SXSW Music underway … Eager music fans and performers alike have begun their invasion of the SXSW music festival in Wednesday, and the overwhelming abudance of music has been accompanied by none other than tweets. Since 2007, Twitter and Austin festival have become an unlikely (yet powerful) match of community and interaction, helping those solo loners make friends quickly while helping the SXSW vets find the most crackin’ parties. To view some of the diverse crowds from this year’s fest so far, check here.
Kanye West charged not once, not twice … But three times for misdemeanors stemming from the LAX incident in September 2008 where he went buck wild on TMZ paparazzi. Kanye will be arraigned April 14 on the counts of battery, vandalism, and grand theft charged by the Los Angeles City Attorney. If convicted for all three charges, the 808s and Heartbreak rapper could face up to two-and-a-half years in prison. That just might make him as hard as T.I.
Incu-who? … Four years after their latest release Light Grenades, alt-rock band Incubus is back and has announced a greatest hits set and an accompanying tour for the summer. The two-disc release, Moments and Melodies, is slated to drop on June 16 and will include memorable songs like “Megalomaniac,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “Nice To Know You,” while also featuring news songs “Black Heart Inertia” and “Midnight Swim.” The tour, which lasts seven weeks, kicks off July 9 in San Diego.
Fiddy and FOB-by… Fall Out Boy and 50 Cent are embarking on a tag-team tour this summer — enough to make any hipster, indie rocker, or plain ol’ pop hater gouge their eyes out. The rapper and pop-punk group will link up for the first time on April 14 for their “Believers Never Die” stint. But, like most of us “snooty” music appreciators, their own fans aren’t happy about the unlikely affair. One Fall Out Boy fan wrote, “I would rather eat my own crap literally than listen to 50 Cent.” You’re not the only one, dude.
Things are moving even faster than I thought in the re-ordering of the American economy. It’s four PM on Wednesday 3/18/09. Although many people don’t know or don’t yet understand, the link between government and finances has been totally changed.
Yes, we had AIG (see below), and the foreclosures.
But now… check this…. the U.S. government is buying a TRILLION DOLLARS in mortgaged backed securities in order to create instant liquidity in the markets (read: cash you can borrow to buy a home or a market.) I never thought the hip hop chant to “make money money, make money money mon-EEE” would become so literal.
Yes, I am a news geek; and a politics geek; and I am astounded. I linked from the NYT to this handy dandy URL you can share with your friends. tinyurl.com/USmakes-fakes-Money.
I wrote the article below earlier this morning. Already it seems dated. But bear with me as I breathe.
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I’ve been guesting on WNYC’s syndicated morning show The Takeaway with John Hockenberry. (Adaora Udoji is on maternity leave.) We’ve been talking a lot about branding. Some folks told us about the brands they missed (”Bit ‘o Honey” and the “Reggiebar” candy bars each got a vote).
Other folks talked about what they would rename/rebrand “too big to fail/too small-minded to give up the multimillion dollar bonuses” insurer AIG as…
Amigos in Gold
Amateurs Implementing Guile
Anti Inflammatory Geeks
A**holes Invoking God
As If God
Appalling In Greed
(And that’s just from the journalists!)
Listeners wrote, among others:
Absolutely Insufferable Greed
Angry Investor Gross
But let me take a turn here.
Yesterday, I was invited to address the US Mission to the United Nations, now led by Ambassador Susan Rice. I was part of a panel that examined how and why then-Senator Obama won the Presidency; and what lay ahead. I spoke about Brand Black, or blackness as a mature political brand, just as hip hop is now a mature media brand. Every product/entity/person who wants market share starts out in the experimental, spaghetti against the wall.
Of all the people who start blogs, relatively few keep it up and even fewer find a longterm audience. If they do find an audience—not just bloggers but political candidates, preachers, musicians, etc.—then they enter the brand-building phase. They try to bring on a core constituency first, then expand that constituency. For hip hop, the core constituency was urban blacks/Latinos, adding graf artists, b-boys and b-girls, streetcorner wisemen…. and then multicultural urban youth… and then multicultural global youth. As hip hop has become a mature brand, you see stars like Ice Cube and Queen Latifah moving into mainstream family-oriented film; P. Diddy and Russell Simmons crossing onto Broadway; Simmons into philanthropy and spirituality; and Jay Z into the economic CEO/Beyonceed celebrosphere. My argument in the speech, which I will elide, concerned the use of hip hop as a feedback loop that helped make blackness a culturally mature brand that had political capital.
Since this is a blog post and not a dissertation, peep this:
When Obama first made the gesture, it split the world into three camps: people who thought he actually had dirt on his shoulder (maybe three people or less worldwide); people who got the intent of the gesture (back up off this; you don’t matter); and people who got the specific reference to hip hop and the 2003 hit by Jay Z.
The use of hip hop signifiers and metaphors, as well as support from the hip hop community, really drove the Obama campaign at first. The hip hop generation (or at this point, really two generations) were the “early adopters” of Brand Obama. The Civil Rights generation were later adopters of Brand Obama. And Brand Obama stood on…. the shoulders of the Civil Rights generation, who took blackness from an exiled/discredited “brand” among anti-integrationist whites to a nearly-mature brand that lacked one thing… the sense that a black man could be president.
I didn’t know that Obama would win. No one did. But Obama used hip hop to leverage early youth support, which in turn built numbers for what political scientist William Jelani Cobb of Spelman calls “The Black History Month Massacre” (Obama winning 10 Dem primaries and caucuses in a row), which in turn helped justify Civil Rights generation political figures/superdelegates like John Lewis switching their allegiance from Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama.
In the end, Brand Obama leveraged hip hop to take the White House… a final signal that “Brand Black” is mature and thriving. What happens next? I don’t know. But I’m eager to see, hear, and write more, especially now that politics has a soundtrack.
Twitter. Twitter. Twitter. Hopefully by now, you’ve heard all about it. News on Twitter (the free microblogging service that let’s you send 140-character messages on whatever you want) is everywhere. It’s as if the media has twitter diarrhea because lately it’s all they are talking about. Reporters from all across the country are joining Twitter in droves and writing about their experiences like David Pogue of the NYT.
Now the media discussion has changed slightly from “hey, there’s this new service called Twitter” to it’s impact on the world of journalism. As Reuters reports, “News organizations are all a-twitter about Twitter: Is it a friend or a foe? Should it be embraced or eschewed? Will Twitter kill journalism or revive it?”
And then you have media outlets like the Financial Times that are trying to teach their readers about the culture and language of Twitter. You know, twitter messages are called “tweets.” The peeps who sign up to read your messages are “followers.” And when you send out someone else’s tweet, you are “re-tweeting.”(This is easily done by addressing your message to a follower by adding an “@” sign to their name, i.e., @faraichideya.)
And as interesting (or not) as this whole conversation about what Twitter is, the better question to ask is why are people using it? Why has Twitter caught on?
The media’s recent discussion and “discovery” is quite amusing to several of us (myself included), who has used Twitter for six months or more (called early adopters) because it used to be a new tool. There was something special about discovering it. Twitter’s long-time users have several reasons for loving and using the free, web-based service.
Like a lot of users, Danyel Smith (@danamo), editor of Vibe, (who I am a big fan of) started using the service because she was curious about it.
Others like novelist/music journalist/cultural critic Touré (@ToureX) thought it could help his professional writing skills.
BTW, he doesn’t really need any help in this area but it’s somehow endearing that he is continuously thinking about and working on his writing. It makes us think he is just like the rest of us, which is one of the beauties of Twitter. Unlike traditional media, which tends to be top-down or a one-way means of “them” telling “us” as readers something, Twitter creates a one-on-one conversation where anyone with a Twitter account can join in the conversation. It’s about two-way communication. Several journalists even started asking their Twitter followers if there were questions they wanted to ask in an important interview. Thus, it’s revolutionizing the way journalism is being done.
Many folks are joining because their favorite celebrities are on Twitter. There are few places in the world where you can talk to TV and movie stars like Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and his wife Demi Moore (@mrskutcher)… and they might talk back. Twitter has given regular folks yet another window into the daily lives of stars through their Twitter streams. You can find all sorts of celebs from Britney Spears (@britneyspears) to Puff Daddy (@iamdiddy) to MC Hammer (@MCHammer) to Omarosa (@omarosa). They are all there – tweeting away!
Gawker even started tracking Twitter accounts with their daily posting of the Twitterati. It’s hilarious and a reminder that people are broadcasting their thoughts out onto the Internet for anyone to read (unless you adjust your privacy settings). And now, a person’s tweets (Senators, writers, TV stars and regular people) have somehow become the news and fodder for the media? Interesting flip!
And there are thousands that are just like me, who also use Twitter because it helps us connect with people— new and old friends. It even helps you meet like-minded folks. Whatever you are into, there is someone on Twitter that likes the same thing. (And you can use Twitter’s search site to find posts on your favorite subject.)
Twitter also keeps you informed and quickly (if you follow the right folks). And you don’t have to check thousands of news sites or even go to a RSS feed service. If you are following @CNN or @Drudge_Report or other media sites and the reporters that have recently hopped on-board, you will be definitely be in the know. And if you downloaded Twitterific or Tweetie for your iPhone (or Twitterberry for your Blackberry), you have these conversations and breaking news at your fingertips.
And obviously, if you have something interesting to sayor sell, you should be using Twitter. Except beware, no one likes a constant self-promoter. The Twitter world is all about the give and take of information… you know, sharing. It feels like a conversation (although at times a bit scattered), but a talk nonetheless.
The merits of Twitter and its impact on media will be debated for years to come. But with technology giants, like Google (@Google) joining the Twitter fray, isn’t it time you checked it out for yourself. Don’t take my word for it or the thousands of media folks ranting or raving about it. See for yourself.. You may become a Tweetering fool that neglects their Facebook account for a bit. (Or is that just me?)
Barack Obama didn’t just tell the world that he is going to announce his veep pick via text. He Twittered it.
Incorporating new technology into the campaign trail is not a new concept. Sure, today’s text is may be the telegraph of yesteryear, but the Twitter/text transformation is also about recognizing a fundamental shift in how our society communicates.
Of course, the timing of the announcement will still be strategic. The turn-of-phrase in the carefully crafted text will undoubtedly ooze with hope and optimism and all that stuff the Obama campaign is made of. The press will be ready to file their own stories based on tips and embargoed materials the second the campaign clicks ’send.’ But in this case, it’s the medium that defines the message.
As a serial texter (I recently had to upgrade my calling plan to unlimited texts), I can safely say that the rise of texting says a lot about the way our culture—youth culture in particular—communicates. Whether it’s a status update (”Meet me at the quad in 5″), a non sequitur overheard on the subway or flirty banter with that cute guy you met at the party last weekend, texting is easy, efficient, and, most importantly, it frees the sender of the commitment and formality of a full phone call. It’s casual and cool without trying too hard—the exact image that someone courting the cutting-edge college crowd might want to project.
