AMC Is Screwing Up Over Mad Men Twitters

Dear AMC,

When you are getting free social networking for your show Mad Men (which I love incidentally) through fan Twitter sites, why in the hell would you raise hell about it.

Whitney with the scoop:

Once AMC found out about the accounts, they asked Twitter to remove them. As of today, poor Peggy is “being investigated due to strange activity.” The other characters are disappearing as well. (The guy who writes Paul Kinsey has been sharing his side of the story on his blog.)

“It’s outrageous!” Tiffany says. “My thought is, why would AMC put a stop to some really great social media marketing for their show? At least perhaps they’d take a note from the success of the characters and take the project over themselves.”

AdRants agrees, noting that “slapping down fervent supporters as opposed to forming a partnership does more harm than good.”

Here’s more:

Don Draper’s back. On Twitter, that is. The fake accounts of “Mad Men” characters like Don Draper and Peggy Olson, created by fans but taken down at the request of bumbling cable channel AMC, are back up again.

What happened? Deep Focus, the Web marketing group that works for AMC, tells us that they gently nudged their client into rescinding the DMCA takedown notice they’d sent to Twitter.

This is free publicity for crying out loud. There are times I just shake my head.

Progress ain’t easy in the new world of marketing and remembering when you are being helped by your fan base. No one was stealing your product. They were promoting it.

Crikey.

Thanks,

Newscoma

Twitter And Local News Coverage

An excellent commentary about how local news organization can cover those stories that won’t make the nightly news or the next edition of the deadwood edition.

Applications like Twinkle are also great journalistic tools, of course. In the old days, newspaper reporters had the TV on in the background, in case TV news had something that they should know about. Today, someone in the newsroom should be monitoring local tweets; it’s the new early warning system for news, with an army of witnesses feeding you information.

Read the whole thing.

I’ve noticed that Twitter is already doing this to a large extent. I’ve seen traffic updates from most of the major cities in the state and the amount of breaking news I’m seeing on the site is ridiculous.

I just keep watching. One problem here is that there aren’t a lot of people who know about Twitter.

I think it’s coming though.

UPDATED: When I wrote this earlier this morning, I didn’t know about the school shooting in Knoxville. Where did I hear about this horrible tragedy. On twitter.

The Knoxville blogosphere is mourning their loss, and we mourn with them.

Barack Obama Will Announce VP In A Different Way

CNN is reporting that Barack Obama will announce his VP choice via Text, E-mail and on Twitter.

I need to just start chanting that I’m a dinosaur. News is changing so fast that I can’t catch my breath sometimes. (I’ll link to a story once I find one but I’ll link to the list of who it MIGHT be here.)

But I can’t help but be enthralled by this development.

Sharon has more.

Bernie Mac Is Dead

Media observation:

I heard Bernie Mac has passed away from complications of pneumonia at 50-years-old.

Once again, I found about it on Twitter.

I liked Bernie Mac. I’m finding I’m getting all the breaking news on Twitter from Edwards to Bernie Mac to Russia/Georgia’s conflict.

If you are in media and aren’t on Twitter, I’d do it now.

Congress On Twitter

It appears some congressmen are utilizing Twitter.

Chris Dodd’s also designates who on his staff is tweeting.

Joe Biden’s seems to be more of a scheduling thing of his agenda.

Not a soul from Tennessee on the list.

Figures.

Friendfeed, Strep Throat And Randomness

Yes, the strep throat is bitch but I can see a bit of improvement from yesterday and last night was all right I guess because I was stoned out of my head due to all the medicine that I’m having to take. Apparently I’m not the only suffering one from general malaise and feeling like penguin poo.

I own it. This is some powerful stuff but if it will make me well and give me back my ears, it’s of the good. I’ll probably be announcing my rehab stay with Heather Locklear next week because that apparently is what famous people do and this stuff is STRONG. Squirrel Queen laughed at me because not only was I wondering around the house like I was at a Grateful Dead concert, yammering on Twitter (sorry for those who had to put up with me over there all though I had a great time) and I watched Transformers

I’d give you a review a year late of it but the only thing I can really say is that Peter Cullen voicing Optimus Prime was my favorite part. SQ and I talked today that we really don’t know anything about Transformers so what we saw was a bunch of big robots fighting. I know that’s not very deep but that’s what I got out of it.  Did I mention my medication?  Oh, yeah, I did. If you want to know more about it, go read Ron Hogan’s review at Den of Geek. With that said, I’m a voice-over geek. I love to know who’s voicing what. I guess that goes back to my DJ days.

On another note, Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela.

And due to my medical diversion, I didn’t have enough energy to post about this so just go have your Moment of Zen with Steve Cohen who compares Vice-president Dick Cheney to a barnacle. Now, this is why he’s my political boyfriend.

Finally, join Friendfeed right now. I don’t mean to be an evangelist about this but with Twitter “stressing” I’m finding the functionality of Friendfeed to be very useful. You can put all of your online ramblings into one place, comment, send messages, favorite things such as photos from Flickr, Youtube, Last.fm, twitters, posts and the like all in one place. I had a moment of if anything were to every happen to me, that I wanted a place to show my brilliance and my ineptitude for my nieces. So I have taken my RSS from Friendfeed and put it on a Tumblr account, which of course is also called Newscoma.

I’ve had that account for about a year and I didn’t know what to do with it, so now I do. Yeah, I’m slow on the uptake.

Why do I do this stuff? Because I’m trying to learn new things and I guess one way to do that is to root around places.

And, go read Angela because she’s good. Also, go read and listen to Katie at Shaggy Dog Farms. Three of the four dogs here at Chez Coma were rescues (well, Mabel just showed up and never left and I sometimes wonder where the hell she came from) but Duff was tossed out at Homer’s house when the oldest niece, Asa Corn, was about one year-old. She has a site dealing with pups and kittens. Being that I guess I’m a dog blogger, go check out healthy and gentle living for the animals.

This is Duff. She’s lived with us 11 years. I call her the stinky dog. She has been stinky since the day she moved in with us. But I love her.

Headed back to the strep throat drug highway. I’ll be seeing pink elephants today I’m sure so bear with me.

Because I’ll probably blog about it, as that is what I’m wont to do.

Shooting Guns In Tie-Dye T-Shirts

So I shot a gun.

I’d never shot a gun before. We didn’t have them in my house when I was a kid. I think my dad had one but he never had it around.

I tried to kill a can. The can survived. Of course, the gun I shot was a 357 or something like that and my ears rang for 24 hours after I shot the damn thing. If I were going to review the shooting of the gun, the only thing I’d say is that it did exactly what Aunt B. said some time back and that is it went Crack-Pow.

As I talk just about like I Twitter (which, you can ask Badger Beth that I’ve been practicing lately in obscure ways. I tell her it’s like twittering but, you know, with words and looking at people. I will randomly say “Look a cat in a sweater.” “Fruit Loops taste like fruit suck” or “If I was On Sig’s boat on Deadliest Catch, I would be tired yet awesome.”

You know, random things.

Badger indulges me in this social experiment by ignoring me. I put it up on Twitter and had a rather lively conversation about it over there but realize that I hadn’t navel-gazed over here about it.

As for the gun, I don’t have any idea why I shot it. I never had before. Now I can say I did. There is no purpose or reason behind it. No liberal observation. It was loud.

No can was killed in this experiment.

And Mabel rode on the back of a four-wheeler because she wouldn’t ride in a truck when we went to shoot.

On another note, I have not ever really ridden a four-wheeler much nor, until this spring, have I ever hung out in the country but, you know, Goosepond Swamp Monster and all.

I’m a townie. Yes, there are different societal systems in Hooterville. As I continue my quest to find gainful employment in a place where I can eat sushi every day without having to drive an hour, I’m experiencing all I can. I have also realized that mosquitoes think I’m a bar and grille as they dine on me unmercifully when I’m enjoying the spoils of the farm.

To keep my street cred, I did shoot the gun in a tie-dye T-shirt.

Just saying.

Annoying Autobiographical Pause – Twitter Mumblings

I’ve been talking a lot about Twitter this past week. A murder trial, the speed of news and the conversation that followed immediately after Tim Russert’s death and even live updates about the 7.2 earthquake in Japan.

On March 29th, I wrote about us sending out some news on Twitter that made the rounds.

I know, beating a dead horse and all, but actually I’m not.

And I’m not the only one writing about it.

What you are left with is a group of people you find useful/interesting/relevant who update you through out the day. In my case it’s sparked new relationships and opportunities as well.

So I’m not really sure why anyone would prefer not to bother themselves with using twitter or a similar service. If you’re a writer (especially the non-fiction variety) check out twitter for a week and see if it hasn’t proven invaluable on at least one occasion.

Read the whole thing. TechGOnzo breaks it down very well.

I talk a lot about being in a rural part of the state and some of the limitations that go with that. I work at a place that doesn’t even subscribe to a newswire.

I’m finding I don’t need one with Twitter who continually keeps beating mainstream media cable networks in breaking the news. Many times it needs verification, don’t get me wrong, but then it creates a dialogue. The conversation flows and you have instant feedback.

If you don’t give two hoots about Twitter, I’ll give you a picture of a kangaroo drinking a beer

Twittering The Earthquake In Japan

Ivy alerts us to a Twitterer giving regular updates on the earthquake in Japan.

Once again, I’m amazed.

Twitter As A News Microblog

I wrote a couple of months back about Ron Sylvester who twittered the murder trial of a 14 year-old girl.

He writes about it this morning at his blog, Technolo-J.

I had started using Twitter during jury selection, as a solution to some problems we’d had with trying to file live updates during the trial. We wanted immediacy, and we got it.

One day, I cut and pasted all my “tweet” updates into a traditional story file. It measured 80 inches. Now, I don’t think anyone would have read an 80-inch story from the newspaper on this trial, as compelling as it was. My editors certainly wouldn’t have run a story that long. But what I found is that people will read an 80-inch story, given to them a paragraph at a time, 140 characters long.

He certainly is right. Most editors wouldn’t print an 80 inch story. That’s a huge hunk of newspaper real estate. But what he did was offer news in one of the most immediate ways available and for those of us who followed his tweets on the murder trial were given the heart wrenching story of a girl who’s life was cut short.

One of the most fascinating things to me was the jury selection. If you have ever covered any kind of trial, it honestly can be tedious. Sylvester, 140 characters at a time, made it fascinating. As jurors had to vote on life in prison or the death penalty, there was a great deal of emotion tied into what each interviewed juror would do.

I thought this was cool. The immediacy was really amazing.

I say it at least once a week. Delivering news is changing. I think it is good.

Thursday Geekery

Today, other than the usual non-virtual world making me do crazy things like work, I’ve been watching certain trends.

I found this story on FriendFeed from Ryan Sholin who shared it on Google Reader.

Harrisonburg is a small Virginia city with a population of less than 50,000. The town wasn’t exactly Happenstance until Brent Finnegan decided to liven things up by supplementing his alternative newsblog, Hburgnews.com, with a communal Twitter account. He called on his readers to text in news and soon he and his cronies outpaced the regular news media covering breaking news.

Needless to say, if you are in news, I’d be paying attention to items like this.

FriendFeed Delivers While Twitter Recovers

As Twitter has been hiccuping and burping through a database crash of astronomical proportions and that the pagination feature, which is something I like so I can keep up with you wahoos, I have found myself gravitating over to FriendFeed quite a bit.

I’ll let them explain it.

FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends.

I sign up for new programs all the time. Some of it I use, other times I don’t.

The thing I personally like about FriendFeed is that I’ve been able to access older Tweets from some of my buddies over there while pagination was down. Another thing is that I’ve seen some of the people I’ve friended share things to the site from their Google Reader, when someone adds photos from Flickr I know immediately and it is pretty comprehensive of sharing what you want to or what you don’t. You can add pretty much anything you want to.

Just sharing a new geek thing I like. And I have seen a lot of benefits from FriendFeed.

You may also want to check out this.

Sarah Lacy, Mark Zuckerberg And How Fast A Train Can Wreck

I wouldn’t have known the instant reaction about Sara Lacy’s interview with Mark Zuckerberg and how the audience absolutely went for blood over what is being called a trainwreck.

AUSTIN, Texas — They came expecting a civilized, one-on-one discussion, but they got what some attendees described as “a train wreck.”

Ballroom A of the Austin Convention Center was packed to capacity on Sunday evening for an hour-long intervew with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the keynote speaker at this year’s South By Southwest Interactive festival. The 23-year-old billionaire founder of the social networking site was interviewed on stage by author and journalist Sarah Lacy. Using her unique, friendly style of interviewing — closer to two friends chatting than a straight question-and-answer session — Lacy tried to get the notoriously tight-lipped Zuckerberg to open up. But the discussion rarely strayed beyond the usual business fare and eventually descended into a string of awkward moments punctuated by the audience’s heckling.

“Talk about something interesting,” one attendee yelled about half way through the keynote. The remark was met with waves of cheering and applause.

Meanwhile, members of the audience participated in a backchannel discussion on Twitter, with users of the microblogging site directing most of their animosity at Lacy’s unorthodox interview technique.

“Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview,” said Jason Pontin on Twitter. “Poor girl, flirtatiously awful tho’ she was.”

This all happened in a matter of about three hours. It hit the Internet immediately.

Lacy went on later to put on Twitter:

seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.

Yep, them there internets are fast and so much of it was done on Twitter and in instant fashion.

Grabbing the popcorn and sitting back.

There was even a cartoon put up instantly.

It’s stuff like this that changes the game of journalism, blogging and social media networking platforms. And I’m watching. Man, cause the game is changing.

We have a lot to learn and it’s happening right now.

Damn, if it doesn’t make want me to go to Austin next year.

Twitter Explained

This is just about right. I tried to put this up at MCB from our pal Fishwreck (best name evah) and I couldn’t get it to look all pretty and stuff, so decided to put it here.

This video explain Twitter perfectly. Let’s not forget it was Sleepy Dad who found it first.

Awesomeness.

A Twitter Thought …

I find if my twitter buddies put a link in their 140 allotted words, I tend to go check it out.

Random drug-filled thoughts from your ailing Newscoma who has fluchitis™ which was brilliantly come up with by Ron in the comments.

I think this word works.

Photo credit

BusinessComa

You know, I do read business stuff. I have to.

You can just call me Political/BigfootSeeking/Televisionhound/GoofyNewsComa if you want to and then add BusinessComa.

I’ve seen a lot of conversations about networking online this week because in my new role as Media Editor over at Music City Bloggers, I’m trying to keep my eyes on these things. I’ve been trying to keep those posts local over there but there is really a lot of great stuff nationwide obviously.

There have been some conversations about the frivolousness/value of Twitter around the Nashville Blogosphere and, believe me, I’m not a zealot but I do believe the times are changing. As an old broad with a heart of gold and limited tech skills, I’m keeping my eye on these things because it’s impacting the industry I work in.

Here’s something I found this morning:

With all of the hoopla these days about networking online I can’t help but wonder why people get so confused about how to approach these new tools. See, networking is networking, only the tools that you can employ have changed.

When you think about it, hasn’t networking always been social networking?

Here are some of the proven, effective best practices when it comes to networking

• It’s never about the sale, it’s always about the relationship – build first by giving
• Don’t keep score, give because you can help, the universe will sort out the accounting
• Network with your peers and partners as much as with your prospects and customers
• Every network has influencers, build relationships with the influencers
• Get out and chat, lunch and visit with the members of your network from time to time

I am not a MySpacer and I tend to be hot and cold about Facebook and I think some of us tend to look at the MySpace phenomenon which creates some negative connatations of what social online networking is for my generation, or me at least.  It just isn’t my thing but it has created a more open bubble of online networking which I think we can all agree on.

Things like Twitter, LinkedIn and even blogging to a large degree is about social networking. It is the reason we pine for page views and hits. It’s to either promote an agenda, a business, a philosophy, faith, politics or entertainment as we see it. It is extremely social and has widened social circles. Don’t get me wrong, I blog for fun as most of us do but we do it because it’s a part of us. What’s wrong with spreading the social network more open.

I’m trying to remain open-minded in this new age of technology. I’m not saying I get it all, but I’m going to give it a shot.

Yeah, I run a business and I think about these things. And you just thought I talked about Bigfoot. So here’s a picture to not destroy the illusion.