Since some of us here are geeks and we don’t even know it, or we just like things that wouldn’t be permitted in the mall’s parking lot; or maybe we like to take apart radios (yes, AM/FM and all that) and put them back together, and get a chuckle when there are a few unattached pieces leftover; or we read David Macaulay’s Castle when we were young (and again last month); or we knew what a google (googol) - have you been to Googolplex.com? - was before 1995; or we like to rationalize the randomness of life through M&M’s - we decided to engage in a good old fashioned act of self indulgence, and launch 0s and 1s.

What did we do before YouTube? It’s as if our lives up until last year were a dream (of the nightmare variety) in which we had no visual connections to the fleeting past of pop cultural oddities and had no idea what some dude over there was doing with his digicam.

Social networking built on the principle of “you are what you watch” is what makes YouTube more than a repository for retro TV clips, video diaries and bathroom mirror antics turned loose on the outside world. But the content is what drives the community and what makes the site compelling. The chance to be seen, to reach out, and to gain the social cache of remembering (and having videos of) obscure pop culture nuggets ensures the constant flow of content. These are time-tested real world motivators that translate well to the YouTube environs.

In August, a 79 year old widower from Great Britain and a home-schooled teenage girl from the U.S. parlayed YouTube popularity into features in offline media.

Also this summer, NBC announced it would make content from its fall line-up available via a branded YouTube channel. Record labels are starting to grasp the promotional power of having their music videos on the site and YouTube has been active seeking their content. Big things appear to be on the horizon for YouTube.

More professionally produced content means more revenue for YouTube through branding partners and increased legitimacy in the eyes of advertisers, but for a site built on consumer-generated media it could be a dangerous proposition letting the pros in. It’s a thin line for YouTube to walk – catering to major media and advertisers while not alienating the core community that brought them far enough to be in this position. It should be an interesting plot to watch unfold.

Real Technology Used to Keep Real Americans Where They Really Want to Be

It’s fifty years later, and now YOU can do it with the click of a mouse

Buy me this. Seriously.

I’m healthy, because it tells me so.

Al Gore just claimed he invented the Internet and didn’t try to explain it.

Reuters reported on Mr. Gore’s latest take on his baby and basically he’s just as silly as ever, but this time in a bad way. “You can stream that, forward it, store it, time-shift it, you can do lots of things, but you cannot broadcast in real time to millions of people over the Internet”. He has clearly missed some of the developments of the last 10 years, not the least of which are the changes in consumers’ media consumption habits.

That’s ok. He’s probably in the post-partum fog brought on by the birth of his new baby, CurrentTV (check it out at currenttv.com). In the grip of this psychosis, infanticide is definitely possible (Andrea Yates tragically took the lives of all of five of her children) so it shouldn’t surprise us that he’s dissing his older child. The fate of Love Story can only be guessed.

Stay tuned, oops can’t do that on this screen, sorry.

Interestingly, I found a few blog entries that were dated for August 27th and August 28th whose subject matter was about how Google has not yet recognized the existence of Nintendo’s new Wii consoles. When you typed “Wii” into Google, it would ask you if you actually meant “Wwii.” Which actually stands for World of Warcraft II. This would make it very hard to find information for the new console that is coming out in November of this year.

As I was reading this one day later and finding it interesting that Google is a little behind the times, I started to compile a post when I decided to test it myself, only to find out that Google has already fixed the bug. See what a few blog entries can do. (Not to mention how my spell checker still does not recognize the word blog.)

Sources: Wii vs WWII, Google Doesn’t Know Wii

Just pick a reason: Our long plotted hostile takeover of Digitas went up in flames with their billing. David Kegel (our Creative Director) has been sending me links to other agency blogs and I wanted him to stop? I get Adrants every day so I knew how high the bar was set? Adweek featured CPB’s move (not re-positioning, physical move) on their front cover? A new VISA TV spot broke featuring a “leprechaun” with a combination Croatian/Irish accent? Anyone is still investing in outdoor advertising? One more “online” columnist misattributed the “the lunatics are running the asylum” quotation to David Ogilvy? The idea of Web 2.0 has passed the tipping point, jumped the shark and is just too synergistic. Self-restraint was simply no longer an option?

So we decided let the team loose; because Sharpe Tangent is a team blog. Everyone in the Agency can add their thoughts and ideas. Some team members are naturally more outspoken than others. My own willingness to share my opinion seems to have been present from a very early age. (See photo.) But, I know that some team members, despite their intelligence and talent will hear the call and choose not to respond. I can only trust that as our industry continues to evolve and the silliness of the commentary escalates they will be moved to enter the fray.

So what exactly are we going to write about? The INDUSTRY of course and then of obviously anything else we want (see the Junk Drawer). This is a blog after all. So join the party, hey we know we aren’t right all the time, but then who is?