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Sarah Britten is the strategic planning director at Y&R Johannesburg.
Her relationship status is hidden.
Twitter
To block or not to block: that is one of the most difficult questions any of us face when we’re out there in the social media trenches.I always regarded blocking as an admission of defeat. Heck, I rarely even unfollow people, and on a public platform where you take the good with the bad, blocking should be a last resort. Having rotten tomatoes lobbed your way is one of the occupational hazards of raising your head above the parapet. ...
Nobody does tactical advertising better than Nando’s. Over the years, the fast food chicken franchise established a reputation for putting out sharp, witty and timely online ads in response to current events. Before the days of Facebook and Twitter, it relied on print; now its ads are distributed via social media, rapidly going viral.It works incredibly well for it, so much so that it’s almost become a form of "prevertising". The moment there’s a big news event, people think: ...
So were you one of the roughly 10-million people who got a mail from LinkedIn congratulating you on having one of the top 5% most viewed profiles? Did it make you feel special? Or, as in the case of Diane Truman, editor-in-chief of Zillow, did you find it creepy?I was thoroughly irritated by that mail. It felt very spammy, a blatant attempt to appeal to narcissism, and not entirely credible. If I’m one of the top 5% most viewed ...
Of all the challenges faced by those who put content online, the comments facility must be the most vexing one. (There’s even a Twitter account, @AvoidComments, which reminds followers not to read the comments, ever. Sample tweet: Whenever you see a smiling child, remember: she's never read a comment in her life, and she's doing just fine.)Many websites have experimented with reining in the bad behaviour that predominates in a facility that offers a toxic combination of visibility and anonymity. ...
I love Twitter for many reasons -- in many ways, I’m in a relationship with it. But one of the things I value the most is the insight it has given me into the lives of my fellow human beings. I get to eavesdrop on conversations I’d never normally have the opportunity to hear, and because they’re between people who know each other, they’re more natural -- even if they are visible to others, who watch with their express permission ...
Sport is one of the great divides on Twitter. Fans descend into atavistic tribalism or pontificate about strategy and tactics while non-fans head for the digital hills – anything to shut out the noise. Twitter is chaos for an hour or two, and then the final whistle blows and life goes on.A few weeks ago, I found myself having an actual real life face-to-face conversation with a fellow denizen of Twitter. Naturally, we were scrolling through our timelines at ...
In all of the things I’ve read about Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, one thing has astonished me more than any other. Not the fact that he used an assault rifle on six year olds, horrifying as that is, or that he played violent video games – par for the course – or even the revelation that the guns belonged to his survivalist mother, not him.No, what astonished me most was this: he didn’t have a Facebook page – let ...
A little more than a year ago, I permanently swore off relationships. I was recovering from being dumped, again, and I’d had enough of the pain. I was going to focus on finding fulfillment through work instead. That part of my life, I declared this year, is over.Only it isn’t, because it turns out I’m still in a relationship, whether I like to admit it or not. It’ll be four years next March. There have been good times and ...
On Sunday, I took Twitter on a road trip with me. I announced that I was driving to the top of a mountain, drove to the top of a mountain in Marakele National Park near Thabazimbi and down again, and finally got safely home -- with Twitter kept updated all the way.Today, I have decided, I will drive to the top of a mountain.— Sarah Britten (@Anatinus) December 2, 2012I did it partly because I love sharing ...
Most of us suffer from it -- and most of us don’t take it seriously. Yet back pain costs a fortune in terms of lost productivity, and a lot of the time, it’s our own fault. I’ve suffered from back, neck and shoulder pain for over twenty years now, and I’m only too aware of how my tech-related habits are a major contributor. My chiropractor loves me; my bank balance not so much.The costs really are significant. Back pain sets ...
