When Twitter Goes Wrong, By Ryan Babel

Ryan Babel is facing the possibility of disciplinary action from the Football Association after responding to Liverpool's 1-0 defeat at Old Trafford by posting a mocked-up photo on his Twitter site of the referee Howard Webb wearing a Manchester United shirt.

Webb had incensed Liverpool by awarding a first-minute penalty when Dimitar Berbatov went to ground after a slight touch from Daniel Agger and then sending off Steven Gerrard for a dangerous challenge on Michael Carrick.

Kenny Dalglish, returning as Liverpool manager, called the penalty "a joke" and Babel posted the picture of Webb with the message: "And they call him one of the best referees? That's a joke. SMH."

"SMH" is the abbreviation for "shaking my head" and Babel's attack will almost certainly lead to the FA intervening on the basis that he is alleging bias on the part of the man who refereed the World Cup final and was made an MBE in the Queen's New Year honours list. An FA spokesman has confirmed they are aware of the incident and are looking into it.

Babel later tweeted: "Sorry Howard Webb. My apology if they take my posted pic seriously. This is just an emotional reaction after losing an important game."

Dalglish's son, Paul, also vented his feelings on Twitter, posting a mocked-up picture of Sir Alex Ferguson with his arm around Webb, again in a United shirt.

Dalglish junior wrote: "Howard Webb MBE. Manc of the Busby Era. I am not normally bitter, as you know, but it is different rules against them." In a separate tweet he added: "Fergie has his puppet Howard Webb on a piece of string."

Microsoft and Diddy Teaming Up?

Microsoft and Sean P. Diddy Combs launched a social media holiday campaign this week to get fans involved with giving away thousands of dollars to charities by deciding the beneficiaries without costing them a dime.

For seven days, Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy, will use Tag to share exclusive content with fans through a link via Twitter and Facebook. More than 3 million Twitter followers and oodles of Facebook Fans also will participate in the giveaway of $10,000 per day for five days. Proceeds will go to five charities.

Diddy uses Twitter to promote the exclusive giveaway, tweeting to followers how to find the content, scan the Tag, and unlock the gift via smartphone, either iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows.

The campaign -- created for Microsoft by Izea, a social media marketing company -- gives $50,000 to charity for twelve days. During the remaining five days, those scanning tags have an opportunity to vote on how thousands of dollars are divvied up to charities.

Izea CEO Ted Murphy, who is responsible for getting Diddy on board, says Tag can more accurately read results and gather backend data compared with a QR code. He calls it the "biggest campaign of its kind" where tweets are sent through a sponsorship in a social media platform.

Marketers can build rules into the platform that only allow each individual to phone scan a tag once hourly to vote for a charity. For each day during the five, site visitors will see a list of three charities to choose from. At the end of the day, Diddy announces the winner. "We're happy to support charitable giving," says Jeff Somers, director of marketing at Microsoft.

Microsoft Tag -- a slightly different technology than QR codes, another 2D barcode -- works in color or custom code images. The technology, which lives within Microsoft's startup and incubator business group, lets marketers continually change the code on the fly to point the URL in another direction, so designers need not hardcode the URL into the campaign. That flexibility aims to encourage testing and increase the lure for marketers.

As for metrics, Tag's backend platform tracks device IDs, so it recognizes the phone type and when the user engages with the tag. This lets marketers create campaigns targeting specific phones. The backend infrastructure, designed as an end-to-end solution, allows marketers to collect data every time a phone engages with a tag. On the backend, a heat map identifies the location of the scans, as more location-based data is built and pulled into platforms.

Open Source Government In San Fran?

It was only a matter of time, but San Francisco has opened up it's information pipeline in a more accessible fashion to the fine residents of this city. For people in the ad biz, 'open source' is not a new term. A former client of mine is an open source platform for creatives. An advertiser can submit a proposal to an online community (a similar user interface to Facebook), and people from all over can collaborate to submit a project to the advertiser. A director from LA could find a guy with a green screen in Burbank, while their graphic designer for the new logo is in San Fran.

Wikipedia defines open source as "the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content."

Long story short, the idea has come to the business of running SF....

courtesy Fast Company

It's a good thing Gavin Newsom checks his Twitter feed during meetings. Otherwise, San Francisco's mayor would've missed a life-changing missive about ... potholes? "It really made me wonder," he says. "What if we used social media to make our city services work better?" That stray tweet led to the city's first-of-its-kind Twitter account (@SF311), which encourages residents to send queries and messages about nonemergency issues. But it also underscores the city's open-source stance on government. Just as Google, Facebook, and Twitter released their programming interfaces to app makers, San Francisco opened its arsenal of public information -- train times, crime stats, health-code scores -- to software developers. "There's a tremendous amount of tech talent here," Newsom says. "We'd be fools not to leverage it." To date, more than 140 data sets have been liberated, spawning roughly 30 smartphone apps, such as Crimespotting (browse interactive city-crime maps), Routesy (see real-time train schedules), and EcoFinder (locate the nearest recycling spots). But San Francisco's open-source stance doesn't stop at the city limits: In February, it launched an idea-sharing site, which blueprints everything from citywide health insurance to banning plastic bags. And in March, it released the API for its 311 city-service center. Boston; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C., have already pledged to adopt the new standard.

Twitter Unveiling New Look Next Week

As reported by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, the new site will feature a search box, information on Twitter trends and, in the vein of Twitter 101, a variety of information about effective uses for the San Francisco-based service. It's a shift from the current page, with which users interact in their own spheres as opposed to a centralized location.

"You can try it out without having to sign up, so you can get an idea of what Twitter is before you use it," co-founder Biz Stone said in the AllThingsD report. "We need to do a better job of explaining ourselves to people who hear about us and then have no idea what do to . . . We want it to show us as a place where people can discover what is going on in real-time and much more."

This, says Internet News, "seems to represent the company's efforts to bridge the gap between Twitter as a curiosity and Twitter as a mainstream communications channel."

Which Of Your Favorite Musicians Is On Twitter?

Our friends at Mashable have put together a solid list of musicians who are updating their public via Twitter. What makes this list worthwhile is that Mashable blows the lid off on whether or not the artist is updating themselves or have assigned one of their minions to do it for them.

Some things we learned:

Britney Spears' account is updated by her "team." Shocking.

Dave Matthews tweets more socially than about band news.

John Mayer offers "long tweets in caps."

Unlike most on the list, Hassidic rapper Matisyahu actually follows people back.

There's a band called Dananananaykroyd.

Catch the whole list here.

New Season of Mayne Street: "Twitter"

Social Media Ad Spend Trending Downward

And everyone is waiting for Twitter to takeoff in terms of ad revenue? Get a clue!

Total social network ad spending in the U.S. will drop 3 percent to $1.1 billion in 2009, from $1.2 billion last year, according to projections from eMarketer. This is a major reversal: spending grew an estimated 33 percent in 2008 and 129 percent in 2007. The news shows that while social nets continue to attract millions of users, the ad dollars don’t seem to be following in kind.

Blame it on MySpace: The falloff in social net spending is largely pinned on the faltering of MySpace. The Fox Interactive social net accounts for nearly half of all U.S. ad spend in the space. Back in December, eMarketer expected $630 million in ad spending on MySpace in the U.S. this year. Now eMarketer projects that US ad spending on MySpace will reach just $495 million this year, down 15 percent from the estimated $585 million it produced last year. To be sure, MySpace and Facebook began looking at expanding their overseas advertising last year, as the U.S. market was already heading into a tailspin. But observers are keenly watching as to whether MySpace’s new CEO—and former Facebook exec—Owen Van Natta can begin to turn things around in the U.S.

Facebook, widgets not affected: MySpace’s troubles appear to be unique to itself, though eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson does say that spending across social nets is diminishing. But Facebook still has a reason to smile, as eMarketer expects it to grow its U.S. ad revenues 9 percent in 2009, to $230 million, though it’s less than half of what its rival will take in. Ad spending on widgets and apps are also having very healthy growth, with projected spending to hit $70 million in ‘09, up 75 percent from the year before, albeit when spending was next to nothing. In general U.S. ad spend on all other social network sites combined is expected to rise an anemic 1 percent to $345 million.

Let's All Make Fun Of Twitter

Because I just starting twittering, tweeting, or whatever the hell the verb is, I thought it a good chance to make fun of it. Here's my two cents on Twitter:

As a brand/company/artist, this is a great way to speak directly to your brand loyalists. They've chosen to follow your brand more intimately and what a tool to speak to them directly.

As an individual, this puts narcissism into a whole new category.

Did Jennifer Aniston Break Up With John Mayer Because Of Twitter?

Jennifer Aniston broke up with John Mayer two weeks ago, their second shot at a relationship, but at least she had a good reason. She went to Europe to promote “Hotel for Dogs” or whatever it was, and while she was there he updated his twitter page a lot. That no-good son of a bitch. A source tells the Daily Mail...

“John suddenly stopped calling her or returning her e-mails and when she would finally catch up with him, he'd say, 'I've been so busy with work. I'm sorry I haven't had time to call you back.' Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn't have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates. Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he'd update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like, “He has time for all this Twittering but he can't send me a text, an email, make a call?"

“Unimpressed” and “infuriated” were two of the words attributed to [Aniston] about Mayer updating his twitter page. Interacting with fans, in other words. It’s hard to believe a fantastic lady like this can’t stay in a relationship isn’t it?
Courtesy of WWTDD