The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Just a heads-up, I’m going to tweet from the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference today and tomorrow. Out feed: http://twitter.com/mcmerchant. Will people care? Who knows.

What do you think about live tweets from tradeshows? Good, bad or ugly? Are 140 characters worth the keystrokes if there’s no line to an article, post or example?

When we were looking to “go Web 2.0″ with the Chief Marketer Network’s Websites back in 2008, the topic of article commenting came up. The team that was assembled had asked if there were any vendors who had a plug-in that would work with our site, or if we should look at some sort of a comment aggregation service to facilitate the process.

My advice then: Don’t go with Topix.com. It’s a cesspool for bottom-feeding Internet trolls who have nothing better to do but cowardly hide behind aliases and leave racist, homophobic, libelous, slanderous, tasteless, classless and downright rude comments on every article it attaches itself to. And apparently the publications that use Topix.com do not have the ability to remove those comments, no mater how much its reputation can be damaged.

Topix.com sunk to a new low this week, giving consumers to self-serve privilege to remove racist, homophobic, libelous, slanderous, tasteless, classless and downright rude comments left about them… for a $19.95 fee. That’s just as disgusting as the trolls who have helped spearhead the death of civility on the Internet. more

Hearst runs four daily newspapers in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and its Websites recently went through a redesign to get on the same platform and to look a little more uniform.

Now we all know people hate change. And the readers of the Greenwich Time weren’t happy about their new homepage.

They wanted their clock back. The Greenwich Clock had been a part of the site’s banner - and identity - even before newspapers went digital. more

I just received a very bizarre pitch for a Valentine’s Day article idea on Web retargeting. A company that specializes in online behavioral advertising suggested advising women to “snoop smart” on their husband’s or boyfriend’s computer. more

A few years back, maybe even during the 2004 Presidential Election season, I opted in to receive e-mail messages from the Democratic Party. Now that I’m trying to opt out, the Democratic Party doesn’t want me to.

The latest e-mail I received from the party seemed like it was going to make it easy to unsubscribe if I just clicked a link. more

In what appears to be a sign that it does aim to cater more to catalog members, The Direct Marketing Association has named Bob Allen its interim president/CEO.

Allen is the former president/CEO of The Vermont Country Store. That’s about as old-school catalog as you can get (which I mean in the nicest possible way). more