Dang. It’s time to chose a Top Five contest winner. And I don’t know what to do. There are SO MANY great ideas…and some that won’t work, but really made me laugh. In retrospect, we should have narrowed it down and let you guys choose your favorite. But we promised to choose, and announce, today so that ship has sailed.

We really love Gin and Topics from Barry Silver, Pure Ginious from Brandon Emkes, Thank Blog It’s Friday from Vince Roberts, SpinCycle from Jennifer DeVitt, Gini’s Mind Mined from Paul McConaughy, Spin Sucks, But Friday Rocks from Ken Mueller, The Friday Afternoon Wine Flight from Lisa Gerber (though she can’t compete!), and We Did All the Hard Work for You, You Just Have to Read from J.D. Kimple. And so totally inappropriate ones (but VERY funny) such as: Abbie Fink’s Nooner and Danny Brown’s Premature Factulation

And then, Barry’s and Lisa’s ideas made me consider our own wine:thirty, which is every Friday at 4:30 in our offices. So you see, we have a dilemma.

We really love Gin and Topics. But what if someone from my team eventually takes over the top five post? Then that name won’t work. So Thank Blog It’s Friday and Spin Sucks, But Fridays Rock work for more strategic reasons. And, after the first few, you can begin to abbreviate Thank Blog It’s Friday to TBIF and include a subhead for the week. But Gin and Topics is really good.  Crap.

I think we have a winner (that took you seconds to read but about an hour for me to write)! Barry, it’s yours! Even though it may not fit strategically, we’ll cross the bridge when (if?) we come to it. We’ll send you a copy of Branding Yourself by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Gin and Topics it is.

And with that…the top five stories of the week. (more…)