We launched a new ad format over at DailyKos in April. Called the “Action Tag,” the ad format allows an advertiser to promote a specific action after a post that deals with a relevant topic area. The SEIU helped inspire the ad functionality and been using Action Tags to promote actions around health care and employee free choice.

This weekend, some of the folks at DailyKos started to debate the new functionality, weighing in on its pros and cons. The discussion has been lengthy and inspiring, and has provided some good ideas for improving the functionality, which we’ll begin to impliment shortly in concert with SEIU and Dkos.

Above and beyond the particulars of the debate, I’ve enjoyed the fact that the debate has revived a discussion that began four years ago about an risque ad for Turner Broadcasts’ reality TV remake of Gilligan’s Island. It’s amazing to see the pie-fight meme live on in the Kos community.

I leave you with this thought:

In the cheerful and snide spirit of Cluetrain, here’s the Suxorz deck from this year’s SXSW fully annotated and posted. (I’m running it big here so the text is legible.)

Here’s the Suxorz audio.

The most interesting discovery in updating the deck: since we publicly reamed KFC, they’ve dealt with their fired-employee/former-KFC-blogger problem by removing her post and unlinking her post. (And perhaps persuading her to take her blog down?)

Vote for my twittertee.

Hofi Geza, right, was Hungary’s comic genius 1950-90s. Around 30 seconds in this clip, Hofi reprises “Go marching in” as “Go Nanci Neni” (or “Go Aunt Nancy.”)

As compiled on Gdocs. (Thank you Jenny!)

WSJ:

The BoE has made clear one of its main objectives in buying £125 billion ($189 billion) of gilts is to drive down gilt yields. In theory, this should be impossible since, as senior Bank officials admit, the gilt market is extremely liquid and deviations in yields away from market interest rate expectations should be quickly arbitraged away.

But these are not normal times. The U.K. government’s decision to borrow 220 billion pounds this year and £600 billion over the next five years means gilts yields have been well above levels implied by the swaps market. Without quantitative easing, gilt yields would be much higher.

…

In fact, the BoE’s efforts to manipulate the gilt markets may actually be exacerbating the problem. Credit market participants are increasingly uncertain about the true risk-free rate and the market’s interest rate expectations. That makes it harder to price assets — and may drive yields higher even as the BoE is trying to drive them lower though quantitative easing.

…

In an ideal world, a strong independent central bank would tell the government to get a grip on its borrowing, rather than mopping it up. Instead, the U.K. financial framework requires the BoE to accommodate itself to the government’s reckless fiscal policy. The weakness will eventually have to be addressed — but it might take a crisis to get there.

Same goes for the Fed.

Some deep chord sounded in me on reading the NYT’s story about the John Lennon museum display in New York capped with this image:

Near the exit is “Telephone Peace,” a white telephone mounted on a wall, with a card telling visitors to answer the phone when it rings.

“This is something we did at the show in 2000,” Mr. Henke said. “Yoko would periodically call in and speak to whoever answers.”

Ms. Ono seemed amused at the prospect. “Yes, you pick up the phone,” she said, “and it will be me.”

Why?

Last week I tweeted this:

is Microsoft’s Atlas going out of business? e-mails bouncing, nobody picking up phone lines.

I thought someone at Atlas might get the message. Nope.

But today I got this from their able competitor Eyeblaster:

@hc Hey Henry, the phone is still getting answered over here. Anything that we can do to help out?

Eyeblaster is already ahead of its competitors in reporting and proactiveness, the SM focus just runs up the score.

BTW, I’m at twitter.com/hc and we’ll soon be pulling together a feed of staff twitter accounts.