Mad Twittering: The Medium is the Message

Another thing I wanted to pass along from Pop Candy...

Evidently, AMC is not happy with some folks who had personas on Twitter reflecting characters from the hit series Mad Men. Read Whitney's story for all the details.

Here's my take...It's an interesting debate whether people's avatars should be allowed to impersonate fictional characters. I don't think it's a big deal. People impersonate others all the time. If I opened an email account with the name Superman2008 and sent an email to my friends saying I was from the planet Krypton and that I was a flying crime fighter, do you really think DC Comics would care? What would I be hurting?

Now don't get me wrong, obviously AMC feels they are in the right because people posing as characters from a popular TV show on a popular social network could be seen as a form of advertising.

That's the most fascinating part of this story to me. The blurring lines of communication between "friends" and and perceived advertising/social media marketing. Who's to say that a Twitter promotional campaign wasn't in the works for the show (although I doubt it since the popular series is set in the 60's).

The main thing to realize here is that with the evolution of social media and its place in our everyday lives it is becoming harder to distinguish what is real and what isn't (and who is real and who isn't).

But there in lies the beauty of the digital era that is upon us. The medium truly is the message.

My Infinite Playlist

I ran across a post by the great Whitney Matheson on the blog Pop Candy today that talks about a social media promotion for the upcoming movie, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist."

The premise is pretty sweet. By going to this promotional microsite you can create your own playlist of uploaded songs, pics and videos. If you want you can also use Imeem.com to upload songs already on their network and available for use.

Once you complete your playlist, you can embed it on just about any application that allows embedded HTML code. So, for example I've placed mine at the bottom of this blog. So if you want, you can head down there right now and listen to my infinite playlist...I think I'll keep this around for a while and remix the songs every week.

The other cool thing is you can remix my playlist and add some of your own songs and place them on your sight, simply by hitting the "remix" button at the bottom of my playlist. Let me know what you think about the application and my choice of songs.