of those who didn't wear glasses and didn't want to make a fortune.

Even The Beatles were lucky to be shunted off to Hamburg, Germany, where they were forced to perfect their pop ditties for more than 10,000 hours.

"It's not enough to ask what successful people are like," writes Mr. Gladwell."It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."

(Credit: CC Nimbu)

It is a fine book that takes you many fewer than 10,000 hours to read. However, it is, perhaps, the most misnamed book of all time.

"Outliers" is not the story of success. It is the story of failure. Most of us, when we analyze our lives on cold, damp bar stools, fail. If we didn't, there wouldn't be shrinks. Or tequila.

And Mr. Gladwell's book is perhaps the most reassuring of any that has ever been written for those whose lives have vast holes of unfulfillment that only an extension of Google Earth called Google Soul (you think they won't try and create it, those googlies?) could identify.

"Outliers" encourages us to look for every single explanation as to why we didn't do what we hoped we would do. It tells us there are far more than we had ever imagined. It asks us to really analyze how the whole world is far more against us than for us. Except for a lucky few.

I would have been a brilliant left-fielder, you see. It's just that I was born in the United Kingdom. And my parents were foreign (it's their 55th wedding anniversary today. Do drop them a line). And English was my second language. And the nearest batting cage was, well, probably 3,000 miles away. And Joes Buck and Torre would NEVER have been able to pronounce my name.

See how easy it is? Try it yourself this weekend. It'll make you feel a whole lot better.

So has everyone been wandering around your office, puffing out their hairless chests and declaring "I'm a PC" with pride?

Thought not.

Visible Measures, a company that measures viral-video activity, announced this weekthat the Gates-Seinfeld ads enjoyed 4.3 million more viral views than the politely conventional "I'm a PC" campaign.

A somewhat improbable explanation was given for this enormous discrepancy. "So much viral video is basically word of mouth. And when you build a question into the creative, it gives people something to talk about," Matt Cutler, vice president of marketing and analytics at Visible Measures, told Ad Age.

I question this analysis.

Although the first ad had moments as forced as a Sarah Palin wink, the Gates-Seinfeld campaign was genuinely original. The second ad, in which the Laconic Duo tried to commune with real people--yes, even crabby little teenagers--was both amusing and intriguing.

The "I'm a PC" campaign, on the other hand, is as familiar as the tangy smell of a dentist's surgery. It captures the imagination about as well as Britney Spears captures a B-flat at 8 in the morning.

Visible Measures' figures bear this out starkly. After two weeks in the market, the Gates-Seinfeld ads were still getting about 700,000 views a day. After the same period, the politely conventional follow-up couldn't even scrape 50,000 a day.

"I am truly moved to accept this Technically Incorrect acting award..."

(Credit: CC Domain Barnyard)

In case you were wanting to cry "Fix!," please be advised that each of the campaigns had about 75 online placements.

Of course, viral viewing isn't everything. But it is a significant indicator of where daily eyes--and especially young eyes--go to get themselves through their desperately tedium-ridden days.

Every echo coming out of the closed chambers associated with these two efforts suggests that Microsoft simply lost its nerve after some negative reaction to the Gates-Seinfeld buddy movies. You don't spend large amounts on a star--and pay Jerry Seinfeld to appear as well--with the thought that you'll only run the campaign for a few days.

It is all one large pity.

Firstly, because sometimes the very best creative works aren't universally embraced when they first come out.

And, secondly, because we have been deprived of more "Bill Gates, actor." Mr. Gates' performance in the second ad was quite remarkable, and there was enough in his chemistry with Mr. Seinfeld to suggest a long-term campaign.

Let's hope his agent finds him another gig.

"I know I said I was going to the party dressed as a clown, but what do you think of this pin-striped suit?"

When you've worked in advertising for a long time--especially if you're on the creative side--you learn to steel yourself to expect anything. Otherwise, your doctors prescribe you far too many strangely-named concoctions, all of them ending in 'zepam'.

Which is why Microsoft's decision to regress its ad agency, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, back to the mean, is merely another day at the Wishing Well.

It is, however, sadder than seeing Hillary Swank encouraged into the next life by Clint Eastwood.

I find myself trying to imagine all the meetings that led to the brave decision to run the Gates-Seinfeld Road Show, even though the first spot was haltingly spotty. ("You want Bill Gates to be funny? Bill Gates isn't funny, OK?")

Then I envisage the pressure put on Microsoft's marketing department this week by those who always claim to know better, those whom some at Microsoft would describe as "well, the folks who, you know, seem to have been wrong quite a lot."

One might have hoped that those responsible for approving the Gates-Seinfeld spots would have managed internal expectations. You don't create something so radically different and potentially market-changing and expect to be clutching favorable data by the time your CEO has finished dinner. A new ad is not a new Intel chip. (Though I know there are some out there who wish it was.)

The internal tension was made public when a Microsoft spokesman declared that no more Bill and Jerry ads had been shot, while someone from the agency slipped that there is already one more intrigue-filled opus in the can.

The world's clowns are a little confused.

(Credit: CC Bob Jagendorf)

That's not to say the two different Microsoft campaigns don't come from the same strategy. Clearly, the idea is to subvert the company's perceived weaknesses.

While Gates and Seinfeld addressed Microsoft's tepid relationship with its customers, the new "I'm a PC" work attempts to declare that "It's not fair! It's not fair! That Apple boy is just a bully! He's not telling the truth, Momma!"

The problem, though, is an emotional change of direction that is more intoxicated than intoxicating. Microsoft has chosen to embrace a vignetty spaghetti--a series of testimonials that is a pair of blue slippers to the Gates-Seinfeld ads' pink Conquistador winklepicker.

As I said in my last post on this subject, crucial to Microsoft's ability to create change is the emotional approach of its ads. The radical emotional switch between the Bill Gates of the Road Show spots and the Bill Gates of "I'm a PC and I wear glasses" makes his persona and the brand's appear just a little schizoid.

Crispin, Porter and Bogusky managed to persuade Burger King to persist with the quite loopy persona of the King character just when so many critics, within the Burger Kingdom and beyond, were telling the agency it was plain weird.

The result of that client's steadfastness (and remember, this is a client who has to satisfy some of the most fractious and recalcitrant franchisees in the world) is not only a re-energized brand, but sales that few could have imagined.

To retire Messrs Gates and Seinfeld after their Lewis and Clark journey has barely left Washington State is to give a sharp poke in the eye to one of the better chances Microsoft has had for radical image change.

With just one "I'm a PC" ad, the company reveals the hem of its powerholism skirts and hopes that a modicum of conventional niceness (after Deepak Chopra and Eva Longoria, who might be next? Michael Phelps and Dr. Phil?) will help it achieve its goals.

Perhaps this was the plan all along. Although it would take a particularly fine vendor of asp oil to persuade me that they intended to present the new, very likable Bill Gates for just a few days.

Perhaps the agency is biding its time before encouraging the client back towards distinctiveness. Perhaps the next "I'm a PC" ads will be more adventurous. And perhaps advertising is simply the most perfect job any masochist could hope to enjoy.

As the Queen Mother would always say when she shook hands with eminently Latin-speaking international soccer players before important games: "Bona Fortuna."

At this time of alleged retirement, I wonder if Bill Gates has turned to anyone for advice.

Just in case, I have done so for him.

I have been strangely immersed in a book this week called "How To Get Rich."

It is written by a man, also allegedly retired(ish), who knows he is called the Bearded Dwarf by many others.

A man who openly admits, in his past, to having taken many girls simultaneously to far-off places for far-off behaviors, while enjoying some of Peru's more troubling exports.

His name is Felix Dennis.

I have no idea if Mr. Dennis and Mr. Gates have ever met.

But Mr. Dennis's publishing company seems to have made really quite a lot of money out of computer publications such as MacUser and PC Pro and, amongst other adventures, declining to do a deal with a certain Mr. Ziff.

(Credit: maveric2003)

Mr. Dennis, like Mr. Gates, claims he no longer runs his company, which, until recently, was perhaps most famous for publishing thoughtful mind-soothers for men, such as Maxim.

These days, poetry being an energy-sapping exercise, Mr. Dennis attends only four to six senior management or board meetings a year.

However, he exhibits a Stakhanovite enthusiasm for reading the minutes of meetings: "They are not a memorandum of past events," he says. "They are a tool to understand current positions."

The tool that Mr. Dennis most wields in his current, somewhat retired, state is the veto. All his executives agree to abide by his five veto rule before they join the Board.

Here's what the Board cannot do without Mr. Dennis's express permission (his words):

1. They may not vote anyone on or off the Board.

2. They may not physically move the headquarters of the company.

3. They may not dispose of, or shut down, any substantial asset.

4. They may not purchase, or launch, any substantial new product or business.

5. They may not award themselves bonuses or salary increases.

Which leaves executives to, no doubt, reach for a very poetic understanding of the word "substantial."

Here's the strange thing, though.

In 2007, the Sunday Times (you know, the Brit paper that's too heavy to pick up) ranked Dennis Publishing as "One of the Top 100 British Companies to Work For."

The suspicion, of course, is that it is Mr. Dennis's continued spiritual presence, as much as his physical absence, that makes the company continue to be successful.

I wonder whether Bill Gates will continue to have the same kind of veto powers as Felix Dennis. And whether employees would feel this was a good or a bad thing.

It takes a certain type of character to thrive under someone's extremely tight patronage for a long period of time. How many Microsoft employees will truly be able to flower in these rather more infertile times?

Here's what I do know. To a considerable extent, Bill Gates will be judged on what he leaves behind. And that includes so many of the people he hired.

I once was responsible for creating a campaign for Microsoft and was fortunate enough to meet two of the best clients I have ever encountered- Jeff Ramos and Jeanna Peterson.

Naturally, before I met them, I was told that they would make various parts of my anatomy hurt for days without end.

Yet their striving for simple excellence, honesty and, bloody hell, their sense of humor, made working with them, under numbing pressure, actually enjoyable.

And yes, they worked for Microsoft. For all I know, they still do.

I understand that Bill Gates, like Felix Dennis, is not universally worshiped.

One wore regulation nerd gear, the other a kaftan.

But, and I'm guessing here, they must have done something right.

Perhaps the mistake they made lies in their personas. And their stylists.

If Mr. Dennis had worn a blue button-down and creased khakis, perhaps he would have enjoyed less of a 'love him or hate him' reputation.

An orgy-loving, cokehead, kaftan-wearing head of Microsoft?

Now wouldn't that have been fun?