a few months late, but here are some of my photos from Greece.

A robot spider with the head of Colonel Sanders has kidnapped Pamela Anderson, and only two chickens can save her. That's the premise of a recent online game developed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to increase awareness for their Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign. In the recent advergaming boom, businesses are enjoying great success using games to promote their products. Now, some activists are hoping they will be just as good at bringing attention to their causes. PETA's game, called Super Chick Sisters, is at the forefront of this new politically charged genre, which has been coined "anti-advergaming."

Super Chick Sisters isn't PETA's first venture into web-based gaming, but it has been their most ambitious and successful one. PETA's Marketing Manager, Joel Bartlett, says almost 500,000 people have played it through PETA's KentuckyFriedCruelty.com website. There, visitors can get more information about fast food chain KFC's treatment of chickens, discover ways to protest against KFC and view a list of celebrities who have signed a PETA petition.

"People come for the game and stay for the shocking videos and information about KFC's cruelty to chickens," Bartlett says in an email interview. "It is always a challenge to promote a serious message to our tabloid-filled and entertainment-focused society. People don't want serious news conferences - they want to be entertained. While we do it all - using both hard-hitting and softer approaches - PETA often wraps our serious messages within eye-catching, light-hearted stunts. The most famous example of this is our 'I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur' campaign. Super Chick Sisters follows this strategy. We're pulling people in with humor and a good time, but we've ensured that the message is still strong and will reach all players."

Super Chick Sisters is an homage to the Super Mario Bros. games, looking and playing a lot like Super Mario World. Players control either Nugget or Chickette, two plumber's-cap-wearing chicks that embark on a quest to save a missing Pamela Anderson, a vocal PETA supporter in real life. If you finish the game, Anderson becomes a playable character, in a full Princess Toadstool costume no less.

..> ..>

In true Mario style, Nugget and Chickette leap and dodge their way through five levels of platform jumping, enemy stomping and pipe traversing. Levels take the heroic hens through settings like a KFC restaurant, where huge red-and-white-striped buckets ooze dark red blood and menus offer "Tortured Beakless Baby Bird" and a "Cruelty Value Meal." Bashing question-mark blocks sometimes brings up chunks of tofu that make the chicks double in size. Instead of coins, the duo collects little, winged chick heads for points and extra lives. The aforementioned robotic spiders are the game's only enemies. And regardless of your feelings about KFC, their giant Colonel Sanders heads are extremely creepy.

Cut-scenes between levels show the trials and tribulations of the real Mario brothers, who were late to respond to Pamela Anderson's disappearance due to a severe case of Wii-itis (eventually treated by Dr. Mario). The PETA designers take some pointed but loving digs at the way Mario and Luigi treat animals in their own games. At one point, a rebellious Yoshi refuses to work with the pair and eventually joins a group of People for the Ethical Treatment of Turtles protesters fighting for the rights of Koopa Troopas.

Bartlett says using the Mario series as the game's basis made sense as a way to get people's attention and create a game people will like to play. "We believe that Super Chick Sisters has an extremely broad appeal. By parodying a series with such universal appeal like Super Mario Bros., we think we've created a game that will resonate across all demographics of people who are online, particularly the young people that KFC so clearly targets with its advertising."

"We certainly hope that the game has crossed [Mario creator] Shigeru Miyamoto's desk and that he enjoyed playing our tribute to his masterpiece," adds Bartlett, a Wii owner whose first gaming loves included Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007. "That would be a dream come true for me."

The PETA team found inspiration in other Mario parodies found on YouTube and Flash games like those on Newgrounds.com. After some research on casual gaming, and the realization that an anti-advergame would stand out from the crowd, they moved forward. "As a non-profit, we have an extremely tight budget for this type of project," Bartlett says. "Fortunately we have an amazing Flash developer in-house, or else this game might never have been made."

That developer is 27-year-old Karen Nilsen, a web designer who says she forced herself to stop playing games for about 15 years, to keep herself from becoming addicted to them. "I must admit the research [for Super Chick Sisters] was fun," she says, also by email. "I had - and still have - strong urges to rush out and buy a Nintendo DS system to play the New Super Mario Bros. Nintendo really created a masterpiece there."

As her first experience with game design, Nilsen says Super Chick Sisters took four months of three-days-a-week work to create, not counting evenings spent reading about basic trigonometry, ActionScript animation and using Flash for game design. After hearing about KFC's chicken-raising practices, Nilsen's two sound engineer housemates volunteered to create the sound effects and Mario-esque music found in the game.

Programming, drawing graphics and recording sounds are parts of the creation of most videogames, but Super Chick Sisters had an additional requirement: The PETA team wanted to make the game fun enough that people would want to play, but serious enough that it still relayed their often grim message.

..> ..>

"There's no doubt that painfully cutting off the sensitive beaks of baby birds and then scalding them to death is inherently uncool," Nilsen says. "To build a game - one that people would actually want to play - around these ghastly facts was an enormous challenge. To be successful in the world of net-based games we had to give it an edge, and that meant we had to polish the graphics, sound and gameplay until it all gleamed. If we wanted gamers to hear the message, we had to respect them and deliver a decent game."

For Super Chick Sisters, PETA chose a kind of negative product placement approach to make their point. Enemies have the face of Colonel Sanders, and the famous Kentucky businessman himself is the final boss, disguised as Mario nemesis Bowser. Blood-smeared KFC logos adorn the walls of some levels. And if players stop to read, various human protesters or horrified animals give information from PETA on how they say KFC treats its chickens. One protester tells you, "KFC is scalding chickens to death! Many birds are still awake when their feathers are scalded off in 'defeathering tanks.' Can you imagine THAT?! Yuck!"

Bartlett says he's happy with the result: "Based on the feedback we've read on gaming blogs, we feel that we did hit the right balance. The game has been praised for its humor and playability, but no one has skipped over the point that it does have a strong message."

Super Chick Sisters received a 9/10 rating from Tom Fulp, the founder of Newgrounds.com and a co-founder of game company The Behemoth. Responding to some negative user comments, Fulp wrote, "It looks like a lot of people are giving this game a hard time because they don't agree with the message. It's a solid platformer and plays better than a majority of the web-based platformers out there."

Rather than relying on players to read messages for information, other anti-advergames put the player in a simulation of an event or situation to make the player learn by doing. Disaffected!, an early anti-advergame by serious game developer Persuasive Games, parodies copy stores by forcing players to control workers in a Kinko's location where orders are constantly mixed up and employees don't always respond to your commands. Another anti-advergame by Italian activist group Molleindustria lets players run the McDonald's fast food chain from boardroom to farm to restaurant. Players must maximize profits by making decisions like whether to bribe health inspectors or raze rainforests to make room for more cattle.

The founder of Persuasive Games and author of a book about how games communicate social messages, Ian Bogost, criticized Super Chick Sisters on his blog for not having a stronger link between its gameplay and its message. "[A]s an anti-advergame," Bogost wrote, "the title doesn't really engage the KFC business practices PETA wants to critique. This is a real missed opportunity, because a game about breeding and slaughtering chickens under cruel conditions would get the point across much more effectively. Wouldn't players empathize much more with PETA's claims if they were actually forced to drug and boil live chickens?"

..> ..>

These are the kinds of questions with which early anti-advergame developers must struggle. And while Bogost's critique may have merit, it's hard to picture anybody wanting to play a chicken-slaughtering simulator. Nilsen says attracting a large audience with her game and raising awareness for PETA's message was her priority.

"I believe videogames are like humor," she says. "When you get it right, you'll get your audience to like you before they even realize what you're saying. It's a valuable rapport to build, so that when you communicate a message as serious as how KFC tortures animals, it's more likely to not only be heard but also acted upon. Of course, developing a successful videogame also allowed us to send our message to a vast cross-section of people in gaming communities and the internet at large, who otherwise might have never known that the primary ingredient in a bucket of KFC is cruelty."

Bartlett says PETA will continue to use videogames to attract and inform the public. "What other vehicle can one use to communicate a message that will keep users engaged for 30 minutes?" he asks. "Videogames allow for an immersive experience that can inform players about an issue - in this case, KFC's cruel treatment of chickens - over a period of time. This is perfect for people who are interested but may be turned off by more direct appeals."

PETA's success will likely draw imitators and the number of anti-advergames will start to grow. Tactics will vary. Methods will differ. But that's what makes being present during the rise of a new genre so exciting. The field is wide open, and the art of using videogames to change the world is just beginning.

Two of my friends, independently of each other, are moving away from Norfolk in about a week. That sucks. It got me thinking about if I were to move from Norfolk (which I have no plans to do) – what would I eat in my all important last week. Thank you Holly for help with the initial brainstorming. I'll miss you a lot.

This blog is kinda funny to post right after my last one about losing 30 pounds and we'll have to assume that whatever circumstances lead to me leaving Norfolk that I'm doing so financially secure because this shit would add the fuck up.

Dinner (in order of importance):

1. Bella's Pizzeria – a soy cheese Bianca pizza with olives and broccoli. The soy cheese novelty makes Bella an easy choice as the most important meal to have in my last week in Norfolk. It's the one restaurant I really crave going to.

2. Amalfi – Pizza with faux chicken and soy cheese. Vegan cheesecake for dessert. It's pricey but fucking delicious – 'nuff said.

3. Bangkok Garden – Spring Rolls for an appetizer. Garlic Tofu for the main course. This one kinda goes without saying. Garlic Tofu is just such a staple. I always feel like I should order something different but I have so much trouble bringing myself to. For this meal though I wouldn't have any second thoughts.

4. Tap House – Chickette Sandwich. It's not about the food that would bring me to the Tap House, though I do like the new chickette sandwich and their fries are delicious – but I'd go to the Tap House for the memories. That isn't true for any of these other places. And while I was there I'd put lots of quarters in the juke box and play some pool.

5. Kotobuki – Sushi and some fake meat dish. Despite the fact that the fake meat always disappoint by having too sweet of a sauce I'd still splurge and make the trip to Kotobuki. Something about funky table and being forced to take off my shoes really makes me like it there. Plus I love courses – and when you get a salad, sushi, and a main dish you'll get plenty.

6. Dragon City – Vegetable Dumplings as an appetizer followed by vegan General Tso's Chicken. I haven't ordered dragon city since I saw Super Size Me – so this would be a big treat. It's a good thing I hadn't been going to Taco Bell back then or else I would have been avoiding the Bell the last 3 years instead of Dragon City, my initial Norfolk vice.

7. Rajput – Vegetable Samosa; Palak Tofu. It's always been a dream of mine to write a book of reviews of samosas. I essentially never pass up the opportunity to order one. The owners of Rajput are super friendly, I love the copper cups and I really love the Palak Tofu.

Lunch (in general lunch is less important to me – so I picked fewer meals)

1. Taco Bell – Two Crunch Wraps with beans substituting beef, no nacho cheese, no sour cream, add guacamole. Taco Bell is wonderful, but I'd go because the employees there are so nice and I'd want to say goodbye. They'd deserve it. Who would've thought it'd be the Taco Bell employees who would be the nicest?

2. Yorgo's – Chickette Sandwich on a Poppy Seed Bagel with a Toasted Sesame Seed Bagel with Vegan Cream Cheese. It shouldn't be special to have vegan cream cheese at a bagel shop, but it is, so I'll definitely go to Yorgo's. And they seem like nice people.

3. Amalfi – Meatball Sub with Soy Cheese. It's fucking tasty and I've had far too few of them.

4. Machismo – Boca Burrito with all the veggies and vegan sour cream and cheese. Not my favorite, but I respect their vegan offerings and would want to support them in my final week.

And of course, I'd go to KB's many times to have vegan ice cream in many different ways.

P.S. If Azars still had soy cheese pizza they'd be on a list too. WTF, Azars? And Quenna's – maybe if you opened on time and didn't take 2 hours to make a sandwich (because you didn't do any prep work) I'd feel that you actually respected your customers and would really want to eat your food.

i wrote these 3 blogs i wrote about my weight loss competition in an airport weeks ago.

How I Lost 32 Lbs in 30 Days...

Seth Godin tells me regularly that a quarter, or some other ridiculous number, of books on the best seller list are diet books. It's amazing because losing weight seems so simple. Eat less and exercise. Maybe more people would have luck losing weight if they found exercise they enjoyed. I'd hate to go running every day, but I'd be happy to never leave the pool. Mmm… Water. And the eating less part – that's just will power. I don't think anyone enjoys eating more than I do. Or takes more pride in their ability to Eat to Win. That's just plain ole willpower. Yet willpower doesn't seem to be evenly distributed.

I've always told people I could quit smoking if I were a smoker to begin with. I've always believed I had the willpower to do so. I think I've proven myself as much as a non-smoker can.

Number 2

If you're like me (and if you aren't you should consider at least trying to be) then you've always longed for a future where technology has fixed our need to go 2. Don't get me wrong – I love sitting on the john with the latest issue of Game Informer, but all in all it's just not worth it. Mostly because it's just filthy. I used to refuse to go 2 in any public restroom. I survived this way until college when it was just no longer an option. I hate being forced to take a dump in a room with other people in it. I just  hate it.

One of the best upshots from my month of eating less food was that I had to take far fewer craps. I went a day or two in between each sitting. It was amazing. Hopefully a taste of the future.

Eating to Lose

They say that you're worth your weight in how much you eat.

The hardest part about cutting back the number of calories I was consuming to 250-600 a day was the pride I take in my ability to eat. During the month of June I often ate not because of hunger but because I knew that I should. I could have eaten less – but there was no reason too. But the walk of shame back to my desk after a food party at work – with a bowl of salsa in one hand and fruit in another – meanwhile leaving a tray of samosas behind – that was tough.

Eating was something I've always been good at. It's something people remember me for. Now you see it. Now you don't. I've been called "The Yankees of Eating." It's not that it was just difficult for a month – but knowing that unless I was to just undo the effort I did in June that I need to give up my membership to the Clean Plates Club.

So I've retired now. Not that I want to lose another 30 pounds this month. But 15 wouldn't be bad and I certainly don't want to gain the weight I lost back (that would make the victory a little bittersweet). I'm a champion eater and non-eater. Few can boast this.

Women are twice as likely as men to dump their lover by text, a survey reveals.

Ze Frank has a really funny homepage.

hi-technicaaaal!

I'm claiming my blog

My myspace profile is now the 5th unique site when searching for Joel Bartlett on google. Just last week it wasn't on there at all! Thanks Jack for your shoutouts! (as a thanks here's a link to your fictional blog)

- Joel Bartlett

Like all normal people I google myself on a regular basis.

I've been really happy with how well i've been doing recently. The other day when that marketing prof's article came out I was first for a search for "Joel Bartlett" on google blogs and google news. I already dominate google video with a search for "Joel Bartlett" – thank you YouTube! And again I thank YouTube for getting me into the running for the main search engine. I'm now 2nd on a search for Joel Bartlett thanks to my YouTube profile. It's really just the image search for Joel Bartlett that I don't have a strong presence in. There's only one image that's actually related to me and that one is not very strong. EDIT: I wrote this earlier, but now when posting I look at the image search for Joel Bartlett and I am 6 of the 20 pics on the search!

So basically i really need to put some effort into the main search. Sometimes it makes me wonder if I shouldn't try to use my name on the internet more. Like I just customized my flickr URL. Should I have used flickr.com/photos/joelbartlett instead of flickr.com/photos/joelrama? It's a fine goal to dominate searches for both – but I really don't need any more help on joelrama. It's all me already.

This is an effort to get my myspace page on google: Joel Bartlett. I'd reall

This is an effort to get my YouTube page on to the top of google: Joel Bartlett

Please help me out my linking the words "Joel Bartlett" to my youtube and myspace profiles on your profile. It's very important!!

Last month, in anticipation of the President's State of the Union Address, the marketing team at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) blanketed the blogosphere with its own version of the same. The email pitch came with the subject line, "Presidential Address + Hot Naked Chick = PETA's State of the Union Undress?"

"With Congress cheering and senators smirking," wrote PETA's Jack Shepherd, "this hot PETA girl bares it all for animal rights." (See the video here.)

No matter how you feel about PETA, as an entity or a cause, you probably know its marketing. Even those who don't admire it, in other words, are likely aware of it. Pointed, outrageous, admired, and criticized, PETA's messaging is the type that makes the audience sit up and take notice.

It's also everywhere. PETA as an organization has jumped on the social media bandwagon in a big way, and is riding shotgun on blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and lots of word-of-mouth initiatives.

Last month, I chatted with PETA Marketing Manager Joel Bartlett, who works out of the organization's Norfolk, VA, headquarters.

Ann Handley: As a start, tell me a little about your background and how you came to head up PETA's marketing.

Joel Bartlett: For my first couple years at PETA, I ran the "peta2 Street Team," seeing it grow from a network of 7,500 youth activists to over 100,000 energetic guerrilla marketers (we now boast over 200,000 Street Teamers and an [email] list of almost 800,000 youth). During this time I oversaw all aspects of the peta2 Street Team, including our "missions"; the development of new resources and new ideas; the push for a stronger community via our blog, photoblog, message boards, and sites such as MySpace; and the tracking and analysis of our Web traffic and e-news.

About two years ago I took the position of Marketing Manager in our new marketing department (we were formed to expand the lessons we learned from our peta2 program to the rest of the organization), where…I also oversee all of PETA's non-fundraising email campaigns and the creation and promotion (both paid advertisement and free placement, such as on YouTube) of our Web content. And again, I oversee all Web tracking and analysis and the push for a stronger community (such as launching a PETA blog), except now for the entire organization, not just peta2.

AH: So—prior to two years ago—did PETA not have a marketing department?

JB: Correct. We formed our marketing department at PETA just two years ago. We formed our youth marketing department a few years before that, and other people working on marketing initiatives were sprinkled throughout the organization.

PETA has always done such a great job getting attention to the issues we're working on, whether it's letting people know that animals, including cats and dogs, are skinned alive for fur in China (where most of the fur in the US comes from) or that it's never OK to leave dogs in cars during the summertime as they at risk of death from of the heat.

However, with the success of our youth program peta2, we realized that there was room for improving the process in which we funnel this attention into new relationships by providing Web users with more compelling calls for action. We also realized the potential for online marketing—obviously a newer field and one that we were keen to dive into.

PETA has 26 years of campaign and media experience, so obviously it's not the formation of the marketing department that made PETA a cutting-edge organization. But we've been instrumental in taking PETA's strategies and applying them to online realm. We've been able to open up whole new doors of opportunity to reach people, and to facilitate our supporters' reach out to others by harnessing the power of word of mouth. Both with our youth and non-youth marketing efforts, we've discovered new ways to mobilize our members—for instance, to pressure companies to stop wearing fur or to stop testing their products on animals.

AH: What role does Marketing play at PETA? Is it involved directly in setting policy and strategy, or does it come in to deal with tactics and implementation?

JB: We work hand in hand with our campaigns and other departments from the initial stages of every project, no matter how big or little. Generally speaking, with each project there are two interconnected ways the organization thinks about reaching people—one is through media, either from celebrity support or a creative demonstration, the other is through marketing (by putting video online, buying online ads, pitching it to bloggers, making an interesting Web feature, providing our activists with tools to promote the idea, facilitating people taking action, emailing something to our supporters, sending a bulletin to our friends on MySpace, updating Wikipedia with relevant information, etc.)—and that's what we focus on.

Sometimes we'll kill a project that we don't believe fits our goals, and sometimes projects with no real marketing potential will continue on, perhaps because of the great potential to reach people through traditional media. Most often we work in coordination with other departments throughout an entire project.

We—meaning the marketing department—do own some projects, such as our current "PETA's State of the Union Undress," but often we're working hand and hand with a specific campaign, such as our Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign. We'll brainstorm with them and work with them to implement a campaign or project.

AH: So it sounds like a big thrust of your group is leveraging online marketing tools and social media. Have you found great success in one particular area over another? YouTube vs. MySpace, for example?

JB: We've had a lot of success on YouTube and other video sharing sites. We've had a three-pronged plan for them. Our first step was just getting all our content on the various popular video sharing sites like YouTube, MetaCafe, Break.com, and GoogleVideo. Our goal is for people to find PETA videos whenever and wherever they're searching for videos online. If someone is searching on YouTube for an interview of their favorite band—say Good Charlotte—they'll find our interview with band member Billy Martin talking about vegetarianism. Or if they're searching for John McEnroe, they'll find his spay and neuter PSA. From just our efforts of posting videos we estimate we've received almost 2 million video views.

We also try to harness word of mouth on YouTube, in a few ways. For instance, we encouraged finalists in our "World's Cutest Vegetarian" contest, run on our youth division Web site peta2.com, to send us videos of themselves asking people to vote for them. We posted the videos on our blog and MySpace profile, and they also promoted them to everyone they knew.

We also recently had a contest on peta2.com asking our Street Team members to create videos of themselves explaining why they went veg and how it's benefited them. The winning video received over 1,000 votes.

Most recently, we've been working to encourage our supporters to upload animal rights videos to their accounts. peta2 just finished a "mission" asking our Street Teamers to do this, with a prize of a digital camera going to the Street Teamer with the most views to a video in the span of three weeks. The winning video received 258,275 views in the first three weeks and is now up to over 320,000 views.

AH: You definitely don't shy away from controversial messages or techniques—like featuring a woman undressing in the State of the Union Undress—or from pushing your message by any means necessary. Is there ever a backlash from your efforts?

JB: Getting naked is controversial? We just think of it as fun!

But seriously, the current situation is critical for billions of animals, and we consider it our duty to continue drawing attention to the plight of animals abused in the meat, clothing, experimentation, and entertainment industries. We are willing to use all legal means at our disposal in ways that will capture the public's imagination.

Because we have found that people do pay more attention to our racier actions—and we consider the public's attention to issues that affect animals to be extremely important—this will often entail taking our clothes off. We understand that some consider our projects that include nudity to be controversial, but if our doing so shakes people up and even shocks them into discussion about the staggering number of lives at stake, then we are successful.

AH: A lot of people say that they notice the nudity, not the message. How do you define success of some of your programs? Gimmicks and publicity are great, but how do those efforts help you reach your goals?

JB: I must note that we don't rely on nudity for the majority of our outreach, nor do we use it gratuitously; it is intended to underscore our message, whether it is "I'd rather go naked than wear fur," to emphasize the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, or to show the vulnerability of animals in laboratories or circuses. We make a point of having something for all tastes, from the most conservative to the most radical and from the most tasteless to the most refined.

In the same way we work hard to balance things that are designed to provoke discussion with items that will help us create new relationships with users.

So, for instance, when one of our MySpace friends started an online chain letter about our campaign to get clothing retailer Wet Seal to go fur free driving 350,000 people to peta2.com in one week to watch a graphic video of animals being skinned alive for fur in China (the largest exporter of fur to the United States), we made sure that there was a clear call for action that would enable us to form new relationships with the resulting visitors—a fur-free pledge. We also provide Web forms for users to contact companies through. (BTW, just one month later Wet Seal signed a moratorium pledging they would not sell fur the coming season.)

This approach has proved amazingly successful—in just this past year, for example, major retailers, including Polo Ralph Lauren, Limited Brands, Ann Taylor, and Kenneth Cole Productions, made commitments to PETA to drop the fur from their clothing lines. Welch's agreed to stop conducting deadly animal tests. Our campaign against the atrocities at KFC continues, and we've taken on new challenges as well. We've launched campaigns against Burberry and POM Wonderful, calling on those companies to stop killing animals.

AH: You know, I'm imagining all the readers of MarketingProfs reading this and thinking, "Well, that's cool for an organization like PETA. But it doesn't help me do my job any better." What lessons do you think other marketers can learn from PETA?

JB: I think that the success of MySpace has taught us all a number of lessons, such as that people like to create things. And they like to show off what they care about, especially when it's made easy for them. If you let people participate in your brand, they will become brand warriors.

If people aren't already creating ads for you, ask them to, and give them an incentive. Nobody says no to free stuff. You'd be amazed at how much we've gotten done just by giving away stickers!

We also actively recruit well-connected users. By reading the most popular blogs on MySpace and scanning through the most popular people, we've been able to build relationships with a number of well-connected people on the site. These are people who can drive traffic and sales (if that's your bottom line). We've asked popular people to enter contests that involve being voted for. One popular MySpacer can drive thousands of people to vote for them.

We've also mailed free T-shirts to some of our more popular MySpace friends so that they can post pictures of themselves wearing them. We've used those photos in our bulletins to help drive sales. It's a level of naturalism that can't be faked. Any company can search through MySpace, YouTube, or the whole blogosphere for influencers who are talking about them and make contact with those people. And if people are already contacting you—ask them how many friends they have on MySpace and give the more connected people a little more attention.

Another key to success on any social-networking site is participating in them. Not just so you can be a part of the community and get good karma points, but I think more importantly so that you can understand the systems completely and then take advantage of them. There are ways, for instance, to send MySpace bulletins that make it one-click-easy to repost a bulletin.

Even little tweaks like that can go a long way if you're hoping for a message to be sent around.