The Social

Not only is this Super Mario costume homemade and hilarious, the guy sure can boogie.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

Really, America? Can we talk?

You see, I received this press release from Experian Hitwise in my in-box about the most-searched-for Halloween costumes in the U.S., based on searches in the month ending October 24 that ended in "costume." And the ranking was led by "Michael Jackson costume" and "Balloon Boy costume." OK, so those are timely, albeit a little bit more than unimaginative.

But it doesn't stop there. Following that were "Tinkerbell," "Catwoman," and "Poison Ivy," indicating that most costume searches are either on behalf of women or men who really want to make a fool of themselves. Among the top costume searches beginning with the word "sexy" were "sexy sailor costume," "sexy nurse costume," "sexy witch costume," and "sexy Queen of Hearts costume." (What would Lewis Carroll think?) And high-ranking costume searches beginning with "adult" include "adult cat costume," "adult Snow White costume," and "adult Care Bear costume."

I don't care what you dress up as for Halloween. Have fun with it. But just think about it. Adult Care Bear costume. Really. It's a costume that's probably itchy and uncomfortable, unflattering, and will embarrass the heck out of your kids if you have any. Not to mention that there's no obvious relevance to current events or pop culture that would negate the creepiness factor, considering the last time I checked the Care Bears have been around since 1981. Whatever happened to cowboys and pirates and disgraced politicians? Hitwise stats have officially weirded me out.

More depressing figures: Compared with the same time period last year, Hitwise found a 97 percent jump in searches for "pet costumes" this year. Those poor dogs.

(Credit: Twitter)

In observance of Good Friday, a New York church has been Twittering the story of the Passion--the biblical tale of the hours leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. This means that subscribers will receive 140-character updates coming from a set of Twitter accounts run by people playing characters in the story.

Trinity Wall Street is an Episcopal church in Manhattan's Financial District that live-streams its services on the Web, encourages members of the congregation to send video e-postcards to friends and family, and produces its own podcasts. The church's thinking behind offering a Twitter feed of the Passion is to offer a way to bring the day of observance into modern life and technology: While Good Friday is one of the most important days of the church year for many Christian denominations, there are plenty of devout Americans who don't take the day off from work.

But edgy interpretations of the Passion are nothing new. This is the same subject matter depicted in "The Passion of the Christ," the controversial Mel Gibson movie from a few years ago in which the dialogue was presented in the languages of the time without subtitles.

Also worth noting this week: a Passover haggadah depicted in the form of a Facebook news feed.

It's been a long time since I was this cynical about Valentine's Day. I guess it's not as bad as the year when it was freezing cold and I had the flu, or the year when I had a blind date with that pretentious guy who thought he was destined to be a famous economist. But this year, I'm kind of bitter about the advent of everyone's favorite love-to-hate-it holiday for a different reason, and I blame my job.

I write about the Web. I'm used to an in-box full of press releases from Web 2.0's famous and not-so-famous. But in the week leading up to Valentine's Day, the barrage has reached a fever pitch with all kinds of themed gimmicks, promotions, and other syrupy pitches geared toward the tech bloggers of the world. You'd think it were third grade again, except instead of sparkly pink-and-red cards with bad puns printed inside, I'm dealing with e-mails with bad puns in the subject lines. Unlike third grade, none of them come from the cute boy with the freckles and the missing front tooth who put a mouse in my desk that one time.

Timeliness is usually a decent PR strategy. But the problem with Valentine's Day is that everyone else is trying to use the same holiday theme to get press. Here's just a sample of what's been fluttering into my in-box over the past few days.

There is, as one of my CNET colleagues already highlighted, a new "Blow a Kiss" app for the iPhone. SpeedDate.com. also has a new iPhone app, in case you have been putting all this madness off until the last minute. A price comparison site called DealNews sent out an e-mail with some recommended V-Day gift tips.

The big guys are in on it, too. Facebook not only configured its virtual-gift feature so that you can send "wrapped" Valentine's gifts in advance and then reveal them to your recipients on the big day, but it chose February 12 as the day to announce that the New York City municipal government had chosen a Facebook fan page as the promotional hub for its "Get Some" condom distribution campaign. (Hmmm.) There's even a new promotion out of Redmond that attempts to promote the maxim that "Microsoft is a super romantic love machine of a company."

Oh, it gets better.

A representative from a mobile photo-sharing service called SnapMyLife sent me an e-mail suggesting that camera phones were a great way to share photos from Valentine's Day excursions (so, I suppose, like "Check out this pic of our booth at White Castle. This guy is such a cheapskate.") And in a possible attempt to stand out, e-card and invitation service MyPunchbowl sent out separate pitches highlighting both its Valentine cards and its anti-Valentine's Day cards.

In perhaps the trippiest of the bunch, one e-mail announced to me that the normally invitation-only role-playing game Hello Kitty Online (yes, that Hello Kitty) would be open to the public on Valentine's Day. Great news for those of you who don't have dates!

To be fair, gimmicky holiday pitches are by no means exclusive to Valentine's Day. Journalists and bloggers are, by now, familiar with the Halloween pitch (big with photo-sharing sites), the call-it-anything-but-Christmas holiday pitch (gadget gift guides, anyone?), the quadrennial election angle, and this year we've all become familiar with the recession pitch. But it's February 14 that really gets on my nerves. Maybe it's because the holiday is all about being told how to tell people that you care about them. Or maybe it's just an easy target.

That said, in recent years we've seen some Web 2.0 holiday campaigns that have been spot-on. OfficeMax created that "Elf Yourself" e-card campaign for the holiday season a while back, gaining a massive cult following by encouraging users to turn their co-workers and bosses into dancing elves. None of these Web 2.0 Valentine's campaigns--no, not even Hello Kitty!--really strike me as anywhere near as creative. Is it possible that all possibility for innovative marketing has already been siphoned out of this saccharine occasion? Maybe that's the real reason so many of us get so annoyed when it rolls around every year.

Besides, if you're really clever, you won't be trawling the Web for the best e-cards to shoot off to your significant other. You'll be like that guy who created his own iPhone app in order to propose to his girlfriend. Dweeby, but impressive.

The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York got "Rickrolled" on Thursday.

If you weren't watching the parade live or on TV, you probably saw the mass influx of Twitter messages: '80s pop singer Rick Astley, whose cheesy song "Never Gonna Give You Up" became the center of a corny Internet meme called "Rickrolling,", gave a surprise performance. "Rickrolling" originally started as tricking someone into clicking on a link to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video by claiming it was something else, like a highly anticipated movie trailer.

From what about a zillion Twitterers said, Astley emerged from a parade float sponsored by cable channel Cartoon Network, and started singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" live. The singer was recently honored at the MTV Europe Awards, but contrary to rumors, he did not perform.

Qik user Steve Garfield streamed the whole thing. Click here for a video (embedded above).

Singer Jonathan Coulton reacts to the 'live Rickroll' at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

(Credit: Twitter)

For a company that's cutting costs these days, the annual holiday party is an easy target. But there have been fewer cancellations in the tech industry than one might think.

True, eliminating an evening of eggnog and sugar cookies won't help an ailing balance sheet that much; in the current financial downturn, it has a lot to do with appearances, too. "It's the economy, definitely, but it's also a lot of public perception," said Celia Chen, a New York-based event planner who runs the blog Notes on a Party.

"People don't want to seem like they're being gratuitous or over-the-top when their colleagues have lost their jobs. It's more of a responsible way to run your company," she said.

On the other hand, there's a delicate balance between appearing prudent in the face of hard times, and keeping employee morale afloat. Many tech companies are in trouble, but for the most part they are not in meltdown mode like financial services companies or in a continued downward spiral like print media companies. Perhaps because of this, event planners say they haven't seen the same cancel-everything attitude when it comes to tech companies that they've seen in other industries.

"In the financial industry, their budgets are significantly lower than last year. In the tech world it really depends on the company," said Nate Valentine, a partner in the San Francisco events firm Vintage415. "You're seeing companies that are new, emerging companies that are doing events that haven't done events in the past, because they have the budget (now)."

Things are very different in traditional media companies, many of which have acquired tech start-ups and recently expanded their digital divisions--they're hurting, badly. Hearst Publications, which shuttered three magazines, canceled its party. So did Viacom, which is rumored to have layoffs coming before the end of the year. But many smaller media companies and tech start-ups have never had a large-scale holiday party, and probably aren't hiring high-end caterers or renting out big nightclubs for open bars.

The appearances factor comes into play here, too: employees of some smaller companies say they haven't even heard yet about whether the holiday party is on the books or not, indicating that a few executives are still vacillating on how appropriate it would be to throw a company party amid layoffs. "I haven't actually heard either way yet (about a cancellation)," said a representative from one San Francisco-based start-up that recently cut several dozen employees.

"I can't see us not having (a party)," said an employee of one New York-based blog company that also went through a fresh round of layoffs. "It'll suck, but we'll have it, I'm sure."

For larger companies, scaling back a holiday party can be particularly appearances-driven because there's a good chance they've already paid for much of it. "If you're a really big company, you're putting a deposit down on a Christmas party probably in September, if not August, because you have to accommodate a large group and it's been allocated in the budget for the year," Chen said.

There are signs of cost-consciousness everywhere: Valentine said that recently a group of several dozen Google employees in the Bay Area had arranged for an open bar at one of Vintage415's venues without actually booking the club. In New York, news outlet The Daily Beast reported that Google was renting less glitzy venues for its Gotham holiday parties. (Representatives from Google were not immediately available to confirm the report.)

"They'll still find a way to celebrate," Valentine commented. "It's just a different way to celebrate."

Viacom, for example, canceled its companywide party as well as parties for big divisions like MTV Networks and Paramount. "All employees across the country are getting two extra vacation days in exchange," company spokesman Jeremy Zweig told CNET News.

One member of Viacom's MTV Networks said that he speculates individual divisions of companies may come up with their own smaller celebration plans. "I'm sure we'll have drinks somewhere, at some point," said the Viacom employee, "even if it's just my team."

But a bigger complication arises when it comes to companies that have traditionally invited clients, media, or analysts to holiday parties. Canceling a party to which non-employees, particularly non-employees with an indirect stake in the company, are invited, could skew perceptions about that company's health. Both Google and Facebook, for example, have already sent out the invitations to their holiday media parties, fairly low-key affairs at company headquarters where handfuls of bloggers and journalists show up to schmooze with executives.

That said, the image issues work in the other direction, too. Chen said that a new-media company might want to think twice before throwing a big holiday party where one of the goals is to get loyal advertisers nice and tipsy. "Advertisers, I think they want to know that the companies they're advertising in are fiscally responsible," she speculated. "I think advertising is taking a hit in its own light, so I think the general feeling is that we have to be respectful of what's happening with so many people being laid off. And people really admire companies that are trying to do the right thing."

In the end, it's a tough executive decision. Unlike, say, the financial services industry, there really is no clear-cut answer in the tech sector to the question of whether a holiday party should stay on, scale back, or get the ax altogether. But event planners agree: it's never a good idea to throw a party just to act like things are all right.

"It's very difficult to celebrate with your senior executives when you have to look your staff in the face and say, 'We just had to let half of you go,'" Chen said.