According to the study , ”Forty-two percent of Americans describe themselves as sexually ‘adventurous….’”  I soon found another study by the AARP that reported, “Phone sex with a spouse or intimate partner and the exchange of erotic notes and e-mails is popular among the 45-to-49 age group.”  Great!  So it seems like a lot of us are less sexually inhibited than we were a few years ago, but there’s got to be something else driving the online behavior from the above Zarrella quote.

I soon found another study, this time from Michigan State.   In a nutshell, the study delved into the online habits of law enforcement officers.  The following behavior was observed: “as (the officers) anonymity increased, (their) informational disinhibition increased.”  In other words, their scruples got fewer as their sense of invisibility became greater.

So the missing link seems to be the perceived anonymity of the internet in general.  Even though the web is the most public form of media in human history, most people still feel like no one will ever find out what sites they’ve been visiting.  So if you combine an increased willingness and desire to view content of a sexual nature with the fact that no one thinks that they’ll get caught online, you can get a pretty powerful Sirens’ Song leading potential consumers to your content.

So given these morning reading “truths,” back to the original question – does sex in social media actually work?  Consider, if you will, a perhaps sexually adventurous social media project that we recently produced in partnership with Ketchum Atlanta for their client,  7-Eleven.

The project was called, “Wake up with a hot Brazilian!,” and can be found at - www.the711club.com.  The purpose of the execution was to drive trial and awareness of 7-Eleven’s new gourmet Brazilian coffee.

Set in a chic, fictitious club on Copa Beach, visitors are challenged to skillfully navigate a complex social scene in order to score a hot Brazilian companion for the evening.  After the user has successfully conquered their prey, the final scene of the game fades to reveal a hot, steaming cup of 7-Eleven’s gourmet Brazilian coffee sitting on your night stand the next morning. The user then receives a coupon to try a free cup for themselves.

…and the results?  As we were delighted to find out, the coupon redemption from the711club.com was the highest of any promotion 7-Eleven has done in recent history.  So it turns out that social media sex might just might sell better than good old fashion sex after all!  Who knew? (We did.)

Social Media is on everyone’s mind, and Facebook is universally understood to be one of the biggest players in the game. Facebook has become so popular that if you don’t have a presence there, it’s the equivalent of not owning a TV – people might think you’re living in a log cabin and preparing for the apocalypse.

With so many people actively using facebook, it makes sense to use it to network with professional contacts for business purposes. After all, Facebook has over 6 times the number of users that LinkedIn has. However, Facebook users are traditionally more informal, openly sharing personal information with a select and limited group. For many, the idea of adding professional contacts to their Facebook profile causes a lot of anxiety; how can they keep the more intimate (and potentially embarrassing) details of their personal life strictly relegated to friends and family?

Facebook doesn’t make it easy. Their site has been upgraded and expanded in such a piecemeal way that much of the functionality available is far from intuitive. Unless you’re a Facebook junkie, you probably haven’t invested the time necessary to figure out how to manage the (sometimes complicated) privacy controls that they offer. Fortunately for you, I AM a Facebook junkie, and I think I can help.

In the following video tutorial (and companion slideshow presentation), I show you how to protect your personal information, regulate who sees your photos, and send your status updates to the right people. Using this as a guide, you’ll be able to blog about American Idol and post pictures from your beer-bong weekend, while your boss only sees that WSJ article you posted.

Ok. This is going to get pretty dev-talky so read ahead with caution…

The problem comes from adding and removing things to the display list in Flash. Flash depends on something called the “garbage collector” to come along and clear things out of memory that are no longer in use by your program. This frees up your computer. Here are step-by-step instructions for how to get your memory clear without having to do a page refresh.

Removing Objects and Marking Them for Garbage Collection

First thing is to remove the objects from the display list and set them to null.

Example:

for(var i:int = 0; i<images.length; i++){

images[i].unload();

removeChild(images[i]);

images[i] = null;

}

images = null;

You must remove anything that has a referential connection to the objects that you are removing or they will not be marked for garbage collection. As in our example, the images array holds a connection to each item in the array, so it must be removed as well in order to clear the objects from memory.

Here is a really good article about garbage collection.

Calling the Garbage Collector

Here at TSG, we did all that but there was no way of knowing if the garbage collector was actually coming around to pick up this trash. Instead of sitting there and seeing if the garbage collector would ever come around, we decided to try and call him up. We found two solutions:

1. The first is to open two local connections (it’s a total hack, but it works):

try {

new LocalConnection().connect(’foo’);

new LocalConnection().connect(’foo’);

} catch (e:*) {}

2. The second method is only available with the additional CS4 ActionScript libraries:

flash.system.System.gc();

Read “How To Avoid SEO Failure”

Here are a few excerpts:

See what the search engine sees

The old rule against Flash-heavy sites is changing since Google starting working with Adobe to make graphics searchable. But search remains a text-focused medium, and that means it pays to see your page as the search engine sees it, according to Steve Gavette, managing director of the search agency Visible.

To do that, Gavette recommends looking at your site in a browser like Lynx. Or, you can click on the “cached” link in Google search for your site and then follow it to the “text-only” link, says Chris Wallace, founding partner and COO The SuperGroup.

Either way, both methods will give you better insight into what the search engine sees when it looks at your website. If you don’t see anything at all in the text view, you definitely have a problem, according to Gavette. But according to Wallace, a Flash-heavy site will be just fine, provided that each page’s content (Flash or otherwise) is located in a universally accessible location like an XML file.

Ask about relevance everyday

If you’re not asking about relevance, you’re definitely failing at SEO, says The SuperGroup’s Chris Wallace. “Much like a credit score, no one knows exactly how specific factors affect rankings,” he adds. “But as a general rule of thumb, always ask yourself: What more can I offer the users who I want to attract? How can I be the most relevant website on a particular topic? This means an abundance of informative content, and a diversity of content that a user might be interested in. Don’t just load your site down with text. Make sure to include PDFs, videos, and even links to outside resources that would be helpful for your users. Do anything you can to make your site extremely relevant and useful for a visiting user, even if that means providing links to outside resources. This will rank you higher in search engines.”