One of my favorite ezines–and just about the only one I read from beginning to end–is “New Thinking” by web usability guru Gerry McGovern.

This past week I helped a client by explaining his complex technical process using little tiny words. And by tiny, I mean single syllables. Short phrases. Dummy language, almost.

The clouds parted, angels sang, and his product offering became immediately understandable…and more desirable.

Where many copywriters and most amateur marketers complicate their copy to sound important, I work in the opposite direction. My passion is for helping people understand.

Well, Gerry McGovern has my back on this. From this week’s New Thinking:

There is a view among the intellectual elite that the general
public are just not educated enough to make important decisions.
This elite are often quite reasonable and progressive people,
and they fear mob rule, populism and xenophobic nationalism.

[T]he Web reflects a world that is becoming more and more
immune to sciency-sounding words and legal gibberish.

Deliberately complex content still has the power to impress some
of us some of the time. But societies are becoming less
susceptible to the language of deception, and the Web is at the
forefront of that changing reality.

~ Gerry McGovern

Are you pulling people in with your language, or pushing them away? Or worse yet, are you pulling the wool over their eyes?

Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service, has decided to get even larger, by confiscating the property of all of its users.

According to Facebook’s newly updated Terms of Service:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

In other words, Facebook owns all of your personal photos, all your messages, all your bad haiku, all of your comments, your profile photo, your email address and everything else.

Aloha, Facebook. You are not the boss of me.

I always love getting great results for my clients. This week, my client’s name and website were featured in an Associated Press story about online dating, and the story was picked up by about a dozen news outlets, including ABC News online and MSNBC.com. I pitched the story to an AP reporter a couple of weeks ago, thanks to Peter Shankman’s excellent Help A Reporter Out service. The two biggest hits? ABCNews.com and MSNBC.com.

This is a huge PR win, any way you cut it. But it’s a bit awkward to talk about, as this week, I was my own client, and my motivation was entirely selfish.

ABCNews.com
MSNBC.com
HeraldNews.com
Technology Canoe
Lethbridge Herald
Netscape.com
The Observer
TMCNet.com
Calsun.com
Fort Frances Times
Canadian Press

And what’s even better, I got a thank-you note from the author of the story, Megan Scott. She wrote,

THANK YOU for being so open with me. Your story inspired me…Keep me posted on your search!

If my little website helps even one person find true love, it’s all worth it.

And if my PR work helps even one company find a new customer, so much the better.

Like me, Peter Shankman is in the marketing and PR biz. Unlike me, he has figured out a way to grow a 60,000-member mailing list. How did he do it? By offering a matchmaking service for journalists and sources.

Tired of opening his Rolodex every time a reporter called him to find a quote for a story, Peter set up a Facebook to “Help A Reporter Out.” Reporters emailed their story queries to Peter, Peter emailed the queries out to everyone on his list, and people who knew (or were) sources contacted the reporters.

Peter isn’t the first to launch such a service. PRNewswire’s ProfNet claims 14,000 subscribers. If you have to ask how much it costs (and yes, you have to ask) you can’t afford it. (One wonders how HARO will impact ProfNet’s business model.)

By offering a service that’s elegantly simple (and totally free for both journalists and sources), Peter has not only helped out many a reporter, he has also helped out many a PR maven and client. And now, with a five-figure subscriber base, Peter is selling ad space at the top of every email. So it’s helping his bank account, too.

I just love it when everybody wins.

Speaking of wins, a couple of weeks ago I responded to a HARO query from an Associated Press writer doing a story on online dating. She wanted to know how online daters deal with all the winks, emails, waves, nudges, etc. that online dating generates. As an online dating veteran, I responded with a pitch about my own personal dating site, which I use as a screening mechanism.

Incredibly, the reporter liked my pitch and interviewed me. Even more incredibly, the AP sent a photographer to snap me working on the laptop. And most incredibly of all, the story went out on the AP wire today. So far it has been picked up by a couple of community newspapers. Just in time for Valentine’s Day.