It’s been a busy week and to wrap it all up we thought that we would mention a few things that caught our attention.

Firstly we should probably mention the huge amount of attention Richard’s post about last weekend’s anti-Scientology rally received. Despite being little more than some really interesting photos it received as much traffic in the space of a few days as we would normally receive in about two weeks (check the graph below and see if you can guess when the post went live); a perfect example of how writing about events that relate to the wider world than our particular specialities can result in large numbers of visitors and links (and also a great example of why you should always have moderation on your comments.)

Another site learning all about the dangers of comments is The Guardian. Yesterday they published the first (and last?) post from a young man named Max who is about to head off on his gap-year travels. Max describes himself as a 19 year old who:

[lives] on top of a hill in North London…spending any sort of money I earn on food and skinny jeans

His post acted like a red-rag to The Guardian’s readers who objected to what they saw as The Guardian funding the travels of someone who seems to be related to one of The Guardian’s authors; by the time the comments had closed they had effectively destroyed Max’s reputation (labeling him a ‘Nathan Barley’) as well as that of one of his friends who tried to come to his aid and many of the comments had been deleted for being offensive. As Simon Hammond, who wrote about the post and the reactions to it, says:

I could try and pretend that I’m linking to the Skins Blog as a case study in the unexpected consequences of a mediocre blog elevated to undue prominence on a hugely-regarded media platform.

Actually, it’s because it’s the funniest thing I’ve read this week.

What’s interesting is that Max apparently co-writes Channel 4’s Skins, and the URL of the post is actually /skins_blog, suggesting that the whole thing could have been a rather bizarre stunt to promote the new series. Worth a look either way.

Something else that caught my eye was the link-up between eBoy (creators of lovely things such as the poster we have in our office) and kidrobot (who make collectible toys for people like me who never grew up). It’s not just the rather cute toys that I love, but also the way they’ve used every possible channel to engage with people likely to be into the product.

There’s a flickr group where owners can post images, most of the characters have MySpace profiles, even a tool that allows you to design your own Peecol and submit it to an online gallery. You can see mine here and as soon as I’ve tracked down a London retailer I’ll probably be adding photos to the flickr group. I know - pathetic really isn’t it?

Finally one of our international members spotted this rather sweet Argentinian ad.

Apparently the strap-line translates as:

Enough with the sweetness. Sweet things don’t stop your thirst.

And on that, we’d like to wish you all a belated Happy Valentines Day.

Have a great weekend.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.