Unwrapping Your Christmas Prank With Social Media  

Posted by: Alena Koch:) in , , ,

So, you have a great idea to prank a friend. You go through all the preparations and it is a success, but only a handful of people know about it. Now add a YouTube video and the power of social media sites like facebook, and the world gets to see the Christmas Prank that keeps on pranking!

Enter Adal Rifai and fellow improvisers, armed with 35 rolls of wrapping paper and eight hours of fun wrapping everything from Louie Saunder's clock on the wall, his sofa cushions, bath towels, and food in his fridge, among other things. Saunder's was out of town and gave Rifai a spare key. Little did Saunder's know doing that would result in a winter wonderland of Christmas at his Chicago apartment.

I first heard about the prank, when my friend Rifai posted it on his facebook page. I checked out the video on YouTube. At the time it had 311 hits. I thought it was hilarious and merrily executed. I posted it on my facebook page for my friends to see. A couple of days later I was talking about the prank and checked out the video again. At that time it had over 13,000 hits! At the time of writing this, it has 292,632 hits and the video was just posted on Dec. 13, 2009!

Because of the cleverness of the prank and the obvious timeliness, the video went viral. People have been twittering and facebooking the links. Then news organizations starting hearing about it. MTV contacted them, and CNN showcased it on a segment where they look at holiday videos on YouTube. Add to that, being featured in numerous blogs, and traditional mediums such as the Sun Times newspaper, the video is a huge hit! It is leaving many people wondering, how will Saunders retaliate!

This is just a prime example of how powerful social media can be. How will you harness the power?



Tuesday Question of the Week-How Do You Feel About Automated Twitter Responses?  

Posted by: Alena Koch:) in ,

So, you just followed someone and already got a direct message from them. Wow, that was fast! Then you realize that it was one of those automated Twitter responses. So, how do you feel about it?

Tuesday Question of the Week-How Much Money Did You Spend Online on Cyber Monday?  

Posted by: Alena Koch:) in ,

How much did you spend? If you bought stuff, what did you buy?

I myself ended up buying nothing this Cyber Monday. I looked at a few sites, but most of the deals I wanted were sold out by the time I went to look at them.

According to Coremetrics, the U.S. online retail sector reported strong sales results on Cyber Monday (Nov. 30) 2009 compared to the same period last year. Interestingly enough, sales were up 24.1% compared to Black Friday of this year.