Weekly round-up of business and idiocy news

• Citi – which loaned billions on crap mortgages – terminates account of gay social networking site because of "objectionable content”: And then changed its mind when the feces hit. “This situation had nothing to do with the content of his web site and any comments by our staff to the contrary were incorrect; we are reviewing what happened.” (BusinessInsider)
• Ad banned because of Miss Piggy’s cleavage: COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Puppet cleavage has been ruled out for advertising posters in Colorado Springs bus shelters. Lamar Advertising rejected posters for a touring production of the Broadway show "Avenue Q" because they show the cleavage of a fuzzy pink puppet. (WaPo)
• Wingnuts see Obama/Islam overtone in new Federal agency logo: “The conservative blogosphere is abuzz about the new logo of the US Missile Defense Agency, which they say looks suspiciously similar to both the Obama campaign logo and the crescent moon typically seen on Islamic flags.”(RawStory)
• Brazil government says Paris Hilton ad demeans women: Brazil’s Secretariat for Women’s Affairs wants a beer commercial starring the hotel heiress, model and actor off the air. Brazil’s regulations say beer commercials cannot treat women as overtly sensual objects. "It’s an ad that devalues women — in particular, blond women," according to a spokeswoman for the Women’s Secretariat who said it received numerous complaints. (AP) (How much did Paris pay to have someone get her back into the news?)
• Apple bans & then brings back some boob apps:  Wobble’s developer Jon Atherton has been restored to the App Store after complaining about being booted from it. “This time, there’s no suggestive images or language in the app’s marketing materials. But you can still make boobs wobble — the app’s original point — if you bring your own artwork. Wobble simply had to remove illustrations featuring a silhouette of a naked woman from its app.” (BusinessInsider)
• Man sues Royals after team mascot hits him with a hot dog: (This is my favorite lede of the week) “If there’s anything more American than shooting and throwing encased meats into a throng of loud and hungry people, it’s silly-sounding lawsuits that make for good headlines on Internet websites.” (YahooSports)

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A killer app for LinkedIn and other such sites

A little insignia that indicates you actually know a person as opposed to just being part of your “network.” Any time I need an intro at LinkedIn I always email the person who I’m connected to and check whether or not they actually are. Allow me to quote one friend’s response:

Good news: Sent an intro.

Bad news: I don’t know who the f- he is.

That is the point at which the utility of LinkedIn et al. starts to break

I hate it when they’re funnier than I am, Part 2: Social Terror Networking

Damn you, BOROWITZ!!!

After successfully sponsoring several of the presidential debates, Facebook is spreading its wings once more, announcing today that it would become the official co-sponsor of the United States’ war on terror.

In snagging the coveted anti-terrorism sponsorship, the popular networking site beat out two of its rivals, MySpace and YouTube, who had also vied to co-sponsor the global struggle against Islamic extremism.

As if that wasn’t enough to piss me off, he’s also written:

Obama Wins Country Music Entertainer of the Year … Coming off a weekend in which he racked up victories in Nebraska, Washington, Louisiana, the Virgin Islands and Maine, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) extended his amazing winning streak today by being named the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year. For Mr. Obama, who is not a country music entertainer, the award represents a significant upset since it had been expected to go to longtime country favorite Kenny Chesney.

Oh, hell … stop reading me and go read him. I surrender. This blog will now be devoted to knitting and those few other topics I know even less about than politics, marketing & humor.

Gooruze is a site and a test-case for online marketers

Gooruze is a site that wants to be the Facebook/LinkedIn for online marketers. (Gawd, is there anything more tired than the description “is the the MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn for…”?) So it has come up with the requisite weird site name sent out invites to the online marketing types and given us a space where we can post our profiles and our work.

It seems fine, if a bit generic and I have joined. That’s just a professional obligation — I have signed up for a bazillion of these sites but I actually have found little reason to participate in most of them. (BTW, I have to include a piece of code for it to track my blog on the site, so here’s the code: ConvonHoffman.gooruze.com. Hope they’re happy.)

However, it begs the question: Why should I use it? It’s just started up so I’ll give it some time to get up and running but so far I don’t see any real value being added by the people running the site. Right now there’s a news feed from stories suggested by members — but it’s not as comprehensive a feed as I would find at Mashable or TechCrunch or a number of other sites. There’s a lot of posts from members that unfortunately read like basic marketing communications — informative but basic and lacking any attitude or style or anything else that might make me want to read further.

So why go there? Can they build a community simply by saying they are the place for this community to be? Because right now that’s all I’m seeing. As with many social/professional networking sites it feels like they expect me to do all the work and that’s not going to cut it anymore. The site’s name is an ugly play on the word gurus, but as of yet it feels like I’m supposed to provide the swami myself.

Like I said, it’s an interesting test case. We’ll see.