For Oprah Winfrey, about 40,000 followers on Twitter. The media mogul from Chicago had 40,000 followers on Oprah's Twitter before her first Tweet. (Post.) As of 3 p.m. today, Oprah has 128,588 followers and only nine posts. That equates to 14,287 followers per post.
According to the latest report I found, Oprah makes approximately $732 per minute. I'm not sure which stat is more baffling. Twitter Founder Evan Williams was a guest on her show today, and I'm sure he wonders what her secret formula for success was, since his company is still searching for viable revenue streams. Imagine all those soccer moms and middle aged moms who will visit Twitter for the first time today.
The woman obviously has a golden touch. (Just ask Barack Obama.)
The pranksters became overnight stars on on Youtube, and several days later, Dominos Youtube response was posted. Doyle replied with a focused and straightforward demeanor to defend the company's reputation online. The video is posted on Dominos Youtube Channel, and Dominos Twitter.
We thank members of the online community who quickly alerted us so we could take immediate action. The independent owner of that store is reeling from the damage that this has caused and it's not a surprise that this has caused a lot of damage to our brand.It sickens me that the actions of two individuals could impact our great system where 125,000 men and women work for local business owners around the US and more than 60 countries around the world.
The store has been sanitized from top to bottom. Nothing is more sacred and important than our customers' trust, and we're re-examining our hiring policies to make sure that people like this don't make it into our stores. We have auditors in our store every day of the week making sure our stores are as clean as they can possibly be and that we're delivering high quality food to our customers, day-in and day-out.
Doyle's response illustrates how damage control strategy has evolved in the Youtube Era. I asked Allen P. Adamson, the managing director at Landor and author of Brand Digital,for his take on Dominos' response. He appreciated the angle and focus of the company's message.
Youtube is very personal storytelling and the best to way to respond to it is to make it personal ,and not David vs Goliath. David is always going to be preferred, even if David is behaving badly.
A big company needs to make themselves smaller. Doyle made it personal, without a fancy suit and tie, He's not sitting at a slick desk, and it was shot in-store. Dominos didn't respond as a big company, they responded as individuals to make it a David vs. David discussion.
Adamson outlined the ideal response strategy for a company that encounters a PR crisis:
Be as transparent as possible.
Be honest.
Move incredibly fast.
Respond strongly, with all the tools at your disposal.
In my opinion, Dominos made its smartest move was when it shifted the focus from the corporation to the store owners and the 160,000 employees who are just trying to make a living. By emphasizing the value of individual workers and reaching-out through social networks, Dominos portrayed itself as a corporation that's in touch with the average American consumer.
Budget cuts have hit virtually every state in the United States, and as the respective government leaders search for new sources of tax revenue, your online shopping costs could rise.
Why? Because your online purchases will include a specific state tax. You may recall my post about the iTunes Tax and other city fees proposed by New York Governor David Paterson . Despite Patterson's verbal endorsement, the proposal died last month, despite the fact that New York's government is $15.4 billion in debt. However, other states have implemented the tech tax. Mississippi's will go into effect July 1, while North Carolina,Vermont and Washington contemplate similar courses of action. An article by Stephanie Condon on CNET spelled out the details.
At least 18 states claim they have the authority to tax digital goods, and more are likely to join them.
On March 12, a bill was introduced in the North Carolina general assembly "to modernize the sales and use tax statutes by treating music, movies, books, and computer software that are delivered electronically the same as those that are purchased in a tangible medium."
Minnesota, Washington and Vermont legislators are contemplating a digital goods tax. There are a few leaders in the consumer's corner, including North Dakota's Governor,John Hoeven, who signed a law that forbids the state from taxing online goods. Hoeven told CNET News:
I think it's important we send a message to the world of digital products that this is a state that's favorable to their interests
Enjoy your dollar downloads while they last.Before you know it, you'll be sending more of your money back to your state. Tax reform should, encourage consumer spending, whether its online or in-person. In my opinion, these taxes will raise the cost of our everyday living and hurt many stores who thrived from the appeal of lower prices.
Health studies conducted by Universities often produce controversial results. One of the most recent examples is a claim that Social Networks such as Twitter can kill your sensitivity.The study's findings were published in a CNN feature story on social media and mental health, titled Scientists warn of rapid -fire media dangers. It was conducted by USC social scientists Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Manuel Castells andAntonio Damasio, of USC's Brain and Creativity Institute. They studied how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain.
Regardless of what you're devoting time to, moderation is the key. Personally, I think they're just focusing on the social network community because its the hot trend. I asked readers to vote:Do you believe social network updates make you insensitive to sad news?
The results revealed that the majorty of the poll participants don't believe that social networks damage your sensitivity.
I was eating lunch at Beef O' Brady's when I saw the Tea Party map on CNN and it reminded me of election night coverage with the red and blue states. Here's a direct comparison of the redstates/blue states with the Tea Party Map.
An interesting note: Notice the Tea Party turnout density in Florida Tea Parties. (Map image is from freedomworks.org.) Obama won the Sunshine State in the 08 election, only a few months ago. Rick Santelli of CNBC must be amazed by what he's witnessing today.
A grassroots movement that started with a small group of cities has evolved into a nation-wide phenomenon.
The modern day Tea Party Protesters are expected to gather at Town Halls in 300 cities in all 50 states.Several cities, including St. Louis, Cincinnati and Orlando already hosted tea parties, but leaders saw April 15 as the ideal date to launch a widespread effort to denounce the tax code, stimulus plan and federal budget. Groups developed their party plans and mapped hundreds of party locations via the freedomworks.org site and social networks.
(I noticed freedomworks was down earlier today.)
Today's protests are a culmination of parties- literally and figuratively. The movement's base isn't exclusive to a particularly organization, rather a group of organizations, including FairTax, the Constitution Party and Americans for Tax Reform, (also known as ATR). The remarkable growth rate of the movment was highlighted by Glenn Harlan Reynolds' article Wall Street Journal, Tax Day Becomes Protest Day.
Though critics will probably try to write the tea parties off as partisan publicity stunts, they're really a post-partisan expression of outrage.What's most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven't ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.
As I was watching 24 last night, I saw another installment of theHappening now commercial series by Sprint (NYSE:S) The theme was relationshIps. In case you missed it, here's a a video and a rundown of the stats from Sprint's 4G network.
Welcome to the now network. Population: 49 Million.
Right now:
379 couples are breaking up
253 by phone.
42 by E-Mail. (I've been there.)
84 by text message. (The lowest form.)
13,000 people are streaming Pandora on a bus.
3,700 people just found all their friends on Loopt.
92 just realized they were in the exact same place.
IBM has a similar series based on the theme of smarter networking. One of their most recent ads, Smarter Connections, hypes the possibilities instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent planet.
Soon there will be 1 trillion connected devices in the world.
Can you hear them?
Food is talking to store shelves.
Cargo containers are talking to supply chains.
Powerlines are talking to the grid.
Now that's smart.
Systems that allow carrots to tell truck drivers how fresh they are.
Roads alert cars about traffic patterns.
Cars that learn mechanics before they break down.
When things communicate,systems connect and the world gets smarter.I'm an IBM-er. Lets build a smarter planet.
Personally, I prefer the Sprint Commercial to IBM. Both ads focus on networking, but Sprint uses a humorous approach, while IBM's hyopthetical presentation comes across as the boastful teacher's pet at the front of the class. Having said that, I think IBM has strengthened their brand as a visionary, progressive tech company.
Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or updates on Twitter or Facebook could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say.
Hmmm, rapid-fire TV news bulletins could make us indifferent to human suffering as well? Doesn't CNN play rapid-fire news bulletins almost 24-7? Anyway, the study leaders included researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang., USC sociologist Manuel Castells and research leader Antonio Damasio, director of USC's Brain and Creativity Institute.
Their findings:
In a media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in.
Brain scans showed humans can process and respond very quickly to signs of physical pain in others, but took longer to show admiration of compassion.
A need for slower delivery of the news, and highlighted the importance of slow-burn emotions like admiration.
I'll agree that overexposure to violent media may contribute to the deteoration of someone's health, but I don't think it's fair to say it's the main culprit. it's never healthy to obsess over news, just as it's not healthy to obsess over food, or gambling or ANYTHING that consumes most of your time and energy. Moderation is the key. Personally, I think they're just picking on social networks because they're the hot trend.
I'll never forget when I was in high school in April 1999, when many sociologists went on CNN, Fox and the other networks and blamed the movie Natural Born Killers and linked video games with the Columbine shootings.
I've never seen Natural Born Killers and from what I've heard, it's a terrible movie, but I played plenty of first-person shooter games such as Doom, Wolfenstein and Goldeneye, and so did many of my friends. None of us ever went on a shooting rampage rampage. Maybe we should just follow the lyrics of Jack Johnson's song: Th News:
"A billion people died on the news tonight. But not so many cried at the terrible sight. Well mama said it's just make believe. You can't believe everything you see. So baby close your eyes to the lullabies On the news tonight"
What do you think? Vote, then leave a comment stating the reason for your vote.
ATR's article on the controversy: Censorship Effort Underway in Maine? is posted on their Center for Fiscal Accountability page. I read the article and decided to take a look at maineopengov.org to see what all the outrage was about, but I didn't find anything different than you would see in any public records collection. Here's what the mainopengov.org includes:
A listing of more than $1 billion in vendor payments from the State of Maine in fiscal years 2006 and 2007 to a company, contractor, vendor or individual.
All retirees receiving a pension from Maine Public Employees Retirement System
Payroll for executive, judicial and legislative office, as well as local school districts, Maine Maritime Academy, Maine Community College System, State Retirees and the University of Maine system.
Censoring the names of public employees opens the door for massive taxpayer-paid bonuses, salary hikes and secret deals to occur in the shadows, because this vital information would become inaccessible to citizens and the media.
The fate of this bill could set an interesting precedent for similar cases involving public information. Stay tuned.
How do you attract a massive following when your target is within a small geographic area? That's the question potential advertisers are asking Everyblock, where all news is local.
Everyblock and other local news aggregate sites such as Patch and Placeblogger are sprouting-up to supplant metro sections at major daily newspapers. Their model structure is straightfoward but the execution isn't so simple:
Provide links to news articles and posts from freelancing local bloggers, along with data feeds from city governments, with crime reports, restaurant inspections.
Sounds like a fail-proof plan, until you try to lure advertisers other than the businesses within your coverage area. Even major daily papers struggle to find a steady balance of local and national advertisers, despite their major online presence. (Just ask the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.)
Everyblock was founded two years ago by 28-year old developer and journalist Adrian Holovaty. His background in journalism includes a stint at the Washington Post, where he edited a section titled "Editorial Innovation." Holovaty also developed one of the original Google Maps mashups, chicagocrime.org and an open-source framework called Django, which helps programmers build sites.
Holovaty, the company’s founder, showed that the police had answered a domestic battery call two blocks from his home and that a gourmet sandwich shop four blocks away had failed a city health inspection.'We have a very liberal definition of what is news. We think it’s something that happens in your neighborhood.'
In addition to the revenue and profitability hurdles, local news aggregate sites have plenty of other kinks to work out, such as incomplete and irrelevant blog posts. Everyblock recently tweaked its Geocoding for accurate mapping. One area where I see the potential for more problems is in crime reports. If inaccurate or hacked reports were published.
I worked at a community paper for several years. Our editors and reporters a had a close bond with the county sheriff's office and followed strict guidelines and standards for the crime section. If there's one advantage local newspapers have over these blogs, it's face-to-face accountability with the local government officials. If and when a few reputations are damaged due to a hacked or inaccurate blog post in the crime section, the potential for serious legal problems could arise.
Having said that, these hyperlocal news sites may find an effective hook to lure readers and a better revenue model than their paper predecessors. Finding the right path won't be easy, but intelligent innovators such as Holovaty can blaze new trails. (After all, the guy can play an acoustic guitar version of the Macgyver theme song.)
IBM
ATR's article on the controversy: 
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