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Mitt Romney’s campaign team recently told ABC News the presidential candidate will begin receiving Secret Service protection this week due to “increased crowd sizes” at political events. Once the Internet realized that meant Romney will need a code name, Twitter users immediately volunteered to provide some options.
The tweets came pouring in under the hashtag “#RomneyCodeName,” made popular by pundit Paul Begala and the Huffington Post. Common references included:
Though most were merely playful, some tweets involved some harsh judgments on Romney’s positions. “Actually, [the code name] will change every few weeks,” one Twitter user said.
MORE: Can Mitt Romney’s Dad Jeans Help Get Votes?
Article source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/02/01/twitter-users-weigh-in-on-mitt-romneys-secret-service-nickname/
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Chevrolet rolled out the first Super Bowl smartphone app that allows Big Game watchers to enter a contest to win everything from pizza to a new Camaro. Kia is the first company to show its Super Bowl ad ahead of the game in movie theaters. And Coca Cola set up a Facebook page and website so viewers can see its animated polar bears — one cheering for the New England Patriots and the other for the New York Giants — reacting to the game in real time.
“The world is changing,” says Pio Schunker, Coca Cola’s vice president for creative excellence. “We needed to come to the party with something new and different.”
Advertisers have big incentives to stand out. With more than 111 million viewers expected to tune into the game, the Super Bowl is by far the biggest stage for marketers. It’s also not cheap — NBC is charging an average of $3.5 million for a 30-second spot. And the competition is fierce: there will be more than 70 TV ads during the Super Bowl battling for attention.
To create buzz, it’s no longer enough for marketers to simply get people talking at the water cooler the morning after the game. They also want to engage the people who like reacting to big events like the Super Bowl by posting on Twitter or Facebook or texting their friends, says David Berkowitz, vice president at digital marketing agency 360i.
“People are glued to their digital devices, sometimes sharing far more that way than they are with others in the same room,” says Berkowitz, whose firm created Coke’s online Super Bowl campaign. “Being social means something very different now.”
About a dozen companies have put up their Super Bowl spots on video-sharing website YouTube this year, up from a handful last year. The amount companies have spent on sponsoring Youtube’s Ad Blitz, a site for Super Bowl ads, has doubled compared with last year although it declined to say by how much.
And in another sign that marketers are trying to engage viewers over social media web sites: USA Today’s Ad Meter, which ranks the popularity of ads, is for the first time allowing viewers to vote for their favorite spot on Facebook.
“This year, we’re seeing a whole new level of social media activity for Super Bowl advertisers,” said Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
This is the first year that advertisers have tapped into the growing number of users of iPhones and other smartphones during the Super Bowl. In its ads, domain-name hosting site Godaddy.com will feature a QR code, a black and white two-dimensional code that people can scan by putting their smartphones up to the TV so they can go to the company’s website. This is a first for a Super Bowl ad.
Chevy’s free smartphone app for the Super Bowl, called Chevy Game Time, allows people to enter a contest to win prizes from Chevy and other Super Bowl advertisers, including Bridgestone and Motorola. Users also will get a code. If the code matches the license plates in Chevy ads during the game, they win one of 20 cars being given away, including the Camaro, Silverado and Sonic. App users can also answer trivia questions or polls to win prizes.
Other advertisers are going after the laptop and tablet crowd. As part of Toyota’s Super Bowl campaign to showcase its “reinvented” Camry, the company is asking Twitter users to use the hashtag, or search term, “(hash)Reinvented,” to post or “Tweet” about what other kinds of products should be reinvented. Some will get a response back with an illustration of the “reinvented” product.
Volkswagen released a teaser of its 60-second Super Bowl ad on YouTube.com. The ad, which shows dogs in “Star Wars” costumes barking the “Imperial March” song, was released on the site on Jan. 18 and has 10 million views. Volkswagen also created a dedicated Super Bowl on its Facebook page.
For all their attempts to reach people on their “second screens,” Calkins, the marketing professor, says advertisers won’t know what works until Game Day.
“The question is which of the advertisers will really manage to connect on the day of the Super Bowl,” Calkins said. “It’s never entirely clear which ones are going to stand out.”
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Follow AP retail coverage at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Retail and Mae Anderson at http://www.twitter.com/Maetron.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/super-bowl-marketers-target-smartphones-laptops-movie-screens/2012/02/01/gIQAvhQNhQ_story.html
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Kravitz worked for the Mount Pleasant-based company — a website that reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets — from 2006 until 2010. PhoneDog sued him in July, saying that, when he resigned, Kravitz changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog–Noah to noahkravitz, and kept his 17,000 followers.
Article source: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2012/02/01/judge_allows_sc_twitter_lawsuit_go_move_forward/
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For Robert Greifeld, chief executive officer at Nasdaq OMX, reputation is at stake after his market became synonymous with computer and Internet companies through offerings by Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. NYSE’s Duncan Niederauer is trying to salvage a year in which his stock lost 30 percent and European regulators recommended blocking the $7.3 billion merger with Deutsche Boerse AG.
“It should be the IPO of the year,” said Lawrence Creatura, a Rochester, New York-based money manager at Federated Investors Inc., which oversees $350 billion. “This is a marquee name in a world where those are scarce. We’re not creating a lot of Facebooks these days so it would be extraordinarily valuable for an exchange.”
Richard Adamonis, a spokesman for NYSE Euronext, and Frank De Maria, of Nasdaq OMX, declined to comment on the listing. Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Facebook, declined to comment.
Hiring Underwriters
Facebook chose Morgan Stanley to lead the IPO, four people with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The Menlo Park, California-based company will file plans today to raise $5 billion, though the amount may rise, two people said. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase Co., Barclays Plc and Bank of America Corp. will help manage the sale, people said.
Should it increase, Facebook’s IPO could be the biggest ever by an Internet or technology company, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The debut of Infineon Technologies AG for $5.85 billion in 2000 is the largest to date.
NYSE and Nasdaq are trying to lure Facebook by promising they will do the most to raise its profile, according to William Hambrecht, chairman and founder of San Francisco-based investment bank WR Hambrecht Co. and a four-decade veteran of public offerings by Silicon Valley companies.
“It usually comes down to who’s willing to put the most promotional money out,” Hambrecht said in a phone interview. “You pay for advertising and that type of thing. There’s always a lot of advertising around the offering and listing and that’s about the only way they compete from a cash point of view. They both do it.”
LinkedIn, Pandora
The New York Stock Exchange made inroads into Nasdaq Stock Market’s technology dominance last year by capturing LinkedIn Corp. and Pandora Media Inc. Convincing Facebook would help focus investors after a year in which NYSE Euronext’s market value fell from about $10 billion to $7 billion, said Creatura.
European regulators may vote as early as today to prohibit NYSE Euronext’s agreement to merge with Deutsche Boerse. The proposal is opposed by antitrust officials because it would put 90 percent of Europe’s exchange-traded derivatives in the hands of one company. NYSE Euronext shares tumbled 30 percent since the companies said they were in talks on Feb. 9, 2011.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/facebook-ipo-will-they-list-on-the-nyse-or-the-nasdaq/2012/02/01/gIQANg76hQ_story.html
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Computerworld -
With Facebook expected to file its plans today for its initial public offering, industry and financial analysts say it could be one of the biggest IPOs in U.S. history.
And that could be a bellwether for the entire social networking world, bringing in more interest and money for other big Internet players like Twitter.
“What’s not to ‘like’ about the Facebook IPO?” asked Kathleen Smith, principal of IPO investment adviser Renaissance Capital. “The social networking king is an advertiser’s dream, accessing the intimate social interactions of one in every 10 people in the world… We are expecting 2012 to be a year of recovery for the IPO market led by the Facebook IPO.”
While many in the tech and financial industries have been sitting on the edge of their seats in anticipation of the SEC filing, the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things D reported that Facebook may wait to file until after market close today. That is if they end up filing today at all.
Facebook, the largest social network in the world with an estimated 800 million members, is largely expected to file papers today, or at least this week, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and then to launch its IPO in four to five months.
Many are waiting expectantly to see how well Facebook’s IPO will performs, as it’s being seen as a defining moment for the financial viability of the social networking sector.
With an estimated valuation of $100 billion, the IPO is expected to seek between $5 billion and $10 billion at the start.
However, Facebook is no average Internet company. The social network grew quickly, changing the way people around the world communicate, get their news and share information ranging from party photos and health news to favorite videos.
However, the network also has gotten more serious. Instead of being a place where users post status updates about their favorite sandwich and how long they worked out at the gym, Facebook also has become a place for politicians to reach out to potential voters and volunteers. It’s also a place where users go to share their feelings about major events, like the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs and the killing of terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
Facebook also amassed enough clout to take on Google in a high-powered duel for advertising dollars.
While Google has been the dominant player in the Internet world, Facebook has mounted an impressive challenge. And that battle would be out of reach for most companies.
“What is exciting about this is that this is going to be one of the largest IPOs in history,” said Mark Siegel, a managing director at Menlo Ventures LLC. “In terms of how we feel about social networks, it’s incredible news. This is great news for Twitter and Tumbler.”
Siegel added that the excitement over Facebook’s IPO is an indication that social networks are changing entertainment and advertising.
“They’re also changing us culturally in terms of how we interact with other people and how we feel about privacy,” he said. “It’s sort of this bellwether for social media. It will tell us a lot about what the demand is for social networks … [Twitter CEO] Dick Costolo is paying close attention to Facebook’s IPO.”
Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, noted that a successful Facebook IPO could immediately start driving more money toward social media. While he doesn’t anticipate another dot-com bubble arising, it could lead to an influx of cash to a lot of companies.
“It certainly could either drive more money into the segment if it is successful or pull money out if it isn’t,” Enderle said. “It will showcase just how rabid investors still are for this property. If Facebook goes big, its example should push funding into the segment. If it doesn’t, it will simply tell us that investors have moved on.”
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at 
@sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon’s RSS feed 
. Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.
More about Facebook
Read more about Web 2.0 and Web Apps in Computerworld’s Web 2.0 and Web Apps Topic Center.
Article source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223887/Facebook_IPO_may_be_social_networking_bellwether
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Analysts, investors and Facebook fans awoke early Wednesday morning, eager to get a look at Facebook’s filing for an initial public offering, which should include the financial information and other data the Menlo Park social network has kept close to the vest for years.
Then they waited. And waited. And waited some more.
With rumors abounding that Facebook would file the initial IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission as early as 3 a.m. Pacific time, interested parties –and embittered reporters — awoke and continually updated the SEC’s Edgar database of regulatory filings, continually finding nothing on the most anticipated public stock debut in years.
Now, reports say that the filing is due this afternoon — if it shows up Wednesday at all.
Kara Swisher reported on technology blog AllThingsD, citing several anonymous sources, that Facebook “will likely not file its copious documents until this afternoon, after the markets close, at the earliest.”
So, with weary eyes, Silicon Valley journalists turn back to the rumors rampant about the filing as they await the real thing: Bloomberg News is reporting that Facebook is looking to receive $5 billion in the IPO, which will definitely be led by Morgan Stanley.
The Facebook revenue from the stock sale is smaller than expected, after weeks of speculation by analysts and industry observers who predicted
Facebook might seek up to $10 billion. If Bloomberg’s report is true, however, Facebook will still have plenty of time to revise the document and push that number higher before stock hits the market, likely this spring.
Industry sources expect the stock offering will set Facebook’s overall value at $75 billion to $100 billion, which would garner Morgan Stanley up to $500 million in fees.
Silicon Valley is expecting to find out if those reports are true Wednesday afternoon. Or not.
Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.
Article source: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_19868327
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Travel
Published January 30, 2012
| FoxNews.com
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LOS ANGELES – Two British travelers were barred from entering the U.S. after posts on Twitter indicated they had plans to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe,’ The Sun reports.
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, and Emily Bunting 24, were detained upon arrival to Los Angeles after Homeland Security discovered the tweets.
The two were then reportedly questioned for five hours before being put on a van with illegal immigrants and then held overnight.
Despite Bryan telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party,’ and the reference to dig up Marilyn Monroe was a joke from the show Family Guy, the two were reportedly held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes.”
They spent 12 hours in separate holding cells before being put on a flight home, the Sun reports.
“We just wanted to have a good time on holiday. That was all Leigh meant in his tweets,” Bunting told the Sun.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection released a statement about the “terrorist tweet,” confirming that two people had been taken into “secondary interviews” and said that during those interviews, information was uncovered that “revealed both individuals were inadmissible to the United States.”
To read more on this story, see The Sun article here.
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Article source: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2012/01/30/twitter-joke-to-destroy-america-gets-tourists-barred-from-us/
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Blake Griffin from the L.A. Clippers slam dunks a ball before winning the All-Stars Slam Dunk contest at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on February 19, 2011.
(MARK RALSTON – AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
If you missed the Los Angeles Clippers playing the Oklahoma City Thunder last night, I don’t know what to tell you. Blake Griffin pulled off the dunk of the year, no questions asked. Lob City, Lob Angeles, whatever — what a team.
Even when the District government gets things right, they seem to do it the wrong way
. Yesterday, Mayor Gray announced that the city has a $240 million surplus on hand, the product of emergency furloughs and higher taxes. One thing, though — they didn’t even know it was coming. Even city CFO Natwar Gandhi, who is notoriously meticulous about D.C. finances (per his job requirement), was flummoxed. The Post’s Nikita Stewart reports on the windfall.
It’s amazing how much one can learn by just walking around
. And Cultural Tourism DC gets it done on that front. If you’ve ever seen the signs around town, then you know what I’m talking about. My basic advice is to read every single one you see. You will learn a lot. There’s a new one up along H Street and it’s all the rage – so much so that even NBC4′s Pat Collins showed up for a tour recently. The Post’s Emily Wax chronicles how this historical walkway came to be in Northeast.
Newt Gingrich is quite the character
. I love his raspy attitude in debates, not a huge fan of his politics and I don’t judge his personal behavior behind closed doors. The Florida primary is today, and Gingrich’s camp has a new promotional tool that I’m not sure they wanted. First though, I’ll ask you: What’s your favorite word that rhymes with Newt? Mine is “chute.”One guy’s is “hoot” and he made a song about it. Seriously. This is not a joke.
Twitter is moving into tricky waters
. When they announced last week that they’d be implementing a modified censorship model, they turned a few heads. For a social networking site that proclaims to be the free speech bastion of the Internet, it seemed odd that the site would flirt with anything of the sort. But the changes are really not that big of a deal, as there are easy workarounds to skate the new policy. Slate’s Uri Friedman explains why Twitter has botched it with this change.
The history of women’s soccer in this country is an interesting one.
The national team has been a major player on the world stage for decades, but professionally, the sport hasn’t been nearly as successful. Yesterday, WPS closed up shop for the season, which is sad. Say what you want about the viability of women’s pro soccer, the three incarnations of the league since 2000 have undoubtedly leveled the playing field globally. The Post’s Steven Goff explains what happened.
Extra Bites
• You’re all getting really tired of the “[Expletive] People Say” series, but I’m not. And as a guy that grew up playing on a fair amount of baseball teams, this one really makes me laugh. God, I love baseball.
• Looking for something to do this week, or any week? The Going Out `Gurus are obviously the go-to. The lineup for the next seven days is particularly cool. Nonstop dubstep all night long.
• WaPo is changing a few things on the comment front. Step your game up.
Check out my Facebook fan page, my Twitter feed, or e-mail me at clinton.yates@wpost.com
.
Read more on The Root DC
QA with comedian, author Baratunde Thurston
Slave exhibit opens at Smithsonian
National Signing Day: looking back
Documentary explores hair culture
The Game: Season five, episode three
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/twitter-changes-censorship-policy/2012/01/31/gIQAk6CDfQ_blog.html
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With nearly 100% of the votes counted in the Florida primary, Ron Paul trails far behind the leaders with about 7% of ballots counted.
And his avid supporters are mad — on Twitter, at least.
The source of their anger appears to be something that took place Saturday in another Southern state, the Tennessee straw poll. In the survey, taken by the Tennessee Republican Assembly, Paul was backed by 63% of the 316 voters who participated.
MOOD METER: Track the nation’s mood on the candidates
Paul’s campaign website wrote about the results under the headline: “In Case You Missed It: Ron Paul Wins Tennessee Presidential Straw Poll.”
A full 16% of “angry” tweets mentioning Paul reference the straw poll, according to an analysis by San Francisco-based Kanjoya.
“A lot of Paul supporters seem to be angry that Paul’s victory wasn’t getting more credit,” said Kanjoya engineer Moritz Sudhof.
The anger seems to be directed mainly at the media. The transgression? Not paying enough attention to Paul.
Tennessee for Ron Paul 2012: Ron Paul Victory at TRA Straw Poll subjected to MEDIA BLACKOUT — #RonPaul2012
Another poll you won’t see on Fox or CNN. Ron Paul wins Tennessee straw poll with over 63%!
The rising anger detected by Kanjoya, which uses a computer algorithm to assign emotion to social media posts, is a departure in sentiment detected around Paul on most days. Typically, Kanjoya has found the bulk of the conversation around Paul on Twitter has been tied to positive emotions such as “joy” or “surprise.”
The Texas Republican is making his third run for the White House. He was on the ballot in 1988 as the Libertarian Party’s candidate.
The Paul pattern on Twitter is distinctly different from those of the other remaining candidates — Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum — each of whom has won a state at this point.
Kanjoya analysts said they believe that’s an indication that Paul’s supporters are highly motivated.
“We’re seeing that people who tweet about Ron Paul are more connected to each other than people who tweet about the other candidates — i.e., more retweets, more replies, and more mentioning of each other,” said Sudhof. “Therefore, an emotion expressed in a single tweet can propagate throughout the network fairly quickly and cause spikes to happen.”
At the same time, they appear to be talking to each other much of the time. Paul is the subject of far fewer tweets than Romney or Gingrich, who draw comment from a wider audience. And Kanjoya has found it possible to detect emotion more often in tweets about Paul — 45% of the time compared to about 40% for the other candidates.
On Tuesday, in the hours before and after the polls closed in Florida, Kanjoya also detected a sharp rise in “angry” tweets about Paul that connected him with words such as “newsletters,” “supremacist” and “racist.”
“A full 24% of the angry Ron Paul tweets from the last few hours include these keywords,” Sudhof said.
In December, Paul unplugged his microphone and walked out of an interview with CNN after he was questioned about offensive statements that were mailed to supporters under his name in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
One mailing included the statement: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.”
Paul has distanced himself from the mailings but said he was still morally responsible for material distributed under his name.
Learn more: What sentiment analysis can and cannot tell us about the GOP race
Article source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/politics/~3/Wdup8AF8qCs/la-florida-primary-ron-paul-fans-foes-get-mad-on-twitter-20120131,0,4699511.story
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Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/facebook-said-to-pick-morgan-stanley-to-lead-ipo/2012/02/01/gIQAlRV2gQ_video.html
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