Posts Tagged TweetDeck

Romney Snags Top Twitter Ad for Debate – NationalJournal.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Politics on October 3, 2012


 

Romney Snags Top Twitter Ad for Debate

By Adam Mazmanian

Updated: October 3, 2012 | 10:19 a.m.
October 3, 2012 | 7:30 a.m.

COURTESY PHOTO

There’s only one “Promoted Trend” ad unit allotted by Twitter per 24-hour period, and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney bought it in a bid to steer the online conversation his way in advance of Wednesday’s debate.

The ad puts the hashtag #CantAfford4More in the feed of every user who logs into Twitter via the Web, and it is also visible to mobile users and those accessing via desktop application Tweetdeck.  The ad, which insiders say costs $120,000, is accompanied by a Promoted Tweet from the @MittRomneyaccount that reads, “Another term for @BarackObama will bring more taxes, regulations, and debt that have ground our recovery to a halt.”

“If there’s one thing that we learned with the 20 debates that we did in the primary, it’s that Twitter is where a lot of real-time conversations are going,” Romney’s digital director Zac Moffatt told National Journal in an interview last month. At the time, Moffatt wouldn’t confirm or deny plans for a Twitter advertising buy for the debates, but he said the campaign planned “to use that experience to build something that’s most in line with what our goals are.”

Romney’s campaign became the first presidential purchaser of a Sponsored Trend when it bought one during the Republican National Convention to promote the candidate’s acceptance speech.

 Romney Snags Top Twitter Ad for Debate – NationalJournal.com.

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Bored with real life? There’s an app for that – Chicago Sun-Times

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Facebook, Opinion, Perspective, Social, Society on April 25, 2012


Bored with real life? There’s an app for that

BY RICHARD ROEPER rroeper@suntimes.com April 24, 2012

If Marty McFly touched down in the real 2012, no doubt he’d be dazzled by the info-techno-revolution, and within a day he’d come to this conclusion:

The average American looks down at her communications device more often than she looks other people in the eye.

We spend an astonishing amount of time taking and sharing photos of our food, our children and whatever our current location happens to be.

And when we’re not doing that, we’re playing games in which we draw pictures, form words and slingshot angry birds at green pigs.

Remember when Americans got rich by making auto­mobiles, forging steel, building skyscrapers, drilling for oil, bootlegging liquor — all those good old-fashioned ways? Now, your best bet is to come up with an app that gets people addicted to playing updated versions of board games with friends or strangers. Or invent yet another way for someone to share every facet of his life with the seven other people who might be mildly interested in his 165 vacation photos.

Back to the future

I take note of all this not from the viewpoint of some Luddite who pines for the days of typewriters, pay phones and playing kick the can. I’m the guy with the Mac Desktop, the Macbook Air, the iPad and the iPhone, the guy who says, “Check out this app!” to people who didn’t ask to check out the app, the guy who has seen every installment of “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men” and “The Walking Dead” — and has never watched a single episode in real time on “regular TV.” I’ve got everything from news apps to Flight Board to TweetDeck to games such as Temple Run, RealRacing2HD, Pocket Passer, Air Hockey and Waste Paper Basketball Diaries on the iPad.

I love this world — but still. You look at the top paid and free apps on iPhone, and it’s all about getting in touch with your inner 12-year-old. (Or being an actual 12-year-old.) There are Angry Birds Space and Flick Home Run! and Draw Something, Shark Dash and Fruit Ninja, Camera+ and Cut the Rope, Kick the Buddy and Scramble with Friends.

Or how about this one: WhatsApp Messenger. It’s “a cross-platform smartphone messenger . . . that utilizes push notifications to instantly get messages from friends, colleagues and family.” (I’m sure you can reach your enemies as well.) With WhatsApp, you can “switch from SMS to exchange messages, pictures, audio notes and video messages with WhatsApp users at no cost.”

Finally!

It’s not that I expect our smart devices to be packed with apps titled “Cure for Cancer” and “Press This Button and Lose 10 Lbs.,” but geez, when do people find time to become masters of all these games? How significant is the percentage of Americans who are so bored with their everyday real lives they can’t go a day without playing a glorified version of “Pictionary”?

Insta-WHAT?

I’m still trying to wrap my logic around Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, the nifty but hardly revolutionary photo-sharing program. They have to make a billion dollars just to break even on the purchase. How will that happen? Anyone?

Facebook has something like 850 million active monthly users. Instagram has about 35 million. No doubt a good percentage of those 35 million are already on Facebook.

I know: It’s the mobile factor. Facebook swallowed up Instagram before Instagram started taking a bite out of Facebook. And if Facebook is worth $100 billion, why not spend a billion here and there? But it still seems like an enormous overpay.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to do something with the Pinterest account I opened a while back. I haven’t posted a single entry under “Products I Love” or “My Style.” But once I get it going, I’m sure it’ll be a valuable addition to a portfolio that includes my website, my Twitter account, my two Facebook pages — I think there’s even a MySpace page accumulating dust somewhere.

MySpace. Remember?

 Bored with real life? There’s an app for that – Chicago Sun-Times.

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