down the avenue

Media Streams for Entertainment OR Marketing?

The Media Streams panel at TechCrunch Crunchup included Sean Rad of Ad.ly, Ryan Amos of DailyBooth, Jesse Engle of CoTweet, Hollywood agent Robin Bechtel who represents Britney Spears and Philip Nelson of NewTek. Erick Schonfeld and Paul Carr moderated, Carr enters stage right with a fluffy furry hat on.

Robin talks about an idea did for Britney: they hit tickets for one of her upcoming concerts and sent out clues through Twitter. The grand finale was a live event in Times Square where Britney showed up in a double decker buzz to greet over 8,000 fans.

Philip Nelson of NewTek talks about how Twitter and real-time streams are being used by artists to reach out to fans. One campaign brought 50,000 fans to an artist's hotel room where they experienced personal moments in real-time.

For a Todd Rundgren concert, they did a backstage pass promotion where fans got to witness his costume changes. The result? He sold more tickets.

Co-Tweet CEO Jesse Engle talks of Twitter as a focal point where a lot of disparate messages get communicated across different places. Various marketing elements also come together.

Philip talks about the webcast activity around Miss Universe where through viral communication alone a week before the event, they generated a half million viewers. While the number may not be significant compared to mainstream television, there was no promotion for weeks and months in advance.

The goal is to make contestants more accessible to their fans. Rad says, "Twitter brings a sense of honesty on the net. If you look at Twitter, you’re only as good as your content. While there is a sense of marketing and pushing on Twitter, 140 characters has value to an audience. That said, in some way, shape or form, it wants to be monetized."

Schonfeld brings Scoble up to the stage to talk about supertweet and how it applied to the discussion. Advertising is coming to Twitter, but it will be fun advertising? And what will that mean? Where will it go? The overall sentiment was that you can't f-k with editorial. So like advertising on television and elsewhere, its outside editorial, outside the core content.

TechCrunch's Crunchup: Startups Pitch Their Latest

TechCrunch's Real-Time Crunchup previewed a number of startups, some of which haven't officially launched yet and some of which announced new features and announcements today.

Baduku is an opinion engine that helps people make informed decisions or gauge public opinions about anything -- all in 50 characters.

Baduku is an intelligent organization of opinions that merges the opinions of all users and ranks them by order of consensus. Rather than having to read hundreds of individual reviews to get the whole picture about a topic, Baduku seeks out similar points/opinion in every review and then organizes it by how often a point/opinion was mentioned by different people.

Flixup is a web and mobile application that helps you discover movies and share them with your friends on Twitter and social media.

Think of the Twitter stream and filtration for movie reviews. (Rotten tomatoes Twitter style :-). They segment and analyze movie conversations to make it easy for moviegoers to understand what people are saying about a particular movie.

It spans across Twitter, then returns a score as well as tweets about a particular movie from people you follow on Twitter.

VideoLobby (great name), allows you to run professionally managed live shows. You can set your shows up to go viral and using their Twitter and Facebook integration leverages the power of your audiences social networks.

Rippol is an intelligent video discovery engine that uses The Butterfly Effect Network, a system of algorithms that allows you to discover videos you like and once you do, you can view it online in real time.

There's over 700,000 TV shows, movies, live video and clips from all over the Internet to choose from. You can learn, discover and share new content based on your passions, social graph and social impact. Friendcasting will allow you to dig into your social impact and measure it.

Marc Benioff Chats with Schonfeld & Gillmor

On the heals of Dreamforce's massive San Francisco-based event (touted as the cloud computing event of the year), TechCrunch's Real-Time CrunchUp had Marc Benioff on stage today -- a joint interview by Erick Schonfeld and Steve Gillmor.

Entertaining and provocative as always, he avoids direct answers to acquisition interest, touts their growing numbers, and complains about Microsoft's lack of features.

And, of course 'it's all in the book,' his latest which he references on more than one occasion: Behind the Cloud: the untold story of how salesforce.com went from idea to billion-dollar company -- and revolutionized an industry.

Best Table Designs in the Bay Area

Below are a sample of photos taken at this week's Dining by Design event in San Francisco, an effort to help raise money for AIDS and people who don't have healthcare insurance, which has grown this year.

DIFFA has mobilizing the immense resources of the design communities for over a decade and granted over $38 million to hundreds of AIDS service organizations nationwide.

Dining by Design Chefs & Designers Speak Up

Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS is one of the country's largest supporters of direct care for people living with HIV/AIDS and preventive education for those at risk. Merging care and commerce, supporters of DIFFA come from all fields of fine design and the visual arts, including: architecture, fashion design, interior design, photography and consumer product design.

They held their annual Dining by Design event in San Francisco this week.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Organizing 2.0: Putting New York in a New Media State-of-Mind

Check out Organizing 2.0, a conference of bloggers and online organizers from the social justice world. The conference aims to serve as a way for organizers to come together and train, while also learning from each other on how to better organize in the world of new media. In a New York state-of-mind so to speak.

Great Content at Defrag in Denver This Week: Take a Look - #defrag

I was planning to AND am now not hanging out with geeks and other technology pals at Defrag in Denver this week. If I had a $100 for every conference and event I get hit with every day that draws me in, well.....I'll leave it to someone else to do the math. Shoulda been there....next year.

Behind the scenes from Eric Norlan.

Venture capitalists are people who wanted to be bankers, but lacked the personality. Discuss. Be sure to use examples. Extra points if they live in Colorado, or are named “Lindzon”.
If you have a pre-money valuation of $4m, then $1m invested, but a 15% ESOP, what is the real pre-money of your venture? Extra points for converting to euros.

Tons of Twitter activity: #defrag. Have been following a few folks - take a look: @jobsworth @kevinmarks @scobleizer @pistachio @bfeld @stowebowd @sacca @docsearls @stuarthenshall @jholston @pkedrosky @cshipley @lizasperling.

Social Networking & Social Media: Goin' Mainstream Baby

Recent study on social networking and social media reaching mainstream.

Recap:

• Twitter session usage grew more than 250 percent since April 2009.

• Facebook usage increased by 192 percent, surpassing Yahoo! IM and AIM.

• SharePoint collaboration increased bandwidth usage 17-fold since April.

• Blogs and wiki posting increased by a factor of 39, with bandwidth increasing by 48.

Bow Wow: It's All Just Noise

After a very long night, thanks Vlad for bringing a smile to my face and reminding me that regardless how much we think we think we're going in the right direction, we can't control everything.

Artists Who Are Inspired by COLOR

At San Francisco's Open Studios, I talked to a number of artists over a five week period - about their work, their dreams, inspirations and how they got started.

One thing that was a consistent theme for all of them was color - vibrant, rich color and it shows in their work. Take a look.

Florence Schwartz-Harlan talks about her art - how she's inspired to paint via happy travel moments from around the world - from Turkey, Italy and Mexico to northern California and France.

San Francisco artist Michael Griffith talks to us about color and his work. What inspires him is the human condition, vibrant color and beauty. He works out of Hunters Point studios and lives in Noe Valley.

Artist Patricia Brown on color and movement. She loves bright, loud and colorful abstracts and paints mostly in art. Unlike Florence who paints from an emotional connection to a place or person, Patricia's work is all "in her head."

Digg on Sneakers? I had to do a Double Take

Answers Corp. Reports Q3 2009 Financial Results

Client Answers Corporation (NASDAQ: ANSW) reports Q3 financial results today - revenue of $4.99 Million and Adjusted EBITDA of $1.7 Million. Answers Corporation includes the properties WikiAnswers and ReferenceAnswers.

A few great stats from their results:

Revenues were $4.99 million in Q3 2009, an increase of 40% compared to $3.56 million in Q3 2008.

WikiAnswers average daily page views were 6,336,000 in Q3 2009, an increase of 4% compared to 6,082,000 in Q2 2009, and an increase of 105% compared to 3,094,000 in Q3 2008.

ReferenceAnswers average daily page views were 2,857,000 in Q3 2009, a decrease of 4% compared to 2,965,000 in Q2 2009, and an increase of 7% compared to 2,666,000 in Q3 2008.

Mashcast's Scott Page Paints us a Digital Rich Picture

At the 140 Character Conference, Mashcast's CEO Scott Page (also former sax player for Pink Floyd), talks to us about mashing digital rich content, such as video under one platform to create incredibly creative personalization - mainly of brands.

Listen to what they're doing and where they're headed. Take a look at the customization they did for me, as an example of some of the things they can do - copy, paste and replay baby. It's very slick.

Larry Schwartz or Yossi Vardi?

Fans of Yossi are everywhere, the latest in LA at the 140 Character Conference, held in Hollywood's Kodak Theater late last month.

Aleks Degtyarev & Freakcast (Psychedelic Video & More) #140conf

I really like what this guy is doing. Enter Alek (@freakcast) and his 'live show' gig: Freakcast. He walks me through an online video experience of something he performs live - imagine the video slicing and dicing being done in real-time. He says, think "Quantum Montage." I love LA for this: it thrives on creativity and diving in without fear. (Check out Freakcast on YouTube)

Mug Shots of Twitter Addicts (#140conf)

A smattering of photos from the 140 Character Conference last week in Hollywood. Photos also uploaded and on flickr.

Brad Templeton (@bradtem), Debbie Landa (@deblanda), Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver), Renee Blodgett (@magicsaucemedia)

Oz Sultan (@ozsultan), Paige Craig

Jason Shellen (@shellen), Google's Jeff Eddings, John Knowles (@pancity)

Amy Martin (@DigitalRoyalty), Stefanie Michaels (@adventuregirl), Renee Blodgett (@magicsaucemedia)

Dave Winer (@davewiner), Renee Blodgett, Jerry Schuman

Amy Martin (@DigitalRoyalty)

Lan Bui (@bonny), Vu Bui (@bonny), Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield), Renee Blodgett (@magicsaucemedia)

Kevin Pollak, Renee Blodgett, Scott Page (Mashcast)

Mashable's Ben Barr (@benparr)

Alf Lamont - The Comedy Store

Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver)

Dave Winer (@daveWiner)

Oz Sultan (@ozsultan)

MK Timme

Paige Craig

Greg Ferenstein (@wikiworld)

Khayyam Wakil

Marc Salsberry (@wmmarc) and Marla Schulman (@cvinmsm)

Josh Cagan (@joshacagan)

TweetPhoto's Rodney Rumford (@Rumford) and Sean Callahan (@tweetphoto)

Dr. Wave Talks to us about Google Wave

At the 140 Characters Conference last week in LA, a few of the Google Wave guys flew over from Sydney to participate on a panel, talk about the latest features and benefits of Google Wave and in general, spread the word among early adopters, movers and shakers in the world of Web 2.0. (developer Alex North joins us for part of the conversation). Video is in parts I and II.

Social Media, The Law & Twitter (followed by lawyer jokes) #140Conf

Attorney Glenn Manishin (@glennm) tells amusing lawyer jokes at the 140 Characters Conference this past week in Los Angeles. Scroll down and hit play.

Glenn was on the panel that discussed public policy, legal issues within the context of social media and who owns what on the web.

Says Glenn, "if you ask a lawyer a question, they’ll say, it depends." Well, in this space, it really does depend because there is no law about social media right now. There are doctrines of law that affect social media, you can be fired, not hired, but he asserts, that in many ways, "its still the wild wild west."

Because the wild wild west is abbreviated to www....now what? What about linking? Caching? Twitter? Answers are evolving as we speak. Risks are high but if you don’t take the risks, you also don't yield the rewards.

So, who owns the content on social media networks? Can employers prohibit employees from using social media?

Employers could learn a lot about their employees by not only allowing them to voice an opinion but engaging with them in the process. If you let employees use social media, you can monitor their voice and their behavior. Instruct them out to use it and give them concise guidelines but give up the control. In the long term, that control won't work to serve corporations.

Larger corporations don't just think about the legal risk but also the business risk. Brett Trout (@bretttrout) talked to us about intellectual property law. He says with a grin, "social media isn’t like baby bottles or the phone – it’s a tool you have to use. If your lawyer isn’t using social media, you need to get a new lawyer. You need a lawyer who understands what it is and its implications."

As for endorsements and being up front about what you're doing, we are given this analogy: sharks don't know much about playing badminton but they do know how to hunt & kill.

On copyright and trademark issues, 90% of tweets are repetition of facts that are already public and out there.

Tweets live forever and anyone can see them. There’s a difference between that model and Facebook, a walled community, which means you decide who sees your content.

Normally the copyright rule is that if you use the entire article or quote, it’s not considered fair use. You can use a portion of something for commentary or parady. If you retweet, by definition, you’re basically repeating everything someone said.

By posting something on Twitter, you are not copying it, you’re reposting someone's stuff and as Pete Cashmore once said about reposting stuff, it's great to extend that reach of what you said. Hear hear. Distribution distribution distribution.

@glennm below tells us some amusing lawyer jokes on-site at the Kodak Theater last week.

What Makes a Popular Answers Destination Site?

At this month's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, client Answers.com's Bob Rosenschein talks about the latest growth and why its such a popular answers destination site with KRON-TV's Brian Shields.

Kodak's Chief Blogger Talks Shop

At the 140 Character Conference last week in LA, I talked to Kodak's Chief Blogger Jennifer Cisney. She talks to us about her role at Kodak.

Sabra from Altran Wishes You Happy Halloween

I love Halloween.....it was a great opportunity to be purple. This year, I created an image in my mind (mainly because I wanted to be purple) and in that image, alien engineer Sabra from the planet Altran in Galaxy WangaShee, was born.

This character has a deep voice, she's working on open source telepathy, is miffed by the fact that laptops don't come in rainbow colors and the fact that you can't use them to order food for instant consumption.

She is also dealing with a merger back in her galaxy between Sprintikon and Morgishan Wireless, which has resulted in all Altranites being forced into 3 year mobile plans which no longer include free external calls beyond their galaxy. They are contemplating war.

Meet Sabra - I had fun being her and am so into character with this one that I'm half expecting a screen to appear before I head to bed with KitchKong's face on it, asking for her Earth visit progress and his daily question of why humanoids are so mediocre? "Help me understand Sabra...."

Happy Halloween!!

Mashcast: Customizable, Humorous, Slick.....

I had a chance to spend some time with the MashCast team at the 140 Conference this past week in LA. They refer to their video mashup as collaborative expression, a new category of communicating that allows for advanced levels of creative and collaborative interaction using video.

They can essentially drop photos into existing video templates or create new ones, updating statements or images daily depending on the situation.

Within a MashCast network, individual artists and businesses can own and manage exclusive online communities, giving them the power to connect their network to all social media outlets (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) for one-button-push, net-wide distribution of select content; grant varying levels of rights, roles and permissions to members; distribute content securely to their subscribers real-time or “on demand”; customize and segment content for targeted communications to different kinds of users. The result? The ability to “own the audience” while opening up new revenue streams for their brand.

A proprietary rich internet application allows subscribers and network operators to pass creative content—video, audio, animation—back and forth to each other over the MashCast network in real time.

Take a look at two personalized videos they did inserting my photo into a video - and this is just one small piece of what they're capable of. You can also click play below.

Is Blackberry Doomed?

Is the Blackberry doomed? Check out take from Toktumi. Chart from their post.

PeopleBrowsr's New Functionality

Jodee Rich talks to us about PeopleBrowsr's new functionality, launched at BlogWorldExpo late last month.

Dining by Design 2009

DIFFA: Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS presents DINING BY DESIGN 2009 at the San Francisco Design Center November 18 and Thursday, November 19, 2009.

I attended last year and it's a fabulous gathering with inspiring and creative artists. The event, which is sponsored by Castello di Gabbiano wines and Stolichnaya ELIT, will bring together the Bay Area's social and design movers and shakers for an exclusive look at dozens of spectacular, table-top design installations by leading architects, retailers and interior designers.

At the event, they'll have exquisite sweet and savory hors d’oeuvres served by 15 of San Francisco’s best restaurants and food purveyors paired with wines, cocktails and the latest music.

DINING BY DESIGN benefits the Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital, America’s oldest and the city’s largest HIV/AIDS clinic serving thousands and currently planning the world’s first HIV/AIDS Museum and Learning Center.

Tickets for the TABLE HOP & TASTE PREVIEW PARTY on Wednesday, November 18th are $100 and on Thursday, November 19th for a 3-course meal and silent auction - available online or by calling (415) 597-4650.

The Galleria at the San Francisco Design Center is located at 101 Henry Adams Street in San Francisco, between Alabama and 15th Streets.