The article I found this week was concerning the hit HBO television series, “Game of Thrones.”  Game of Thrones is a highly popular medieval fantasy series that is an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of five fantasy novels.  Since the show has gained such great popularity since it’s season one premiere in April of 2011, it was expected that the season two premiere this past Sunday would draw a huge amount of viewers, and it did just that.  The premiere gathered 3.86 million viewers, trumping the Mad Men season five premiere on the same night, which garnered 3.5 million.  The article claimed that the GOT premiere created so much buzz online that it actually crashed an entertainment social networking site entitled “GetGlue.”  I had no idea what GetGlue actually was, so I checked it out and it was actually pretty cool.  The site allows users to check in to whatever TV show, movie, album, or book that they are enjoying at the current moment, much like Facebook status updates.  The site claimed that about 50,000 people checked into the show’s premiere on Sunday, again trumping the Mad Men premiere with only 22,000 check ins.  Those who used the site were apparently highly active on Twitter as well, about 50% of the tweets about the premiere came from GetGlue.  Social media TV analytics provider Bluefin Labs also weighed in, claiming that the show generated a total of about 60,000 comments across all social networking platforms and that the gender spread was close to even, 54% men and 46% women.  

About a year ago, a mobile app was created for beer enthusiasts and social media geeks.  This app is called Untappd.  Untappd is a “mobile-based social network that allows users to “check in” to the beer they are enjoying, add the location of where they are enjoying via Foursquare, upload photos, and share all the information with their network of friends.”  Every time you check in a beer, you are also able to rate the beer, which will be put into a weekly aggregation of data from all users to create a “trending beer” list for that week.  It basically acts as Facebook for beer.  As your different beer check-ins build up, you unlock different “badges” for completing certain beer drinking accomplishments.  For instance, if you check in with three different IPAs in a 30 day period, you get the “I Believe in IPA!” badge.  Or if you check in a beer at the same venue as someone on your friends list at the same time, you will both get the “Drinking Buddy” badge.  You can also comment on your friends’ check-ins, and similarly to Facebook’s “like” button, you can “toast” to them.  Just recently, the network launched “brewery claiming,” which will give beer-making businesses a way to connect with communities across the globe.  Once connected, breweries will be about to communicate directly with consumers, and gain far greater insight into customer preferences.  

Some “brewery claiming” features:

-Brewery insights - Real-time “check-ins” allow breweries to instantly understand which of its beers are most popular and in which venues

-Beer management - Enables breweries to directly edit, merge and remove beers that are listed in their portfolio, which will keep data far more up-to-data.

-User conversations - Allows breweries to comment and toast on user check-ins opening the door for direct-to-customer communications

Some big names have already adopted this system such as MillerCoors, Boston Beer Company, and Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales.  Just launched a year ago, Untappd has over 100,000 registered users, 150,000+ uploaded photos and over 4 million check-ins.  If it hasn’t already, it’s only a matter of time before Untappd becomes a game changing app in the micro and macro-brewery industry.

A marketing agency caught a lot of criticism and controversy this past week during South By Southwest when it released what was possibly the festival’s most talked about tech product.  The agency, BBH, outfitted thirteen homeless volunteers from Austin’s local shelter with mobile Wi-Fi devices to offer festivalgoers wireless access around the city in exchange for a donation.  The volunteers were given the device, a stack of business cards, and t-shirts bearing their names (ex: “I’m Clarence, a 4G hotspot”), and were instructed to travel to the most densely populated areas of the festival.  BBH called this “Homeless Hotspots” project a charitable experiment, paying each participant $20 a day and allowing them to keep whatever donations they collected.  As word spread, the criticisms started rolling in.  One commenter said that the project was “completely problematic” and “something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”  Others commented on the fact that the homeless involved were getting paid less than minimum wage.  BBH sprung to defend itself claiming that it was a way to “raise awareness by giving homeless people a way to engage with society and talk to people.”  The same agency launched another successful experiment in New York in which it gave homeless people cell phones and Twitter accounts as a way to share their story.  Mitchell Gibbs, director of Front Steps, the shelter that houses the project volunteers, said that he was surprised of all the criticism of a project that inspired “entrepreneurial spirit” among its homeless participants and gave them an employment opportunity.  Even the actual participants were unconcerned.  Clarence Jones, a 54-year-old man who became homeless after Hurricane Katrina, said, “Everyone thinks that I’m getting the rough end of the stick, but I don’t feel that… I love talking to people and it’s a job.  An honest day of work and pay.”  I agree that this project does seem a little absurd on the surface, but when taking a deeper look, it’s not so bad at all.  This is a great opportunity for the homeless to have an actual job and make some real money.  The fact that BBH has constructed previous projects helping the homeless shows that they are trying to help them, not exploit them.  It’s an interesting concept that I don’t think deserves the criticism.  

A recent deal offered on the Internet coupon site, Groupon, has been causing some controversy in the past couple of days.  Groupon is a website that once you have joined, will offer highly rewarding gift certificates to be used at local and national companies on a day-to-day basis.  This particular gift certificate involved a walking tour of certain watering holes and neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  These certain locations are the locations where notorious 1980’s serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer reportedly picked up his victims.  Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.  His various murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism.  This deal to check out Dahmer’s old hangouts was obviously very price-sensitive coming from Groupon: $25 for a $60 value.  Families of the victims immediately reacted to this ghoulish offer and demanded for the deal to be dropped.  The tour was organized by the Wisconsin marketing firm entitled Bam Marketing.  They defended their tour claiming that Dahmer’s escapades are part of the city and nation’s history, and it would act more like a documentary rather than an exploitative shock-trip.  The article pointed out that regardless of the rest of the drama, all types of organizations look to capitalize on humanity’s fascination with inhumanity, which is very true.  Groupon did indeed end up removing the deal from their site but the walking tour will go on, there were already 15 people signed up for the discount before the promotion was shut down.  I think that creating controversy over this is a little dramatic.  There are cities all over the world that offer ghost tours and related events that look into the particular city’s grisly history dealing with serial killers.  There are even haunted houses all throughout Europe that guide tourists through the extremely grotesque torture practices of medieval governments.  Maybe it’s just because Jeffrey Dahmer was a more recent series of murders, but I don’t think there is that much to make a fuss over.  

The Seattle area chapter of Planned Parenthood has just launched an interesting campaign to “hook up” with members of the social-media generation, according to this article.  The campaign, entitled, “Where Did You Wear It?,” incorporates condoms with QR codes imprinted on their wrappers to enable members of the social-media generation to “check-in” the location of their sexual activity online.  The students are encouraged to scan the codes after sex that will take them to a website where they can anonymously post the approximate whereabouts of their recent safe-sex encounter to an online map.  The whole point of this is to help spread the word about safe sex and to let everyone know that our generation is “proud to wear protection.”  When you actually go on the website to check in, you can choose from number of different options to describe what happened.  Some of these options include age, gender, sex, relationship status, etc.  You can also describe how enjoyable the intercourse was.  Upon clicking a check in on the website’s interactive map, a pop up will appear with something along the lines of this:

 “A twenty-something guy and a guy, whose relationship is all about love and have already talked about safer sex and STDs, used a condom in a plane, train, or automobile because no one wants an STD. It was ah-mazing-ing—rainbows exploded and mountains trembled.”

 And if you are feeling really open about yourself, you can choose to share your check-in via Facebook and Twitter.  The originators plan for this QR sex code aspect to expand, claiming that several other Planned Parenthood affiliates have already expressed interest in distributing condoms with the Where Did You Wear It? stickers.  

According to this article, the local-reviews site Yelp set a price range for its IPO today of between 12 and 14 dollars a share.  This offering would set the company’s value at around $839 million.  The company originally filed for an IPO in November and aims to sell 7.15 million shares beginning on March 2^nd when it will begin trading under the ticker YELP.  CEO Jeremy Stoppleman and Russel Simmons founded Yelp in 2004 on the west coast.  The company quickly spread throughout the country and it is one of the most popular sites online today, averaging 66 million monthly unique web visitors and 5.7 million on its mobile apps.  The article claims that financially, the company’s numbers are mixed.  Its revenue, which comes from selling local ads, climbed 74 percent to $83.3 million last year.  However, its losses widened to $16.7 million after a previous $9.7.  The company doesn’t plan to be profitable in the near term because it’s still focused on investing.  There have also been long time relationship problems with competitor Google.  Yelp has repeatedly accused Google of “scraping” its business listings and reviews without agreement or compensation.  Stoppleman testified last fall before a US Senate antitrust company looking into Google’s power.  More than half of Yelp’s web traffic comes from visitors sent from Google, so its ability to rank high in the mega search engine’s ranks is critical.  There is now doubt about how quickly this company has grown, turning down buyout offers from both Yahoo and Google, so a successful IPO would be a huge victory for Stoppleman and Yelp.  

According to this article, Sony hiked up prices of Whitney Houston’s Ultimate Collection on iTunes and Amazon within 30 minutes of her death on Saturday.  In the UK, the album’s price jumped more than 60% from 4.99 to 7.99.  People originally blamed Apple for this occurrence until it was released that iTunes was just responding to Sony’s lift of the “wholesale price.”  This has happened many times in the past.  Michael Jackson’s catalog jumped sales and prices considerably after his death in 2009.  This shameful act by the record companies raises a question about piracy and online file sharing.  Should we feel bad about illegally stealing an album from one of these mega record labels when they conduct themselves like this?  

New York City announced NYC Digital last July, a campaign with the mission of creating a better civil society and stronger democracy with the use of technology.  One of the main goals is to use digital media to improve communication with residents and business to enhance government transparency.  This campaign coincides with the plan to make New York the world’s leading digital city.  The plan is split into four different categories: Access to Technology, Open Government, Engagement, and Industry.  Some examples of these strategies put to use are as follows:

1.     This year, Digital NYC provided Wi-Fi to more parks and public spaces across the five boroughs and strengthened support for more broadband choices.  For the first time ever, six different subway stations offer cell phone service.

2.     OpenData API platform has been developed allowing hundreds of sets of public data produced by agencies and organizations viewable through the NYC Digital Tumblr.

3.     The city has created more than 250 social media channels in the past year in order to communicate things going on in the city.

4.     Mayor Bloomberg introduced new immigration services for startups in October at they NYC Tech Meetup.  

Last week McDonald’s decided to take a digital route with a marketing campaign and pay for a promoted hashtag on the Twitter homepage entitled, “#McDStories.”  This tag was intended to let McDonald’s customers on Twitter share “heart warming stories” about eating at the fast food mega chain.  However, the plan backfired on the Golden Arches when users started using the hashtag to ridicule the company and share their opinions about the restaurant’s shortcomings in the health and hygiene departments.  People tweeted phrases such as, “Dude, I used to work at McDonald’s. The #McDStories I could tell would raise your hair,” and, “One time I walked into McDonalds and I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air and I threw up. #McDStories.”  After paying a hefty sum of money to promote this trend, McDonald’s had to pull the campaign after only two hours because of negative press.  In my opinion, the company could have used a hashtag that was a bit less ambiguous than “#McDStories.”  I think it would have made more sense to use their common slogan, “I’m Lovin’ It,” as a hashtag in this campaign.  It would have directed people towards a more positive response and could have kept this hashtag from becoming a #bashtag. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/01/24/mcdstories-when-a-hashtag-becomes-a-bashtag/#