The Week End: ESPN, Red Sox, Social Media, Sex…
My eyes hurt. I haven’t taken my contacts out all week, even though typically with this type of dull pain I would be ripping those puppies out at first sight of a bottle of generic CVS-branded saline. Unfortunately I can not remove them, sadly it may be the small bits of shaped plastic residing on my eyeballs that have the Sox up 2-0 in the World Series. Sounds ridiculous right, and normally I would agree with you, in fact I was making a bit of fun of my Parents and Uncle who have been going to the same bar for a pre-game Miller Lite before every game, as if it mattered. On the other hand however, with the Sox down 3-1 to the Indians I took off my glasses, mainly because they reminded me of Charlie Sheen 
in Major League, and put on my contacts. They haven’t lost yet? What more scientific proof does one need? Articles are published in the New England Journal of Medicine with less proof.
Don’t believe me…that’s OK, because the perception that I have some semblance of control over a personally important sports event is enough to let me sleep at night, however uncomfortable in my eyewear.
Onto some highlights of the week:
Living Under a Rock?
In case you missed it, Microsoft put $240M into Facebook giving it a value of $15B…making Facebook the 5th most valuable U.S. Internet company. To me this is just another proof point that we are in a bubble and heading down a really dangerous path. But the thing that scares me the most may be how much Microsoft actually knows about me now. Jeremiah Owyang has the in depth look. Are you afraid of Facebook? Should you be?
Sex, It Always Bites Back
Jeremy Pepper has a terrific post about how PR may lose the social media battle to advertising because of the latter’s ability to bring sexy back. This is a MUST read for all of you. Much of the commentary are things I’ve blogged about in the past but Jeremy puts it all together really well. The one part I wanted to dive into a bit more was around the use of interactive groups. I left a comment and figured I would reprint it below:
Great post Jeremy, as usual. Something I’ve been talking about a lot and trying to get folks to understand.
The one area I’m interested in diving into is around the interactive group. While I can agree that leading social media through the interactive group is a bad decision, I think that there is a general lack of knowledge from PR people on how interactive services can help them implement social media and understand technologies.
I guess it is under the auspices of PR people simply have to get smarter when it comes to the tools at their disposal, it is not enough to simply have an idea about online interactivity and community involvement…you have to understand how it is built, how it works, how it might effect your client, etc.
Having an interactive services group that can educate you concerning those facets of social media can be an asset. At the same time the PR folks should be doing the same for that group and making them understand the intricate weave of client relationships, community building, et al.
Keep on shouting this from the rooftops!
Video Clip of the Week: Eagles on the Warpath!!
ESPN has had a tough few weeks, first they lose the MLB Division Series to a horrible TBS crew and then the Steinbrenner dictatorship bans them from concalls. I actually want to commend the folks in Bristol for starting to understand, albeit extremely painfully and slowly, the benefit of opening up content to be shared. Just this morning I noticed that video can now be embedded and their RSS feeds are a bit more accurate. It is still disappointing that they can’t figure out how to use Twitter nor how to properly create a blog, but perhaps someone is talking some sense into them…if it’s you let us know! And in celebration, check out BC’s unreal comeback versus Virginia Tech…as a season ticket holder I was VERY pleased:
October 29th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for the comment and shout out. I’m getting some interesting responses … oddly, on other blogs which shows some interesting side conversations on the subject.