What’s With All the Puppets?
Back in the height of the dot-com boom, the Pets.com socket puppet dog was extremely popular while Pets.com, the business, floundered despite raising gobs of venture capital. The puppet appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America, Nightline, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, and had a balloon for the 1999 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Although the rights to the puppet were sold after Pets.com went out of business, the use of puppets within the online world pretty much disappeared…until now.
It seems puppets are back, they’re hot and resonating with a multi-tasking, time-strapped audience. For example, 1938Media’s Loren Feldman has scored a huge hit with a funny, but sometimes cruel, puppet series featuring Shel Israel (the puppet, not the social media consultant) doing a series of interviews. The series has become so popular that it even has a new sponsor - Zong, mobile platform company - and Feldman may not be able to get himself back in front of the camera any time soon.
Next on the puppet stage is Flickr, which has just released a new video service, which oddly is limited to 90-seconds and uploading just for Flickr Pro customers (see TechCrunch’s mini-review). To illustrate the new service, the Flickr blog users two puppets, which, by the way, are no way as cut as the sock puppet dog or Shel Israel, the puppet, not the social media consultant.
Puppets are cute and all but we’re adults; we’re not supposed to be watching puppet shows because puppet shows are for children. If real people aren’t good enough to make a point or launch a new service, why not embrace Common Craft’s Paperworks concept, which are smarter and, well, a lot more mature.
More: There’s no lack of comment/coverage about Flickr Video but Silicon Valley Insider has an interesting post looking at whether Flickr’s decision to limit video uploading to its $25/year Pro customers could actually be a business model for video.
Update: Speaking of puppets, Shel Israel (The Puppet, not the social media consultants) interview with Seesmic’s Loic Lemur is pretty good and funny. The puppet asks pretty good questions.
Technorati Tags: Flickr, Loren Feldman, Pets.com, Puppets, Shel Israel
April 9th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I dunno. The puppets make me laugh.
The Pets.com sock puppet became more popular than the service itself. Maybe it’s a bad sign when marketing reverts to puppets…
April 9th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Just one comment, regarding your “Puppets are cute and all but we’re adults; we’re not supposed to be watching puppet shows because puppet shows are for children” affirmation.
Do yourself a favor next time you are in NYC and go see Avenue Q on broadway (http://www.avenueq.com/)
A muscical puppet show for adults with the hilarious “the internet is for porn” song? Priceless!
April 9th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Sylvain: Thanks for the tip - gotta add it to my things to do in NYC list.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
[...] again, Mark Evans’ post on puppets had me reconsidering. The Flickr video launch was aided by puppets. Also notable is the Pets.com puppet that was super [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
“Gideon” the world-famous Interactive designer/puppet is a puppet with a job (http://www.fitc.ca/video/2008/toronto/gideon/). He will be hard at work during this week’s FITC Toronto: Design + Technology Festival interviewing other world-famous Interactive designers …