Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, knows how to name things. He named Napster, after all, and that inspired half the names of Silicon Valley companies thereafter. Then he took Mark Zuckerberg’s fledgling college project and–whatever else he did–he took the “the” out of TheFacebook. (Justin Timberlake in The Social Network had an awful lot of fun excising that “the”.) Facebook really needs Parker’s gift now for the Emmys–and he’s let them down. Facebook has invented a giant branded box for celebrities to shake at the Emmys. They’re calling it the “Mentions Box”. Yup, bears repeating: “Mentions Box”.
Anyway TV stars will shake it during the Emmys broadcast and out will come questions posed by curious fans on Facebook. (It’s a co-branded thing with Access Hollywood.) Facebook wants more celebrities using its platform, according the the Wall Street Journal. (Celebs tend to prefer Twitter–naturally they need followers more than friends.) The Facebook ‘Mentions Box’ is something between “a Magic 8-Ball in function and an Etch-A-Sketch in form,” according the iStrategyLabs, which built it. Now those are good names, as Sean Parker could tell you–Etch-A-Sketch and Magic 8-Ball.
