Social Media – Page 2

Two epic battles occurred in the past week: one on Twitter and the other at the Super Bowl. On Twitter, “Team S” (hash tag #MBteamS) was racing against 3 other teams in the first-ever Twitter-fueled race sponsored by Mercedes-Benz. Team S drove a 2011 Mercedes-Benz S400 coupe from Los Angeles to Dallas, while the other teams drove from Chicago, New York, and Tampa. During the 3 day race, the teams and their Twitter followers accumulated points by completing challenges. The team with the most points won.

Super Bowl XLV was played on Sunday, February 6, in the new Dallas Stadium between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The billion dollar stadium was completed in June 2009 and is home to the Dallas Cowboys. Attendance for the game was 103,219 people. (FYI: that’s more than the population of Green Bay which was 101,025 in 2008)

Even as I write this, a day after the Super Bowl, both topics are still smoldering on the Internet; still trends on Twitter.

Well, the short story is that both MB Team S and the Packers won. MB Team S amassed 131,643 points! That was more than the combined points of the 2nd (74,092) and 3rd (44,944) place teams. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl 31 to 25; they never trailed.

So how did they win? Promotion.

Todd Sanders (twitter user name @tsand) and John Pederson (@ijohnpederson) were the drivers for Team S. They won the chance to drive in the first ever Twitter-fueled race from a promotion Mercedes held back in late 2010. They, along with their coach Pete Wentz (@petewentz), promoted the race from day one. They were the underdogs according to Twitter follower statistics. Todd works for University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, John works for WiscNet, Madison, and Pete is a famous musician (bassist for Fall Out Boy).

First, the race was a promotion for Mercedes-Benz. They are developing a new line of cars in the coming years and they want young people to drive them. Somewhere in the recent past they must have lost that demographic. This was the first time the luxury automaker has advertised at the Super Bowl.

[Sidebar: I find it a little ironic that Audi and BMW also had ads this year – the 3rd year of economic recession. I guess they’re hurting too and want a wider customer base.]

Second, the race was a promotion for donations to the charities of the coaches. Pete’s charity was St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Mercedes donated $45,000 to the winning team’s charity. Todd and John, additionally, raised over $5,000 from their friends, followers, and the social network community.

Third, the race was a promotion of social media, or, more accurately, the power of social media. Through crowd-sourcing, Todd (it was mainly Todd) was able to reach out to the people that follow him on Twitter and Facebook, and they in-turn reached out to their followers, and so on. With that number of people, most of whom are proficient users of social media, Team S was able to keep their car “full” of tweets – from start to finish – each day.

UPDATE: As the number of references grows, one can really begin to see the power there is in social media, and the influence one man can have on an entire community. Todd even had the cojones to visit us at HighEdWeb 2010 from his home via videos, tweets and pictures; he’s that good.

Mercedes-Benz Tweet Race To Super Bowl XLV With #MBteamS

Posted on January 28, 2011 | by C. | Leave a Comment

Guide to #MBteamS Victory
Full text available at http://mbteams.com/participate/

#MBtweetrace Prototype Test 2: Parking next to SLS AMG

#MBtweetrace Prototype Test 2 “That’s Close”

Official Site: http://www.mbtweetrace.com/mercedes/prototype/

This effort needs to be coordinated for us to move this vehicle. That said, there are a few details that our supporters, both Twitter ninjas and Twitter newbies, need to know. This is still a draft. Please use the comments below to ask for questions, clarification, etc.

1. What You Need

You need a Twitter account. http://twitter.com.

You need to follow @tsand on Twitter. http://twitter.com/tsand.

If you don’t, can’t, won’t do the Twitter thing, skip down to “Following #MBteamS Online” below. We understand. There are other ways to play.

2. Tweet Fuel

We receive 1 unit of Tweet Fuel each time #MBteamS shows up on Twitter during race hours.

Example: I am cheering for #MBteamS.

We receive 3 units of Tweet Fuel if you re-tweet something that @tsand puts on Twitter during race hours.

Example: RT @tsand I may hire my Co-Driver to be my life coach after this trip. #MBteamS

*IMPORTANT NOTE*

Many Twitter applications, including the Twitter website itself, have a handy “Retweet” button. This “Retweet” button is poison. Unless you know what you are doing, it’s always better to manually retweet by typing in…

RT @tsand I may hire my Co-Driver to by my life coach after this trip. #MBteamS

*UNDERSTANDING HOW TO RETWEET PROPERLY IS A HUGE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE*

3. Challenges

A. Our primary challenge is to keep the car filled with Tweet Fuel. This requires you, the Pit Crew, to be typing #MBteamS into Twitter (1 point) and re-tweeting @tsand (3 points). It’s our job to do fun things along the way in order to keep things interesting.

B. Mercedes-Benz will be issuing challenges to both Todd and I in the car as well as challenges for our Pit Crew to participate in. We won’t know what these are until we hit the road. Follow @tsand at http://twitter.com/tsand for the latest on the challenges and how you can help.

4. Timing

Understanding timing is key. We only accumulate Tweet Fuel during race hours. There is a 30 minute “Fuel Up” period each morning that will be critical as we start each day with no fuel. Note: We also “burn” Tweet Fuel on our travel, meaning that we’ll need a nice stream of tweets throughout the day to keep us moving. We will be stopped if we run out of Tweet Fuel.

Wednesday, February 2

Fuel Up: 7:30am – 8:00am PST. (8:30 MST, 9:30 CST, 10:30 EST)

Race: 8:00am PST. (9:00 MST, 10:00 CST, 11:00 EST)

Thursday, February 3

Fuel Up: 7:30 – 8:00am MST. (6:30 PST, 8:30 CST, 9:30 EST)

Race: 8:00am MST. (7:00 PST, 9:00 CST, 10:00 EST)

Friday, February 4

Fuel Up: 6:30am – 7:00am MST. (5:30 PST, 7:30 CST, 8:30 EST)

Race: 7:00am MST. (6:00 PST, 8:00 CST, 9:00 EST)

5. Following #MBteamS Online

Twitter: http://twitter.com/tsand

Follow Todd Sanders on Twitter. Twitter #MBteamS: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23MBteamS

See everything that everybody is saying about #MBteamS on Twitter.

Facebook: http://facebook.com/mbteams

We are pushing fun pre-race stuff here for people to play with.

Website: http://mbteams.com

This is a place to tie together many different pieces and parts associated with this adventure.

St. Jude: http://fundraising.stjude.org

We have a site with St. Jude where we are trying to raise an additional $5,000 for our charity. St. Jude received $25,000 for our participation and another $20,000 if we win this thing.

Spread it. Include #MBteamS in your Tweets

Social Media In the Classroom [UPDATE]

Posted on May 27, 2010 | by C. | Leave a Comment

Schools should educate kids about the world around them even if the kids get there first.

Instead of dismissing social media as distracting or destructive, schools should embrace it as an essential part of the curriculum. Not only does this limit the potential for students to abuse the technology, but it opens a new set of valuable educational tools. Source: 4 Tips for Integrating Social Media Into the Classroom | Mashable.com

Dangers in the virtual world like bullying, pornography, reputation, predators, or viruses, are just as real out in the real world. I think teaching them how to play nice and be smart on all Internet activities should be integral to classroom curricula.

UPDATE:

On a more positive note, I kept my eyes peeled for other information about social media in the classroom and behold more stuff dropped on my desktop from the Twitterverse and beyond. I learned a new word, pedagogy, or method of teaching. I found stuff like a plethora of YouTube videos about Twitter in the classroom, tweets about videos that explain things in plain English, blogs about social media in higher education.

Source: The Twitter Experiment – UT Dallas | YouTube.com

I like what she says at the end, “It’s going to be messy, but messy doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be bad.” I think that means, students might use bad grammar in Twitter, they might not like going from 1000 word papers to Twitter and back, but the important thing is that they communicate their thoughts. If their thoughts are closely related to the subject being thought, then mission accomplished. In other words, the important thing is the message not the delivery mechanism.

I think the reverse is true too. How you get the message to the students brain can be important. We know that students learn in different ways at different speeds. If a student can watch and remember a YouTube video about a school subject, and then tweet comments about it, then why not try that method; the school might even save money.

I re-found the blog, Social Media in Higher Education, which is one professor’s views about using social media in college classrooms. I won’t go into detailed description of his site, but suffice it to say he is trying to quantify what others are discovering by doing – that is using social media in a classroom has merit. There are caveats and benefits to this new mode of teaching.

Note-to-self: Likes are the new links. We can use facebook’s “Like” buttons on any content.