Do you want papadoms with that?

Not being a huge fan of Facebook, and the millions of people I have never heard of who want to be my friend and poke me, I was amused to read that just as in the US, Facebook users in Europe will no longer be able to waste their time on "Scrabulous" — the online imitation of the Scrabble board game, which has now been yanked by Facebook in all countries except India in response to a copyright tussle over the game.

Facebook said Monday it decided to block access to this infantile pursuit throughout most of the world in response to a formal request to do so from Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside North American.

Scrabulous' developers — Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta — removed the game from Facebook in North America three weeks ago, in response to a federal suit filed in New York by Hasbro, which owns the rights to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada.

Rumour has it that they have decided that in order to avoid all this bull-s*h*i*t in the future, they are sticking to the Rat Vindaloo take out trade.

Rewarding failure... Why can't it happen to me?

The big news in technology over here is the good numbers turned in by Hewlett-Packard today. The company's stock gained $2.47, or 5.7 percent, to $46.16 on its positive outlook and third-quarter profits that beat analysts' forecasts.

I'm glad for them, because most of their advertising is done by my good mates at Goodby/Silverstein, and as usual with all their work, it is way better than the vast majority of advertising in the category. Most of H-P's success has come since they got rid of Uber-pain-in-the-ass, CEO, Carly Fiorina, who nearly bankrupted one of the most successful technology firms ever...

Apart from laying off thousands of workers, flying around the world in company jets to make speeches at Davos and other exotic places, she managed to drive the stock down the tubes, while spending $16 million to fund a Formula One team. More money for Bernie's fetishes! Anyway, the funny thing is, she's being touted as a possible VP for McCain...

Only in America can you f*u*c*k up big time and come out smelling like a rose. Although, come to think of it, that's true of politics everywhere.

Will Twitter go t*i*t*s up?

There's a really interesting article in BusinessWeek that spells out exactly why Twitter will never make money. Readers of AdScam, will know I've been hammering away about this for months. Not only do I not want to know what time you went to the bathroom this morning, I certainly don't want to know what you did while you were in there.

Why the VC morons have pumped millions into this platform on the promise that it will make shitloads of money from advertising, is beyond me. As the article points out... "Twitter is not a vast communications network of 2.3 million users squared. Rather, it consists of small pools of people with gaps and limits on how they interact.

This is important to marketers and investors, because it puts big brakes on how internal communications could propagate inside any social media network."

In other words, MySpace and Facebook it ain't... And both of those are way over-valued.

Words... Use them, or abuse them!!!

My good friend, Alan Kerr, who I used to work with at Chiat Day in San Francisco, sent me this message today...

George... This could apply to advertising as well. After all, that's what it is, just a different creative Brief.

Alan.

Watch this video, some of you may have seen it before, but even so, it's worth watching again. On the one hand it makes you realize that what we are involved in is a giant crock of s*h*i*t... But, then again, perhaps what we can do, through the power of the right words, in the right place, might actually do some good!

Cheers/George

Time to trade in the Town Car for a Swatch Car!

Here in the States, for many years, any BDA (Big Dumb Agency) lucky enough to have one of the big auto accounts would be in fat city for a long, long time. The big three tended to stay with their agencies for years and shovel mega-bucks into the dumpster's of Madison Avenue. Well, those days are over. News today that General Motors, who lost a mere $15 BILLION in the last quarter, has announced it's slashing it's agency fees by 20%, which on a $3 billion spend last year, works out at more than $20 million. The current agency roster includes Leo Burnett, Starcom, McCann Erickson, Modernista and Campbell Ewald. That's a lot of bodies hitting the street in the next few weeks. Look for the same to happen with Ford and Chrysler very quickly. It's going to be a long, hard and bleak winter for many of the Adverati this year.

Why Yahoo sucks!

You have to laugh at the news today that a major Yahoo shareholder has asked for a review of how its votes were cast in last week's re-election of the company's board, raising questions about whether the opposition to the directors may have been understated. Capital Research's manager, Gordon Crawford, has publicly scolded Yahoo's leadership for its response to a $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp., which withdrew the offer three months ago after Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang demanded more money.

THIS JUST IN... It was confirmed late Tuesday that Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc., an independent voting intermediary, made errors in reporting votes from Yahoo's annual shareholder's meeting on Aug. 1. When Broadridge reported voting results for "withholds," a truncation error occurred in reporting share numbers that exceeded eight digits, according to Yahoo. The board seat tabulation has been corrected to 33.7% withheld shares for Chief Executive Jerry Yang from 14.6% and 39.6% withheld for Chairman Roy Bostock rather than 20.5%. Holy s*h*i*t. That's a hell of a "truncation error!"

Hey, Google buddy... Can you spare a dime?

Guess what? With billions in cash sitting around, and with passbook savings rates what they are, Google is always looking for ways to put its money to work, and now it's reportedly considering a formal structure to make sure its bucks are performing productively in the service of the company's greater goals.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the search sovereign, following in the steps of a growing number of tech companies, is mulling creation of a venture capital arm. The Journal's sources said David Drummond, Google's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer, would head the investment unit, assisted by a new hire, William Maris, a 33-year-old investor and former entrepreneur.

Google has generally preferred straight-up acquisition to investing, though it already does an impressive amount of the latter, some through its philanthropic arm, Google.org. This *** couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of billionaires.