Bill Clinton attempting to calm an excited crowd during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. (Photo: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Those who watched Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday night were all a-Twitter, and the tweeted reviews were mostly raves.
The positive reemergence of "the male Clinton," as many Twitterers referred to him, inspired a hopeful — but technically impossible — push for his reelection. "I love Bill Clinton in a completely appropriate way. Re elect the male Clinton!!! We wish, right?" Sara Lidstrom wrote on her Twitter page shortly after the speech.
A few naysayers chimed in, calling Clinton's rhetoric boring and unconvincing. Adam Kmiec tweeted, "so disappointed with Bill Clinton's speech. wish he would have said the truth instead of playing politics."
As is the case with most smooth talkers, Clinton's appearance reignited the age-old debate: Would you date him? "I want to re-elect Bill Clinton after that speech he gave tonight. I still don't find him hot, though," wrote MissSueBurbia on her Twitter page.
Some women could still see the appeal of the 62-year-old politician. "It's official: My crush on Bill Clinton has been restored," Josephine wrote on Twitter.
DWMDC was disappointed — not with the speech but with the phenomenon of aging. "Alright, I confess: Bill Clinton is no longer "hot"," she wrote on her page.
Still, some Twitterers managed to stay on topic. They discussed the content of Clinton's speech, which focused on his endorsement for a Barack Obama-Joe Biden ticket.
And one pro-Clinton twitterer may even be out in front of the pack on the next nonagenarian political celebrity:
"Bill Clinton passed the torch beautifully. Can't deny the man gives a great speech," Seth tweeted. "And OMG Joe Biden's mom is adorable."
Jim Romenesko’s media news site -- once considered an edgy, gossip-heavy addiction for journalists, but now in the post-Gawker world seen as a virtual oak tree of old-time journalistic restraint and standards -- has taken some hits lately, including this body blow from an apocalyptic Howell Raines. The deposed New York Times executive editor brands Romenesko as, yes, just another print-bred dinosaur, one who doesn't quite get that the online revolution he helped usher in will eventually push him to the side as well.
Then the site's redesign launched this week. The New York Observer'sMatt Habercompared his reaction to the awkward moment when you realize an acquaintance has had her breasts done. Gawker itself asked simply, “Is this the end of our hero? Eh.” Media theorist and NYU professor Jay Rosen Twittered: “Re-designs are hard, first reactions unreliable. But Poynter’s new design leaves Romenesko lost in a sea of type. Hate it.” He elaborated in another tweet: “What I meant is that on all four sides the site wants to zip me away from Jim’s space.”
Rosen was on to something. It seems the site’s very popularity became an issue. Romenesko is owned by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit, Florida-based school that trains journalists and promotes journalistic and media integrity, and the biggest audience on the Poynter site is Romenesko's. You can’t blame Poynter for trying to leverage its one star to benefit the site as a whole. As Poynter Online's director,Bill Mitchell, explained in an e-mail:
Romenesko is the most popular page on Poynter Online, and we heard from some users that they had difficulty finding his page from elsewhere on the site. That prompted us to include ROMENESKO in the main navigation across the top of pages. To encourage traffic in the other direction, we included on Jim’s page the same functionality to access content by most recently published, most e-mailed, etc.
Romenesko himself added, over the phone:
People complain that Poynter is trying to move them off the site. And they are -- our stats show that the majority of people go to my part and don’t move off of it, and obviously we want people to explore the other parts of the site. ... There’s Al’s Morning Meeting which has a TV focus, but I think it’s of interest to all journalists. I think it would be great if my readers found him too.
I also like the new conversations that we’ve added to the new design. There’s a Romenesko conversation going on there now, a new chat board. People can post, and I post items and readers are welcome to respond or start something new. There’s so much there, really, there are columns by the faculty and staff... Poynter Online is more than Romenesko, although my ego would want to think it’s not.
Poynter's Mitchell has assured readers that he's listening to the criticism and will make changes (e's already increased the headline sizes). And it's true that every redesign is hated at first. Still, with its busier page, this one is going to take some getting used to -- on a day crammed with other things to do, you really just want that sense of urgency and focus that Romenesko (like any good blog) delivers.
But there are knottier problems for Romenesko. He's been criticized, bizarrely, for continuing to post the overwhelmingly bad news that spews forth from journalistic quarters. Blogger Justin McLachlannoted a “backlash against the industry-wide death rattles he seems fond of publishing.” He concluded that the younger generation of journalists were turning away from the site. And he railed against Romenesko for not offering some solutions himself: “The news business is collapsing around us, mostly because people like Romenesko sit around wringing their hands and lamenting what was instead of innovating the way we do our jobs and the products we create.”
On the phone, Romenesko sounded perplexed by all the shoot-the-messenger stuff:
Some days are depressing. There was one day in particular that it seemed all I was doing was posting about layoffs, budget cuts and buyouts, and so on. But I think I have to do that. I can’t ignore it when a newsroom shrinks by 25%. I can’t look away. Some readers complain that it’s all gloom and doom. I read on Twitter that some people are boycotting my site because they say it’s too negative. ... Of course Twitter allows only 140 characters, but the sense I get is that they don’t want to read the negative. People will post my link and say, "Warning, it’s a Romenesko link, enter at your own risk." But you know, it's a historic time in the business and I think I have to document it.
Even in the good times, journalists tend to be constitutionally negative and grumpy, obsessed with gradations of status in their perpetually embattled profession. With his quick reactions but sober, almost clinical approach, Romenesko has always been their perfect pulse-taker. The current story of journalism is not pretty -- and neither is the Poynter redesign -- but we need him to keep telling it, and we should keep reading.
Michael Weiss-Malik's "Proposal 2.0" on Google Maps Street View.
We have all heard stories about couples getting hitched through computer games, web comics, technology blogs and lolcats, but Michael Weiss-Malik thinks he may have topped them all. What's better than a kitty "marridj," you ask?
How about a Google Maps panoramic image, accessible by anyone, of the groom-to-be holding a sign reading, "Proposal 2.0: Marry me Leslie!!"
Weiss-Malik, 29, a software engineer for Google Inc., was informed along with many of his coworkers when the Google Street View van — the vehicle used to record panoramic street-level imagery for Google Maps — would be driving by the company's Mountain View headquarters.
Michael Weiss-Malik and Leslie Moreno at a wedding — not their own. (Photo: Michael Weiss-Malik)
He then designed and printed — using the company ink — a sign he would hold as the van snapped pictures, he said. He also registered MarryMeLeslie.com to document the Web 2.0 proposal.
"I wasn't sure if it would get a lot of attention," Weiss-Malik said.
It did. More than 50,000 flocked to the website, and the news got international coverage.
"I figured it would be kind of a fun way to do something big — a very public announcement of asking her to marry me," he said.
The advantage of his public proposal is that Weiss-Malik already secured a "yes" from his bride-to-be in what he calls "Proposal 1.0." The initial proposal was a pretty classic scenario, taking place during a quiet night at home, ring and all.
While Weiss-Malik's fiancee, Leslie Moreno, 26, is waiting to announce her official "yes" until the poll on their website tips toward a majority in support of the decision, here's a spoiler: It's going to happen. And the wedding date is already set tentatively for May 24.
"I got quite a few e-mails in my inbox suggesting that I marry Michael," Moreno said. "Most of the people have been really positive."
Since Google updated its Street View map earlier this month with Weiss-Malik's proposal intact, the heartwarming event has taken on a life of its own. Users spotted it, and submitted links to social media, giving it even more attention. A friend of Weiss-Malik updated Wikipedia's online proposal article to include Proposal 2.0.
"I was pretty sure no one had ever done it before, and only one person could have done it for the first time," Weiss-Malik said. "It's possible no one will ever do it again."
Maybe so, but here's hoping there are many more lolcat "proposalz" to come.
Reddit is often praised for its tightknit community and unique content promotion algorithm, although it's not necessarily the most popular social news site in town.
Considering there are a multitude of other venues to haunt, Web Scoutchatted with Reddit's undisputed No. 1 submitter, qgyh2, to find out why Reddit is worth his time — a lot of his time.
Reddit's anonymous top user, a shot that is "suitably spooky looking," he said in an e-mail. (Photo credit: qgyh2)
The five seemingly random characters that make up his screen name — they don't correspond to his real initials — are instantly recognizable within the Reddit community. But not always for the most favorable reasons.
One user by the name of Red Reddit published a blog post equating qgyh2's rise to fame and promotion to site moderator as a catalyst for the collapse of Reddit.
Reddit's developers parodied the grievances on their blog Monday with some assertions of their own. Was qgyh2's activity on Reddit indirectly involved in the fluctuating price of gold, or the fall of the home loan mortgage company Fannie Mae? The evidence is damning, to say the least.
Qgyh2 asked to remain anonymous for the story because it allows him to post any story he chooses without it being linked to his real-world identity.
But he did share a few specifics on his "secret identity:" He's a 29-year-old living in Midland, Mich., and is currently unemployed — or "taking a break," as he said in our instant message interview. But he does maintain a rarely updated blog, called Enlight Me.
His history on the social medium dates back to July 2007, and he now spends four to five hours a day periodically reading, submitting and commenting on stories. "I just love to browse Reddit. It is addictive," he said in our instant message conversation.
Since getting started, he has accumulated more than 183,000 "karma" points, a system which counts the total number of positive votes (called "up-mods") for a link submission minus the number of negatives ("down-mods"). He also has more than 15,000 comment karma.
Because of his dominance, he has to adjust his actions so as not to overly sway voting.
qgyh2: one little confession I must make.. I do not downmod anything. (comments or posts)
I do upmod comments and posts I like
LA Times: Why is that?
qgyh2: well I'm on reddit quite a bit.. so if I downmod things it would probably be unfair to others..
Qgyh2 says he chose Reddit over other social news websites, like Digg, because its users are not swayed by a select few power users — perhaps not the most convincing argument, coming from the preeminent Reddit user.
qgyh2: users are mostly equal here.. I can't say digg is run by power users but they definitely do have an advantage
for a story to get to the front page of digg, it needs 250+ votes approx -
due to the huge amount of stories submitted, people need to have at least 200 friends who (plus around 50 random upvotes)
reddit on the other hand doesnt use friends so much
so, anyone can submit something and people will vote it up if its good
Despite his preference for Digg's competitor, Reddit's top user considers Digg's top guy, MrBabyMan, a friend. Qgyh2 also keeps in touch with a few other top Diggers and one Reddit user, noname99 — "a teenager and an awesome redditor," qgyh2 wrote.
A mutual relationship of sharing stories exists between the two social news sites' users, qgyh2 said in an instant message. "I occasionally grab some of the stuff mrbabyman submits to digg. as he seems to just know what people would be interested in," he wrote.
For now, Reddit's top submitter plans to continue posting on his favorite topics, like health, human rights, funny images and offbeat news. Qgyh2 first created the offbeat section — a topic page on the site built by a user is called a "subreddit" — and he is interested in utilizing a new feature added to the site Tuesday that provides customization to those pages, like redesigning the layout or changing the Web address.
"I've already made some funny logos.. gonna try a custom domain too sometime," qgyh2 wrote in an e-mail. "hope it will give birth to some fun new reddits."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)
Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).
Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.
Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.
Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.
Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.
Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.
Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.
MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.
NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.
Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.
NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!
Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.
Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.
Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.
Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.
YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.
Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.
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Update:Hurricane Gustav hit southern Haiti today, threatening to become an "extremely dangerous" storm as it heads toward Cuba and takes aim at states along the U.S. Gulf Coast. See Hurricane Gustav computer models at Weather Underground.
Hurricane Gustav topped Google Hot Trends today with related results (Hurricane Gustav Tracking, Projected Path of Hurricane Gustav) found throughout the Top 100 most searched terms.
With current maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, Gustav could develop into a Category 2 hurricane later today and a “major” Category 3 or 4 storm by the end of the week, according to AccuWeather forecasters. (View the projected path of Hurricane Gustav from the National Weather Service.)
Forecasters warned Gustav's eye could pass near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, home to nearly 3 million people.
To avoid the storm, Carnival Cruise Lines diverted one of its ships today to a Mexican port instead of Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Crude oil prices rose today as Hurricane Gustav threatened major oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico, home to more than a fifth of U.S. oil production.
Bryan Levi, creator of the "Jesus shot" video. (Photo credit: Korina Schlieper)
Video game publishers generally don't get excited when a customer publicizes a programming glitch in a software release because "it exposes a problem," said EA Sports president Peter Moore. But Bryan Levi got paid for it.
Since he posted the "Jesus shot" clip last year, it received only a few comments and about 50,000 views -- not very popular by YouTube standards. It wasn't even Levi's most watched video -- that honor goes to a clip of his friend chugging bottles of Ipecac.
But since the EA Sports parody video went viral, now with more than a million hits, it has sent a flurry of viewers to Levi's original video, leaving comments of congratulations and claims that he got "owned" by the game publisher's rebuttal.
"A lot of people are saying that I got owned by them, but I kind of laugh at that because I think it's pretty cool," Levi said.
Neither party took offense to the mutual jabs. In fact, both Levi and EA'sMoore could agree on one thing: They think the whole situation is very funny.
"I thought other people would find it humorous, so why not?" Levi said. "And now they got me back. They told me they loved my video."
Levi was really excited to see the golf pro acknowledge and act out his video. Tiger Woods "is always very willing to do something like this," Moore said. "He realizes that marketing is changing."
Woods didn't stop at walking on water either. On Saturday the EA Sports YouTube channel was updated with another video, this one showing the golfer playing with a Rubik's cube and then putting the toy into a hole a few yards away. "Square Peg, Round Hole" has yet to feel the viral buzz, however, with just shy of 2,000 hits since it hit the Web.
Levi, a 21-year-old film and video student at Penn State, wouldn't disclose the amount of money he was paid for giving Wieden+Kennedy, EA's ad agency, the rights to worldwide use of his video, but the video gamer did say he hopes to score a free copy of the new Tiger Woods game in stores Tuesday.
He also plans to continue shooting and posting videos to his YouTube channel once he's able to buy a new video camera -- his old one is broken.
But Levi shouldn't have to wait long. His check should be on the way.
Digg user badwithcomputer. (Photo credit: Dashiell)
We have all heard from the pioneers of social media. Interviews with Kevin Rose on Digg, Biz Stone on Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook are a dime a dozen.
But you, online reader, were Time's person of the year in 2006. You are what keeps social media fresh and worth reading (well, some of the time).
As part of a new Web Scout series, we talk to you -- well, maybe not you, per se, but the users out there who spend hours per day contributing content and building an almost celebrity status on their platforms of choice.
First up is Digg user badwithcomputer, who has consistently been a top 10 submitter to the social news website for the past year since he opened his account.
On Digg, his "real name" is Henry Hill, which actually turns out to be a homage to the 1990s flick "Goodfellas." Outside the virtual world, the Los Angeles resident is Dashiell, a 21-year-old student at Pitzer College, a liberal arts school in Claremont.
Badwithcomputer's beginnings on Digg were much like that of anyone just getting into the site. He would submit stories he thought were interesting and nobody seemed to agree with him. His submissions would get only a couple of votes, or Diggs, and then fall off the map. Dashiell chronicles his humble beginnings in our instant-message conversation.
badwithcomputer: One day I got lucky with some video I found on Break and was instantly hooked on the inexplicable nerdy joy of seeing something I submitted become popular. I haven't looked back.
LA Times: I know what you mean.
BWC: Yeah, and that's the problem. Most users just throw their hands up and leave a million comments about how broke the system is without taking a look at their activity on the site. Consistently submit quality content that is of interest to a wide range of people and things will eventually start rolling.
Or not, and that's the often irritable problem with Digg for a lot of people. But what can you do?
You could try talking to other Diggers. Dashiell keeps in contact with top users, like Zaibatsu, the third all-time submitter, and head honcho MrBabyMan. And their chats take place through more traditional means, not using Digg's "shout" feature, an internal system for communicating and sharing stories of which Dashiell is not a fan.
BWC: I haven't talked to MrBabyMan in a while but we have each other's screen names. Every now and then i get the pleasure of a brief phone chat with Zaibatsu where we talk shop and do a cursory catchup. MakiMaki is an android from the future and I'm worried that if I talk to him he'll drain all my Digg power, like Shang Tsung style.
MakiMaki, by the way ... never sent a single shout and he is hitting the front page more than anyone else these days. Shows you how much you can rely on the shout system if you think you can register over night and just start shouting to a thousand friends.
In addition to those, Dashiell says he respects Digg users jaybol and Brian Cuban, brother of billionaire entrepreneur Mark.
Unlike many of Digg's top users, Dashiell doesn't have a slew of RSS feeds he is subscribed to. He searches for Diggable content the same way the Internet's earliest adopters found links to post on Usenet message boards: by surfing his favorite websites, which include Kotaku, Gawker, Break and Funny or Die. E-mail solicitations probably aren't the best idea for "helping" him find your content.
BWC: Sometimes I get IM's or emails from sites basically just wondering how they can get something on the front page. Every now and then i'll get a real suspect email that is just straight up offering money in exchange for a front page submission and I just forward those to abuse@digg.com.
It just comes with the territory of being on the top 50 digg users list.
Badwithcomputer is notorious for his funny, edgy, eye-grabbing headlines. We asked him to pick out some of his all-time favorites, but of all the ones he mentioned, THIS IS HOW I MAKE BREAD is the only story suitable for publication due to its lack of obscenity.
BWC: That was a great submission just because you rarely see something with all caps get popular, but it totally fit in this case.
As trends and the site's community rapidly change, Dashiell seems to be ahead of the curve. His number of front-page hits -- nearly three every day for the last 30 days -- aren't slowing down, and he will likely be a major player on the site for a very long time.
"I got 99 problems but a Digg ain't one," he wrote.
It's been a busy week for viral marketing on YouTube.
On Monday Samsung hit us with a clever short disguised as an "unboxing" video (a trend where fans and bloggers record themselves opening their new gadgets for the first time). The spin on the often anticlimactic genre was the parade of a miniature marching band and baton-twirling ladies that sprang forth from the high-tech box. It led to a pyrotechnic-laden unveiling of Samsung's new Omni i900 cellphone, which looks and acts a lot like Apple's wildly popular iPhone.
To produce and market the video, Samsung employed the U.K.-based Viral Factory. The two have partnered regularly in the last 18 months, and the Samsung Omnia (i900) Unboxing video was the ninth since the companies first hooked up, according to an e-mail from Toni Smith, managing director for the Viral Factory.
When Samsung asks the marketing firm to promote a product, the guidelines are few. "They give us a product (in this case the i900) and a task (in this case create buzz around the launch of the i900)," Smith wrote. "We then write, produce and seed the campaign."
The day after the Samsung video went online, Electronic Arts Inc.'s EA Sports posted a video response to a fan who had poked fun at a programming glitch in one of its games. About a year ago, YouTube user Levinator25 posted a video highlighting an error in the EA Sports game Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 that showed the Tiger Woods character standing on water, then slicing a golf ball into the hole. Levinator25 dubbed it "the Jesus shot."
EA Sports' response, recorded in a style similar to its Tiger Woods TV commercials, shows the actual golf pro walking onto a pond and performing the feat. The message that closes the video: "It's not a glitch. He's just that good."
The Portland, Ore.-based Wieden+Kennedy ad agency manages the viral efforts for Electronic Arts, one of the world's largest video game publishers. "We've done a lot of viral videos," said EA Sports President Peter Moore. "We believe we're reaching a younger audience than with network television."
And because there's not much involved in viral campaigns — beyond getting the OK from Tiger and then shooting and uploading the video — companies can score with successful advertisements without the costs of broadcasting them on primetime TV. Such campaigns aren't "something you can manufacture," Moore said. "You can't actually push it, because [savvy Web surfers] reject that."
So how do you create a successful viral promotion? "By making it good, and by making it relevant to the target audience," Smith said in an e-mail. "This is very hard, as they're a tough bunch to please and the competition is huge."
The free exposure from high-profile blogs, such as Engadget for the Samsung video and golf blogs for the Tiger Woods clip, certainly can't hurt. "We didn't pay to place the clip on these blogs (you can't), but they posted it because it's right for their audiences," Smith wrote.
The two videos also hit the front page of the popular social news website Digg a couple hours apart Wednesday — both submitted by the same user, badwithcomputer, who says he isn't getting any kickbacks either.
"Unfortunately, I won't be receiving a new Samsung phone or a copy of an EA game any time soon," he wrote in an instant messenger conversation. "That Samsung video had 3K views when I submitted it yesterday and now has over 200K and climbing. I feel like a huge Digg story really pushed that thing into going viral (getting a lot of views from Digg and getting picked up by other blogs)."
In three days the Tiger Woods video on YouTube has gotten 706,000 hits; Samsung has had 658,000 in four days.
"People pass it on," Moore said. "It's like pond scum."
Or like a virus.
— Mark Milian
Correction: The story originally stated that Electronic Arts does all of its viral marketing in-house. Wieden+Kennedy, the ad agency EA uses for its TV commercials, actually organized, and hired Los Angeles-based Motion Theory to shoot the Tiger Woods video.
That supposedly "mint condition" Spider-Man comic book you got on EBay that had half a page torn out is a dispute between you and the seller. The California courts are staying out of it, no matter how many lawsuits you file. Consumer protection laws don't apply to sales not specifically targeting California customers, according to an L.A. Times article posted Wednesday.
In the latest judicial message of "buyer beware" in Internet shopping, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said a federal district court in Northern California properly decided it didn't have jurisdiction to require a Wisconsin classic car seller to abide by this state's consumer protection laws.
1964 Ford Galaxie 500. (Photo credit: dave_7 / Flickr user)
The dispute began three years ago when Paul Boschetto of San Francisco offered the winning $34,106 bid for a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 XL auctioned by Wisconsin sellers who described the vehicle in their EBay ad as "in awesome condition, not restored, rust free chrome in excellent condition, recently rebuilt and ready to be driven."
When the car arrived, according to Boschetto's testimony to the federal district court, the engine wouldn't start and the car was rusty and dented.
Boschetto contacted EBay and Hansing in a fruitless effort to rescind the purchase, then filed suit in federal district court alleging violation of the California Consumer Protection Act, breach of contract, misrepresentation and fraud.
The fact that neither the courts nor EBay are stepping in to settle the dispute is disconcerting. And without a working car, it's going to be a pretty long bus ride to Wisconsin to settle this face to face.
David Sarno
is the Times' Internet culture and online entertainment writer. His Web Scout print column runs in the L.A. Times Calendar section on Wednesdays.
— Follow David on Twitter.
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