21st century attention seeking.

Let’s have a round of applause, and a cinder block on the fingers, for Alecia Keys, who came up with the idea of raising money for charity by asking you to pay to see celebrity tweets and Facebook updates. On the face of it, this sounds like real progress – less Lady Gaga, more money for a good cause – indeed you could almost be fooled into thinking that social media has finally delivered some genuine value to the world, but then the truth comes out: Gaga will only deign to address her 30+ million online followers again AFTER they raise over €1m for charity.

The only thing more depressing than this innovative approach to fundraising is the likelihood, whether by novelty or loyalty, that it will work. People – strange, confused, lonely, young people – may be all too willing to donate money, so that a woman who wears a phone on her head will update her Facebook and Twitter again.

Cyber-sociologists say:

“The creation of social networks has brought millions of us closer together so that we can all have a good look at how lonely and needy we really are. User-neediness is quantified in terms of updates, friendships, followers and tweets and is then reinforced with a crude but effective numerical system. The more friends and followers you have, the better you are. The more comments you have on your update, or tweet, the better that comment is. At the heart of this dangerously flawed system is the premise that asserts your personal worth and self-esteem can only be measured in terms of other people.”

Please hastily post your own responses to this story, thereby legitimizing this reporter’s deep insight and rare understanding of human behaviour on the internet.

In real news, the legendary Leslie Nielsen has gone to the great comic in the sky.

Nice beaver.

Nielsen died at home following a conversation with his wife, during which he outlined his need of a hospital. A hospital? His wife said, what is it? It’s a large building for sick people, but that’s not important right now…

Sadly, it was important right now.

Adele Staunton, media pig

Social media experts up and down the country today rejoiced at the launch of Google’s new social media product ‘Buzz’.

“We’ve had a mare of a Q1 so far” said Adele Staunton of leading Irish digital media agency Vapidit.ie

“Our portfolio of expertise was waning there for a short while. People had begun to unlock the deep, dark mysteries of Twitter and Facebook and we found our 2000 euro per day ‘Social Media Synergy’ workshops were beginning to lack in popularity. We needed some new hype, and thankfully, Google Buzz has come along at just the right time to fill the money shaped hole in our portfolio of bullshit.”

“In the last 24 hours, Vapidit.ie has established itself as Ireland’s leading authority on Google Buzz. How? That’s a deep, dark mystery that I cannot divulge, and you could never hope to understand. All you need to know is that WE are the experts. Only we can help your business leverage it’s  untapped sales potential in the sociosphere.”

So it’s just a simple matter of upscaling your clients’ vertical markets into a socially scalable, cloud-aware hyperniche?

“Pretty much. Our marketplace is mostly advertising agencies who don’t have a clue about the internet but know that they should be ‘involved’ in social media somehow. They saw it on the cover of the Economist, but were too lazy to actually read the article. At the proposal stage, we just throw a couple of buzzwords at them like ‘retweet’, ‘unfollow’ and ‘fan page’… before you know it, marketing managers are crapping  themselves because they’re hearing technical-sounding words they’ve never heard before. They don’t want to seem out of the loop, or that they’re losing their edge.”

“Once you instill that fear, well, the money starts flowing like the fucking Niagra Falls.”

“We’re talking workshops, seminars, conferences, open coffee, closed coffee,  shitbrick Tuesdays… you name it, we’re selling it to them for sizeable chunks of their marketing budget. All we’re really doing though is copying stuff off someone else’s blog and pasting it into Powerpoint, but don’t tell anyone.”

So business is booming then?

“Google Buzz is going to keep us in Grande Lattes and Macbook Airs for at least the next 12 months.”

What then?

“Sure if the hole falls out of it, I can always go back gutting fish part-time in the factory down the docks. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll probably go into SEO.”

As shocked and badly wounded Haitians looked on in wonder, buildings reassembled themselves and rose skywards, services such as water and electricity began to work again and even more amazingly thousands of people came back to life. Initially there were some casualties as the superstitious people feared a rising of zombies and set about the resurrected with crude machetes, but soon it became clear that a once in a lifetime event had taken place.

Facebook group defeats nature

Eye-witness Claude D’Arcy-Trent-Terrence told the Irish Sentinel, “It was incredible. One moment I was mourning the loss of my entire family, my home and what meagre possessions I had whilst standing knee deep in rubble and corpses, the next life had returned completely to normal. I thank God for what he has done”.

Yet researchers at MIT have discovered that God played no part in the miraculous goings-on. Close analysis of web trends in the hours leading up to the event left them in doubt that Facebook users were the ones who saved the day. Professor Marlon Prince, head of Teh Internets 2.0, said “We’ve never seen anything like this. It appears that in just under two hours over three and half million people joined the group ‘Save Haiti by joining this Facebook group and you can feel better about yourself without actually having to do anything ‘. Quite how it had the power to reconstruct an entire nation is something we’re unclear about at the moment but the best guess we have is that somehow it roused Superman who flew around the world really really fast to reverse time and having had some practice at this in the past he has honed his skills to the point where he can be region specific. Obviously it’s something we’re going to keep working on though”.

A spokesman for Facebook said “Once again it shows the power of social networking and when it comes right down to it, Facebook is the daddy. Perhaps if the people of Iran had used us instead of getting all those Twitter idiots to change their avatars green then they might have democracy now. USA! USA!”.

The Irish Sentinel has learned that due to the economic downturn the government have decided against the redevelopment of the picturesque Dublin park which is due to undergo renovations as construction of Metro North begins at the end of the year. Up to 20% of the park will be lost as tunnelling starts, 45 mature trees will be felled, a large part of the pond is to boarded over and the Fusilier’s Arch taken away.

The shape of things to come?

Originally the plan was to replace the monuments and restore the trees and pond to their former glory but rising costs have forced a rethink.

“That’d be mad money to spend”, said Nigel Cox of the Office of Public Works. “It was going to cost a fortune to put those things back so we’ve decided the best thing to do is to store it all out in one of those self-storage places off the M50.

Then to raise the money to put them back we’re going to install a number of pre-fabricated offices on the site and Facebook have been one of the first to avail of such a prestigious location. Of course, the other option is to sell off the naming rights to the arch, thus providing the funds for its reinstallation. While I don’t want to jump the gun, as these kinds of negotiations are very delicate, we are hopeful that a deal can be done with Facebook while Aldi have also expressed an interest”.

Meanwhile Facebook’s impending arrival has sparked a job rush, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Ford opened their factory in Cork in 1905.

“I can’t wait”, said Mary Mulvagh, “I use Facebook all the time, it’s great. I don’t even have to talk to the person who sits beside me any more, I simply leave a message on their super-wall, so to work there would be a dream come true”.

“Everyone I know is on Facebook”, said another man, “so to work there and to be a proper, genuine, 100% bonafide Facebooker would be the best thing ever”.

It is believed the company is initially looking to recruit people in the marketing, advertising, administration and zombie application sectors with further vacancies due to be advertised in the months to come.

: We asked Dubliners if they’d like a job with Facebook.

Download audio file (facebook.mp3)