Twitter Marketing: Names and Powers

Tom Milsom's band, Sons of Admirals, has just released "Here Comes My Baby" a new single and digital bundle on iTunes and they are making an all-out push to land in the UK top ten during the first week of release. The song, a cover of a Cat Stevens hit from the sixties, has been reimagined for the twenty-first century (to bottow some pretentious twaddle from Brian Wilson's Gerhwin album).



As part of the marketing effort, Tom, spent a good part of the day yesterday on Twitter making good on the following twittered offer:

Buy the Here Comes My Baby bundle in iTunes today, tweet me a link to a screenshot, and I'll personally bestow upon you a unique nickname.

Turns out that, unlike the garden variety of nicknames, Tom's names also came with super powers. (see below)

Mickeleh's Take: Personal attention from a recording artist carries a lot of weight. But is this scalable?

Here are some of the names and powers Tom granted to people who bought "Here Comes My Baby."

@_heyduder Hooray! You are now SUPERCARLY. You can fly. And swim through brick.

@LacieDayParade Bow down to the almighty LACIE, PROTECTOR OF THE REALM OF FASHION! See an ugly shirt? BLAM. You can make that person vanish.

@greengoobermunc Hooray for MARTHA, THE TUBE QUEEN. You are now ruler of things in tubes, that are tubes, or the London Underground trains.

@Matthew_Gibson Hooray for KING MATTHEW of THINGS THAT MAKE SOUND WHEN YOU HIT THEM! Percussion's all under your watchful eye. Good luck.

@DreamlessJamie Hooray! Thanks JAMIE, RULER OF THE SLEEP REALM. Have fun RULING OUR DREAMS!

@NotUnspecial Hooray! Thank you LAUREN, GRAND VIZIER OF INSECTS. You now have supreme power over billions of creatures!

@_irisaurus Hooray for IRIS, EYEBALL QUEEN! You can see EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE

@BookWormVicky Hooray for VICKY, PRINCESS OF POISONOUS GASES! Use your new powers wisely.

@kthrnprrtt That is perfectly fine KATHARINE, GREAT MISTRESS OF WHEELS. You pretty much have power over anything that rolls now.

@claytonpeters Thanks CLAYTON, MASTER OF METEOROLOGY. You control the weather now. That's pretty neat.

@PotterMoosh Thanks CRYSTAL, SEER OF FAR-FLUNG FUTURES, the most POWERFUL ORACLE the world has EVER SEEN!

@SphereCase Didn't you get one? Aren't you THE IMOGENATOR?

@kaycanseeyou YAY! Thank you KATIE, DUCHESS OF SALSA (dance AND condiment)

@TupperwareBox :D You are MADZ THE IMPALER. You are SO PALE.

@emmaajedward That's fine, EMMA, PRINCESS OF THE PRESENT. You are in charge of making sure time-travelers don't get disoriented.

@poppybouttell Thanks POPPY, OPIUM PRINCESS! The good kind. From ancient China. Not, y'know, heroin.

@Becz005 YAY for BEC, MISTRESS OF CATS IN CLOTHES. Rule your small, weirdly specific jurisdiction well.

@somegwenperson Hooray for GWEN, PROTECTOR OF 9. We can't got into double figures without your vigilance. *salutes*

@EnglishRedhead That's great HAYLEY, QUEEN OF SPAINS. Any Spain that is not the real Spain, you've got that shit DOWN.

@SphereCase Hooray! Thank you, THE IMOGENATOR! Your special power is to CREATE THINGS FROM YOUR IMAGINATION! Go imagine world peace!

@Abko147 Hooray for PRINCE LIAM OF ORANGE! That's a whole 7th of the colour spectrum you now rule. Rainbows cannot occur without you.

@IFYimcool Thanks ALICE, QUEEN OF WINDOWS. Glass is your willing slave. Also, Bill Gates.

@penguin1124 Either way, you are SAM, PRIME MINISTER OF SMELL. That's a whole sense. Careful how you go.


@danisnotonfire aww :3 Thank you DAN, DEFENDER OF THE LEONINE RACE. It's your job to be a kind and gentle king to the world's lions :P

@HannahCaseyyy Hooray! Then I name you HANNAH, SPRITE QUEEN. You can defeat your enemies with huge torrents of lemonade. Not 7up though.

@beaderrick BEA, HELIUM QUEEN. Balloons are now your willing servants.

@mitziplz haha, best smiley face EVER. Thank you, ELI, MASTER OF THE ARTS. Your smiley faces strike fear into the hearts of your enemies.

@BrettBall Thank you BRETT, LORD HIGH MASTER OF THINGS THAT ARE SHINY. You rule the mirror kingdom. Congrats.

@MeBeDanni That's fine DANNI, DESTROYER OF WORLDS. You destroy worlds, sure, but only uninhabited ones to make new, awesome ones.

@xlaurax Thanks LAURA, SIREN OF THE SEAS. You are friends with the fish. Which is creepy AND awesome.

@Loftio Hooray! Thanks ALEXANDRA, LIGHTHOUSE QUEEN. Basically, you can see in the dark. Also through walls.

@thinkingphrase Hooray for LORD SIMON, CARBMASTER GENERAL. You are the ruler of potatoes, and also the enemy of people on the Atkins diet.

@SophStrawberry Thank you SOPHIE, QUEEN OF THE FOREST. You are now in charge of the tree people.

@nattalieee_ Hooray for NATALIE, PRINCESS OF STAMPS. Your super power is FREE POSTAGE FOR LIFE

@tommylyon Hooray! Thank you LORD THOMAS, DRAGON KING. Your special power is ABILITY TO CONVERSE WITH REPTILES

@LizzieParker Perfect! Thank you LIZZIE, MASTER OF NETS. You can control any net. So if people are wearing fishnet tights, YOU CONTROL THEM!

@courtneyybuzz COURTNEY, QUEEN OF NEWTONIAN PHYSICS. You're really good with momentum and trajectory and gravity...

@BBC_Fangirl LAURA AKA INFRARAY you can see through walls and hear things a mile away. Also, what those TV License vans do? You can do that.

@Marthatorwho MARTHA, DESTROYER OF DALEKS. You're, like, the most useful person on the planet sometimes. :D

@kennydude That's wonderful. You are LORD JOSEPH THE PERSUASIVE. You always win arguments and got your way. And the ladies dig that.

@helenlyhelen Awesome! You are HELEN THE MIGHTY, whose super power is BEING ABLE TO TYPE AT 200 WPM

@FearlessTSwift MOLLIE THE BRAVE, whose super power is BEING ABLE TO PREDICT WHEN THE DOORBELL RINGS FIVE SECONDS BEFORE IT DOES

@JBdaWonderLlama THE ILLAMANATOR, who roams the streets, hunting evil DARK LLAMAS

@xxkathleen KATHLEEN, FORK-QUEEN. You are in charge of every fork there is. Use your power wisely.

@JazzyPants_ JASMIN, PRINCESS OF THE SKY. Birds? Clouds? Planes? You now own 'em. Congrats!

@kirifarrell KIRILLY OF THE HILLS. Your super power is to be able to FLATTEN MOUNTAINS. Construction companies will pay you MILLIONS

@BAMstranks BETHAN, QUEEN OF THE MOON. That's right, you got the MOON. Your super power is SPONTANEOUS SOUP PRODUCTION

@Reganito REGAN, SCOURGE OF WORLDSUCK. Your special power is being able to extend your legs 20 inches IN ANY DIRECTION

@bonnniiee You are BONNIE, DFENDER OF AWESOME. Your super power is winning at card games, like, all the time.

@BeckiiCruel Your super power is being able to bend spoons with your mind. Spoons and wills.

@theojessop Thanks! You are LORD THEO, RULER OF AQUATIC CREATURES.

A Creative Commons Birthday Song

I wanted to wish YouTube a happy fifth birthday yesterday without violating the copyright on the famous "Happy Birthday" song. Since I'm not in a position to pay royalties, I wrote my own original song and I'm offering it under a creative commons license. I an't imagine you'll want to use it. It's crap. But it carries the virtue of being free. So, use it if you will.

Several commenters on my YouTube channel were surprised to learn that "Happy Birthday is still under copyright. While there are those who doubt that the copyright is valid, the publishers are still collecting some $2 million annually, mainly from motion picture and television productions.



MIckeleh's Take: The copyright will expire in 2030. If I live to be as old as my dad, I might actually survive to hear you sing a royalty-free chorus of the more famous "Happy Birthday." Until then we can make do with this one.


A Song for YouTube's Fifth Birthday by Michael Markman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at mickeleh@gmail.com.

Getting Lost My predictions for Season 6 premiere

The clock is ticking to the premiere of the new season of Lost. This will be my last chance to speculate on what will happen. (Maybe I'm just doing this to compensate for the fact that I refrained from posting any iPad predictions.)

Turns out Jack was right. The H-Bomb goes off. Timelines are reset. The crash never happens. Oceanic 815 lands safely at LAX.

Mickeleh's Take: The series never airs. Abrams, Lindeloff, Cuse, and the entire cast find their bank accounts mysteriously drained of all their earnings from the show. George Bush is still president. We have never heard of Sarah Palin.

Tom Milsom Sings Lady Gaga

I let the Grammy show go by without saying a word about it. How can I make it up to you?

You can find more Tom Milsom at tommilsom.com

Condensed Cream of iPad U-I Soup

Thanks to Gizmodo for pulling these key demos clips together from the iPad Keynote

Mickeleh's Take: Knocking the iPad for being "just a big iPod Touch" is a cheap shot. There's a richness to this platform that will become even clearer when it ships and the apps start showing up.

The Party of iPad No Can't Filibuster

Best Web Browsing or a big blocky question mark? Steve Jobs demonsrates how a lack of Flash support means the video element on the NY Times front page just can't play on iPad.

Even before Steve Jobs had switched off the Reality Distortion Field Generator, objections to the iPad starting pouring out (even from Hitler): no multi-tasking, no camera, doesn't replace my laptop, name sounds uncomfortably tamponic, AT&T. At the same time other folks were reaching for their handkerchiefs to wipe the drool off their chins and developers, sniffing out another app store gold rush were diving into the SDK (software development kit).

It turns out that reactions to the Apple iPad are as sharply divided as the U.S. Senate, but with this important difference: people saying no to iPad don't have the filibuster. The naysayers can't block the yaysayers from buying it.

The first truth about the iPad is that nobody outside of Apple yet knows the truth about the iPad. Of course it doesn't do everything a notebook does. It wasn't intended to. The critical question was posed by Steve Jobs early in the keynote: does iPad do a useful set of things appreciably better than a notebook? The list Steve proposed was this: browsing, email, photos, video, music, and games. I venture it's safe to say that the gaming experience on iPad will smoke gaming on a notebook. As for the others, the jury is out.

What's the experience really like? Will people really prefer it enough to shell out for three devices (phone, iPad, and notebook)? I don't see any reliable way to answer those questions without actually living with it for a couple of weeks. I'm curious about hands-on reports from folks at the launch event, but I don't put much stock in their brief encounters.

The second truth about the iPad is that the product Apple introduced yesterday is just a teaser for the product that will ship in March and April. And that, in turn, will be just a teaser of the product that will be available a year from now. What's missing? The apps and the content deals. And then the next rev of the OS.

Just as today's iPhone is very much defined by the apps available for it, so will the iPad be defined by apps that take full advantage of its larger size and faster processor.

The weeks preceding the launch were filled with rumors about negotiations between Apple and TV networks and print media. If there's truth to those rumors, it's likely that Apple had hoped to tell us more about the glories of subscriptions to content. The negotiations, if they are happening, clearly dragged on beyond intro date. But I think it's safe to expect a number of content-specific apps, not all of them free.

MIckeleh's Take: The party of iPad no has lots of good arguments. But until shipping, they're arguing against a phantom. They can stay on the sidelines jeering as loudly as they want. The iPad will still attract buyers. And the user-experience may well prove revolutionary.

Resetting the Clock on Analog TV

I reset the countdown timer on the end of analog TV. Obama hasn't signed the bill which just cleared Congress. But since he asked for it in the first place, I'm considering it a done deal. If I'm wrong, I'll change it back.

Calling Foul on Pepsi for Their "Forever Young" Super Bowl Ad

In the early 80's, when Steve Jobs recuited Pepsi marketer and president, John Sculley to run Apple, he famously challenged him with this question: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"

Pepsi's new marketers have built up immunity to such a challenge with a new ad theme, "Every generation refreshes the world." For today's Pepsi, there's no difference at all between selling sugared water and changing the world. (It's moot point, actually, because Steve Jobs has built up an even stronger immunity to any impulse he might have to hire another Pepsi marketer.)

The ad was exceptionally well crafted and executed, clever in its strategy, superficially enjoyable—but horrible nonetheless.

Here are my top four emotional reasons for wanting to run from the room screaming when this ad comes on. (I don't actually do that, I just press "skip" on my TiVo remote.):

• I resent advertisers playing the cheap trick of licensing clips and tunes that trigger treasured emotional memories in the hopes of attaching them to their brand. (I have the last laugh here, because it's my resentment that accrues to their brand.)
• I resent advertisers who entice Bob Dylan to sell his image, likeness, and music just to sell sugared water and thereby sully the glorious memory of his previous sellout to Victoria's Secret.
• I resent advertisers who entice will.i.am to sell his image, likeness, and performance to enhance sugared water with the emotional resonance of the "Yes We Can" video he did for Obama's campaign.
• I resent advertisers asking us to take solemnly the notion that we are what we drink. (At least when Heinkeken asked us to wrap ourselves in the mantle of their brand, they had the good humor to hire John Turturro to ham it up and play the post-modern irony gambit.)
  

In the classic cola wars going back to the sixties Pepsi has consistently tried to peel younger drinkers away from Coke with a series of youth-oriented campaigns—Pepsi Generation, Choice of a New Generation, For Those who Think Young. Someone must have noticed that members of the original Pepsi Generation are now sixty-somethings. Rather than throw the geezers overboard, they tried to embrace us by offering a split-screen duet of two young generations. From that perspective, the choice of Dylan and his song, "Forever Young," were brilliant.

It was an attempt to map Obama's post-partisan meme onto a post-generational landscape. In Pepsi's world, we now have two young generations, one of which just happens to be collecting Social Security.

Mickeleh's Take: Look closely at the matched images that Pepsi used in the spot. They're all perfectly equivalent except for the styling. The despairing message: nothing has really changed from then to now. It's all the same. It's merely refreshed. Just like the Pepsi logo and packaging. Refresh the logo, refresh the world. Forever young.

The Flavor Packet Song

This is completely crazy and is mainly a testament to how deranged the world has become. I have (for the day, anyway) a top-rated music video on YouTube. 

It's an original song by me (vocal, ukulele, MIDI drums and piano). As of now it's the #27 highest-rated music video on YouTube. (That ranking will, no doubt, start moving south as newer and better videos appear.)

BREAKING: Now it's #18!

The response has been incredible, despite the fact that I struggle to sing on pitch, can barely play, and I'm just stumbling around in the dark on GarageBand, Motion, and the ukulele.

It was done as a guest appearance on a channel called VlogRamen. They call their guest vloggers "Flavor Packets of the Week." Which is why the song is called "The Flavor Packet Song.")

In the UK, it's called "The Flavour Packet Song."

Me and the Gas and the Music

iPod on shuffle, my eclectic music collection, and a hefty, happy dose of nitrous oxide, while two women whom I don't know all that well used sharp and spinning instruments in my mouth combined to give me a surreal and delightful two-hour cruise. Unlike Gilligan's crew, I have returned. I share with you the playlist. I assume you won't get the same effect I did, but it's the best I can offer without a license to practice dentistry.

Jimi Hendricks Experience: Voodoo Chile
Louis Prima: Angelina-Zooma Zooma
Louis Armstrong: Body and Soul
Carmen Miranda: Mama Eu Quero
Doc Watson: June Apple
Bob Dylan and The Band: It Ain't Me Babe (from Before the Flood)
Carmen Miranda: Weekend in Havana
Count Basie: Miss Thing
Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra: (Keep Your) Sunny Side Up
Bob Dylan and The Band: Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
London Sinfonietta: Lullaby of Broadway (this 15-minute modern stereo performance transcribed from the soundtrack of Busby Berkeley's 42nd Street was the most surreal, thrilling, and endless passage).
The Beatles: Your Mother Should Know (the loopy version from Anthology)
David Holmes: Let's Get Killed
Red Nichols and His Five Pennies: Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula
Isley Brothers: Twist and Shout
Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers: Blue Blood Blues

At which point I was filled. Really filled.

YouTube Needs Widescreen. But Not All The Time

In the same way as it has become a real time warning signal for such natural disruptions as wildfires, earthquakes, it was Twitter that first brought me news that YouTube was switching its native player to widescreen.

The first alarm came in all caps.

"WTF WIDESCREEN SERIOUSLY WHAT OMG"

WTF, indeed. YouTube going wide sounds like a good thing. Everything's going wide, even the humble Flip video camera. It's not so much that they did it, it's how they went about it: abruptly, disruptively, and discourteously.

Overnight, YouTube's entire legacy of standard format (4:3) videos were needlessly bracketed with black pillars. Was it really necessary to throw everything into the same 16:9 player? It's software dammit, not that physical collection of toxic metals, glass, and plastic that passes for a TV in my living room.

While many cheered, others were upset. Here's YouTube contributor, Nerimon, railing against this and other YouTube changes.

Side notes on Nerimon's rant: If you're just a casual viewer, many of these issues will seem obscure. But most builders and users of software will recognize the pattern. Unnecessary, unwanted futzing with "ain't brokes," while annoying rough edges remain unsanded and unbuffed. Nerimon is smart, funny, engaged, and a passionate, successful creator of content. He's a great example of the kind of customer who can help guide a development team away from the rocks and toward greater product excellence. If you make any kind of software you should take an earful of Nerimon. Think of him as a younger, funnier Dave Winer. Like Dave, all he asks is that developers listen to and respect their users.

Why frame everything at 16:9? Surely YouTube can detect aspect ratios and put up a player with the right aspect ratio. I did it. And I'm just a marketing dink.

Behold: The same clip, but this time Nerimon rails against pillars that aren't even there.

Is that so hard, YouTube?

It's easy to see why YouTube has to accommodate widescreen. Rival Hulu.com is rapidly growing the internet audience for widescreen, even HD movies and TV. If there are big, Google-worthy bucks to be had in online video, that's where they lie. YouTube has already cut deals with MGM, CBS, and Fremantle Media (those wonderful folks who bring you Idol, Got Talent, Let's Make a Deal).

But much of the active community of vloggers works with 4:3 webcams. Their content is usually a single talking head. Does it serve them well to go wide? Remember what Fritz Lang said when confronted with Cinemascope. It's a great format if you're shooting snakes and coffins.

Community-generated content on YouTube now finds itself competing with corporate media, not only for audience, but for some courtesy from the mothership.

Mickeleh's Take: YouTube big-footed the change without offering a warning to their creative community or providing guidance on how to prepare uploads for widescreen. That was just rude.

This is the Change We Need: Toughest Obama Commercial Yet.

Mickeleh's Take: I thought the last two were on the right track. This one pulls into the station and unloads a can of whup ass. McCain earned this one. As for the rest of us: let's get out there and canvass. Do you know how your neighbors are voting?

Keeping My Old iPhone (for now)

iPhone 2.0 software delivers 80% or more of the value of the new iPhone HW. I know uber geeks will need the HW upgrade too. They can’t take the embarassment of being seen with an iPhone with a metal back. (Hint: put it in a case. Nobody will know.)

The new HW offers some peachy improvements: faster network, more accurate location finding, improved sound (kind of important in a phone). There's a rude awakening though, folks are discovering that running all those new radios will give you shorter battery life than the first gen iPhone.

The truly revolutionary advances are available through a software upgrade: App store… push notifications… MS Exchange integration… Enterprise IT support… push synchronization with PC’s and Macs… and above all an SDK and developer program. (memo to self: come back and translate this paragraph to human readable language.)

As someone in Redmond said quite famously: “developers! developers! developers!

Mickeleh's Take: If you don’t have iPhone yet, the new total value proposition should give you plenty of reasons to consider.

If you have a first gen… you really don’t NEED the upgrade except to meet irrational urges. (But if it weren’t for irrational urges, life would be pretty dull.)

Ethan Kaplan, Master of Irony

Dave Winer posts that too many blogs are chasing each other's tails with meta-commentary about meta-commentary and gossip about gossipers. He says, "the end is near" and there's a drought of original thinking. "Most people wouldn't recognize an original thought if it bit them in the ass," he says.

Then, Ethan Kaplan chimes in with: "Wow, I agree with Dave Winer completely on this." Was that an original thought? Or a meta-comment? Or just delicious irony? I vote irony.

Mickeleh's Take: I agree with both of them (and everyone else making this point). But there's nothing new or original in noticing it:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes, 1:10).

On the other hand, it is not true that Ecclesiastes said, "Of the making of many blogs there is no end." That was Sifry.

What I Learned Last Week

Here are some of the things I learned last week.

• The Aurora Bridge in Seattle (over the Ship Canal on Highway 99) is the second most popular suicide bridge in the U.S. (behind San Francisco's Golden Gate).
• Some of the jumpers don't wait till they get to the middle of the span where they would fall into the water, but jump from a point that's still over land so they fall into local parking lots, traumatizing the workers.
  
• I'm a very bad prognosticator. I predicted that last week would be a "fine, fun week for Obama fans."
• Three big shot tech executives (or ex execs) have signed on with McCain to bring us a third Bush term and a 100 years in Iraq. (Carly Fiorina, ex CEO of HP; Meg Whitman, outgoing CEO of eBay, and John Chambers (CEO of Cisco).
  
• Steve Gillmor—whom I've only known as the wise and far-seeing tech oracle, impresario of NewsGang (a fine compendium of what's new, important, helpful, and interesting) and the NewsGang Live podcast— has also had a long association with members of the Firesign Theatre--and served as a producer on some of their projects (evidenced by the appearance of George Tirebiter on a recent NewsGang Live).
• Dr. Bronners Magic Soaps include olive oil that combines the product of a grove owned by a Palestinian with that of a grove owned by an Israeli. (Yes... the hemp oil is still an ingredient; so is the peppermint.
• The Prophet Jeremiah had an even harsher message and rougher reception than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
  

Mickeleh's Take: Given my record, maybe I should predict a rough week for Obama fans.