Welcome to New York. (Photo: YouTube)

Here's a lesson for all the soon-to-be college graduates out there looking for work: get off your ass and create some ~viral content~. It just might work! Take Jannic Nielssen, a rather lively young professional who launched a Kickstarter-esque campaign, fit with an elevator pitch promoting his skills, that he created to get him a job.

Mr. Nielssen was looking to get his foot in the door in either social media or advertising (who isn't?), but needed an employment offer letter by May 1, or else the half-Jamaican, half-Norwegian citizen faced deportation due to his visa expiring.

Well, the campaign, which hit the spotlight online and received thousands of shares on social media, worked.

Thrillist Media Group told Betabeat today that they have hired Mr. Nielssen for an entry-level position. The offer was extended yesterday--a day before Mr. Nielssen's deportation deadline. He will relocate to New York from Illinois to serve as Marketing Coordinator.

Eric Ashman, a strategic advisor for TMG, lauded Mr. Nielssen's approach in looking for a job:

Jannic's unique approach to finding a job really reflected how we operate at TMG.  The use of all aspects of social media, and the KickJannic campaign in particular, was impressive. It showed great skill and creativity in using technology and media to tell his story and engage a wide audience.

No pressure, buddy!

Cool text. (Photo: Hashgram)

People are increasingly acting like complete assholes to each other online, according to a new study conducted by corporate training firm VitalSmarts. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they believe people’s rude behavior on social media is getting worse, and that they themselves have “no qualms” about acting like a jerk online.

Meanwhile, 19 percent of survey takers said they have blocked, unsubscribed or unfriended a person after an online argument, while one in five of the 3,000 people who responded said they have reduced IRL contact following an e-brawl.

Joseph Grenny, a co-chairman from VitalSmarts, believes etiquette online hasn't yet caught up to those of in person principles. He said the lack of peer pressure (a.k.a judgement) online is the root of why people think they can get away with being mean.

"What really is surprising is that so many people disapprove of this behavior but people are still doing it. Why would you name call online but never to that person's face?" said Grenny to Reuters.

Because it's easier, you jerk.

Rude girls. (Photo: MyCentralNJ.com)

Fourteen years after the movie's release and millenials have already forgot the first rule of Fight Club. The latest blabbermouths to blow their cover hail from Bridgewater-Raritan High School in New Jersey, where students have been posting and promoting their videos in a Facebook group.

Police are investigating a page titled “BRHS School Fights,” a two week old group that’s garnered more than 1,000 likes. The user-submitted videos posted, which are usually recorded from student’s cell phones, include a brutal brawl between two girls pulling each other's hair in a 20-second fight. Another video shows two boys violently beating each other up during a lunch period.

The videos have since been pulled from the page.  However, social media rubberneckers have bombarded the page asking where they can view the videos.

School officials don’t “have jurisdiction” over social media and don’t know who created the page. So instead, they’re calling on the public to apply pressure against the unknown page administrator for it be deleted. A police spokesperson told MyCentralJersey.com it has launched an investigation.

The number of fights at Bridgewater-Raritan High School has spiked to seven in the first two weeks of March, immediately after the Facebook page was created. A school official called it “unusually high” since there have only been five fights recorded since Sept. 2012.

But the police investigation isn’t fazing the page’s creator. Earlier today, the person posted a status updated proclaiming that they would “rather stay anonymous then be known as the idiot who got caught.” A few hours later, the indignant administrator compared the “haters” to the bullies who push kids into killing themselves…or something

To all my haters I didn't get caught and stay off my page if you don't like it. Posting threats and making fun of me makes you just as bad as the bullies that push kids into committing suicide.

Sounds like the Facebook fight page should have some new content coming soon.

AdAge, MediaBistro, Motley Fool, Business Insider and dozens of others all weighed in on Coke’s study, which “finds online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales”--driving thousands of tweets, likes and comments between them. (By “weighing in,” I mean they repeated the same few facts derived from the same presentation originally reported by AdAge in its “Buzzkill: Coca-Cola Finds No Sales Lift from Online Chatter” story.)

The chatter about this story was so immediate, so loud and extreme that Coke rushed to walk back the claims--reassuring the blogosphere about its devotion to social media. Coke’s senior vice president of integrated marketing communications and capabilities, Wendy Clark, was compelled to post on the company’s website promising that "with social playing a crucial role at the heart of [Coke's] activations," the company is committed to continuing to invest in social campaigns.

It's an ironic microcosm of the real impact of online buzz. You can't say for sure why or how it works, but clearly when there is enough noise in the right circles, it drives real people to do real things.

However, the idea that advertising or chatter on social media is going to drive short-term sales of soda is stupid (and that's all Coke's study ascertained). I'm not even sure that social media buzz can lift sales in the long term. Not with a brand so well known.

Perhaps social media isn’t working for Coke because they’re not doing a very good job at it. Perhaps their ads are targeted poorly. Perhaps their 61 million Facebook fans aren’t generating much value because Facebook has surreptitiously walled off up to 85 percent of those fans and charges exorbitant rates for reaching and communicating with them. Maybe nobody wants to tweet (or listen to tweets) about 100-year-old sugar water. Who knows?

None of the potential reasons say much about social media buzz as a whole. (This is why data scientists warn about generalizing from a single example.)

But one thing is well established: social media is incredibly effective at taking something totally unknown and making it known, sometimes in a matter of minutes.

I've seen this with my own clients and with myself. A blog mention by Tim Ferriss and your book sales skyrocket. A mention on 20/20, not so much. Look at the musician Alex Day, whom I advise, he’s never been mentioned in an offline media source in his life. And last week, based solely on the buzz of social media, he charted higher than Justin Timberlake.

One needs only to glance at Kickstarter, where projects go from $0 in sales to commitments from fans in the millions of dollars. How do people find out about these projects? It isn’t from the New York Times, at least not at first. Users hear about it from friends who post about their donations, from blogs, and from email and then they spend real money in real time. So we know social buzz is responsible for at least $119 million last year--and that’s on one site. Another company turned $200,000 in Facebook ads into $10 million in revenue. The list goes on and on.

So many marketers and gurus have naturally begun to extoll the limitless benefits of online media and highlighted the decline and influence of other media. But to focus exclusively on that is short-sighted. What they should really be focused on is how to get more from both.

Because in my experience, online and offline media drive each other. Eighty-nine percent of journalists admit to using blogs as sources. Meanwhile, every old media outlet on the planet accuses blogs and social media of profiting unfairly off their work.

Right now, social media is cheap. Its impact is more difficult to track, which has made it easy for charlatans to exaggerate its benefits. On the other hand, other forms of advertising like television, print and outdoor have premiums built into them--premiums left over from when they were the only game in town.

The perfect example of this is Forbes. It's a 100-year-old media brand … but its business model is exactly the same as Huffington Post. Essentially anyone can publish there (leading to a lot of embarrassing articles and crap). Yet, its advertising rates are comparatively quite high. In fact, they claim that they do not have "remnant inventory” (though anyone who has ever read a Forbes article knows how many bogus pageviews the site generates).

If Coke or anyone is buying there--purchasing new media advertising inventory at old media rates--of course it’s going to be ineffective. Old tactics are growing less efficient, but their prices remain high. New tactics are developing, but their value and proper cost is still ambiguous and can fluctuate.

Because of rapid technological disruption and advancement, knowing what works is even harder. At this intersection of old and new, there is all sorts of confusion. What is this worth? What is that worth?

Coke’s study says social media doesn’t work. Facebook and Datalogix have an equally persuasive study that says it does. In fact, they say that Facebook ads work just like television ads, subtly influencing you whether you know it or not. And 50 years ago Ogilvy was trying to figure out if television ads worked at all compared to print. Nobody knows anything.

And that’s my point: don't expect the debate to be settled--ever. Because it never was in the first place.

Marketing is a mercurial business. It's based on gut and "creativity." If it wasn’t, the Don Drapers of the world wouldn’t get to keep their cool offices and expense accounts.

Marketing has always been hard to track–the idea that advertising and PR and “brand awareness” drive sales is, at its core, based more on common sense than it is on data.

And at the end of it, the only thing we can say, whether we’re talking about classified ads or Facebook messages, billboards or online display ads, is this: certainly spending all these billions doesn’t hurt.

That’s all we really know. The rest is opinion.

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of  Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator and a PR strategist for brands and writers.

Mr. Keys. (Photo: Twitter)

Power-Twitterer and Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys has been indicted by the Justice Department. He stands accused of “conspiring with members of the hacker group ‘Anonymous’ to hack into and alter a Tribune Company website.”

A journalist handing over his ex-employer's log-in info to Anonymous, combined with the fact that the vandalized "Tribune Company website" happens to have been the homepage of the Los Angeles Times, is so juicy that overworked assistants all over Hollywood are probably cobbling together pitches to turn Keys into the next Bradley Manning.

Before Reuters, Mr. Keys worked as a web producer for the Tribune Company-owned TV station KTXL FOX 40, in California. The DOJ says that in December 2010, after being "terminated" by Fox 40, he:

identified himself on an Internet chat forum as a former Tribune Company employee and provided members of Anonymous with a login and password to the Tribune Company server.  After providing log-in credentials, Keys allegedly encouraged the Anonymous members to disrupt the website.

The indictment, uploaded by the Huffington Post, has even more gory details. The feds say Mr. Keys burrowed into the IRC back channels of Anonymous with the nickname  "AESCracked" and handed them information on a silver platter:

Defendant MATTHEW KEYS then told the unidentified individuals that he was a former employee, proceeded to give them a username and passowrd, and told to "go fuck some shit up."

When the hacker reported back with a mission accomplished:

sharpie: that was such a buzz having my edit
sharpie: on the LA Times
AESCracked: Nice

Meanwhile, our old friend Sabu pretty much outed Mr. Keys back in 2011, but no one noticed:

Anonymous tweet from 2011: twitter.com/anonymouSabu/s… twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew…

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) March 14, 2013

It's actually frighteningly easy to commit a computer offense that could land you in the clink. But it won't hurt the DOJ's narrative that Mr. Keys has tweeted things like:

Tribune Company thanked employees for four years of talent, made no mention of dozens of employees laid off (or quit) during bankruptcy.

— Matthew Keys (@TheMatthewKeys) December 31, 2012

Anonymous has weighed in, blaming Sabu for snitching:

BREAKING: Reuters journalist indicted over Anonymous hack ow.ly/iWQ8t #fuckSabu #snitch

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) March 14, 2013

To add another layer of intrigue, BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray points out that Mr. Keys also fed Gawker at least one log of his chatroom interactions with Anonymous.

Mr. Keys faces counts of conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, transmitting information to damage a protected computer and attempted transmission of information to damage a protected computer.

Update, 5:45 pm: Guess Mr. Keys knew what was coming. Gizmodo reports that just last night, he told a friend he suspected his days at Reuters were "numbered," though he said it was "just a feeling."

Update, 3/15: Thomson Reuters offered the following statement:

“We are aware of the charges brought by the Department of Justice against Matthew Keys, an employee of our news organization. Thomson Reuters is committed to obeying the rules and regulations in every jurisdiction in which it operates. Any legal violations, or failures to comply with the company’s own strict set of principles and standards, can result in disciplinary action. We would also observe the indictment alleges the conduct occurred in December 2010; Mr. Keys joined Reuters in 2012, and while investigations continue we will have no further comment.”

(Photo: Instagram / Benjimanfood)

Food pics have long been the poster child of photo apps like Instagram. Crammed between the selfies and the screencaps of inspirational quotes, photos of food porn have become so ubiquitous that most of us scroll right by them without a second thought. But NYC chefs--particularly those steadfastly mounted upon Michelin-starred high horses--are beginning to foment a revolution against the Instagramming masses.

The New York Times reports that several area restaurants have flat-out banned photography, lest the flash of your iPhone camera "totally disrupts the ambiance" (actual quote!). Momofuku Ko, for example, went as far as to publicly shame a patron in the 12-seat restaurant for daring to 'gram her meal, making us wonder: who exactly is the asshole in this situation?

Other restaurants would simply prefer that you actually take a picture that does their meals some justice. Chef David Bouley often ushers people he sees snapping his plates back into the kitchen so they can get a picture on a marble background with proper lighting. He's even working on a system that will allow users to choose from an array of digital images of his dishes that they can send to their friends before they even get their meals. Servicey!

Still, photographic food porn can be a dangerous hobby leading victims into a depressing downward spiral. One NASA scientist reportedly annoyed his family for years by taking pictures of everything he eats with a huge camera, then compiling them into gigantic Powerpoint presentations he sent around to family and friends.

“Now he’s got Facebook, thank God," quipped his daughter. Hey, even NASA scientists have their annoying hobbies.

Utopia? (Photo: Office Snapshots)

The Roosevelt Island campus is still in progress, but Cornell NYC Tech officially had its first day of classes yesterday at 20,000 feet of donated space at Google's Chelsea HQ. Oh you fancy huh? [New York Times]

Now you can apply for a job at Google with just one click--as long as you have an actually updated and functional Google+ profile. So... nevermind. [The Next Web]

People are still getting fired for their social media presences so maybe keep that in mind next time you comment on a BuzzFeed article, Curtis Dee, manager at the Olive Garden. [New York Times]

How does Google keep its employees so happy? Its HR team, called People operations, uses data and social scientists to figure out which perks employees respond to the best. Yeah? Well... at Betabeat we have free coffee... [Slate]

You can no longer purchase gun-related promotions on Groupon, at least for now. [Business Insider]

(Photo: Blogspot)

Wondering where to dump that stray $50k you have lying around so that you can spend the presidential inauguration swagging out in some palatial, gold-plated estate? Look no further than D.C.'s Madison Hotel, which is offering an elite "Inaugural Town and Country" package to visitors of the capital for whom a night at the Four Seasons just ain't cuttin' it.

The Daily Dot reports that the stay comes with "a $5,000 gift certificate for clothes and a night at a different hotel" (???), as well as your very own "social media butler" who is literally paid to document your visit via social media.

Yes, digital marketing expert Victoria Levine will "chronicle your Inaugural experience so your friends and family can follow your adventures on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest." Because you can't bear to pass up this humblebrag opportunity, but sharing every minuscule moment of your $16,000/day stay is just so exhausting.

For her part, Ms. Levine seems skeptical anyone will actually buy the package. "We haven't really figured out the details. I guess we're waiting to see if anyone buys it," she told the Dot.

High rollers, please prove her wrong and have your social media butler report back.

Everybody likes this (Photo: Facebook.com)

It's about two weeks later and we're still reeling from the Presidential election. Luckily, we got our campaign fix today because Tumblr and The Daily Beast spoke to Laura Olin, one of the Obama campaign's top social media strategists.

Ms. Olin was responsible for scheduling the victory posts to all Obama's social networks. Most notably, she posted the now-famous photo of a hugging Mr. and Mrs. Obama with the simple caption "four more years." The post has amassed more than 800,000 retweets and is the most liked Facebook photo of all time.

But like all important moments in history, the much loved post almost never happened, Ms. Olin explains:

One of my team members remembered an amazing photo of the president and first lady hugging at the president’s last campaign rally in Des Moines. It’s this really beautiful photo at night — the only thing was that Michelle was facing forward and the president was facing away from the camera, So my boss, Teddy Goff, made the very good point that we should see the president’s face. I remembered that our campaign photographer had taken a series of really great hug photographs at another Iowa rally, in the summer, and I went to our photo editor and she was like “Yes!”

And Brian Ries, the social media editor for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, who produced this story, couldn't help but rep his favorite brand with his leading question, "It was nice to see you guys embrace the GIF on Tumblr. Was that a conscious decision?" Ms. Olin explained that posting GIF's is just what felt right:

We recognized early on that when we put up a GIF or reblogged a GIF it would have a better reach than just a static image. It’s just another way to speak in the terms of the community — and make things more fun. This isn’t rocket science at all, but I think something that we discovered — or tried to implement — was that if you put things in terms that people actually want to share, they will share them. Political campaigns historically haven’t totally gotten it.

Turns out, all you have to do to win an election is act like a regular human being.

(Screencap: Twitter)

After announcing their intention to attack Hamas on Twitter, the Israeli Defense Force began military operations in Gaza yesterday. The Alqassam Brigades, Hamas’s military arm, also has a Twitter account, and the two have been engaging in a sparring match on the platform that elevates typically meaningless Twitter tiffs into the stuff of WWIII nightmares.

Aside from updating their followers on the death toll and the status of military strikes, both accounts have tweeted photos of children (warning: both links are graphic) injured or killed in the conflict. The IDF is letting no social media channel go untouched. They've been uploading photos of their operations to Flickr and Pinterest and publishing status updates to their official Facebook page. They also just started a Tumblr account that is littered with pro-Israel propaganda, including a photo showing a cartoon of an Israeli family in the crosshairs of a Hamas target with the message "Israeli civilians are Hamas's target."

Spreading information and even propaganda through social media channels in times of violent conflict is new territory for internet companies. The Arab Spring is often cited as Twitter's defining moment. In that case, Middle Eastern citizens used the service to communicate with each other and the press in order to foment revolution against totalitarian governments.

But this time, it’s different. As Peter Kafka of AllThingsD noted, Israel is, in essence, "using the Internet as weapon," employing the same tactics as dissidents in the Arab Spring to spread a message without a middleman. There is something grotesque and disturbing about two parties with a long history of conflict live-narrating the launching of bombs that kill civilians and destroy communities. There is no empowerment or revolution here: just a dark, sinking feeling as we watch the bloodshed unfold in real time.

And the platforms that are allowing both the IDF and Alqassam Brigades to spread their messages? Faced with a new frontier of social media manipulation, neither YouTube or Twitter really knows what to do.

(Screencap: Tumblr)

It's difficult to nail down whether or not the content disseminated by both the Hamas and IDF accounts violates Twitter's terms of service. One Twitter rule explicitly bans the “direct, specific threats of violence against others," which certain IDF tweets do seem to violate. The Daily Dot reports that the IDF Spokesperson Twitter account was temporarily suspended for about 40 minutes today, but was then reinstated. As Twitter doesn't comment on the status of individual accounts, it's difficult to suss out what the reasoning behind this was; perhaps it was automatically suspended after being flagged for removal by users. Whatever the case, it's back up now, tweeting about the rockets flying between Tel Aviv and Gaza. (A fake account, @IDFSpokesman, has been suspended.)

YouTube, meanwhile, also temporarily banned a video uploaded by the IDF that shows a "pinpoint strike" that killed Ahmed Jabari, one of Hamas's military leaders. The video was put back up after AllThingsD pointed it out. YouTube told them:

“With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”

As one social media analyst told the BBC, the actions of both the IDF and Alqassam Brigades on Twitter put the service in a difficult position. "They want to preserve their position as a carrier service that doesn't editorialize," he said. "On the other hand, they have terms and conditions that must be adhered to."

"This is not a decision a couple of hundred engineers in North California want to be making," he added.

And yet, as hashtagged insults and news of bombs continue to fly across these services, it's a decision social media platforms may have to make sooner or later.