MW3: The Largest Entertainment Release in History

Each year, just as the Oscar-worthy movies begin to populate the theatres, an even bigger entertainment phenomenon surfaces, the latest installment of the video game juggernaut, Call of Duty. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hit stores this week and our friends at GameStop saw lines around the block all across North America. Check out the GameStop photo gallery HERE and the promo video HERE .

Interesting Stats We Came Across

In light of Groupon’s recent IPO we found some stats about their business thanks to Statspotting:

• Cost of acquiring each subscriber: $5.
• Avg. Number of Groupons sold per subscriber: .32.
• Avg. Revenue per subscriber: $3.45.
• Non-marketing costs per subscriber in a quarter: $2.21.
• Profit per subscriber per quarter: $1.24.
• # of quarters to earn back acquisition
  cost of subscriber: 4.

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Marketing That Inspires Us

Nature Valley is doing a great job of mapping the world’s hiking trails for us. Imagine hikers with Google-like cameras strapped to their heads. Now eat a granola bar and check this out HERE.

In a long-anticipated move into the e-book market, Google has officially launched its massive e-bookstore, bringing more than 3 million books, many of which are available free of charge, to any device that has app capabilities or has a web browser.

But what makes Google E-books better than those already dominating the space such as Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple? We’ve compiled the top 5 reasons why Google E-Books is changing up the game.

Free Material
Everybody loves getting something for nothing. Google E-books provides you with roughly three million books free of charge. Google E-books has the largest selection of public domain titles, allowing users to download tons of noteworthy titles without spending a penny.

Cross Platform Support
Google E-books supports any type of device that has access to a web browser. Instead of requiring users to purchase the titles through a single online store to read only on compatible readers, Google E-books allows customers to not only buy books from their own store, but also from any other online vendor that sells books in either PDF or EPUB formats. These downloads are then read by any device that has web browsing capabilities. Google E-Books works cross-platform with computer web browsers, smartphones with the Google eBook reader app, and eReader devices such as the iPad, Nook, Kobo eReader, and Aluratek eBook.

Automatic Syncing
Cross-platform usage would be pointless if nothing synced up. As you read your books on your computer, Android, iPhone, or iPad devices, Google E-Books will automatically sync across all platforms. If you begin reading in the morning on your iPad, you will be able to pick up right where you left off on your Android or iPhone device on your way to work.

Impressive List of Publishers
Google E-Books may have just launched, but nearly 4,000 publishers are already providing the store with content. Of these 4,000 publishers, almost all of the major players have jumped on board including Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette just to name a few.

A New Approach
Google’s approach to the e-book phenomenon is different from those already dominating the space. Because of the way Google decided to take on the challenge, they’ve created a brand new ecosystem which makes both retailers and affiliates, as well as publishers, all part of the e-book selling process for the very first time.

April Fool’s Day is like Christmas on the Internet. You wake up early and excited; ready to unwrap presents in the form of numerous pranks on websites.

The best present is always Google. You can always count on them to apply great minds to give you an in depth April Fools stunt that makes you ask, “is this real?” Today was no letdown. Google was officially renamed Topeka in response to Topeka’s recently renaming of their town, Google.

Next up is Funny or Die who today renamed themselves Bieber or Die after the kid sensation that has the number one album in the country this week, Justin Bieber.  Very well done.  I recommend you watch some of the videos, they are very funny.  Of course, make sure you ask your kids who Justin Bieber is first or else it will be completely lost on you.

Click HERE to read the rest of Larry’s post.

The breaking news of Michael Jackson’s sudden death nearly two weeks ago dramatically slowed the internet, crippled Google, crashed Twitter, sent iTunes and BitTorrent downloads skyrocketing and made for a huge portion of TV news and radio airplay, according to The Nielsen Company, Billboard and a number of other analysts that tracked coverage of the event.

An Online Outpouring

Nielsen reported that Jackson-related news dominated web discussion on June 25, causing huge spikes in traffic and overwhelming social networks with bursts of information and updates from millions of users.

In comparison, the high volume of blog discussions about Jackson made recent buzz around the swine flu scare and President Obama’s inauguration seem paltry and insignificant.

Similarly a Nielsen Buzzmetrics analysis revealed that more than 16% of tweets in the 24-hour period after Jackson’s death mentioned the singer, while less than 2% of mentioned Farrah Fawcett and Iran – two other high-profile news topics during the same time period.

Information from Mashable put the percentage of MJ-tribute tweets higher, at close to 30%, with a reported 50,000 tweets in just one hour. Mashable said that Twitter tracking tool Twist showed 22.61% of Tweets following Jackson’s death with the phrase “Michael Jackson,” 9% containing “MJ,” and 25% including the name “Michael.” Twitter is reported to have crashed at least once during this time.

The ICM News site in the UK reported that search engine Google dramatically slowed down between 2:40 pm and 3:15 pm Pacific time on June 25, as millions of Googlers entering the star’s name got an error page rather than a list of results. These difficulties were later confirmed by Google.

In addition, many entertainment sites slowed significantly and became difficult to access, including celebrity gossip site TMZ.com, according to TechCrunch. TMZ.com first broke the story that Jackson’s heart had stopped and paramedics had been summoned.

Traditional Media Also Overtaken

Separate from web activity, TV and radio stations immediately began airing footage and playing songs in the hours immediately following Jackson’s death.

US TV network and cable coverage seemed nearly omnipresent, while the Guardian reported that the UK’s Sky News reported a peak of 735,000 viewers in the 15 minutes after Jackson’s death was confirmed, while the BBC News channel hit 562,000 viewers around the same time period. The jump in viewers resulted in much-higher-than-usual ratings for these channels during the time of the Jackson coverage.

Radio Honors Jackson’s Passing

Rolling Stone reported that Jackson’s music became immediately popular on radio as well. Citing Nielsen numbers, the magazine said the singer’s biggest hits jumped nearly 1,735% in overall airplay over the previous week, with many stations exclusively dedicating their play lists to Jackson’s music the weekend after his death.

According to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems, which tracks total airplay for terrestrial, satellite and cable radio stations, Jackson’s “Billie Jean” was played the most over the airwaves, logging 4,540 plays from June 22nd to June 28th. Of those, 4,446 plays came after June 25th. In the previous week, “Billie Jean” only registered 318 plays total, according to Billboard.com.

Billboard noted that, overall, 20 Michael Jackson songs registered more than 1,000 plays last week following news of Jackson’s death. By comparison, only Jackson’s “Rock With You” managed to crack 500 plays the previous week. “Thriller,” which was only played twice on Tuesday, June 23rd by all stations combined, was aired 1,497 times on Friday, June 26th, and collected 3,570 plays for the week. Also cracking the 3,000 plays mark were Off the Wall’s “Rock With You” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.”

Four Jackson 5 songs managed to surpass the 1,000-play mark: “ABC,” “I Want You Back,” “I’ll Be There” and “Never Can Say Goodbye.”

MP3 Downloads Surge
Rolling Stone reported that, following Jackson’s death, the top five albums on iTunes, and seven of the Top 10, were all Jackson releases, with The Essential Michael Jackson, Thriller and Off the Wall ranking as the top three.

Similarly, the Amazon MP3 store listed Jackson as the service’s top-selling artist of the day following his death, said Rolling Stone. Last.fm also documented a large increase in listeners to “The King of Pop” in the moments following his passing, with a peak of roughly 42,000 of his songs played on the service between 6 pm and 8 pm ET.

Downloads of Michael Jackson’s music also caused a surge on BitTorrent, where, immediately after his death, the three most active torrents in the music section on the largest torrent indexer, Mininova, were all compilations or discographies from MJ. On top was a torrent listing 30 Michael Jackson albums, The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, totaling 1.94 GB of music.

MJ Death Spawns Spam

Despite an outpouring of shock, caring and sympathy from fans worldwide, all of the web’s Michael Jackson activity isn’t about the love. Computerworld reported that an increase in Michael Jackson spam and malware is likely to sweep the internet in the wake of the entertainer’s death.

I am a pretty loyal person, and Google has always been my main man. I consistently use the word “Google” interchangeably with the word “search”, I’m in love with my Gmail and its search features, and I can’t get enough of Gchat.

Then all of a sudden, all of the talk was about Bing, the new man on campus. What is Bing? What differentiates it from Google as a search engine? Well according to Microsoft, it’s being touted as a “decision making engine”, not a search engine. Personally, it seems pretty similar to Google. Some differences: Bing puts their related searches on the left, instead of the bottom, which is convenient. When searching for “Saved By the Bell” (come on, best show ever) it organizes my results into different categories: just SBTB, SBTB Wallpaper, SBTB Quotes, SBTB DVDs, and so on. This could be helpful if I’m not really sure what I’m searching for, but it also clutters the page and makes it a bit confusing.

Ultimately, it’s too early to tell what I think about Bing, but I do admit their ad spots centered on “Search Overload Syndrome” are pretty entertaining:

I’m not saying I’m dumping Google, but I might have to flirt with Bing a bit to test the waters. What do you all think of Bing so far?

30 Ways to Lose a Job on Twitter – http://www.resumebear.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/10/30-ways-to-loose-a-job-on-twitter/

Trailer for Year One (Michael Cera / Jack Black) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTNBwIAY9Zo

Captain is re-captured by pirates – http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-somali-pirates11-2009apr11,0,3373558.story

A Twittering Squirrel – http://twitter.com/common_squirrel

YouTube Loses Lots of Money for Google – http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/03/analysts-estimate-youtubes-losses-at-470-million-this-year