Nobody reads anymore. Don’t argue; just keep reading.

We are living in a world of 150-character Tweets, clipped and abbreviated text messages, and emails and blogs acting like verbal Ambien if they exceed a few hundred words.


Nowhere is this more apparent than in my written communications to our neighborhood civic association. I am president of said association and as part of my civic duty, I periodically write and distribute flyers to keep our constituency informed and up to date.

After disseminating my latest proclamation about a neighborhood clean-up, I was shocked by how many of our members came up to me and asked questions that were clearly answered in my communiqué to them.

The litany of obliviousness went on and on: “What time are we starting?” “What tools should we bring?” “Will refreshments be served afterwards?” “What happens if it rains?”

Like a 6th grade English teacher, I wanted to take these people by the shoulders and yell: “Don’t you read?” But then, I already knew the answer.

I guess this wouldn’t rankle me half as much if I were not an advertising copywriter by trade. But even my cohorts at work now tell me to keep my prose short and sweet because “nobody really reads the ad copy anyway.”

I think our society’s blossoming reading deficiency is more a function of time and attention deficit than anything else. The world is moving too fast. No one has time and everyone wants things spelled out in big, bold, block letters so they really don’t have to put much effort into comprehension.

Which brings me to a very important lesson I learned way back in junior high school…

One of my teachers gave us a test with a long and intimidating paragraph of directions at the top. He told us to read the words very carefully before diving into the questions below. He also said that we would be graded on how fast we finished the test as well as our correct answers.

Like thoroughbreds chafing at the bit, when he gave us the signal to go, we started answering questions at breakneck speed.

Not one of us took the time to read and understand the directions, which buried deep within, simply said to write our names at the top of the page and lay our pencils down.

Needless to say, we all got an “F” that day but the test left a much more important mark on my life.

© Prepared by LoBo & Petrocine Marketing Communications, a Melville, Long Island advertising agency serving a wide range of clients in education, finance, healthcare, natural nutrition, hospitality, the automotive industry and more.

There’s another school of thought that takes the opposite view called population ecology or organizational ecology that put forward that managers don’t really matter all that much. This view grew out of sociologists who’d taken to study organizations in the 1970s. They assert that organizational outcomes have much more to do with industry effects than who the CEO is and the choices he or she makes. They study birth and death rates of populations of organizations, as well as the effects of age, competition and resources in the surrounding environment on an organization’s birth and death rate. Most of these organizational ecology scholars come out of the University of California at Berkeley.

As a graduate student, I didn’t have much time for this ecology line of thinking. I believed in the power of the individual executive to overcome all challenges in the external environment. We can always point to dynamic CEOs as case studies, even though the sociologists would say those are the equivalent of celebrating the smarts of lottery winners.

As I age and watch what’s happening in the world of Internet and mobile, I can’t stop thinking of these ecologists though. More and more in the Internet space, it seems that your long-term viability as a company is dependent on when you were born.

Think of the differences between generations and when we talk about how the Baby Boomers behave differently from Gen X’ers and additional differences with the Millennials. Each generation is perceived to see the world in a very unique way that translates into their buying decisions and countless other habits.

In the Internet world, we’ve really had 3 generations: Web 1.0 (companies founded from 1994 – 2001, including Netscape, Yahoo!, AOL, Google, Amazon and eBay),Web 2.0 or Social (companies founded from 2002 – 2009, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Groupon), and now Mobile (from 2010 – present, including Instagram).

With each succeeding generation in the Internet, it seems the prior generation can’t quite wrap its head around the subtle changes that the next generation brings. Web 1.0 companies did a great job of aggregating data and presenting it in an easy to digest portal fashion. Google did a good job organizing the chaos of the Web better than AltaVista, Excite, Lycos and all the other search engines that preceded it. Amazon did a great job of centralizing the chaos of e-commerce shopping and putting all you needed in one place.

When Web 2.0 companies began to emerge, they seemed to gravitate to the importance of social connections. MySpace built a network of people with a passion for music initially. Facebook got college students. LinkedIn got the white collar professionals. Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon showed how users could generate content themselves and make the overall community more valuable.

Yet, Web 1.0 companies never really seemed to be able to grasp the importance of building a social community and tapping into the backgrounds of those users. Even when it seems painfully obvious to everyone, there just doesn’t seem to be the capacity of these older companies to shift to a new paradigm. Why has Amazon done so little in social? And Google? Even as they pour billions at the problem, their primary business model which made them successful in the first place seems to override their expansion into some new way of thinking.

Social companies born since 2010 have a very different view of the world. These companies – and Instagram is the most topical example at the moment – view the mobile smartphone as the primary (and oftentimes exclusive) platform for their application. They don’t even think of launching via a web site. They assume, over time, people will use their mobile applications almost entirely instead of websites.
We will never have Web 3.0, because the Web’s dead.

Web 1.0 and 2.0 companies still seem unsure how to adapt to this new paradigm. Facebook is the triumphant winner of social companies. It will go public in a few weeks and probably hit $140 billion in market capitalization. Yet, it loses money in mobile and has rather simple iPhone and iPad versions of its desktop experience. It is just trying to figure out how to make money on the web – as it only had $3.7 billion in revenues in 2011 and its revenues actually decelerated in Q1 of this year relative to Q4 of last year. It has no idea how it will make money in mobile.

The failed history of Web 1.0 companies adapting to the world of social suggests that Facebook will be as woeful at adapting to mobile as Google has been with its “ghost town” Google+ initiative last year.
The organizational ecologists talked about the “liability of obsolescence” which is a growing mismatch between an organization’s inherent product strategy and its operating environment over time.

This probably is a good explanation for what we’re seeing in the tech world today.

Are companies like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo! obsolete? They’re still growing. They still have enormous audiences. They also have very talented managers.

But with each new paradigm shift (first to social, now to mobile, and next to whatever else), the older generations get increasingly out of touch and likely closer to their significant decline. What’s more, the tech world in which we live in seems to be speeding up. Tim Cook had an interesting line about the velocity of change in his earnings call last week: “Through the last quarter, I should say, which is just 2 years after we shipped the initial iPad, we’ve sold 67 million. And to put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs and 5 years for that many iPods and over 3 years for that many iPhones. And we were extremely happy with the trajectory on all of those products. And so I think iPad, it’s a profound product.”

Yahoo is already a shell of its 2000 self. There is increasing chatter (including from me) about how Google’s facing a painful multiple contraction, once its desktop search business (still accounting for the vast majority of its revenues and profits) starts to fall off a cliff as users dramatically drop traditional search for new ways of getting information they want in a mobile world. Is Amazon destined to decline? There seem to be no signs of it today and people will still need to buy stuff in a mobile world, but the new mobile platform will certainly open the possibilities for new entrants that Amazon can’t even imagine today.

Facebook is also probably facing a tough road ahead as this shift to mobile happens. As Hamish McKenzie said last week, “I suspect that Facebook will try to address that issue [of the shift to mobile] by breaking up its various features into separate apps or HTML5 sites: one for messaging, one for the news feed, one for photos, and, perhaps, one for an address book. But that fragments the core product, probably to its detriment.”

Considering how long Facebook dragged its feet to get into mobile in the first place, the data suggests they will be exactly as slow to change as Google was to social. Does the Instagram acquisition change that? Not really, in my view. It shows they’re really fearful of being displaced by a mobile upstart. However, why would bolting on a mobile app to a Web 2.0 platform (and a very good one at that) change any of the underlying dynamics we’re discussing here? I doubt it.

What about Apple? Where does it fit in to this classification scheme?
Apple is really a hardware company, so it’s difficult to put it into a bucket related to web apps. It certainly seemed very Web 1.0 with its Ping social application. Yet it’s succeeded in mobile from making the best hardware and software ecosystem for apps to proliferate on. In some ways, as long as it has a successful iOS platform, it doesn’t care which Web 1.0, 2.0 and mobile companies fail or succeed on top of it. Maybe that’s why so many non-mobile companies seem to want to emulate Apple. Google bought Motorola Mobility (MMI) to get into the hardware business. Facebook and Baidu are rumored to be launching their own mobile OS.

The bottom line is that the next 5 – 8 years could be incredibly dynamic. It’s possible that both Google and Facebook could be shells of their current selves – or gone entirely.

They will have all the money in the world to try and adapt to the shift to mobile but history suggests they won’t be able to successfully do it. I often hear Google bulls point to the market share of Android or Eric Schmidt’s hypothesis that Google could one day charge all Android subscribers $10 a month for value-added services as proof of future profits. Yet, where are all the great social success stories by Web 1.0 companies? I imagine we’ll see as many great examples of social companies jumping horses mid-race to become great mobile companies.

It’s a lot easier to start asking Siri for information instead of typing search terms into a box compared to thousands of enterprises ceasing to upgrade to the next version of Windows. Google’s 76% market share. Facebook’s 900 million monthly users. They just aren’t as sticky as they seem.

And does anyone think the pace of change is going to increase in the next 5 years versus the last? That we’re going to see fewer innovations, fewer start-ups trying more stuff on cheaper and more powerful processing power? In all likelihood, we could have an entirely new way of gathering information and interacting with ads in a new mobile world than what we’re currently used to today.

The Googles and Facebooks of tomorrow might not even exist today. And several Web 1.0 and 2.0 companies might be completely wiped off the map by then.

Fortunes will be made by those who adapt to and invest in this complete greenfield. Those who own the future are going to be the ones who create it. It’s all up for grabs. Web monopolies are not as sticky as the monopolies of old.

The following article was written by Eric Jackson for Forbes.com

A sweet moment? Sure. But for me it crystallized the inherent power of face-to-face communication, and also spoke to the fundamental limitations of text-based digital communication.


No, this isn’t another screed by some fossil about how things were better in the old days before email, texting, etc. But it brought into focus an important shift in the ways we communicate and what we may have lost.

An article in Time magazine featured the following: “A recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that college students today have significantly less empathy — the ability to understand and share the feelings of another — than students of generations past did. The reason, psychologists speculate, may have something to do with our increasing reliance on digital communication and other forms of new media.”

And there’s this from U.S. News & World Report: “A 2008 study by researchers at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and George Mason University put more than 200 students in groups to perform teamwork tasks and found that those working face-to-face showed greater cooperation than those communicating through instant messaging, who were more likely to lie. When interacting face-to-face, “you’re getting more information from the people around you,” says coauthor Gregory Northcraft, which “is allowing you to trust them more.”

There’s no doubt that texting is the way people in their 20s and 30s prefer to communicate. Railing against that reality would be a fruitless and silly waste of energy. But what I think is worth discussing is the concept of balance.

And that leads me to the news that Skype has launched a $12 million marketing campaign that challenges consumers to think about the quality of their personal communications and introduces the line, “It’s time for Skype.”

AdAge Global reports, “The campaign, from Pereira & O’ Dell in San Francisco, uses provocative lines to snipe at other technologies and social media. They include “When did it become OK to text Mum happy birthday?” and “140 characters doesn’t equal staying in touch.”

“Francie Strong, Skype’s director of global customer-based marketing, said, “The focus is on big, bold statements to grab people’s attention and get them to think about how they communicate.””

The whole idea strikes me as very “meta;” proposing that a digital communication platform is the solution to the growing use of impersonal digital communication.

But it makes sense. Gen X-ers and Y-ers aren’t about to give up texting because it might mean they have less empathy and might be less honest. But a compromise that promotes the use of digital communications technology to reintroduce them to the idea of, and value behind, communicating face-to-face is brilliant. And it’s a win-win for the targeted demo; they can use the technology they crave as a means to being more “human” in the way they interact with their peers, family and colleagues.

That AdAge Global article went on, “Agency research discovered how infrequently people call family members and friends. “It was depressing and inspiring,” said Justin Cox, Pereira & O’ Dell’s senior strategic planner-mobile. “It’s rare that a campaign gives you the opportunity to address very relevant, timely cultural issues. Skype isn’t solving the world’s problems, but it has a point of view. This is more than just a marketing message with provocative headlines — our message is to help people truly connect in a genuine way.”

So…technology as a remedy for too much technology? That sounds about right.

Yes, just like meeting someone for the first time, you get only one chance to make a good first impression. But good website strategy and management goes far beyond, especially if you’re an e-retailer or your website has some sales or direct response purpose. Your prime directive is attracting new customers and making sure old ones come back for more.

So what can you do to help optimize your website? Here are a few axioms to help keep you on top of your game and the competition:

Maximize navigability. Never sacrifice look for function. Any good website that’s worth the computer screen it’s displayed on should be easy to navigate. If visitors get lost trying to find what they are seeking, you’ll lose them in a matter of seconds.

It’s about them, not you. Many websites are overly self-promotional and indulgent. There’s a lot of chest beating and hyperbole about a company’s past accolades and accomplishments. Remember, customers or prospects come to your website to discover what you can do for them – how you can solve their problems and give them exactly what they need or want. Always put yourself in the customers position and develop your website from their perspective.

Keep optimizing. If you build it, they will come. It’s not necessarily so when it comes to your website. If no one can find you, you might as well be whistling in the wind. “Key words” play a key role in the search process. That’s why you need as many of the right ones as possible embedded throughout your web pages. What words are key for you? Check out googlekeywordtool.com or google.com/webmasters for some ideas.

Stay connected. So you attracted a visitor. Now, how do you hook them? It’s imperative that you try to develop some type of relationship and possibly communicate with your visitors in the future. For example, people can get more information or updates if you offer them an email subscription.

Updates freshen your appeal. There’s a lot of competitive noise out there. To cut through, you have to offer fresh content. Many Internet gurus recommend updating your content two to three times a week. New content is also attractive fuel for search engines. In other words, constantly feed the machine.

Use analytics. You’ll never know if you’re losing visitors unless you make an attempt to find out. Keep track and stay on track. A free Web tool like Google Analytics can help enlighten you as well as make adjustments.

In both cases, the attackers successfully tricked their targets into opening e-mail attachments that appeared to come from trusted sources or colleagues.

Investigators haven’t disclosed how the attackers gathered information on their victims, but at RSA’s security conference last month, the risks of social networking sites — and LinkedIn in particular — were a hot topic. Dozens of presenters said the business networking site could be a potent weapon in the hacker toolkit.

“Businesspeople are using LinkedIn for research purposes, and headhunters and marketers use it to recruit. Why wouldn’t Chinese intelligence agents use it as well to spear phish?” said security analyst Ira Winkler, the author of “Spies Among Us.”

Most of the discussion about LinkedIn’s risks was theoretical — investigators say it’s almost impossible to trace back the original source of personal data used in successful “social engineering” attacks.

But in one arresting case study, self-described “hacker for hire” Ryan O’Horo demonstrated how he used LinkedIn to get inside a client’s corporate network.

O’Horo is a managing security consultant for IOActive, a services firm that offers vulnerability testing. His customer, a “high-profile company with tens of thousands of employees,” had top-notch technical protections.

“We needed to go to the next level,” O’Horo said of his efforts to crack its network.

O’Horo created a fake account on LinkedIn, posing as a company employee. He stocked the profile with realistic details — a plausible job history and skill set — plus a few credibility-establishing flourishes like a membership in a local hockey league. From his dummy account, O’Horo sent out 300 connection requests to current company employees. Sixty-six were accepted.

Next, O’Horo requested access to a private LinkedIn discussion forum the company’s employees had created. The group’s moderators granted his request without ever checking a company directory to confirm his identity.

“Now I had an audience of 1,000 company employees,” O’Horo said. “I posted a link to the group wall that purported to be a beta test sign-up page for a new project. In two days, I got 87 hits — 40% from inside the corporate network.”

O’Horo got caught just three days into his LinkedIn attack: An astute employee figured out he didn’t belong and blew the whistle. But he’d already made his point.

“They were definitely surprised that the group existed,” O’Horo said of his client’s response to his report. “It wasn’t a formal company group; there was no oversight or policy covering that aspect of their social presence. The people in charge of their information security didn’t know it was there.”

Hackers don’t need anything so fancy as private discussion forums to take advantage of LinkedIn, though. The site’s users openly display plenty of valuable data.

At last summer’s DefCon security conference, a group of “social engineering” hackers staged a game in which contestants attempted to trick employees at more than a dozen major companies — including Apple, AT&T, Calmar, and United Airlines — into disclosing sensitive corporate information. Next to Google, LinkedIn was the competitors’ most widely used resource.

Some people divulged specific technical information about their employer’s infrastructure in their profiles, while others offered up details that could be used for stealth attacks. For example: If you can learn the name of a target’s colleagues, it’s fairly easy to fake an email that appears to come from one of them.

LinkedIn says it urges users to think carefully about the information they choose to reveal.

“We recommend members connect only with people that they know and trust,” says company spokesman Richard George. “All Internet users should of course be aware of the fact that there are bad guys out there who unfortunately resort to things like phishing attacks, and that people should use common sense and tools available to them to ensure that they don’t fall prey.”

LinkedIn’s vulnerability, though, is inextricably tied to its growth. The site now has 150 million users — almost twice as many as it had just one year ago. As its database grows richer, its value increases for both its members and those wishing to exploit them.

Security researcher Rob Rachwald regularly monitors the chatter on sites and chat rooms where hackers meet to swap tips. LinkedIn’s prominence there is rising, he says.

To illustrate the point, he pulled up a scattering of recent messages from one online hub, Hackforum.new. One posting solicited for someone to break into a target LinkedIn account, while others advertised “real LinkedIn connections” for sale.

“Hackers go where people go,” says Rachwald, the director of security strategy for software firm Imperva. “As Facebook grew, they went there. As LinkedIn grows, they’re going there.”

Well, there are those who would love to include Long Island advertising in that same fraternity. But now hear this… Although the local advertising and marketing community has certainly changed over the past two decades, reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.


In fact, the advertising agencies and marketing communications firms currently doing business here are vibrantly alive and remarkably well – just in a different form.

Years ago, there were a handful of “larger” ad agencies on Long Island that dominated the competitive landscape. Among them were iconic names such as Christopher Thomas, and Greenstone, Rabasca, Roberts with growing staffs of anywhere from 30 to 150, and in some cases, multiple locations.

In its heyday, Greenstone, for example, had almost 150 employees and offices in New York City, New Jersey and Florida in addition to its corporate headquarters in Melville, Long Island.

Greenstone was a strong, up-and-coming regional shop that grew its business and reputation doing superb b-to-b work. Always striving to escape the dark shadow of Madison Avenue, the agency wanted more, much more, and actually started competing for business with city agencies, including coveted consumer accounts.

How did that work out? Today, the “mega ad agency” on Long Island has gone the way of such huge and lucrative accounts as Grumman, LILCO, Newmark & Lewis, Fortunoff. Twinlab, Vytra Healthcare and Northfork Bank (to name a few) that helped feed and drive them. They have faded into the sunset, replaced by many smaller ad agencies that have filled the void, but more importantly, a wide range of extremely valuable niches.

Not only are these smaller ad concerns surviving, but thriving, doing quality traditional and digital advertising work for their clients who have become more time sensitive and budget conscious than ever before.

In most cases, these smaller ad agencies are smart, nimble and innovative – staffed by eclectic marketing professionals, many of whom cut their eyeteeth in Manhattan.

They are not concerned with being “all things to all people”. Rather, they are committed to doing the best work possible for a chosen few.

Best of all, these Long Island ad agencies know who they are and are more concerned with strengthening their identities rather than trying to establish new and more grandiose ones that they may never quite live up to.

Is smaller better? In these hardened and very volatile times, maybe so, at least when it come to advertising and marketing communications on Long Island.

© Prepared by LoBo & Petrocine Marketing Communications, a Melville, Long Island advertising agency serving a wide range of clients in education, finance, healthcare, natural nutrition, hospitality, the automotive industry and more.

What is a landing page exactly? Just to be clear, it’s not the home page on your company or organization’s web site.
It’s the place you send potential customers to when they click on an ad, banner, link or search engine result. It’s a very specific page that usually contains special offers or information and can serve as an entree to your overall website, and eventually, new business.

So here’s some simple rules for building a successful landing page or having someone else construct it for you:

• Keep it real. When someone clicks on an e-mail you sent them or a pay-per-click ad, they expect to see the exact offer that first interested them. Keep it relevant and clear. Never send them to your generic home page.

• Eliminate confusion. Have a clear call to action on your landing page. Nothing is worse than confusing visitors or not letting them know what they should do next.

• Design is critical. Friendly, clean, uncluttered, professional, pertinent. A poorly designed landing page can turn visitors off.
One that is pleasing to the eye can keep them happy and involved.

• Don’t overwhelm. Less can be more on a landing page. Don’t give visitors information or visual overload. Eliminate distractions and keep your message as short and sweet as possible.

• Strive to optimize. Your landing page should be embedded with specific keywords that are relevant to a visitor’s search. For example, if you are a Ford car dealer on Long Island, you should make sure you include such key words as Ford, cars, Long Island, deals, test drives, rebates, etc.

• Establish trust. The more you can do to make a visitor comfortable and confident, the better. A professional design, proper grammar, no spelling mistakes or typos, and professional logos, certifications, licenses, affiliations and the like can go a long way to establishing trust.

• Test and tinker. Want to know what is working and what isn’t? Experiment. Try two different landing pages or change up your pay-per-click ads. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, but a little adjusting from time to time can result in greater success.

© Prepared by LoBo & Petrocine Marketing Communications, a Melville, Long Island advertising agency serving a wide range of clients in education, finance, healthcare, natural nutrition, hospitality, the automotive industry and more.

Experts say you should think of your profile as your “personal brand”. You want it to be unique, enticing, comprehensive and tailored to exactly who you are and what you offer.

Here are some tips for creating an effective LinkedIn profile:

• Avoid using “buzzwords” that are trite and overused. For a list of some examples, you can visit press.linkedin.com. In short, when describing yourself, try using action words instead of adjectives. Show who you are instead of just stating it. So rather than saying you are “creative”, give an example of some things you have created.

• Include a photo. Yes, seeing is believing, or at least, it can help give you a more solid image. Studies show that profiles with a photo are seven times more likely to be viewed than those without.

• Highlight your past experience. If you include at least two or more past positions or accomplishments, the chances of your profile being viewed can increase over 10-fold.

• Be thorough. LinkedIn actually measures with a bar in percentages your profile’s completeness. Make sure yours is 100% which can help with search rankings.

• Create a business profile. You can compose a separate corporate profile in addition to your personal one. Such a page can list your company description, logo, staff, affiliates and more. Then contacts and others can “follow” your page if you ask them, getting info on special news, promotions, events, etc.

• Keep it fresh. Try to continually update your online information so it appears you are an active participant in the LinkedIn community. You can even connect a Twitter feed or start a blog.

• Make a good first impression. Some call it a headline; others a tagline. Regardless, it’s one of the most viewed parts of your profile. It appears under your name and tells people what you do. Make yours as clear and descriptive as possible.

• Don’t overlook summary Info. A summary is often a second thought for a profile, but it can be a very effective add-on because it helps viewers get to know you better and reinforces your specialties.

• Interact as much as possible. Don’t be hesitant or shy to communicate with others on LinkedIn. It offers you the chance to become an authority or spokesperson in your field. Plus, if you ever answer a question in a search category and it’s chosen as the “best”, you can get a star in your profile that can give you even more sway,

© Prepared by LoBo & Petrocine Marketing Communications, a Melville, Long Island advertising agency serving a wide range of clients in education, finance, healthcare, natural nutrition, hospitality, the automotive industry and more.

The captain of the Starship Enterprise on the iconic TV series “Star Trek” (and in subsequent Star Trek feature films from 1979 to 1994) remains to this day a beloved and revered hero. But not at Priceline.

William Shatner was a giant among aliens who boldly went where no man had gone before and helped many fans do the same – opening their minds and imaginations to infinite possibilities.

Indeed, Captain Kirk helped shape the way space itself was viewed, Not bad for a TV character.

Later in his career, William Shatner went on to play other characters, including “T.J. Hooker” in the cop show with the same name, and the laughable Denny Crane in the hit dramedy “Boston Legal”.

But he will always see William Shatner first and foremost as Captain James T. Kirk.

That’s why we mourn again when Priceline.com recently announced to the advertising world that they were killing off Captain Kirk in their TV commercials. The company explained they needed a change to “reflect a broader marketing strategy”.

OK, so Mr. Shatner wasn’t actually playing Kirk in the Priceline commercials. He was supposed to be the “Priceline Negotiator”, a bargain-touting travel guru. But we couldn’t help ourselves. We still saw William Shatner as that hero barking out commands with confident bravado on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

That’s why so many are taking his “second death” so hard. It wasn’t bad enough that Captain Kirk met his untimely demise helping to save the universe in the epic 1994 movie “Star Trek Generations”. Now, we have to watch him die all over again in a series of 30-second TV spots.

In Priceline’s new commercial that just began airing, William Shatner rescues panicked vacationers from a bus teetering on a bridge railing. “Save yourselves – some money!” he says, shilling to the very end as he and the bus tumble into a dry riverbed.

A big, fiery explosion follows that we can only assume claims Mr. Shatner’s life. How sad is that? We have to watch Captain James Tiberius Kirk die once more.

But hey, he will always “live long and prosper” in our minds and hearts!

© Prepared by LoBo & Petrocine Marketing Communications, a Melville, Long Island advertising agency serving a wide range of clients in education, finance, healthcare, natural nutrition, hospitality, the automotive industry and more.

The main reason for this dissatisfaction stems from the neglect of personal privacy by forcing new settings on users which affect how their personal information is shared. The index is from 24/7 Wall St., who analyzes data from many sources including Consumer Reports, JD Power, MSN/Zogby Poll and ForeSee.

While not mentioned in the article, Facebook also does not offer live customer service support for either consumers or businesses. You can e-mail them, but they do not promise to answer everyone’s questions.

Here’s a link to the 24/7 Wall St. article:

http://bit.ly/zIP7bH

© Prepared by LoBo & Petrocine Marketing Communications, a Melville, Long Island advertising agency serving a wide range of clients in education, finance, healthcare, natural nutrition, hospitality, the automotive industry and more.