Well, they have done it again. First, Ben and Jerry’s hooked me with the most heavenly ice cream flavors and the cutest names ever, like Half-baked (with a backwards “e”!), Imagine World Piece and Karamel Sutra. Now, they have taken their amazing ice cream brand name and found a way to do good at the same time.

The idea is simple, rather than waste very valuable tweet characters for Twitter users, they can go to Ben and Jerry’s site and write their tweet there. The tweet spaces left unused will fill up with a tweet about Fair Trade and a link to this Fair Trade website. Supporting Fair Trade, as they say on their site, is about “making sure people get their fair share of the pie. The whole concept of fair trade goes to the heart of our values and the sense of right and wrong.”
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It’s a little bit eerie when you’re browsing Facebook and your eye wanders to the side of the screen, where roughly four advertisements hit a bit too close to home in terms of where you live and what you like to do. Even on the their website, Facebook is happy to let advertisers know that they can reach a specific target market through information that people post to Facebook. In a case study described in the section of the website for potential advertisers, a photography company narrowed its advertisements to appear only for women between 24 and 30, whose relationship status said “engaged”. More Information…

Summer intern season is in full swing and offices across the nation, including here at Smarter, are staffing up as school lets out. The intern industry is a strange and often shady one, for both parties. Companies are notorious for exploiting the ‘intern’ title to get free labor, and interns are largely known for occupying a spectrum from “surrogate employees” to “completely useless.” Check out the anatomy of interns below to see which category you, or your interns fall into. To learn more about the dark side of the intern industry, read the source article here (via The L Magazine).
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Working in the realm of digital media is fast paced and exciting. It also means that you are held to a very different standard when it comes to job hunting. Employers in digital fields are not very impressed that you know Photoshop or that you are a ‘fast learner.’ It takes a lot to get your resume noticed in any field, but now we have to compete with interactive documents like this one.

QR CODE – Content-rich Resume from Victor petit on Vimeo.

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If you’re internet savvy enough to be reading these words, then chances are you’ve heard of QR codes. Those static-y looking Rubik’s cube things. Whether you have a smart phone surgically attached to your hand or you’re still using your busted up Nokia, it’s hard to deny how much potential these codes have to change how we interact with print media. With so many publishers and advertisers claiming that the internet has killed print media, it’s hard to believe they are so slow to adopt a tool that would bring the two together.

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It’s nice to see so many companies getting into the April Fools spirit. From Google’s Gmail Motion to Hootsuite’s Happy Owls, it’s nice to know that big brands have a sense of humor.
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We here at Smarter Social Media know full well how powerful social media can be. Now you know too, and knowing is half the battle.
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