The Accounts and Hashtags - Make sure you know who and what to follow:

• @SuperBowl on Twitter, along with the #Superbowl and #Superbowl46 hashtags
• Twitter: @Giants and @Patriots
• Facebook: New York Giants and New England Patriots
• Google+: Giants and Patriots (make sure you put them in your circle!)
• Super Bowl Command Center: If you’re AT the game (lucky duck!), or even if you’re not, make sure you check out the accounts for the official Super Bowl Command Center.

Brand Bowl 2012 - Paying attention to the ads today? Of course you are! One of the best places to connect on this topic is Brand Bowl – a collaboration between Mullen, Radian6, and Boston Globe – gauges twitter sentiment and then rates each ad.  It’s a great way to see how the ads are stacking up.

Freecast Mobile App – This is one of the only ways you can watch the Super Bowl streamed live, and the only way to do so in Facebook.  It also let’s you interact with your friends the whole time. You can catch the action on your iPhone or Android.

Streaming – You can only stream live (officially) through NFL.com and NBC.com. If you’re ok with a small delay, you can follow NBC’s Gameday Extra as well.

Shazam App - Most of you know Shazam for it’s stellar music tagging capabilities.  Well, for this year’s Super Bowl, the App has partnered with advertisers to offer that same tagging for nearly half the ads and music, with opportunities to win a load of prizes.

Foursquare – Check in to the “Super Swarm Sunday” and unlock Amex-supported Pizza Hut coupons.

GetGlue – They’re offering not one but eight special badges for check-ins tonight!

Tiquan Underwood – If you want some “unusual” information, try following this Patriots player – er….ex-player – on Twitter. He was unexpectedly released from the team only yesterday, and has decided he’ll be commenting publicly from his seat on the couch.

Etiquette – At a Super Bowl Party? Probably.  Make sure you know the rules, and make sure you don’t do any of the below.

In honor of an incredibly epic Super Bowl coming up on Sunday (GO GIANTS!), and the always important advertising that goes along with it, here’s a great infographic from BlueKai, courtesy of Mashable.  Some background:

Just two NFL teams will remain after Sunday’s league semifinals, setting up a final showdown for Super Bowl XLVI glory. But the Super Bowl isn’t just a huge event for the players, coaches and fans involved. It’s also make-or-break time for the television advertisers who pay a premium for the right to reach an audience of more than 100 million rapt viewers.

But exactly who will these advertisers target? And what will they spend to do it?

The infographic below shows that sales professionals, fans of science-fiction movies and people interested in buying Sony and Vizio products are “very likely” to tune into the game. Golfers and owners of sport utility vehicles have an even higher likelihood of watching, and people looking to buy an Amazon Kindle are probably big fans of the Super Bowl as well.

But reaching those football buffs won’t come cheap — 30-second spots are expected to top out at around $3.5 million each for the 2012 Super Bowl. Last year, advertisers spent some $200 million to run their messages on Fox during breaks in the action. The record, however, was set two years prior when companies spent a total of $213 million to advertise during NBC’s broadcast of the game.

From 2001 to 2010, total ad spending on Super Bowls topped a reported $1.6 billion. During that period, the parent company of Budweiser beer led the rush by shelling out a whopping $235 million, while PepsiCo was well over the $100 million mark as well.

This was originally posted on the Meta-Activism Project (MAP) website as part of our discussion on digital technology shifts since the beginning of Arab Spring.

The wave of protests that swept through the Arab world last year – what we all call the “Arab Spring” – involved various methods of mobilization and communication of citizens that have since led to region-wide, progressive instances of revolutionary upheaval.  At MAP, we’ve of course been paying most attention to the use of digital technology throughout. I’ve pulled out a few insights – some obvious (but worth solidifying) and some big-picture/not-so-obvious.  Let me know what else you think is important.

Digital technology usage has become more sophisticated.

• Digital technologies offered a way for people to connect, communicate, and in many cases mobilize.  This isn’t new per se, but the speed and proliferation that it occurred this time around was. Not only did the connections happen, but they led to mobilization quickly and perhaps more effectively than in the past, and instances of mobilization became very wide-spread throughout the region as well (so not just quicker and more effective in one instance, but more prolific).

It’s not just to the benefit of the activists anymore.

We started to see this in Iran in 2009, when governments or anti-freedom groups started “fighting back” using digital technology.  It happened slowly, and was not very effective or organized.  We saw it more organized in the London Riots and other movements since.

The real notability of this shift came when I was speaking with a friend in Syria, asking him how things were, that it sounded rough from where I was standing (note: this was before it actually GOT rough), and he said point blank, “you can’t trust any of your media (by the way, he’s mostly American), or Twitter. They aren’t accurate, and we’re safe.” It turns out that people had hijacked the hashtags to report fake bomb attacks and hyperbolize what was happening on the ground.  Something we’d seen before, but to minimal degrees. (See below point).

Ok, who to trust….. Joe (that would be my first inclination, but…)? Twitter (this would be my second outlet, and first in the cases where I didn’t have a friend on the ground)? The press (but everyone tells you not to go there)?

And this leads me to the next high-level insight….one I’ve spoken about before…

Verification is super important!

In case you didn’t know…. but what’s happened now if that because these tools are in the hands of several different actors, there will be these hashtag hijackings and manipulation of information that we all need to be very careful of.  Combine that with the fact that this digital information is being used for multiple purposes, this really muddies the waters.  When getting fast information becomes the name of the game, it becomes more difficult to practice discipline when we’re consuming and especially sharing that information.

This is so important, because if it isn’t streamlined or worked out, it has the potential to ruin whatever systems are put into place moving forward.  If we’re presented with a pile of information, no way to sift through it, and no way to verify it, I ask you how useful that pile of information is at that point – to activists or others.

It depends on who’s being challenged and how receptive they are to public outcry.

Mary recently described the Arab Spring within the context of a Constructive/Destructive framework of network affects on nation states:

“In this example, networked actors used social media like Twitter to broadcast elite anti-regime narratives. This mechanism of international agenda-setting made it difficult for other heads of state to oppose the movement publicly, giving the activists a conducive international environment in which to push for regime change.  Activists also used social media to mobilize the actual street protests which forced the Tunisian and Egyptians dictators from power.

In this example we see networked technology being used to challenge state power at the highest level by challenging the legitimacy of state institutions and the authority of rulers.  We can say that its overall effect was positive since the political orders emerging in Egypt and (moreso) Tunisia are likely to be more democratic and concerned with public welfare than those that preceded them.“

We should watch out for Eastern Europe/Central Asia as a possible next hot spot for outbreaks.

Anyone who’s been following this region know 1) it’s highly volatile at the moment and 2) they’ve already used digital technologies to mobilize and communicate in the past, so they’re ahead of the curve.

Ok, do you have anything else for us?  Also make sure to check out David’s thoughts on the matter.

@garyvee says that social media is the same thing as the internet.  I disagree.

While some of what he says is true – that the amount of “things” on the internet that can be called social media is humungous – social media still encompasses the parts of the internet that allow you to connect directly (and usually publicly) with others. Yes, a lot of current sites contain social components (social sharing buttons, etc), but take those away and it’s really not social media at all.  Just because someone (or millions) tagged youtube as both “web 2.0″ and “social media” doesn’t mean they’re the same. In fact most of the reason is probably just because they want to increase searchability using the tags.

I could go on, but I’m going to save it for another time. [UPDATE: I didn't save it for too long, so here are my additional, and more profound thoughts]

Please note that the title is “Most Interesting”…. they’re interesting for better or worse reasons than others, but it’s still a good list.

Some of my favorites:

1. Cannot go wrong with Leymah Gbowee, the influential women’s peace activist from Liberia who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman (two equally as amazing women).
2. Adele has an amazing voice, no questions asked.
3. The Tiger Mom herself, Amy Chua tells us what to do – and not to do – with our children.

There are a couple of others on the list.  Also check out Danielle Smith’s commentary on it for some additional thoughts on what “interesting” means….

While I can’t claim to never use exclamation points, I can claim to cringe every time I over use them, and certainly cringe more when others overuse.

That’s why I appreciated so much this handy chart from the January edition of Entrepreneur magazine, which was part of their overall clip on email etiquette (also well worth the read!). [I'm on the go, so apologies for not including a direct link. Google can help.]

I was on WSYR Bridge Street this morning having a casual discussion on Twitter basics with Kaylea Nixon and Chris Brandolino. Dan Klamm then joins me to chat about the professional aspects of using social media in the second clip.

I was able to chat with Nancy Spears at genConnect while at BlogWorld a few weeks ago about some of my thoughts on social media use at Syracuse University:

Chris Brogan brought up a good question on his blog earlier today – using myself and our SU social media team as an example. “What’s the role of a social media communications team during a crisis situation like alleged sex abuse scandals? What do you think is an appropriate amount of content about a story that obviously has national attention right now versus the “go back to business as usual” approach?”

Even with that in mind, I was very mindful of my tweets today. Obviously I wanted (and needed) to post the Chancellors comments, especially since I was the one up and available at the time, and I also RTed one of our student team member’s posts concerning Boeheim’s reaction to the situation. I answered you in between a flurry of phone calls, and I chose to respond to one particular off-subject tweet, but, because it’s not obvious, I’ll highlight that those two people are both Syracuse employees and currently living through the same thing the rest of the SU community is…. I felt it was actually quote fitting to connect with them on that level during this and I’m glad I did (many people on my feed may not have recognized that, but my goal was to connect with them directly). And as for foursquare… well, let’s be honest, you just don’t like people linking foursquare to Twitter So that one doesn’t count!

Again, great conversation, I’m happy to chat more with you about the process, and would love to hear what others think. Sorry if this was a little….wordy

Chris Brogan brought up a good question on his blog earlier today – using myself and our SU social media team as an example. “What’s the role of a social media communications team during a crisis situation like alleged sex abuse scandals? What do you think is an appropriate amount of content about a story that obviously has national attention right now versus the “go back to business as usual” approach?”
You can read his full response here, but this was my comment:

Thanks for bringing up this issue, as it’s a good one. I’d like to take a few sentences (ok… more than that) to let you know how we and the rest of the social media team thought through this situation.
One role I played was to make sure my team had direction in terms of how we should be moving forward as the day progressed. I highlighted several things to the team at the beginning of the day, some of them specific to this issue: This will be at the forefront of the SU community’s mind today and we shouldn’t try to gloss over it, or pretend that it’s business as usual, and; we need to be very careful with what content we put forward, as there is still a lot of unsettled information flying around out there.
In other words: Let’s try to use internal communications that have been vetted by the people closest to the situation and remember that this is by far the issue of the day.
After a discussion around noon today (several hours into monitoring and gauging sentiment) we choose two specific “other” pieces of content to put out: The results of our Class Presidential race (something the specific candidates have put a lot of work into and ARE focused on today) and welcoming a large group (500+) of prospective students to our campus who are here on a weekend visit. I’ll also note the tone of each of those responses as they were carefully chosen (and well so I might add, but I’m biased and think I have a rocking team underneath me). Everything else we’ve placed on the back burner.
As for my own account, my role depends on a lot, and I think it should be looked at carefully.
I’ll say – and this isn’t an excuse – few people in my circle on twitter know of my current position, and the general SU community is only slowly learning of my position. Therefore, I know the eyes are all at @syracuseu for this information, and very few will be turning to me (and this is something I hope will shift over time, but it’s the fact right now).
Even with that in mind, I was very mindful of my tweets today. Obviously I wanted (and needed) to post the Chancellors comments, especially since I was the one up and available at the time, and I also RTed one of our student team member’s posts concerning Boeheim’s reaction to the situation. I answered you in between a flurry of phone calls, and I chose to respond to one particular off-subject tweet, but, because it’s not obvious, I’ll highlight that those two people are both Syracuse employees and currently living through the same thing the rest of the SU community is…. I felt it was actually quote fitting to connect with them on that level during this and I’m glad I did (many people on my feed may not have recognized that, but my goal was to connect with them directly). And as for foursquare… well, let’s be honest, you just don’t like people linking foursquare to Twitter So that one doesn’t count!
Other than that, I WILL tell you one big role that a social media manager has, and that’s to make sure their team, the ones who are actually the voice of the organization, has the tools they need, and my time today was much more valuable working internally, and continuing in my overall role (scheduled meetings, future goals etc)….I simply didn’t have a whole lot of Twitter face-time today…..and I’m not sure that if I had had more time I would have necessarily flocked to Twitter…. however, this is a very interesting issue…. should that channel now or in the future be part of the higher strategy of communication and how do you prioritize that? As I mentioned, if I begin to be seen as more or a voice for SU communications in general, this will and should shift, but right now, the already well-established channels held my focus for the day….
Again, great conversation, I’m happy to chat more with you about the process, and would love to hear what others think. Sorry if this was a little….wordy
Cheers,Kate

Related articles

• What Is a Social Media Communicator’s Duty in a Crisis? (chrisbrogan.com)

There were a lot of great opportunities at BlogWorld LA this year to sit down and chat with some of the media.  Here are some thoughts on content production….

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