The science vlog Veritasium is one of the must-follows on YouTube, if you're into following YouTube accounts. However, one of its recent videos that caught my eye is not, strictly speaking, science. It's an examination of the practice of buying ads on Facebook in order to acquire Facebook Likes. This is something that Nifty Niblets has done a bit of since our recent launch.
So what does Veritasium find? That Facebook ads pay off, or ... not so much? Well, the provocative title of the blog - "Facebook Fraud" - gives away the conclusion. Watch:
To be clear, Veritasium does not accuse Facebook itself of engaging in fraud, but that's about the kindest interpretation one can come away with after watching the clip. In short, Veritasium began buying Facebook ads - promo spots designed to increase the "likes" for its Facebook page. And those likes did, in fact, skyrocket after the ads ran. The problem: While Veritasium found it had tens of thousands of new "likes," engagement with its Facebook page actually dropped.
What gives? A large percentage of those new likes were from "like farms" - they were fraudulent, phony. But why? Veritasium hadn't paid a "like farm" for new likes, it had paid Facebook for legetimate promotion.
Short version: Like farms are also liking pages they were not paid to like in order to disguise their spamming. You can watch the video to discover the full answer that Veritasium uncovered.
I will add that Nifty Niblets has seen the same pattern in response to our own Facebook ads. We started with zero "likes" after creating our own Facebook page about two months ago. To jump-start the page, we bought several Facebook ads. "Likes" went up by several hundred, but post engagement did not follow, and has even dropped as the "likes" climbed. We've seen no benefit whatsoever to all those new likes.
Watching this video, and matching it up to our own experience, has convinced me that paying for any further Facebook ads is a waste of time, and probably counterproductive.
For the cape penguins at Matsue Vogel Park in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, it's "the season of love." But what happens when a cape penguin casts an amorous eye toward one of the zookeepers? Hey, Mr. Zookeeper, you can run but you can't hide!
The puppy in this clip is 8 weeks old, his name is Taco, and he's a Boston terrier. Taco's owner wants him to go to sleep, so he sings the puppy a lullaby. Does it work? On YouTube Taco's owner writes, "I sing a lullaby to my 8 week old Boston Terrier puppy named Taco as she falls asleep. She begins tilting her head when I hum the song instead of singing it. She gives in right at the end."
Dogs often give away that they've done something bad before their owners have even figured out what the bad thing was. The guilty look. You know it, if you've ever owned a dog. Most dogs can't help but look guilty when they have, say, chewed up one of your shoes, or gnawed on your favorite pillow. Those guilty faces - they'd be adorable if they weren't signs of bad behavior. Oh, what they heck, they are adorable!
Another way a dog gives itself away is the slooooow walk of shame. This video includes dogs with guilty looks, and other dogs slow-walking their way past the "crime scene":
Or is he having a nightmare about being chased by a dog? We'll go with the happier interpreation: the cat in this video is having a dream of some kind, and we'll say he's dreaming of catching a mouse. Whatever, it must be quite a dream because kitty's legs are jerking, his tail twitches, his claws come out a some points, he makes yowling noises ... it's quite a performance.
For those who saw the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, their performance, and the experience of watching it, is indelible. But even Beatles fans born decades later know the impact and import of that show.
February 9, 2014, is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' Ed Sullivan Show debut. The band performed five songs that night - "All My Loving," "Till There Was You" and "She Loves You" at the beginning of the show, and "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at the end. In-between, Sullivan brought out his usual quirky assortment of guests.
Do you know who any of the other guests were that night, Feb. 9, 1964? We do, and we'll show you who they were.
Coincidentally, one of the most famous non-Beatles on the Sullivan show that night was a future member of the Monkees, the Beatles-inspired group (who became much, much better than their made-for-TV origins, by the way - a very underrated group). That would be Davy Jones. But Jones wasn't the headliner in the act in which he appeared.
Georgia Brown (with Davy Jones, et.al.)
Broadway star Georgia Brown performed the song "As Long as He Needs Me" from the musical Oliver! And in the role of The Artful Dodger, dueting with Brown, was young Davy Jones:
For Jones, the night was an eye-opening, life-changing experience. "The kids went banzai, you know, they loved it," Jones later said of the Beatles' appearance, "and I saw the reaction and I thought, 'I want a piece of this action.'
"That particular night changed my whole way of thinking around. If I hadn't of been on The Ed Sullivan Show that night and wanted that reaction as much as I did, then I wouldn't have taken part in the Monkees. ... If there hadn't of been a Beatles, there would never have been a Monkees."
Tessie O'Shea
Welsh singer (and banjo player) Tessie O'Shea was also a Broadway performer, and later an Emmy winner. A portly woman, in this clip she does a song called "Two-Ton Tessie":
"They played tennis on her double chin." Who knows, maybe this song inspired Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls." (OK, we do know, and it didn't.)
Fred Kaps
Fred Kaps was a magician from the Netherlands, and he was a very good magician, one of the best of his era and still very highly regarded today. According to Wikipedia, Kaps is "the only magician to become FISM Grand Prix world champion three times" (FISM being the acronym for the International Federation of Magic Societies).
This is part of Kaps' performance on the Sullivan show of Feb. 9, 1964 (Sullivan has to settle the crowd down before bringing Kaps out). His card trick is hurt by the poor quality of the video, alas. He also did a second trick, not included in this video, called "the Long Pour Salt trick."
If you're a fan of traditional magic, check out YouTube for better clips of Kaps in action.
Wells & the Four Fays
Wells & the Four Fays was part vaudeville, part acrobatics, all strange. One of the troupe members was the mother of choreographer and "Mickey" one-hit wonder Toni Basil (Hey Mickey, you're so fine, you're fine you blow my mind! Hey Mickey!). Here they are on Sullivan:
Frank Gorshin
Among the non-Beatles on the Feb. 9, 1964 Ed Sullivan Show, the best-known at the time was impressionist and comedian Frank Gorshin. Gorshin was a nightclub regular, a Las Vegas regular, a favorite (and sometime opening act) of the Rat Pack. We know him best today, however, as The Riddler on TV's Batman.
This performance by Gorshin is from an episode of The Dean Martin Show, with Gorshin imagining other actors in the roles of Batman and Robin:
There's a better Gorshin performance, from the 1975 Sammy Davis Jr. series Sammy and Company, on YouTube here (non-embeddable, alas.)
McCall & Brill
And finally, there was McCall & Brill, the husband-and-wife comedy team of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. They went on to appear on a lot of game shows in the 1970s, such as The Gong Show and Tattletales, as well as plenty of TV guest acting roles. This is part of their performance from that night:
We once saw a from one of those 20/20 or Dateline type shows (although what, exactly, it was from I'm not sure) about McCall & Brill. It included scenes from the McCall & Brill performance during the Sullivan show, which both members of the comedy team describe as a disaster. Brill said that when they got back to their dressing room after bombing, they wondered, "How are we ever going to face the world again? This was the worst thing that ever happened to us."
Yes, it was tough being one of the other acts on The Ed Sullivan Show that aired Feb. 9, 1964.
Freddy the Great Dane wasn't even the biggest puppy in his litter. But as an adult? Now that Freddy is 18 months old, he's been measured at 7-feet, 4-inches tall standing on his hind legs, and that makes him the biggest dog in Great Britain, according to Barcroft TV.
Freddy belongs to Claire Stoneman and lives in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in England. Claire also owns Freddy's sister, Fleur. According to Claire, she spents £80 to £90 per week on Freddy's food alone. She also spends quite a bit of money on furniture; as the video says, Freddy and his sister have torn up 14 sofas so far.
Freddy hasn't officially been declared Britain's biggest dog yet, but at 7-4 he is significantly taller than the current, "official" recordholder, a 6-foot-6 dog named Samson. Seven-4 is also the size of the official world recordholder, another Great Dane named Zeus. If Freddy grows any more (and if the Guinness World Record folks are called in for an offical measurement) he might be crowned the world's biggest dog.
The squirrel in this video is family pet named Wally. That explains why Wally brings his nuts inside the house, and searches for a place to hide them. The dog in the video is named Jax, and he's a Burmese mountain dog. He likes Wally. Jax must like Wally, because he doesn't seem to mind when Wally tries to hide one of his nuts in Jax's hair:
This was news to me. I didn't remember the incident. But thanks to YouTube (and CBS News, which uploaded it), we have a video clip. Here's how CBS News reported the story back in 1981:
Today - Feb. 7, 2014 - is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in America, when they touched down at JFK airport in New York in 1964. After departing the plane, the four lads - Paul, Ringo, George and John - stood before a gaggle of press members, nearly all of whom were completely stumped as to why these guys were causing such a stir.
The video here begins and ends with screaming fans as the Beatles are whisked to and from the press conference. In-between, we first watch the Beatles stand nervously at the front of the room as reporters examine them as if looking at weird zoo animals. Finally, someone begins yelling, "Will you please shut up!" to the reporters, which the lads find amusing.
Soon questions are being shouted at them, and the Beatles begin parrying with great wit and charm.
This clip shows a few minutes of what was about 11 or 12 minutes total of questioning. The adults in the room were completely pre-occupied with the Beatles' haircuts. Ah, those Beatles haircuts - within just a few years, parents would be wishing their kids had hair that short.
It really is remarkable to watch the earliest footage of the Beatles in America, such as this, because it's clear that none of the adults - none of the squares - had any clue that they were witnessing something special. They simply couldn't comprehend why these funny-sounding guys from Liverpool were popular.
