But seriously… I thought I’d give a little sprinkling of some of the more interesting things I’ve seen going on around the big game today.

I’m a somewhat serious football fan, so I’ll start with the “real” football stuff. Pretty good analysis of Super Bowl XLIV over on NFL.com, in which typical considerations (stopping the run, getting to the QB) are covered, as well as X factors such as the Dwight Freeney injury situation, Reggie Bush, the genius of Peyton Manning, and the seemingly unstoppable New Orleans offense. Unfortunately, the video over there is not available to an embed (not to NFL.com: set your videos free!).

It’s also fun to look at experts’ predictions, not so much for the fact that they have a lot of relevance to the actual outcome, but to see that most expect this to be a high scoring affair as well as one of the more competitive Super Bowls in Super Bowl history. (It’s my wacky sense of humor that makes me think it would be pretty cool to see a 6-3 squeaker or 44-0 shutout, no?)

Now that huge events are now hip to social media, it’s fun to see what they’re doing with it. Lost Remote notes that the NFL is pushing the Twitter hashag #SB44 for wild tweeting on game day. Those tweets, along with photos and other stuff, are supposed to be showcased on nfl.coms/sb44, but it seems to be down at the time of this writing.

Of course, the Super Bowl becomes about so much more than just football. Hulu is running an ad zone to highlight the advertising industry’s biggest day of the year. Here’s one for Cheetos:

The Saints reaching the Super Bowl for the first time is also shedding new and updated light on New Orleans post-Katrina and the resilient spirit of its people.

On a much lighter note, Asylum is running a “LiveTweeting/drinking extravaganza” (via TV Squad).

And finally, we save the best for last. Puppy Bowl VI. That’s all you need to say.

Enjoy the game! I have no clue who is going to win but am expecting a thoroughly entertaining aerial show.

Twitter is a central gathering point to talk about live events, both real world and virtual. So when popular web hosting company Rackspace experienced a major outage today, causing all kinds of online mayhem – websites from the well known TechCrunch were offline to the relatively obscure Online Media Cultist (my blog, that’s how I found out!) – people headed to Twitter to vent, inform, commiserate, and twiddle virtual thumbs.

Searching “rackspace” on Twitter search caused a massive torrent of activity to return. Quickly I noted Robert Scoble’s (as ever) omnipresence. He pointed people to a Twitter List he created of Twitter feeds of Rackspace employees and news sources. Tracking that list shows a quick transition from tweets about impending snowstorms and how “my cat Dracula caught a Hummingbird” to real time updates about the widespread service outage.

The RackStatus Twitter feed also announced that Rackspace is “experiencing problems and are actively investigating their source. Please follow @RackStatus for more updates.”

Less than 20 minutes later, the issue seemed to have been mostly resolved, and the Twitter masses again related the changed status, reminding me of late night website development builds where production teams often frantically instant message each other with “are you up?” and “what are you seeing?”

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler notes that other affected websites included, “37signals, Brizzly, Scoble’s blog, all of the sites hosted by Laughing Squid, Tumblr custom domains, and many others.”

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

The latest is leaked screenshots of a new "contributors" feature, which aims to give businesses that utilize Twitter for online marketing, PR, and customer service purposes more control over their accounts. Mashable's Ben Parr explains that "Contributors is a feature that focuses on creating more authentic engagement for business accounts. With Contributors, a business account with multiple contributors (say, for example, the @Twitter feed) can add the specific user that tweeted on behalf of the business to the byline."

For example, companies that have multiple people tweet to the same account will be able to more easily manage access. Additionally, "enhanced access" and "partial access" will enable companies to give certain people "lower level" control over accounts so that they will be able to tweet, for example, but won't be able to grant access to additional employees.

What remains to be seen is how much Twitter will charge businesses for Contributors-level accounts. Twitter has also stated that Contributors is just one of several new features in development. We'll be watching!

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

How do we know how it's doing at the close of 2009? Check this: Dell Inc. claims to have earned $6.5 million via the power of the tweet. I'd say that's pretty big.

* Webware: Those who say that Twitter is nothing more than a place where people share inconsequential experiences in their lives might want to listen up.

* Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb is skeptical: The news will no doubt be celebrated by social media marketers all the world over but I believe there's reason to be very skeptical of this tidbit of information.

* MaximumPC: Dell keeps it’s Twitter network active with more than 100 employees sending out tweets over 35 different channels to followers in 12 countries. According to Mehta [Mehta, vice president of Dell’s online sales unit], “It’s a very vibrant channel for us and it’s growing aggressively. It’s not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it’s that it’s happening globally.”

* Boy Genius Report: Twitter.com may not have a revenue model in place, but that isn’t stopping other companies from making some green off of the social networking site.

* Fast Company: But with Dell's turnover ticking upwards of $61 billion dollars in 2008, isn't this figure just an insignificant drop in Dell's ocean? Yes, if you're talking pure dead numbers. But according to Manish Mehta, VP of Dell Online, Dell apparently sees Twitter as a "very vibrant channel" partly due to its aggressive growth and partly due to the potential global reach, on a per-second basis, of a single Tweet.

(this post originally appeared at Technorati)

The result, on the webby side at the least, is awfully intriguing.

The Official Avatar Interactive Trailer is an Adobe AIR app that brings the trailer for the lavishly expensive and highly anticipated new film to your desktop, and offers a bunch of interactive and social media features along with it. As Mashable notes, “whenever you watch a trailer, special “hotspots” will come up where you can learn more about the characters. Even cooler though is the integration of Avatar’s Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube feeds. You can get all of the latest news right from the interactive trailer.”

I’m particularly intrigued by the integration of real time subject-specific content feeds that help to enhance the interactive experience, as it relates to my recent piece on digital curation and the future of the Internet. It’s cool to see this kind of content delivery – offering the right content to the right place (people who are excited enough about Avatar to install an AIR app that relates to it) at the right (real) time.

Here’s the Avatar trailer:

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Well, it would seem that 11 days in that this is a big deal already.

Says CNET:

Microsoft on Monday said that millions of Xbox Live members have used the new social-media features that the company pushed live a week ago.

In June, Microsoft announced it would begin offering Xbox Live users access to Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. And while the manifestation of each of those services is scaled down on Xbox Live, the rollout has been one of the company's big pushes this fall for its hugely popular online system.

And of course it’s causing the bloggers to get their blog on:

• Kotaku: Earlier this month, Facebook went live on Xbox LIVE. Loads of people have logged onto Facebook via LIVE. "Loads" is not very descriptive. "Two million" is.

• Destructoid: [David] Dennis didn’t have numbers for the amount of people who got bored with both apps and went to play Modern Warfare 2. He also didn't have a number for the amount of people using the Twitter app, but we’re guessing a lot of people signed into that as well. Not many can resist sending that, "Hey, I'm doing this over LIVE" tweet. Not many at all.

• CrunchGear: In related “social” news, Microsoft says that around half a million Last.fm account were created with the launch of Xbox Live-Last.fm compatibility.

• TechSpot: Meanwhile, the Zune marketplace — formerly called Xbox Live marketplace — served videos to 1.7 million users in the first week available. No figures for Twitter's usage were offered, but Dennis did say that there have been "tweets from nearly every market where we have Xbox Live."

• Edge Online: With around ten per cent of Xbox Live’s 20 million user base accessing Facebook, the service may be the most heavily adopted of the new features introduced with the most recent Xbox 360 system update.

On a personal note, I have yet to play with the Xbox’s new social features as I’m suffering through a bout of the dreaded Red Ring of Death. If the stars align brightly and correct-like I will receive my receive my repaired and newly undead Xbox this very night, a Thanksgiving Miracle if there ever was one I’d say. Well, in geeky terms, anyway.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

It became a happening, which is why it makes sense for Twitter to ask us a throw back yet born anew question.

Here’s what Biz had to say about it on the Twitter blog:

The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”

And onward to other bloggy reactions:

• Mashable: On the surface it’s a minor change, and yet it’s significant in reflecting the shifting focus and user behavior of the service over time. As most users know, the official question is largely ignored by those who have found myriad ways to share pretty much anything they wanted, be it information, relationships, entertainment, citizen journalism, and beyond.

• John Battelle’s Searchblog: For starters, it’s a rather subtle leapfrog of Facebook, which has recently mimicked Twitter with its status updates. Facebook is stuck (but there are upsides to this stuck-ness) in a personal framework. Twitter, by moving past the YOU, is declaring Facebook’s imitation moot.

• TechCrunch: It’s a wise move because “What are you doing” seemed too narrow for the platform. Broadening the question to match all the things people use twitter for was necessary.

• Technologizer: Twitter is catching up to its users, who in large part abandoned the literal description of their activities long ago. My feed might not be an indication of everyone else’s, but looking at the last 40 tweets in my timeline, only six are descriptions of what the person is up to.

(this piece originally appeared on Technorati)

Now, here comes the dilemma: you already have your hands on your Xbox controller, so it’s a huge inconvenience to move over to your laptop, Blackberry, or iPhone so that you can tweet and Facebook Connect and social network at the same time, right?

Well, now you’re all set! Marc Whitten, Xbox Live’s General Manager, has announced that Xbox Live will support Twitter and Facebook beginning on Tuesday.

In all seriousness, this is a significant development that further brings the big time gaming, broadcast media, and social media worlds together… and you don’t even need to leave your couch to absorb its impact.

And here’s what the bloggers have to say:

* Mashable: According to Major Nelson, the new Dashboard Update will be going live to everyone next Tuesday, November 17. The update also includes a new Zune video area that picks up where the Xbox Video Marketplace left off, adding the ability to stream a number of purchases instantly instead of having to wait for them to download.

* NewTeeVee: But the key will be the ability to share Facebook photos through the television, Whitten said. Facebook integration will enable users to easily flip through those pictures, without having to worry about how to connect their PCs to their TVs.

* CrunchGear: The idea, I guess, is that you’ll be able let your friends know just how much fun you’re having while playing the latest game, or streaming the latest Netflix release, without having to go through the trouble of whipping out your phone or walking over to your computer. I see it as a convenience and nothing more. It may also mean that there’s nothing you can to do stop Twitter’s worldwide dominance.

* VG247: The date is pretty fitting since it’s a MASSIVE day in game releases: Assassin’s Creed II, Left 4 Dead 2, God War War Collection, AssCreed DS & PSP Bundle, LBP PSP, The Sims 3 expansion World Adventures, RE: Darkside Chronicles, Toy Hawk: RIDE, Lego Indy 2, etc.

* Destructoid: As you’ve seen in our video preview of the update (or yourself if you’re one of the lucky ones in the beta) the update doesn’t allow Tweets or FB messages on the fly; rather, users have to jump into an application which makes this the second most pointless thing ever. The first most pointless thing, by the way, is my autographed portrait of Dennis Rodman.

(this piece originally appeared on Technorati)

All of this social media tom foolery is enough to dilute creative powers and potency from the artistic genius. At least that’s what John Taylor, Duran Duran bassist (and ’80s hair master) would have us believe. “When artists today are asked to Twitter their every thought, their every action, to record on video their every breath, their every performance, I believe they’re diluting their creative powers, their creative potency and the durability of their work,” Taylor writes.

I’m reminded of a statement that Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler made during the ’90s, complaining bitterly about how artists were expected to produce exciting music videos along with their music, to paint a picture to go along with the song.

Is it true that artists would be better off simply being allowed to concentrate on their art form if they didn’t have to be bothered with self-promotion and other ancillary activities? Or is opportunity more wide open than ever to create and distribute creative content because of the awesome power of the rocking Internet?

John Ditzel, Twitter user, is one who is not having it, tweeting: “So who diluted Duran Duran’s creative powers years ago before twitter?”

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

Case in point is CoTweet’s new Enterprise Innovators Program, which charges a currently invite-only list of companies $1,500 a month to obtain tools such as reach analytics, engagement and influence analytics, and extended customer conversation history, which tracks “a lifetime archive of customer interactions.”

And thus the bloggers spoke:

• Mashable: Previously a free tool for beta users, the new enterprise option tacks on additional analytics and tweet history and starts at $1,500/mo (according to The Wall Street Journal). The company is boasting that McDonald’s, Microsoft, SunTrust, Coca-Cola, and Ford have already upgraded.

• Twitterrati: If there’s a market ripe to consume fee-based Twitter services, it’s businesses looking – and will to pay for – more bells and whistles than Twitter offers. Why Twitter hasn’t already entered this market is a mystery but, then again, everything Twitter does when it comes to revenue seems to be an enigma wrapped inside a riddle.

• WebProNews: Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald’s, Microsoft, SunTrust, and Whole Foods are among the early adopters, which is quite impressive. Another interesting detail is that CoTweet isn’t exactly begging for clients; the program’s existence was discovered by Wall Street Journal reporterAndrew LaVallee, and businesses in fact have to request an invitation to scope out the new offering.

• Digits: CoTweet is working on additional features, such as the ability for users to assign customer-service tickets, as well as a mobile application that it will release in coming weeks, Mr. Engle said. The company plans to add support for other social-networking sites, starting with Facebook, in the future as well.

• programming blog: Also, although the launch of the CoTweet Enterprise Innovators Program might seem like yet another missed revenue opportunity (Twitter’s indicated before that it might try to make money by selling premium accounts and analytics services),Twitter could still presumably join the game at any point in time.

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)