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Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Let the crisis PR begin: Passengers from stranded cruise ship due home today

Vacationers aboard the Carnival cruise ship Splendor — the one that’s been stranded off Mexico’s coast since Monday morning — are  scheduled to arrive in San Diego today. Communication between the thousands of passengers and crew members has been sporadic — Cruise Critic collected  some of the responses from the ship — but you can bet it will become a media circus when the ship arrives. So far, the company has posted updates on  Twitter and Facebook , al…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Reporter from Texas thinks everyone in San Francisco is a pothead

The news media have poured into San Francisco to cover the start of the World Series — Giants vs. Texas Rangers — and that’s making for some local-news hilarity. For instance, Newy Scruggs, a reporter from Dallas’s NBC station, reported live from outside the Giants’ ballpark, where he swears people were smoking marijuana. Obviously, this means the whole town must get high. Oh. My. Watch .

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Communications intern at Cisco goes viral on YouTube

Have you heard of this guy? His name is Greg Justice, an intern in the communications department at Cisco. He’s the self-anointed, “World’s Most Interesting Intern,” a nod to Dos Equis’ beer ads, “The World’s Most Interesting Man” — and Justice has gone viral. That is, he recorded himself rapping about working at Cisco and the video has amassed more than 50,000 views. And yes, working at Cisco — which owns Flip cam — he used the …

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Library of Congress to archive every tweet ever written

Big week for Twitter: It announced an ad platform, hosted its first developer conference, and received word that the Library of Congress will begin archiving tweets. Every tweet since the service launched in 2006, actually. “I’m no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data,” the Library of Congress wrote on Facebook (ironically). “And I’m certain we’ll learn things that none of us now can possib…

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Campaign ad or snuff film?

Yikes . Pamela Gorman is running for Congress in Arizona. And she loves guns — just crazy about them. Good for Pamela. But is showing off your shooting skills in a low-budget format — like this campaign ad — really the most effective way to communicate your message?

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Snooki and Blago appearing in new ads for pistachios

This is purely a PR stunt. And look! It worked! Pistachio grower Paramount Farms kicked off a $20 million campaign Monday with ads featuring Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, star of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was recently found guilty of lying to the FBI. The president of Roll International Corp., which owns Paramount Farms, told  The Wall Street Journal  that his company is “not looking for controversy, but looking for buzz fa…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Twitter says this morning’s ‘nasty’ security flaw is fixed

In case you haven’t heard, thousands of Twitter users were affected this morning by a “particularly nasty” bug. Why so nasty? All you had to do is scroll your mouse over an offending link and BAM — you’re infected. The bug didn’t affect those using third-party apps, such as TweetDeck, to access to Twitter, reports Mashable . Around 10 a.m. Eastern Time, Twitter  said the security flaw is fully patched. Phew . Related The Huffington Post The 17 top Twitter cit…

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45 picture-perfect Facebook fan pages

Managing a Facebook fan page is tough; the biggest challenge is usually engagement. To help tackle it, most brands create a custom page with superb designs. Design Magazine highlighted some extremely well-designed — some might say breathtaking — Facebook pages . — Matthew Royse

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Why ‘return on relationship’ might trump ‘return on investment’

“ROI (return on investment) is incredibly important whenever investing, but companies have to start looking at ROR — return on relationship — when planning, strategizing, and, most importantly, evaluating social marketing,”  writes Ted Rubin, chief social marketing officer at OpenSky. Rubin cites Zappos and Amazon as prime examples of companies that understand the power of ROR. What do you think? Should the conversation move from ROI to ROR?—Matthew Royse

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Want to work in communications and surf the Web all day? Here are the skills required

The Internet is providing the jobs of the future in communications, product development, and branding. In the past, these positions would be listed in newspaper classified ads under public relations, marketing, or communications. Those days are gone. Now we can get paid to surf the Web and scour information channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Bebo. Writing for the website SoFeminine.co.uk , journalist Shila Meyer-Behjat says that Internet jobs represent a new type of occupation — they require…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Top 10 reasons you should delete your Facebook account

Ever get the urge to light a match, drop it on your kerosene-soaked Facebook page, and walk away? Dan Yoder sure has. He actually deleted his Facebook account, and he’d like you to do the same. “This is part altruism and part selfish,” he wrote. “The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I’d like my own social network to migrate away from Facebook so that I’m not missing anything.” Check out his top 10 reasons for ditchi…