Live-Blogging Gets Some Polish with Apple iPad Announcement

By Kyle Austin

Live-blogging has become an important aspect of launching products and services at media events. The 1440-minute news cycle is influenced on a tweet-by-tweet basis and if you can maximize “live buzz” the chances of your news sticking around for more than a Hollywood-minute are pretty good.

Apple has mastered the craft of creating venues for live-blogging. They set up venues with stadium style seating and fast connections, while always saving the biggest piece of news for last. This creates the need to hang on every word, sentence and slide they present.

Despite Apple’s polish though; live-blogging has struggled to become enjoyable to follow for tech fanboys. In fact, mainstream publications like the New York Times proved again yesterday that they don’t quite get what readers are looking for in a live-blog. Namely, speed and visuals.

That said, tech blogs used yesterday’s event as a coming out party to illustrate that they’ve come a long way since the live-blogging of 2006. Today, live-blogging produces several high-quality photos a minute and real-time updates. There were probably too many live-blogs to count yesterday, but I happened to stumble across a few of the best as Leo Laporte and Ustream managed to loose me with their inconsistent audio. Here’s my thoughts on the best:

#1: gdgt: Ryan Block kept my attention the best. His posts appeared to be faster than anyone else that I saw and picture updates were seamless. Or as Nick Bilton of the Times’ Bits Blog called their posting “like an Olympic diver; not even a splash.” It sounds like Ryan may have had the Rackspace hosting guys working a little overtime to make it happen.

#2: Gizmodo: Jason Chen and Brian Lam took the live-blogging on in tandem, which was unique. True to their nature their sarcasm was a little stronger than engadget’s or gdgt’s and their pictures were just about the same. However, it appeared that Gizmodo may have been better prepared for the lighting than engadget.

#3: engadget: Joshua Topolsky, who pals around with Jimmy Fallon in his spare time, did almost as well, although he did seem to lag behind Ryan on speed of posting information. He was on pace with posting pictures but they appeared to be of slightly less quality and darker than Gizmodo’s (may have been his angle). Topolsky stayed focused on bits of information and direct quotes from Jobs’ himself. Engadget’s servers also appeared to be less prepared as the site struggled with traffic.

5 comments January 28th, 2010

Coke prepares for the Superbowl with teaser ad on Facebook

By Ben Haber

It’s almost time for the Superbowl again, which means companies are getting ready to shell out significant money for a 30-second commercial spot on the one day people actually watch – and look forward to – the commercials. This year’s estimated cost for 30 seconds of airtime: $2.5 million (if only that could go toward creating jobs).

In preparation for the big game, Coca-Cola has debut a sneak preview of a Superbowl add (well, part of one anyway) on their Facebook fan page in order to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of America (and get some consumer attention). The add can be viewed in the Live Positively tab of the page.

In order to see the commercial – which features the Simpson’s – users must post a gift (a.k.a. post/note) to a friend’s wall. Each gift results in a $1 donation from Coke to the Boys & Girls Club of America, and Coke will donate up to $250,000 total (the equivalent of a 3 second add during the Superbowl).

After sending a gift, users are able to watch a sneak peak of the commercial. While it seems promising (it’s about the country’s economic problems – what else!), I have no idea how it ties into Coke (however, the currently Blackberry commercial on TV has more to do with purchasing a Beatles album on iTunes then it has to do with the Blackberry).

3 comments January 28th, 2010