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Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Can Tom Brady sell Uggs — to men?

Sure, he’s married to a supermodel and can seem downright deity-like on the football field, but can three-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady do the impossible — sell Uggs to men? The Australian-based footwear company is sure betting on it. The company signed the New Englander quarterback to a multi-year deal  as its  global spokesman starting with its fall 2011 collection.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

New website ranks most influential tweeters by topic

It’s called Pulse of the Tweeters , and it’s the thesis project from a Northwestern University graduate student. The site determines the influence of Twitter users and decides whether tweets are positive, negative, or neutral, and it filters out spam, reports Reuters . “The researchers believe the technology could identify trends and the people who are influencing them,” according to Reuters.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

7 bad writing habits you learned in school

Touché, Copyblogger . “I think good writing doesn’t have to be educated or well supported or even grammatically correct,” Jonathan Morrow wrote for  Copyblogger . Not grammatically correct? That’s a bold statement, sir. “[Good writing] does have to be interesting enough that other people want to read it. Much of what comes out of high schools and universities fail this test, not because our students are incapable of saying anything interesting, but because a well-m…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

That’s the spirit! Punch out in The Washington Post newsroom

It appears the newspaper industry does have some fight left. Late last week, a fight reportedly broke out in The Washington Post newsroom between editor Henry Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam vet, who is nearly 70, and (the much younger) features writer Manuel Roig-Franzia, over an article Roig-Franzia wrote for The Post ’s Style section. Allen told Roig-Franzia that his story was “the second-worst story I’ve seen in Style in 43 years,” according to Washingtonian.com ….

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Snobbery is a smart Twitter strategy

“The only people you should follow on Twitter are people who are immediately interesting to you or people who might become interesting to you,” says blogger Mitch Joel . “Ignore the rest.” Joel admits that this is not very social media but it’s necessary in a noisy Twittersphere. Do you agree with this strategy? — Matthew Royse

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

7 free alternatives to your multimedia tools

The expensive programs you use every day — like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere — have free alternatives online. Some of them are good; some are garbage. 10,000 Words blog has seven of these free alternatives to popular programs.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Twitter is testing an analytics tool — this is good for you

Mashable is reporting that Twitter has invited a group of users to test a new analytics tool. With the tool, “users will be able to see a plethora of data about their account; for example, information about which tweets are most successful, which tweets caused people to unfollow, and who the most influential users are that reply and retweet their messages,” according to Mashable . The article includes screenshots of the new tool.

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

9 alternative definitions of social media

On Wikipedia, “social media” is defined as “media for social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.” But Wikipedia is wrong, says PR Daily contributing editor Jackson Wightman. He offered nine alternative definitions , including, “The group of Web-based things that saved the PR profession from going the way of dinosaurs.”

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

By firing Fox News contributor, NPR kicks hornet’s nest

As you know, Juan Williams, a former news analyst for National Public Radio, received his walking papers this week after  admitting he feels anxious in airplanes when a fellow passenger is dressed in “Muslim garb.” Williams, who is also a Fox analyst, made the comments on the “O’Reilly Factor.” The usual suspects on the right, Bill O’Reilly, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, are demanding the federal government either cut or freeze subsidies to NPR, reports The Dail…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

Is running TSA’s Twitter account ‘the worst job ever’ in social media?

Flying tomorrow? Good luck.  National Opt-Out Day begins Wednesday morning at 70 airports. Organizer Brian Sodergren, who Time magazine  said is not flying on Thanksgiving, is asking travelers to opt out of the full body scans and instead ask TSA officials for an enhanced pat-down. That’s right; Brian wants you to get groped. Time is saying the protest could cause massive delays, so arrive at the airport early. Despite the negative attention — which Daily Beast media critic Howard K…

Ragan Insider   |  Ragan Staff

10 reasons you should — or should not — rebrand

Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea. All of these are signs it might be time to reach for that pink bottle in the medicine cabinet, something that — as a brand — Pepto-Bismol has come to bank on. Knowing that, OPEN Forum would suggests it shouldn’t rebrand. But what do you do when your brand can no longer count on its consumers? Here are  10 signs it might be time for your trademark to turn in a new direction — or maybe not.