AllThingsD » Super Bowl

The Daily Has an Angry Birds App -- And the Start of a Custom Publishing Business

Peter Kafka — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:20:56 +0000

Hey! You like Angry Birds, right? Of course you do. So you’ll enjoy reading about Angry Birds, via a new, free iOS app about the newest iteration of the game, produced by The Daily. (An Android version is in the works.)

And if you like that idea, then you’ll love watching a promotional video for the app.

Hey! Isn’t the The Daily owned by News Corp., which also owns this Web site? Yes, yes it is. Good of you to notice, so we can deal with the disclosure here.

The Daily is also the real point of this post: The tablet newspaper is quietly getting into the custom publishing business.

Putting out other publications using the infrastructure you built to put out your own stuff is a mainstay of lots of traditional newspapers and magazines. But it wasn’t something that was in The Daily’s original business plan.

A year after launch, though, The Daily has put out several standalone apps, using the same Web app publishing system it built in-house in the fall of 2010. Most are put out using The Daily’s name and branding, like the gadget guide it published last fall.

Last month, though, The Daily helped the NFL put out a commemorative Super Bowl mag/app, and publisher Greg Clayman says more of this stuff should be coming down the line.

Right now, he says, the don’t-call-it-a-newspaper is using its existing staff to put out the new publications. Which must make News Corp. execs happy, since that means more revenue without more costs. But Clayman says he can envision building a standalone custom pub staff if this stuff takes off.

On Twitter, the Oscars Were Huge -- But Not Whitney Houston Huge

Peter Kafka — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 06:47:56 +0000

Big TV event + lots of people on Twitter = lots and lots of people Tweeting about the Big TV event. Right?

Yes. But not that many people.

Social TV tracker Bluefin Labs counted 3.44 million “social comments” about last night’s Oscar awards. That metric, which primarily tracks Twitter usage but also includes some data from Facebook and other services, is certainly big. But it’s much smaller than two other big live-TV events this month. Bluefin counted some 12 million comments for the Super Bowl, and 13 million for the Grammys.

And the comment volume for those two events showed much more year-over-year growth than the Oscars, too. Bluefin says Oscar Tweets were up more than 250 percent this year, compared to a crazy 2,300 percent bump for the Grammys and 580 percent for the Super Bowl.

That might seem a little odd to someone like, um, me, whose Sunday evening Twitter feed seemed to be clogged exclusively with people live-tweeting the same broadcast. (Which, really — love you guys, but I could do without.)

So this ends up being a very healthy reminder that different people use Twitter for different things. Hard to remember that sometimes, because the medium so closely mimics a traditional broadcast system, with its one-to-many structure (even if CEO Dick Costolo insists it’s not a media company). But on Twitter, there are a whole lot more broadcasters out there, and not all of them go freaking nuts about the Oscars, and that’s not a bad thing at all.

(Photo courtesy of Academy Award official site)

Oscar Night Means a Torrent of Twittering. Trendrr Gets Ready to Tally It Up.

Peter Kafka — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:39:34 +0000

Things that will happen tonight: Lots of people will watch the Oscars*. Lots of people will tweet about the Oscars. And lots of people will spend a lot of time and energy tracking those tweets.

Many of those folks work at Trendrr, one of several start-ups trying to make a go of the “social TV” boom. A dozen of the company’s 20 employees will spend the day monitoring the broadcast, as well as the red carpet run-up to the show and the post-event recaps.

But Trendrr did its heaviest lifting last week, when it had to figure out exactly how it was going to track Twitter’s Oscar conversation. (Like its peers, Trendrr also keeps tabs on Facebook and other social outfits, but Twitter provides it with the most complete data stream.)

Some of you will go out of your way to help Trendrr and its competitors, like Bluefin and Socialguide, by explicitly labeling your Oscar tweets via hashtags like “#oscars.”

But many of you may simply type something about “The Descendants” at some point during ABC’s broadcast. And some of you may leave out the space between the two words, or the “The” altogether. How to account for all of that?

A combination of art and science, says Trendrr CEO Mark Ghuneim. His team spent the week going through the list of award categories and nominees that will be televised, as well as any presenters expected to be on stage, etc.

That yielded around 200 search terms that his computers will use to search the Twitter stream. And each search term will contain multiple queries — not just “The Artist,” for instance, but “TheArtist.” (You can see some of the list, pictured left.)

Some of the other stuff is trickier to account for, and Trendrr will need to make some decisions about some of the tweets on the fly. If it sees a spike in tweets about “Drive,” for instance, it will need to figure out if people are talking about tooling around in a Toyota, or a sound-editing award.

All of which make for interesting data points after the event, some of which I’ll happy to write up here. (Spoiler alert: Just like the Super Bowl and the Grammys, the Oscars will generate a big year-over-year increase in Twitter activity.)

The long-term question is what kind of value all of this data will provide for programmers and advertisers.

Even if it turns out that Twitter (and Facebook, and every other social service) is directing more eyeballs toward TV — a narrative that pleases both the old- and new-media folks — how is it helpful to know that “George Clooney” was a popular term on Twitter last night?

“This is a swarm event,” Ghuneim says. “And when you have a swarm event, that’s when the action is most actionable.”

That sounds smart, though I’m a little skeptical that the ad world is anything close to nimble enough to do a lot with the data right now. Still, lots of marketing folks seem interested in this stuff in the present tense — if you visit Interpublic Group’s Media Lab, for instance, you’ll see Trendrr data displayed prominently. And always better to have more data than less, right?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish my preshow Melissa McCarthy appreciation exercises.

*If I had to bet, I’d go along with the conventional wisdom that gives “The Artist” an armful of statues. And if you haven’t seen it, I’d say this: It’s fun! You should go! But if you don’t see it in a theater, and end up watching at home, you’re going to be underwhelmed. Can’t watch this one with a remote or an iPhone in your hand.

Viral Video: Bueller … Bueller (No, Really!)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:21:48 +0000

This is a really clever mashup by AkooTV of the new “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” Honda ad played during the Super Bowl and the 1986 movie, both starring Matthew Broderick, in a side-by-side comparison.

Well done:

Viral Video: "The Avengers" Have a Hulk

Kara Swisher — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:32:43 +0000

The best line in the whole trailer for the upcoming action movie “The Avengers” is from Ironman Tony Stark: “We have a Hulk.”

I certainly wish I did these days, what with these tech-blogger wars!

This extended trailer, which aired last week during the Super Bowl, is well worth a look-see:

Near-Record Ratings for the Grammys. CBS Credits the Web.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:31:23 +0000

Last night’s Grammys roped in some 40 million viewers. That’s the second-largest audience the award show has ever had, and the number was up 50 percent from last year.

Why the spike? A good chunk of it, I assume, has to do with the death of Whitney Houston the day before, and viewers who wanted to see how the biggest stars in music responded to the loss of a peer.

But the rise also fits nicely with an increasingly popular digital narrative: Big, live TV events are big events on Twitter and Facebook, which generate lots of online chatter and drive more eyeballs back to the TV screen, where they inspire even more chatter. Cue virtuous cycle.

Last night’s show generated 13 million “social media comments,” says “social TV” tracker Bluefin Labs. That’s even more than the previous week’s Super Bowl (which attracted many more TV eyeballs than the Grammys).

And you could argue that the Grammys were less digitally friendly than the Super Bowl. The game was streamed live on the Web, and the awards show was broadcast-only*, and was broadcast on a three-hour delay on the West coast.

CBS, though, argues that it worked hard to generate online interest for the show. It says it attracted a million visitors to the various sites and iPad/iPhone apps it operated over the three days leading up to the show. It says it attracted a peak of 165,000 concurrent viewers to a livestream of pre-Grammys red carpet coverage Sunday afternoon.

And it says it worked hard, along with Twitter, to get music stars at last night’s show to talk up the event to their own social networks.

“You’ve got to look at the ratings and say that there’s got to be a correlation,” says Marc DeBevoise, who heads up entertainment for CBS Interactive. “We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think it was there.”

*Digital rights clearances make streaming a music show much tougher than a game — note that the Super Bowl’s halftime show with Madonna was also kept off the Web.

My So-Called Social Super Bowl

Lauren Goode — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:19:46 +0000

I am, by many measures, a digital enthusiast. I write almost exclusively for online media as part of my job, and in my Twitter profile, cop to being a 140-character addict.

But during last night’s super-media-saturated Super Bowl, I somehow managed to ignore digital media.

This wasn’t intentional (and it was very unlike our previous Footballmer dual-liveblog extravaganza, during which I balanced a laptop with a smartphone with 3-D glasses). The original plan was to watch the game at home and simultaneously monitor my multiple feeds. During the pregame festivities, I even used Foursquare to gauge how many people had already checked into a Boston-themed bar in downtown Manhattan.

Then a friend called and urged me to join him at a neighborhood bar. I brought along a tablet, its interface dotted with Super Bowl-related apps, on which I could keep an eye on the online stream. My Twitter app was open on my smartphone, and I eagerly awaited the smart and sassy commentary from the Twitterverse.

But once the game started, something happened. I decided to actually watch the game on TV and converse with the people around me. My phone was at hand, of course, in the event that someone might call or email with news, but I didn’t check my many apps.

I also paid attention to the commercials — even the ones I’d already seen on the Internet — and listened for the reactions of my fellow viewers.

By the end of the night, I had tweeted exactly once.

Apparently, my digital defection put me in the vast minority: My AllThingsD colleague Peter Kafka reports that social media commentary last night increased sixfold from the previous year’s Super Bowl broadcast. There were so many tweets flying at the end of the game that a new record for simultaneous Twitter messages was set; in television ratings, Super Bowl XLVI turned out to be the most-watched program in TV, with 111.3 million viewers.

But last night — even without reading updates on Facebook or Twitter — I sensed that the Audi “Vampire Party” ad was likely a winner, that people liked the idea of a slingshot-bound baby snatching a bag of Doritos, and that the newest Go Daddy commercial didn’t exactly resonate. According to data from the CNBC/Collective Intellect Super Sunday Ad Tracker, Doritos ads captured 15.8 percent of all engaged consumers, and the Go Daddy ad was deemed “offensive.”

Anecdotally, people like dogs. Also, Ferris Bueller triggers nostalgia in some, even if they could care less about Honda’s CR-V. And all you need to do is talk to people to get a feel for this. According to Hulu, “The Bark Side” and “Matthew’s Day Off” were the most-liked ads of the game.

Some people thought Madonna’s half-time “Vogue”-ing was impressive; others felt it was arthritic. This was later supported by postgame social media analysis from Networked Insights. But everyone I saw was glued to it, nonetheless — TiVo says so, too.

I knew that Tom Brady’s performance would be a hot topic of discussion, and that New Yorkers were pumped about the Giants’ victory, not because of Facebook status updates, but because when I walked through midtown after the game ended, the whoops and cheers could be heard for blocks.

Fortunately, I was not bound by my job to liveblog, tweet, tumble, update, text, post, buzz, pin or ping about the the big game. (AllThingsD’s Ina Fried, however, did an excellent job of liveblogging the Super Bowl for us.)

I’m sure if, say, CNBC’s Darren Rovell said, “I decided not to report on the game and just watch instead!” his bosses might have a different reaction than mine would. Not only that, but a strong voice in the field of sports business reporting would be sorely missed.

I doubt mine was missed all that much last night.

Generally, I enjoy monitoring — and contributing to — Twitter feeds while I watch live TV. I used Twitter while I watched the most recent State of the Union address. I followed along while the news of Osama bin Laden’s death was unfolding. And I chimed in during last year’s Academy Awards and March Madness games. I think the people I follow on Twitter are some of the brightest in the biz, so to speak, and I usually glean some good insights by following their tweets.

Unaccountably, last night, I just didn’t. And it ended up being the same game it would have been if I had been engaged in social media. I’m wondering if I didn’t even have a bit more fun because I communicated face to face instead of reflexively checking my little screens.

Even though I immediately returned to the social media water cooler this morning, enjoying a social Super Bowl in the old-fashioned sense of the term seems a good reminder that we don’t always need to be connected to feel connected.

(Image credit: Rickshaw_Man) | Flickr

Zynga's First Super Bowl Commercial … Kind Of

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:55:11 +0000

Zynga’s popular puzzle game Words With Friends was featured in Best Buy’s Super Bowl commercial yesterday, calling attention to the game’s founders as some of the “greatest mobile innovators.”

The game, which is a take on Scrabble, has been working its way into the cultural fabric, as Zynga is happy to remind us with a lighthearted list of milestone moments, including Alec Baldwin’s meltdown that led to getting booted off a plane (see the entire list below).

But yesterday, it became part of one of America’s biggest pastimes: Football.

If you were watching the Super Bowl, you may have briefly seen Words With Friends creators and brothers Paul and David Bettner in a cameo performance during Best Buy’s commercial. The funniest part is that they get busted for playing on a plane.

In addition to Zynga, the commercial also noted other mobile innovations, including inventors from Shazam, Square and Instagram.

Words with Friends was acquired by Zynga through the purchase of Newtoy and is actually part of an entire franchise of games that includes Chess With Friends, Hanging With Friends and the latest addition, Scramble With Friends.

In Apple’s App Store for iPhone, Words With Friends has regularly been the leading game in the word category since 2010, until Hanging With Friends became the leading game in June 2011. In August 2011, Zynga released Words With Friends on Facebook, where it has continued to be one of Zynga’s top 10 most popular titles. Currently, it ranks sixth, with Hanging With Friends now placing at 10th.

In fact, the Words With Friends franchise as a whole likely represents the company’s most played titles, even if it doesn’t monetize as well as other social game titles, like FarmVille, Poker or CityVille. A company spokesperson declined to comment.

In recognition of Words With Friends and its appearance in the commercial, here’s Zynga’s list of the game’s biggest cultural moments:

In the words of Jamie Lee Curtis, waiting for a word is “like a young lover waiting for words from her beau.”
It’s credited for being a matchmaker and a flirt because strangers can play each other and chat.
It helped save lives (See Gizmodo story here.)
Celebrity couples do it every day (Alec Baldwin is the best example.)
It’s the subject of ‘rapper braggadocio’ — word up, Fabolous and Big Boi.
John Mayer tweeted, “Words With Friends is the new Twitter.”
Finally, people no longer have to think you’re talking about wrestling or pandas when you type WWF.
The New York Giants are fans. (See the WSJ story.)
It became an official FAA violation when one smart celeb got kicked off a flight. (See above.)
And finally, the game co-starred in a Superbowl XLVI commercial.

And here, if you missed it, is the commercial:

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo: The Full Dive Into Media Interview (Video)

Peter Kafka — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:30:04 +0000

Last week, we got to talk a deep roster of old and new media heavy hitters at D: Dive Into Media. Now we’re bringing you the full interviews from that conference, kicking off with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

Costolo and I started out by talking about Twitter’s recent dustup with Google, but we jumped around a lot, touching on everything from Twitter’s deep integration with Apple to its response to government censorship.

The core of the interview, though, focused on Twitter’s evolution as a business and its relationship with media companies, who use the service to promote their products. (See: Yesterday’s Super Bowl.)

I think it’s quite obvious that Twitter itself is a media business — it attracts its users’ attention, then rents that attention out to advertisers.

Costolo says that advertising will be Twitter’s core revenue driver, but he disagreed with my assessment: “We’re in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company,” he said. It wasn’t the only time Costolo disagreed with something I said that night:

[ See post to watch video ]

A Super Social Bowl

Peter Kafka — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:32:47 +0000

You could have watched the Super Bowl without checking Twitter or Facebook, but you probably snuck at least a few peeks in throughout the game. And a lot of you ended up typing something, too.

Bluefin Labs, a “social TV” start-up that analyzes commentary during TV broadcasts, says it saw 11.5 million comments during tonight’s game. That’s up more than 6x over last year’s broadcast.

(Bluefin competitor Trendrr says they saw a similar leap: They count 15.8 million comments for the game, up from 3.01 million.)

I’ve asked Bluefin if they’ve got any additional insight into the data, and to make sure that they’re comparing equivalent data sets. Last I recall, Bluefin had said that they get a lot of data from Twitter, and less from Facebook, and none from Google+, which wasn’t around last year, anyway.

But assuming Bluefin is comparing apples with apples, the logical conclusions here are that:

A) People are using Twitter and Facebook a whole lot more than they were a year ago; and/or

B) People are using Twitter and Facebook a whole lot more when they watch TV.

More B than A, says Bluefin marketing head Tom Thai, via email: “Sure, social media itself (Twitter, Facebook, etc) has grown in the past year. But the Social TV consumer activity growth has outpaced it. Generally seeing triple digit growth in Social TV.”

That conclusion — again, the two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive — would be good news for both Facebook and Twitter; especially Twitter, which has bet big on the idea that it can provide a “second screen” experience for programmers. CBS strategy honcho Zander Lurie seems like he’s a believer:

Twitter is helping live broadcast events more than axe bodyspray is helping dudes with the ladies

— zander lurie (@zlurie) February 6, 2012

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and I spent a bunch of time talking about that idea last week at D: Dive Into Media, and we’ll have more on that tomorrow.

In the meantime, we’re expecting a series of usage updates from Twitter about tonight’s game. Here’s the first, which would mean more if we had context, so I’ll ask for that.

In the final three minutes of the Super Bowl tonight, there were an average of 10,000 Tweets per second.

– Twitter (@twitter) February 6, 2012

Update: And here, with speed, is some of that context from Twitter PR folks, on other recent high-volume Twitter events:

Tim Tebow overtime playoff win (January 8, 2012): 9,402 TPS

2011 MTV Video Music Awards (August 28, 2011): 8,868 TPS

End of FIFA Women’s World Cup (July 17, 2011): 7,196 TPS

Brazil eliminated from the Copa America (July 17, 2011): 7,166 TPS

AllThingsD Covers the Tech of Super Bowl XLVI (And the Ads, the Game and Madonna)

Ina Fried — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:12:28 +0000

If you liked Footballmer, you are going to love AllThingsD’s coverage of the Super Bowl.

We’ll have a liveblog commenting on the game, the commercials, the apps and more, brought to you by tech-and-sports enthusiast Ina Fried, with possible contributions from other staffers, if they can be pried away from the game.

Our coverage will kick off just before the game does. In the meantime, check out our techie guide to the Super Bowl with info on apps, streaming and more.

2:17 pm: It’s still more than an hour to go until game time, but if you want to watch, NBC is streaming the pregame show. http://nflstream.nbcsports.com/

2:23 pm: Sharing a few of my friends’ comments re: The Super Bowl:

“The Super Bowl … keeping Roman numerals alive for 46 years.”

and

“so I heard there’s a Madonna concert on today, with some strange pre-show and post-show entertainment …”

Feel free to email me your observations on the game, the tech and more to ina@allthingsd.com, and I will add in some of them, as well.

2:32 pm: Here’s what NBC’s streaming of the pregame show looks like:

2:35 pm: The NBC app also allows, among other thing, reviewing the ads and switching of camera angles.

2:43 pm: Getting my gear all ready for the game, and to monitor the apps. So far, I have at the ready a MacBook Air for the blogging and, to see the coverage, a Verizon/Motorola Droid Razr Maxx with NFL Mobile. And an iPad. May dig out one or two more gadgets, as well.

2:46 pm: My colleagues at The Wall Street Journal note that there is a traffic jam with folks trying to get to the game — an air traffic jam. I hate when I can’t park my private jet:

3:07 pm: Another shot of my setup as we get ready for the big game.

Meanwhile, it’s time for the starting lineup. Some guy named Manning is starting for the Giants.

The Patriots have some guy named Brady.

3:11 pm: It’s time to meet the players for both teams. And/or heat up the five-layer dip.

3:12 pm: On the commercial front, meanwhile, it’s an ad for Hulu Plus. No Baldwins or aliens, though.

If you miss a commercial, by the way, NBC says you can rewatch it on their site.

Not sure if the same goes for key plays.

3:16 pm: “America the Beautiful,” with Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton. I missed who was singing on the TV. Luckily, NFL Mobile on Verizon Droid Razr Maxx is running about 10 seconds behind. Homegrown instant replays.

3:18 pm: Meanwhile, “American Idol” alum Kelly Clarkson is singing the National Anthem. So far I’d put “Idol” up by a touchdown over “The Voice.”

3:20 pm: Cut to commercial for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film “The Dictator,” followed by a Verizon Wireless add for the Droid Razr, which now comes in colors. AJ’s excited: “You know me, I love colors,” he said.

As for me, I’m more excited by the Maxx and its extra battery life. Should have charged it up ahead of time to see if it could make it through the whole game.

Twitter is doing an interesting special Super Bowl page, monitoring how both teams are doing, tweet-wise:

3:26 pm: Meanwhile, on the field, New England won the coin toss and deferred to get the ball in the second half.

3:29 pm: As a reminder to all those enjoying the free livestreaming of the game by NBC, be thankful they have the game rights and not ESPN.

ESPN boss John Skipper told me at our D: Dive Into Media conference that he totally would have charged fans if he had the game rights.

3:38 pm: Quick game update: Giants will have to punt. Patriots will get it back, but deep in their own zone.

3:39 pm: Nice spot for Audi, touting the vampire-crushing power of its headlights.

3:41 pm: Whoa, intentional grounding call. Since Brady was in the end zone, it’s a safety. For you techie, non-sports fans, that’s two points for the Giants, plus they get the ball.

3:45 pm: Twitter is taking note of the fact that hashtags are everywhere in the Super Bowl ads, so far. Hashtags are the new URLs, says Gartner’s Michael Gartenberg.

3:50 pm: It was a catch and a fumble, but more importantly, the Patriots had an extra player on the field, so it’s just a penalty.

3:52 pm: Touchdown Giants, meaning Team Mossberg is off to a rough start, now down 9-0. Sorry, Walt.

3:54 pm: Best Buy just showed their cellphone ad — featuring, among other tech folks, Philippe Kahn, talking about the first cellphone camera. Also featured: Ray Kurzweil, the creators of Shazam, Instagram, Words With Friends and more.

It’s a fun spot.

3:56 pm: Also fun: The spot with a Chevy truck surviving the 2012 Mayan-predicted apocalypse. A bunch of guys in their trucks reunite, along with the Twinkies, which also survived. Not so lucky: The guy driving a Ford.

4:02 pm: Oh boy. Go Daddy at it again.

4:06 pm: Patriots kick a field goal to make it 9-3.

Meanwhile, colleague Joe Brown has dug up some most excellent Super Bowl related tweets, I’ll sprinkle in here:

@TheTweetOfGod notes this will be the last Super Bowl before the Apocalypse; @AndyBorowitz notes that porn sites are seeing a drop in traffic; while @JimGaffigan aptly points out that “The Super Bowl is like the Super Bowl of Super Bowl references.”

Borowitz also hypothesizes that Madonna’s halftime show will provide “a sneak preview of Lady Gaga’s halftime show in 2032.”

See something you like, send it my way to ina@allthingsd.com.

4:15 pm: Nice Volkswagen commercial mixes cute dogs and “Star Wars” to capture two key demographics.

4:20 pm: Aiming for equal time after that Go Daddy ad, there’s one that consists of just David Beckham in his underwear for 30 seconds.

4:23 pm: Interesting playbook for the Patriots, so far. I think it is the BlackBerry PlayBook.

4:28 pm: There are all these apps for making a game out of watching the Super Bowl. Hopefully, there is one that makes the Patriots make a game out it.

4:30 pm: Giants have to punt again, but they pin the Patriots deep again. New England will have it on their own four-yard line.

4:32 pm: It’s retro time, with Lucasfilm touting the 3-D version of “Star Wars,” and NBC touting the 53-year-old version of Madonna.

4:37 pm: Breaking: Teleflora steals ad team from Go Daddy. Then a funny ad from Sketchers, with a dog in tennis shoes.

4:38 pm: Wow, that Cars.com ad was creepy. With a capital “C” and a capital “REEPY.”

4:41 pm: Another tech note: NBC’s livestreaming is being aided by Vertigo, whose CEO, Scott Stanfield, asks everyone to help make the game the biggest streaming event ever.

4:43 pm: Grandma in wheelchair steals back Doritos bag by slingshotting baby to get it. Now it’s Etrade baby and pal “speed dating” in a hospital nursery. Babies are taking over.

4:46 pm: As for that football game thing, it’s almost halftime, with the Patriots in striking distance at the three-yard line, with 18 seconds to go.

4:47 pm: And Mossberg scores. Well, technically speaking, it was one of the Patriots on the field. Anyhoo, touchdown Patriots.

4:51 pm: And it’s halftime.

Or “game time” for many of my friends, who don’t understand why they are playing football at a Madonna concert, anyway.

5:00 pm: Hulu Plus gets another plug. Touts the ability to watch shows on all kinds of devices. Now it’s an evil(er) plan to take over the world.

Meanwhile, Shazam gets a shout-out in a Bud Light ad.

5:01 pm: And now, the moment you have all been waiting for … 1982.

5:04 pm: On the plus side, the wardrobe is fully functional.

5:06 pm: Meanwhile, if you Shazam the halftime show, you get a free LMFAO remake of Madonna.

5:11 pm: Dude, Madonna just stole the football field. We’re going to want that thing back.

5:16 pm: Here’s the Shazam app in action during the halftime show:

5:17 pm: And here’s how Madonna wrapped up her act, as seen on the one screen I haven’t talked about. It’s called a TV — people used to watch stuff on them:

5:23 pm: And, with some final halftime ads from Betty White and Clint Eastwood, we’re back to football. Brady and the Patriots have it just past their own 20.

5:28 pm: Walt carries it in again, as the Mossbergs extend their lead to 17-9.

5:31 pm: Just checked. RIM hasn’t made any personnel moves during this game.

5:36 pm: Some more great tweets curated by our fabulous Joe Brown:

@michaelianblack: Joan Rivers did an amazing halftime show.

@PFTompkins: That oughtta do it. World peace should be here by the next GoDaddy commercial.

@TheTweetOfGod: Patriots 10. Giants 9. Madonna 53.

5:39 pm: Giants did a kick-y thing. Now 17-12 Patriots.

5:39 pm: Update: Fiat also knows how to use sex to sell.

5:42 pm: I want to grab a beer, but I am afraid I might miss a commercial. Or accidentally grab a Bud Light Platinum, whatever that is.

5:43 pm: Meanwhile, NBC is plugging an NBC Sports Talk app.

Madonna gets a shout-out from her peers:

5:52 pm: It’s easy to miss, in all the tweets and ads and Madonnas, but there is actually a pretty good football game going on.

5:56 pm: It’s almost the moment you have all been waiting for … Samsung’s Galaxy Note commercial. It’s kind of like a futchdown.

6:06 pm: Loving the “Ferris Bueller” revamp Honda CR-V commercial with Matthew Broderick. #bueller

First Madonna, now Ferris Bueller. Glad my generation now runs all the companies. Or at least their ad agencies.

6:13 pm: Bud Light gets some “awww” points with its last ad, promoting the beer-fetching rescue dog, “Weego.”

6:21 pm: Woo Hoo. Careerbuilder monkeys. I’ve missed those guys.

6:21 pm: Fourth quarter, 9:24 left to go. You can text your vote to for Super Bowl MVP. Personally, I’ll need another 9:24 to give you my answer.

6:25 pm: Futchdown! Goofy ad for Samsung’s Galaxy Note phablet now on.

Not a lot of stylus fans on Twitter, as Samsung ad is getting roundly panned, as is the product.

6:29 pm: Dow Jones colleague Ian Sherr reports his stream of the Super Bowl is decidedly subpar. “None of the TV ads, and it doesn’t even break at the same time as TV.”

Of course, only at the Super Bowl does one complain there are not enough ads in Internet streams.

“I’ve missed several plays, and they keep playing the same ads with Dwight from The Office and “Act of Valor” over and over again,” Sherr said in a Twitter post.

6:32 pm: Meanwhile, it’s a two-point game, with 3:46 to play.

Giants have the ball, down two on their own 12.

6:34 pm: Throw to the sideline at 50-yard line ruled a catch. Patriots challenge, but looks pretty good. First key use of instant replay this game.

Yep, ruling on field confirmed, and will cost the Patriots a time-out.

6:37 pm: As for that Samsung ad, it was a first-ever commercial for director Bobby Farrelly, who is known for “There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb & Dumber” and “Kingpin.”

If you need to re-watch it, it’s here.

I recommend doing so now, as there is another Go Daddy.com ad playing.

6:44 pm: Giants score, but likely would have rather used a little more clock.

New England will still need a touchdown, and have less than a minute to get it.

It’s now 21-17, Giants.

Sorry, was watching the game. First down, but clock clicking. Just 17 seconds left, though.

6:51 pm: Just nine seconds left now, with Patriots near midfield.

6:52 pm: Okay. Five ticks left, so this is probably it for both the Patriots and this liveblog. Hope you were at least entertained!

Incomplete. Giants win, 21-17.

6:55 pm: Disneyland or Disney World? That’s the only question that remains.

Here's the Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2012

Peter Kafka — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:37:50 +0000

Maybe you’re a little bit interested in watching part of the Super Bowl on your Verizon phone. This should cure you of that: It’s the ad Verizon is using to push the service, which it’s selling for $3. I’m a Verizon subscriber, and the carrier just sent this directly to my iPhone, unprompted, via MMS.

You’ll have to take my word for this, but this is exactly what it looks and sounds like on my phone — there’s no drop in quality in this YouTube upload.

What’s truly bizarre is that the live NFL streaming that Verizon does provide is actually pretty good. Or at least it was, when they were offering it for free at the beginning of the season. I don’t know why they’d want to promote it with something that looked like it was made on a Commodore 64.

Also odd: Verizon has made competent, attractive ads for its NFL offering in the past. Here’s one from 2011:

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Neil Webster)

Are You Ready for Some Football? A Techie Guide to the Super Bowl.

Ina Fried — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:24:33 +0000

While many techies aren’t sports fans (and vice versa), lots of us are enthusiasts of both ones and zeros and X’s and O’s.

And for those who are into both football and geekery, tomorrow is kind of like the Super Bowl. Well, technically speaking, I guess tomorrow is like the Super Bowl for everyone.

Anyhoo. For everyone looking for some tech to go with their gridiron, there are lots of options.

First of all, NBC is streaming the Super Bowl live over the Internet, for those who can’t make it to a television or want a second screen to enjoy even more of the action.

ESPN president John Skipper said at D: Dive Into Media that he thinks giving away the game for free is a bad idea, but NBC paid for the rights, so they get to do what ever they want.

Verizon is also broadcasting the game live to the smallest of screens via its NFL Mobile service. (However, Peter Kafka notes their marketing of said service could use some work.)

Second, there are a ton of Super Bowl apps, including the official ones for both iPhone and Android, as well as a game program. Peanuts are still not downloadable, but content-tagging app Shazam is offering a variety of commercial tie-ins. Check here for even more game-day apps.

And of course, the big game will be the talk of Twitter, to be sure.

Lastly, as a special treat, AllThingsD will be offering live coverage of the game, the commercials and the social-media hoopla. We had so much fun in January with Footballmer, our liveblog mash-up of Steve Ballmer’s final CES keynote and the BCS championship, that we decided to do it again.

This time, though, I’ll actually get to watch the game, rather than having Ballmer duty. I’ll be commenting on the game, the commercials, the tech and the Twitter commentary. Check back tomorrow before kickoff for that.

Philippe Kahn's First Camera Phone Set to Star in Best Buy Super Bowl Ad

Ina Fried — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:43:57 +0000

If you want to learn more about the first camera phone, the Super Bowl could be your chance.

Inventor Philippe Kahn talks about it in a Best Buy ad running in the first quarter. In a promotional video that ties in to the ad, Kahn shows his first photo, of his newborn daughter, and talks about how the technology came to be.

While not the first time a camera had been attached to a phone, Kahn notes his camera phone allowed the modern notion of instant sharing. A video of the ad is publicly posted on YouTube (though unlisted).

These days Kahn is running Fullpower Technologies, which does some motion control stuff demoed back at our D7 conference. Their MotionX software is a popular iPhone navigation app and their technology is also used in devices like Jawbone’s UP and Nike+ GPS.

Since you might be refilling the snack bowl or taking a bio break when the ad airs Sunday, here you go:

Update: Best Buy wrote me to note that this video is not the ad itself, but rather a longer video expanding upon the ad itself. And the ad will appear in the first quarter, not in the third or fourth, as I originally wrote.

Shazam Stakes Its Claim as the Second Screen of the Super Bowl

Liz Gannes — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:25:42 +0000

Lots of folks are hyping their Super Bowl apps and tie-ins, but Shazam seems to be going above and beyond. About half of the Super Bowl advertisers have given Shazam bonus content (like videos and sweepstakes entries) to reward those who “tag” the ads from Shazam’s smartphone apps. Plus, Interscope and Bud Light are sending out bonus halftime-show content, and game stats and social features will be running throughout the game.

NFL Brings (Some of) the Super Bowl to Tablets

Lauren Goode — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:37:48 +0000

In case you missed it, NBC has announced that the Super Bowl will be livestreamed on the Web, because, as my AllThingsD colleague Peter Kafka points out, the network expects you to watch it on TV. NFL.com will also carry NBC’s livestream, as will NFL Mobile through Verizon Wireless.

But for those more interested in the postgame highlights and analysis, the inaugural Super Bowl XLVI app from NFL Magazine might do the trick.

The tablet app is meant to be more commemorative than anything else — think of those dust-gathering magazines you collect each year — and it won’t stream the game live.

The app will offer image-rich season recaps for both teams, player highlight reels, polls and Super Bowl history. (No word on whether it includes a slide show of Tom Brady’s hairstyles throughout the years.)

After the game, the app will be updated with 15 to 20 minutes of highlight clips, breakdowns of key plays, interviews with players, NFL.com articles on the game and 360-degree photos.

The video available on the app during and after the game will be “clean” game highlights from NFL Network. Later on, extended highlights from NFL Films, with NBC logos and graphics, will be made available through the app.

The app, which is available on the iPad and on Android tablets, is selling at a pregame discount of $2.99 — which is less than half of the postgame price.

“We’ve seen a lot of fan demand for this,” said Jeff Berman, general manager of NFL Digital Media. “We plan to keep the app fresh for several weeks as we introduce new content, and ultimately provide a kind of lifetime digital keepsake.”

Nielsen data shows that 70 percent of tablet owners and 68 percent of smartphone owners use their devices while watching TV, while a poll conducted by Velti and Harris Interactive shows that nearly 60 percent of mobile users plan to look at or use their mobile device during the game. We’ll likely see some interesting data after Sunday, as well, about mobile usage during the Super Bowl. These metrics are key for advertisers as they try to gauge how many eyeballs are on second — and third, and fourth — screens during big television events.

And what about those Super Bowl ads, you ask? NFL Magazine’s Super Bowl app won’t feature any third-party ads this year, but it will include NFL promotions, as well as ads for The Daily, the tablet newspaper owned by News Corp. (which also owns this site), since the NFL is using The Daily’s technology platform to power the app.

Berman said that since this is the first time NFL Digital has done a commemorative Super Bowl app — it’s the NFL’s first tablet-only app, as well — they’re not focused on signing up a bunch of ad partners to start, though it’s a possibility for future versions of the app.

Revenue generation aside, the app means something else for rabid sports fans: The ability to call up key plays on your tablet whenever you feel like watching them. And rewatching them. And showing them to your friends. And discussing the nuances of the plays.

And unlike a commemorative magazine — which, by the way, the NFL will be producing, as well — the app provides an interactive and updatable experience. Look, Ma, moving pictures!

Hulu's Alien MushyMush Plot Is Back for the Super Bowl With Will Arnett

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:32:22 +0000

Not long after its CEO, Jason Kilar, left the stage after his talk with Peter Kafka at D: Dive Into Media today, Hulu revealed a teaser for the TV ad that will promote the online video service during Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Here, Hulu returns to the campaign it launched in 2009, which starred Alec Baldwin and involved an alien plan to turn human brains into tasty “mushymush.” You see, your mother was right about TV turning your brains to mush, and Hulu is just the secret weapon to make it happen faster, allowing the aliens to eat more. Get it? And Hulu Plus, its subscription service, is even better.

Naturally Hulu is turning to Twitter, and there’s a hashtag you can use to tweet about what you’re watching to turn your own brain into #mushymush.

The latest installment stars Will Arnett, whom you’ll recognize if you watch shows like “30 Rock,” “Arrested Development” and “Up All Night,” which I don’t, so I, uh, didn’t. Anyhow, enjoy the ad:

Correction: Earlier I said this was the ad, not understanding that the video above is actually a teaser for the real ad that will run on Sunday. Sorry about that.

ESPN's John Skipper on Digital Distribution: "We Take the Dollar and We Take the Dime, as Well"

Liz Gannes — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:31:58 +0000

ESPN isn’t much for cannibalization, said its new president John Skipper, speaking today at D: Dive Into Media.

That is, ESPN thinks it can preserve its traditional premium fees from paid TV distributors, while also making money from online offerings.

Where some in television have worried about “turning analog dollars into digital dimes” (I believe that originated with former NBC CEO Jeff Zucker), Skipper said of ESPN, “We take the dollar and we take the dime, as well.”

ESPN viewership is 99 percent live, Skipper said, and it fights cord-cutters by not giving its content away for free. That’s in contrast to NBC, which will be livestreaming this weekend’s Super Bowl online.

“We have a different philosophy,” Skipper said. “We believe that the content we sell to distributors for a lot of money, that we should not distribute it for free to someone else.”

By contrast, Skipper said, “The Rose Bowl is not available for free. You have to have a paid television subscription, and then you can watch it wherever you want.”

Since 2005, ESPN has made sure that all its content deals include rights for every device. As Skipper put it, “We don’t cannibalize ourself, we use those platforms to cross-promote.”

Further, Skipper says ESPN is well worth the money distributors pay (something that draws a lot of grumbles from others in the industry). It brings in strong local ad sales, and has pioneered 3-D and HD content on television.

“The rates we get from distributors are directly correlated to the value we provide,” Skipper said.

NBC Puts the Super Bowl on the Web Because It Thinks You'll Watch It on TV

Peter Kafka — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:30:05 +0000

The Super Bowl is the most valuable show on TV. Which is why NBC can charge a reported $3.5 million for a 30-second spot during the Giants-Patriots game this Sunday.

But if you watch the game on the Web, your eyeballs are worth a whole lot less. NBC, which is streaming the entire thing for the first time ever, will be lucky to get anything near a million dollars for that same ad when it runs online.

So why is Comcast’s broadcast network putting the game on the Web, period? Isn’t this the classic analog-dollars-to-digital-dimes trade that Big Media strives so hard to avoid?

Nope, says Rick Cordella, who runs digital for NBC Sports. The network assumes that nearly every eyeball — and every ad dollar — that it gets from the Web this week will be a bonus, because whoever watches online is simultaneously watching on a big TV, the way football is supposed to be watched.

This is supposed to be the classic “second screen” experience that Twitter’s Dick Costolo and so many other digital folks are excited about.

And that makes plenty of sense to me. Many TV guys have gotten plenty comfortable with the idea of streaming their most valuable live sports events online, for free. In most of those cases, the general assumption is that anyone who’s watching on the Web is someone who can’t watch the game on a TV to begin with — see the CBS/Turner Sports livestreams of the NCAA March Madness tournament.

And in NBC’s case, it is packing the Webcast full of extra camera angles and other goodies, including a feature that will let you rewatch every Super Bowl commercial once it’s aired. The assumption is that you’re holding the TV remote in one hand, and controlling your laptop with another.

NBC already does a version of this with its Sunday Night Football broadcasts during the regular season, and the network says it draws between 200,000 and 300,000 unique viewers per game (that’s the source of that Vikings-Saints screenshot, above).

Meanwhile, those broadcasts are the networks’ best-performing shows by a long shot, so it doesn’t seem to have slowed them down. The NFL, meanwhile, reports that Web companion streams of the Thursday night games it shows on its own channel averaged 450,000 uniques.

So Cordella argues that putting the biggest TV show of the year online, for free, is really no big deal. But I’m pretty sure that this attitude isn’t shared by everyone in the TV business, and we might hear a bit about that today at the D: Dive Into Media conference. Curious to see what ESPN boss John Skipper thinks, for starters.

Super Bowl Predictions: How EA Uses Madden to Guess the Final Score

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:53:13 +0000

Electronic Arts is predicting that the New York Giants will defeat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, by a single field goal.

For the past several years, the videogame publisher has been using its hit title Madden NFL to simulate the outcome of the Super Bowl — and in six out of the past eight matchups, it has guessed correctly.

But unlike the camel in the New Jersey zoo that has picked the winner of five of the last six Super Bowls, EA breaks down the score quarter by quarter.

EA simulates the Super Bowl by using artificial intelligence and real data from each team. It even includes variables such as injuries. The simulation is powered by Madden NFL and Xbox 360, the official console sponsor of the NFL.

EA replays the game’s highlights in a video, including Giants quarterback Eli Manning being named MVP for completing 25 of 39 passes with two touchdowns, and the Patriots’ Tom Brady throwing for 327 yards and three touchdowns.

Spoiler Alert: To win the game, Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes will make a 40-yard field goal, with the final score 27-24.

Ferris Bueller Is Back, and He's Driving a Honda Mom-Wagon (Video)

Lauren Goode — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:27:38 +0000

The Honda 2012 CR-V isn’t quite the same vehicle as the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California. But Matthew Broderick — a.k.a. Ferris Bueller — is bringing back his high-school-truant charm in a Super Bowl ad for the car company.

The commercial was originally supposed to be kept under wraps until game day, but Gawker Media’s car blog, Jalopnik, spoiled the surprise last Friday. Honda put the full ad on YouTube early this morning. Jalopnik says Honda hired “The Hangover” writer/director Todd Phillips to create it.

In the spot, Broderick reprises his role from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” calling in sick from work in Los Angeles, instead of from high school in Chicago. Instead of crooning a karaoke version of “Danke Schoen” during a parade, this time Broderick gets caught up in a Chinese New Year parade. His CR-V is taken for a joy ride, not by garage attendants, but by a valet parker at a posh restaurant.

Here’s the spot, for those of you that would rather just watch it. Maybe … nine times?

Can This Broken Robot Help Save Cisco Systems?

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:00:11 +0000

If you watched Sunday’s two conference-championship football games in the U.S. and paid any attention whatsoever to the commercials, there’s a good chance you saw the ad spot (embedded below) from Cisco Systems.

The spot depicts a batch of assembly-line robots busily building cars, as an instrumental version of the 1979 Gary Numan hit “Cars” plays happily. All is well until one of the robots experiences trouble and complains to the others, “I’m broken.” No problem, one of the others says, fixes his stricken comrade, and all is again well. Cue the voice-over, saying something about assembly lines that repair themselves. Then cue the corporate logo, aaaand … out.

The spot — which has exactly 100 percent less Ellen Page than the last series of Cisco TV ads — is part of a significant new advertising offensive that Cisco is launching today on television, in print and online. The TV spots will appear during the NCAA basketball games, the National Hockey League’s All-Star Skills Competition, and on CNBC and other business-oriented programming. However, it notably won’t appear during the Super Bowl.

Those robots will be seen again, disassembling and reassembling sections of certain Web sites as part of a series of “site takeovers,” including CNBC and The Street, among others.

The print portion is a six-page “manifesto” that explains ways that Cisco’s “Human Network” plays important and unexpected roles at banking companies and companies that sell chutney, and helps the National Basketball Association push its video around the world. The manifesto will appear in The Wall Street Journal (which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp.), the Economist and the New York Times.

There will also be a social campaign via LinkedIn that goes after 140,000 C-level executives registered on that network. It will be the first time that embedded video will be used in a LinkedIn campaign. More TV ads will come later this year, as will localized versions of the campaign for international markets.

Last week, I talked with Blair Christie, Cisco’s chief marketing officer, who said that the manifesto in particular is about using the voice of its customers to show how Cisco’s technology can help companies do things they couldn’t do before. Of course, the point they’re supposed to get is that a Cisco intelligent network is what’s enabling them to do that.

Christie says it’s all part of Cisco’s effort to simplify how it communicates about itself. There’s no more muddling of the message. There’s no more consumer division to eat into the perception that Cisco is anything but an enterprise- and service-provider-focused networking company, so no more need for cute ads that overdo awkward jokes about teleconferencing, or showing a giggly twentysomething woman in a virtual fitting room. Cisco is now about transforming how companies do what they do, either by doing it better, or seeing new opportunities. It’s a big message, and a tricky one to get across in 30 seconds during a football game.

I asked Christie about the state of Cisco’s brand before this campaign, and whether or not there were any perceived weaknesses, given its recent troubles, that this ad effort is meant to shore up. “There was actually a lot that was right with our brand,” she told me. “The opportunity we had was clear and simple. Our customer voice is our talent, and that’s what we’re showing, and it’s consistent with our strategy. We use our customers as a test bed, so why not use them as a reflection of our brand? It wasn’t rocket science. But it was the customer voice that was missing.”

Simplifying and streamlining are themes that Cisco is certainly acquainted with of late. It has been doing a lot of those, and indeed, even shrinking itself as part of a broad-based restructuring. The results of that effort are starting to show up in Cisco’s results.

Time will tell if this new advertising campaign will help Cisco effectively reintroduce itself to its core customers; fight off strong competitive thrusts from the likes of Hewlett-Packard, whose networking division marketed itself aggressively against Cisco in 2010; and perhaps press a perceived advantage against Juniper Networks, which has been having its own problems.

What I find notable, or maybe missing from the campaign, are recognizable names of customers doing innovative things. Yes, there’s the NBA, but in the print manifesto, who’s the bank that’s using Cisco’s video TelePresence to interact with customers? Who’s the small chutney company that turned “browsers into buyers”? And who’s the car company with such smart assembly-line robots? It’s a good message that, to my mind, could be made a lot more effective with more specific examples.

And while I grant it’s often difficult to get customers to agree to be named in ads like this — you could almost hear CEO John Chambers’s frustration about not being allowed to name a certain banking customer, about which he was obviously proud, on a recent conference call — the biggest networking company in the world shouldn’t have such a problem. It should be able to brag that this or that household-name bank is an enthusiastic Cisco customer, and that Cisco networks powered the manufacturing of that popular car everyone is talking about right now. That would add some real oomph, and really serve to remind potential customers that Cisco is still, despite its recent missteps, the networking world’s alpha dog.

Anyhow, my critique aside, here’s the robots spot. Enjoy:

Cisco Robots from Arik Hesseldahl on Vimeo.

HomeAway Hopes Golden Globes Ad Can Fix Super Bowl Blunder

Tricia Duryee — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:00:13 +0000

HomeAway hopes its new commercial, airing during today’s Golden Globes broadcast, will make its Super Bowl blunder a thing of the past.

The new campaign — set to the tune of “Let’s Stay Together,” by Al Green — is much more tame than last year’s ad. The 30-second spot focuses on creating family memories around campfires, swimming holes and hiking trails; memories that often can be made in or near homes — not in hotels.

HomeAway, which operates vacation-rentals marketplaces, including HomeAway.com, VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com, went out on a limb for its Super Bowl commercial last year. If the point was to generate buzz before filing for its initial public offering, it was a success.

But the Austin, Texas-based company ended up having to yank the ad after drawing criticism over a particularly disturbing image: In the commercial, a doll — which was obviously not a child — was thrown against a wall to demonstrate how cramped hotel rooms can be, compared to more spacious rental houses.

The updated — and more subtle — campaign will air in select markets during NBC’s broadcast of the 69th Golden Globe Awards. Following its debut, the spot will air on the Travel Channel, the Food Network, HGTV and other special promotions, including the Grammy Awards on Feb. 12, the Academy Awards on Feb. 26 and the “Survivor” finale.

Second time’s the charm?

NBC Will Stream Super Bowl Broadcast Live

Peter Kafka — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:01:35 +0000

A first for pro football: It will put its biggest game of the year on the Web, live, for free. The NFL says February’s NBC broadcast will also be available on Verizon phones; NBC already streams its Sunday night games on the Web. The move parallels other broadcasters’ moves to put some of their big games on the Web, most notably CBS’s broadcast of the March Madness tournament.

"Like My Status" Was Facebook's Breakout Meme in 2011

Liz Gannes — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:02:03 +0000

Facebook has a nice tradition of telling us about emerging acronyms found in its users’ status messages each year. It’s just the kind of thing to make a young person like me feel like an old fogey for not using the hip new slang yet.

Last year’s winner was “HMU,” for “hit me up”; in 2009, it was “FML” for “(eff) my life.” (And to be fair, I’ve definitely seen those posted by my own friends since — I guess we’re late adopters.)

So here are this year’s dual winners for acronyms in the Facebook status messages of U.S. users: “LMS” for “like my status,” and “TBH” for “to be honest.”

LMS was the “fastest-growing meme of 2011,” by Facebook’s count; in fact, it often went hand in hand with “TBH.”

So if a Facebook user posted “LMS for a TBH,” she would then hand out individualized honest feedback for any friend who pressed the “Like” button next to her status, as in the image at left. It’s kind of wackily complicated, but at the same time a nice gesture.

Facebook released a dizzying list of other year-end trends, as well, through a “Memology” app on the official Facebook page. The biggest global peaks of the year were when Osama bin Laden was killed and when the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.