You MUST Watch This Video
"Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama."
That CAN’T be true! Ashton Kutcher just passed a million, wasn’t he in a race with that old wave media company?
Figuring Ireland had the most people of the three, I Googled, and felt very intelligent when I discovered the home of U2 had 4,156,119 inhabitants.
But then I Googled Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter account and found out he now has 3,246,879 followers. But wasn’t it only MONTHS ago that he broke the seven digit barrier?
I didn’t bother to check the statistics in this video any further, I just contemplated its meaning.
While I’ve got your attention, I want to recommend an article, from "The New York Review Of Books". I’m betting many of you have never even heard of the publication. But as opposed to checking out TMZ, or zoning out on TV, I recommend you take fifteen or twenty minutes out of your day to read it:
Conventional wisdom amongst the older generation, that which thinks it’s in power, is that newspapers must be saved and that blogs and other online media are parasites, living off the hard work of the print establishment. But this exhaustive analysis by a contributing editor of the "Columbia Journalism Review" details that this isn’t true. That not only did Andrew Sullivan cover the uprising after the election in Iran better than any of the traditional media, but Josh Marshall of talkingpointsmemo.com broke the story of the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.
But it gets worse. Today, in the "New York Times", it was reported that the "Hartford Courant" fired its consumer columnist because he was unfriendly to advertisers. Actually, the paper disagrees with that assessment, but read the article and see whose side you come down on:
Lest you think this is a ringing endorsement of the Gray Lady, I bring your attention to the words of the Public Editor in last Sunday’s paper.
Did you catch the front page story on August 10th saying that people were now checking their e-mail first thing, saying that "Breakfast Can Wait. The First Day’s Stop Is Online"?  I did. And wondered where they came up with these people. Turns out I’m not the only one, a blogger researched all the people mentioned and revealed they were all connected to the writer or media-savvy veterans. In other words, was this story true? Or worthless? Old media institutions were never challenged in the past. But now we’ve got a legion of bloggers checking their stories, which frequently are suspect. Read the Public Editor’s words here:
Scroll halfway down, after scanning the Jackson/Branca/McClain story.
And in yesterday’s L.A. "Times", Patrick Goldstein writes about the infiltration of sponsors into programming:
And, in today’s L.A. "Times", Mr. Goldstein chides the movie industry for its lack of insight into the future with regard to the Redbox controversy:
But, does anybody care what Patrick Goldstein has to say? Would he have much more impact if he went solo, created his own website, beholden to no corporate interests and just spoke the unfettered truth?
You might think the lunatics have taken over the asylum. But what we’re experiencing here is a great leveling of society. Those considered to be without power suddenly have lots of it, their voices amplified online. The traditional world, from Wall Street, to media to Washington, D.C., is just not prepared. Oldsters believe their behind the scenes shenanigans will remain just that. But now we’ve got people with no desire other than to reveal the truth shining light on their activities.
So many of the old rules no longer apply. Advertising is a joke. Your customers control your brand. You alienate them at your own peril.
But, a hit is still a hit.
How can it be that an entire industry, the music business, supposedly run by seasoned experts, cannot create something as vital as a single blogger out to make a name for himself?
This video, "Social Media Revolution", is a HIT!
A hit is something you weren’t expecting, that changes your whole being.
If you think the music industry has been releasing tons of these, then you probably think all those gigs being trumpeted as sold out really are.
But the music business is tied up with corporations. It’s about sponsors and greed, not truth and excitement. As a result, people look elsewhere for visceral experiences. A new and different act, beholden to no one, with hooks in its music, could still blow up. Instead, we’ve got Justin Timberlake shilling for Sony
manufactured crap like the Jonas Brothers and the supposed biggest band in the world, U2, telling us we must go to their show so we can see the staging. Huh?
As chaotic as things are, we live in an incredibly exciting era, one rivaling the sixties. You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. You’re on one side of the gap or the other. Something is happening here, do you know what it is, Mr. Jones?
