Hi, I'm "Miley" "Cyrus"!

During the election season, "Fake Sarah Palin's" observations provided laughs and an ironic look at a sudden American superstar. When a furor erupted over Palin's shopping spree, FSP wrote "I know who planted fancy clothes in my closet now, ppl. CINDY YOU ARE GOIN' DOWN, PALIN STYLE". And during the actual election, after Pennsylvania's electoral votes were announced for Obama, there was this: "I was going to name my next kid Pennsylvania but screw you guys5:45 PM Nov 4th, 2008 from mobile web".

But you knew it was fake. It was quite clear that this was not the real Sarah Palin. But what of Twitterers who postfaux celebrity Twitter feeds? This article is about the twitterer 'cwalken'. His profile features a picture of the actor Christopher Walken, and his tweets speak of celebrity and drip of Walken's trademark irony. Other posters twitter under fictional personas, with Don Draper, Betty Draper and Peggy Olson of the AMC hit seriesMad Men sharing their thoughts online.

Why the inclination to twitter under a celebrity name? Is it because the 140 character limit invovles its own kind of stilted syntax, making it difficult to distinguish the real from the faux? Is this not so different from assuming the persona of a fictional character?

But there is a real Christopher Walken. I can also imagine that the writers of Mad Men may not be too thrilled should the Twitter manifestations start behaving out of character, participatory culture be damned.

If you build it, they will strum

I often moan about the ahistorical nature of the web, with its limited archival capacity and rush to adopt new technologies. But then there are stories like this:

Using data from various sources, including images in artwork, fragments from excavations and written descriptions, researchers of the Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application, or ASTRA, project succeeded in developing a 3D mechanical computer model of the [epigonion].

Wow, ancient instruments! (Apparently, the instrument is a lot like a harp.) Hear what our ancestors heard! OK, those of us with ancestors in medieval Europe at least.

In the near future, the researchers hope to perform a concert on instruments that have not been heard for more than 2,000 years.

It's charming to think that through compiling bits of information from a variety of sources, the good folks at ASTRA can recreate objects without any blueprint. I do wonder why they've focused their energies on the epigonion; surely there are lots of forgotten instruments. Though perhaps they're starting out small and building up:

Vicinanza and colleagues ...resurrected the monochord, an instrument played by Pythagoras... Meaning "one string," the monochord had a single string fixed at both ends and stretched over a sound box.

This is Your Brain on New Digital Media, part XXX

This brief piece from NPR contributor Peter Sagel muses about what might be lost when everything is accessible via phones and the internet:

I'm raising children now...and I see them drawn to the flickering, dimly lit holes leading from our house to the other worlds — the TVs and movies and computer games — and I can understand the almost overwhelming urge to crawl through. But I also wonder if, like me, when they grow up and have to say farewell to childish things, they'll have nothing real to let go of.

A sweet elegy to things past, to be sure. But might it be that exposure to a range of different environments, whether they're online or on TV, might actually help to flesh out one's imagination? To have a range of "wooded forests" to draw upon when needed vs. the sole patch of trees near your house? That having been said, offering young people a circumscribed set of shared 'stock' images to draw from suggests certain built-in limitations. Imagine if there were only, say, three or four fables from our childhood to draw upon versus the myriad of folk tales, fables, etc. we enjoy. Cinderella can only explain so much.

The Long Tail of Waiting for Profitability

A new article speaks to both the confusion and promise around online distribution, with an eye towards profits:

SnagFilms...users can download widgets for any one of more than 550 documentaries available on the site, and watch the film -- which has about 90 seconds of advertising interspersed through it -- for free. SnagFilms shares the revenue, half and half, with the filmmaker. But the films need to be seen hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of times before filmmakers can see substantive income from advertising revenue.

And at this point, the viewership is just not there. What gets me is that it seems to be a split business model:

On the other hand, the site allows filmmakers to earn full revenue from any DVD sales, which are promoted along with the free download.

Should a fan either go online a thousand times to watch a favorite film, or buy the DVD? It seems to make more sense to promote one option over the other, and maximize on that particular revenue stream, esp. when dealing with a modest audience size.

Though the Long Tail of market outliers is a great idea, by its very size it seems destined to stay unprofitable for most participants. Except for that lucky lottery winner or the creator with 1,000 true fans that just may justify continued participation.

Our bizzy, bizzy brains

This article on NPR is on doodling's relation to the bored brain:

"If you look at people's brain function when they're bored, we find that they are using a lot of energy — their brains are very active," Andrade says...the brain is designed to constantly process information. But when the brain finds an environment barren of stimulating information, it's a problem.

But why is this nugget in a blog about media engagement? Well, I could justify it in all sorts of ways, but try this on for size:

So when the brain lacks sufficient stimulation, it essentially goes on the prowl and scavenges for something to think about. Typically what happens in this situation is that the brain ends up manufacturing its own material.

Or, it could doodle.
Or, it could daydream, or problem-solve.
Or, it could play with a pocket-sized video game.
Or, it could text a pal, I'M BORED.

In a recent talk, Sherry Turkle said something along the lines of "Loneliness is failed solitude... we develop an attachment to technology when we're "bored" or have time when nothing's happening." Is it that we are hardwired to hate boredom? What did we do with our bored feelings before digital media came along and made everything so interesting?

Margaret's blog post, now with extra McDonald's references!

Back in 2001, I said that the future of advertising was product placement. Alas, there were no witnesses to my brilliant observation, so you'll have to take my word for it. But since then, product placement has been seen as a sure fire cure for the revenue blues. Declining ad dollars from Detroit carmakers in particular have put the economic pinch on broadcasters. In a particularly funny/cruel twist, the Las Vegas morning news show featured
fake, not real cups of McDonald's ice coffee on the news anchor desk. To taunt anyone with a simulacrum of caffeine at 7am is beyond cruel.



The CW of product placement as a cash cow is challenged, however, by this story about the continuation of a UK ban on product placement on the BBC channels:

There is a lack of evidence of economic benefits, along with very serious concerns about blurring the boundaries between advertising and editorial.

I'm puzzled by this seeming contradiction: does product placement generate revenue or doesn't it?

Could it be that product placement has a high opportunity cost? The BBC representative was very protective of the BBC brand. Could it be that media properties free of product placement are Porsches compared to the McDonald's infused Yugo programs?

How Tweet it is...

Yea. I think I was the last one in the world to hear about the new Skittles promotion on Twitter. For low-cost brand recognition, it's brilliant: an app on the skittles.com home page lists all Twitter posts which mention the word "skittles".

And now, I get Twitter (more than I ever have):

* the search function is absolutely critical. Search on anything -- your favorite color, your cat's name. Fun!

* this one word searchability is brilliant for marketers like Skittles.

* by publicizing the Twitter feed on their homepage, folks are bending over backwards to write about Skittles, or just throw in the word in their tweets.

* suddenly, tweeting about Skittles has become a game. Sure, a game with no point or rules, but a game nonetheless.

* Or perhaps it's better to call it a viral meme? Or, as Jenkins suggest, 'spreadable media'?

* Folks are also posting negative tweets about Skittles, i.e. "aren't Skittles carcinogens?" But it doesn't matter. It's all part of the game.

* Traditional marketers are saying that all this content-free twittering will not accomplish much. But how can anyone recommend with a straight face that anyone should be having 'a conversation about Skittles'?

Twitter as marketing juggernaut... to be continued...