BFG’s Sloane Kelley and Hal Thomas had the chance to talk Twitter and jobs with Jessica Kiss of WJCL and TheCoastalSource.com.

You can read more of Jessica’s reporting on this story here, and you can read the back story of BFG’s use of Twitter to hire their newest employee.

When Facebook and Twitter roll out new features or a redesign, the changes are often met with resistance and complaints. When MyYearbook, the social network for teens, saw a need for a redesign, they took a far different approach, one that the larger networks may actually be able to learn from.

MyYearbook went with a crowdsourced plan that accepted user submissions for a redesign and factored in community voting. The approach lead to a new design that the community favored 3 to 1. The main changes are to the network’s logo and navigation although profiles will undergo some revisions soon, as TechCrunch points out.

This video offers a look at MyYearbook over the years and the new look:

Due to one brilliant review on Amazon.com last year the now iconic Three Wolf Moon T-shirt is now “the official T-shirt of New Hampshire economic development.” There is only one word for this: AWESOME!

“The Mountain’s Three Wolf Moon is a true New Hampshire success story,” said Steve Boucher of the Division of Economic Development. “What started off as a tongue-in-cheek take on a cool T-shirt has resulted in worldwide acclaim for a very creative and growing Granite State business.”

The shirt has been worn by actor Rainn Wilson of “The Office” and Allan Hyde of “True Blood.” It was also worn by the U.S. Marine’s Bravo Company 1st Combat Engineer Battalion.

We’ve been big fans of this meme from the moment we heard about it. Keep howling at that moon!

What does it feel like to fall into $130 million?

One clumsy art student just found out… Sort of.

While attending an art class at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, a woman lost her balance and fell into Pablo Picasso’s painting “The Actor” tearing a six-inch hole into the canvas of the $130 million work of art. The painting, which features an acrobat in a dramatic pose on a 6-by-4-foot canvas, was torn in the lower right-hand corner.

Appraiser Gerard van Weyenbergh was quoted in the Mail Online: “It’s a 50 percent loss of the value - at least. “When an artwork comes up in auction, that’s the first thing people want to know - were there any repaints or restorations. Even a small hole and Picasso collectors like [Steven] Spielberg are not going to be interested.”

Museum officials did not release the identity of the wobbly woman, but did say that she did not suffer any physical injuries from the fall—most likely just a bruised ego. However, all hope is not lost. Museum officials say the painting can and will be repaired for an exhibition of 250 works by Picasso scheduled for this spring.

No word on repairing the art student’s self esteem or chances of passing the art class.

When I think of a love story featuring a pair of robots called I’m Here and directed by none other than Spike Jonze, I immediately think of vodka.

Well, not really, but ABSOLUT Vodka is betting I’ll associate their brand with the 30 minute film, which is having its debut this week at the Sundance Film Festival.

“It was a pretty incredible opportunity,” says Jonze. “They (ABSOLUT) didn’t give me any requirements to make a movie that had anything to do with vodka. They just wanted me to make something that was important to me, and let my imagination take me wherever I wanted. And it wasn’t like working with some huge corporation where I had to meet with committees of people. It was just a small group, and it seemed like creativity and making something that affected them emotionally was the only thing that really mattered to them. I got to make my first love story. It’s about the relationship between two robots living in Los Angeles”.

Making films, even with all the new technology, can be expensive, even if you are Spike Jonze. Getting funding and being given total creative control with that money rarely go hand in hand, but in this case it seems the vodka maker wanted Jonze to kind of do his thing and they’d roll with the results. ABSOLUT has always prided itself through its extensive partnerships with artists of all stripes over the years who’ve made designs for the iconic bottles and ads and have probably learned that if you want to work with the best at what they do, it’s best to not put too many constraints on the work.

This is not the first time that ABSOLUT has found robots associated with its vodka, in 2008 they teamed up with some brainiacs at MIT and a Swedish research development company and made a robot that played music and that could be interacted with online.

If you’re not already familiar with the pseudonymous British graffiti artist and snarky social commentator, Banksy, you should really take minute to check out his work. Exit Through the Gift Shop is being billed as “the world’s first street art disaster movie” and looks like a lot of fun. You can also visit the official movie site here.

My love for flash mobs has been well documented, so there’s no need to rehash my reasons. Just sit back, relax, and find a little amusement in this: the 9th Annual NYC No Pants Subway Ride, which took place on January 10th.

The event was coordinated by flash mob masters Improv Everywhere.

If you’re still not sold on the power of Twitter, look no further than Valentine’s Day candy, specifically those colored candy hearts with pithy messages. This year, Sweethearts candy will feature the message “Tweet Me” among the more traditional “Love Me” and “Be Mine” hearts.

It’s not the first time Sweethearts have featured technology-driven messages. “Fax Me” and “Email Me” are the techno messages of Valentine’s Day past. In this case, the Twitter message actually seems to fit the medium quite well, as explained in USA Today.

“We’ve always been short and sweet,” says Jackie Hague, vice president of marketing at New England Confectionery, maker of the Sweethearts brand. “In this case, the technology merged with the ritual.”

Apparently, the Twitter move was consumer-driven. An online survey last year asked consumers for new sayings and “Tweet Me” won out, according to Hague.

Sweethearts executives phoned Twitter executives, and a match was made. “It’s even more proof that people can say anything in short messages,” says Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. “A 140-character message may seem short. Sweethearts are even smaller.”

I love it when a plan comes together.

Photo: Copyright 2009 Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Last week, Rob posted about Coca-Cola’s recent viral success with its Happiness Machine stunt, where Coke used a fake vending machine to dispense everything from free drinks to a six foot sub sandwich to unsuspecting college students.

Great. So why retread old ground, you ask?

It is important to point out that what made the Happiness Machine go viral is the same thing that made The Dark Knight the winner of the 2009 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Movie: they were both something that people enjoyed watching so much that they felt compelled to share it with others.

You see, brands can’t just create a viral video any more than a studio can just make an award-winning film. Videos go viral; films receive awards. Certainly, going viral can be a goal for brand generated content, just as winning Best Picture can be a goal for a film. Going viral happens after the fact, as does receiving awards. But in both cases, achieving either goal is byproduct of the same thing: creating compelling content that connects with people on an emotional level.

This is why I find it a bit disappointing that so many people in the advertising industry have quickly adopted the term viral with seemingly so little thought about what the word really means. (Here’s a good riff on why “viral” is a terrible descriptor. Maybe we should use something more appropriate to what we hope will be the end result, like “contagious content.” But the last thing we need is another buzzword, and I digress.) Even Advertising Age now has its own weekly Viral Video Chart.

Just because a brand makes a funny/wierd/cool video and posts it to YouTube does not make that video viral. The United Breaks Guitars video and its successor–those are videos that have gone viral. The Levi’s Unbuttoned Films have arguably gone viral. And yes, Pants on the Ground, painful as it may be, will go down as viral phenomenon.

What all of these videos have in common is a certain x-factor; they are just outside of the mainstream, are usually not overproduced, and often have a grassroots element. These are not videos most corporate folks would have predicted to be viewed hundreds of thousands (even millions) of times. Contrast the aforementioned videos with the Evian Rollerbabies, which to date have spent 16 nonconsecutive weeks atop Advertising Age’s Viral Video Chart:

Hmm, let’s see. Cute little babies dancing on roller skates to non-threatening old school rap music thanks to the miracle of really expensive post production and special effects yields (as of the time of this post) over 17 million views on YouTube. A surprise? Not exactly.

So while defining exactly which videos are viral or have gone viral can be a bit ambiguous–and maybe even an exercise in futility–the one thing to take away is that, much like winning a People’s Choice Award, the best way to create content that has the best chance of going viral is to create something that is authentic and connects with people on an emotional level. Surprise them in a way that they cannot help but share.

[Disclosure: Coca Cola is BFG client, but Happiness Machine is not our work. We still dig it, though!]

MyBrandz bills itself as a social media community offering brand lovers the convenience of interacting with all their favorites in one place. Members can discuss their favorite brands, share brand information with others, receive updates from brands, and “expand the brand community.” See their video overview here (Video contains brief nudity, so don’t say you weren’t warned).

The problem I see with MyBrandz is that people are already sharing information about, and interacting with, brands in other social media spaces (e.g. blogs, Twitter and Facebook) where updates and interactions occur within the context of a larger social network. People tell others about brand experiences, both good and bad, conversationally via these social networks. In this instance, I am unconvinced that a more narrowly focused social channel like MyBrandz is actually good thing for brands; it removes the brand fans from the general conversational stream.

Unfortunately, MyBrandz reminds me of another experiment in brand consolidation, Firebrand, where you could watch all your favorite commercials in one place. Ultimately, “advertising as content” failed. I can’t help but wonder if MyBrandz will share a similar fate.