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Tag: personal

  • Cheater: Jillian Michaels Gives Team Caffeine Supplement

    “The Biggest Loser” fans were shocked by Tuesday night’s episode. It turned out that fitness coach Jillian Michaels broke house rules by giving caffeine supplements to her team. It now seems that Jillian will be the biggest loser after all.  This unprecedented breaching of the house rules led to the return of the famed former American Idol winner, Ruben Studdard.  The American idol had been eliminated from the show last week for failing to lose the required minimum weight.

    Jillian’s actions could be damaging to her reputation and the integrity of the show. However, she insisted that there was nothing wrong with issuing the caffeine supplements because they are completely safe, although she said she was sorry that her team members would have to suffer because of her actions. “I stand by my opinion. A caffeine supplement is significantly healthier than unlimited amounts of coffee,” she said. “My only regret is that my team, they’re the ones suffering the consequences of my professional opinion.” As a result of her action, the team will suffer a 4 pound penalty.

    Here’s what happened.

    Interestingly, there is a conspiracy theory going around suggesting that the mistake was a deliberate one, devised to bring back Ruben in order to boost the show’s ratings. The organizers of the show have not made any comment regarding the conspiracy claims.

    Jillian herself has added fuel to the conspiracy claims when she responded with “you’re spot on,” to a tweet that suggested Jillian was being used to bring a famous contestant back. However, many argue that the response was a sarcastic response considering that her reputation as a fitness coach is at stake. Nothing had been said publicly about the cheating dilemma until the weigh-in began, when the host, Alison Sweeney announced: “Last week Jillian broke the rules and gave caffeine supplements to each member of her team without a doctor’s permission. What will happen next week?

    See the sneak peek 

    (main photo via Wikipedia)

  • iPod and Blackberry Listed as Most Prized Possession

    Only 1% of people regard their wedding ring as their most valued asset,  accroding to a survey  carried out on Facebook in August on behalf of insurance firm Protect Your Bubble, with 12% of the 500 respondents voting for their iPods as their most prized possession, just outdoing the Blackberry, which received 11.5% of the votes.

    Meanwhile, cars were the favourites of only 4% of people on the social network. Dogs got 9% of the vote and cats received 5%.

    The first iPod launched in 2001 and the devices are still hugely popular despite the massive surge in purchases of smartphones in the last 12 months, with new versions of the iPod nano and iPod touch recently hitting the shelves alongside the iPod shuffle and the iPod classic.

    Stephen Ebbett, spokesperson for http://www.protectyourbubble.com stated, “As online insurers it is particularly interesting for us to see what people regard as their most prized possession and with the iPod evolving so much since its release it has clearly won a place in our hearts. The popularity of the device over laptops and smartphones is quite revealing and we offer competitively priced policies to cover the entire range of gadgets.”

    “Perhaps some of the results show more about the demographics and preferences of Facebook users, with wedding rings and cars so far down the scale, but the iPod definitely seems to still rule as the gadget of choice.”

    Survey results in full:

    • iPod 12%
    • Blackberry 11.5%
    • iPhone 10%
    • Laptop 9%
    • Dog 9%
    • Games console 8%
    • Macbook 7%
    • iPad 6%
    • Cat 5%
    • Camera 5%
    • Television 4.5%
    • Car 4%
    • Video camera 4%
    • Other jewellery 4%
    • Wedding ring 1%

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  • The Marketing Worth Of Twitter and Facebook

    As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?”

    That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities.

    They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….).

    Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice:

    If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what.

    Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end?

    I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it.

    What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t ;) ?

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