I’ve used Twitter, Flickr, and Kyte to build a lifestream page from Interbike in Las Vegas. Here’s a preview:

Latest Tweet

Anyone at interbike want to split a cab to the airport? # 2008/09/26

Latest photo

More videos, photos, and text updates

(post frozen after Interbike)

Before Cyclingnews, this was all the information you’d get about the Vuelta had until VeloNews came in the mail. (It’s on the left, next to the WNBA box score.)

Now that I’m commuting on BART, I get free coffee but no cell reception most of the way, so I’ve been looking at actual newspapers.

Well, sort of. MTV has a announced a new ad network based on “Tribes”, i.e. different subcultures within their audience. It’s a scaled-up version of the Hype Circle network that former Kadisco client Sneakerplay is a part of. They have a very specific look and get great CPMs, even if they don’t do a lot of volume.

What’s interesting is that it’s a move away from automation. The need for relevancy  is so great that you can’t rely on searches and tages; whoever’s managing the network really needs to know the subculture and make judgement calls about what sites (or areas of sites) to include and what ads the audience will respond to. Hype Circle seems to work for advertisers, so there’s definitely potential for this model even if it’s more labor-intensive.

via TechCrunch

The good folks at former Kadisco client Bebo have a new partnership with ESPN to deliver ESPN’s web content through Bebo’s Open Media Platform. As Mashable points out, the content itself isn’t that compelling, but it’s a great brand for Bebo to align with as they try to go mainstream in the US. Nice work by Darius and the crew there.

Check out SportsCenter on Bebo here.

Post your video or written question ahead of time at The Road Diaries

McDonald’s is running a promotion on MySpace to come up with a new Big Mac chant - you know, “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun”…

One of the finalists is a rapper from Miami who actually robbed a McDonald’s when he was 14, got tried as an adult, and was imprisoned for 12 years. Obviously, there’s a rich irony here but it’s disgraceful that we live in a country where you can walk out of prison at 26 having spent almost half your life there. Now he’s involved in the Real Talk Project and works with imprisoned youth all over Florida.

Anyways, go vote for BAiNG. He’s contestant #4.

via TechCrunch

I was looking at the Fail Blog just now, then I came aross this story on ReadWriteWeb. Apparently, some guy at Deloitte looked at a bunch of branded online communities and found that:

Thirty-five percent of the [corporate] online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members - despite the fact that close to 60% of these businesses have spent over $1 million on their community projects.

As RWW points out with insights like “They are stupid,”  the study misses the real reason that corporate social networks fail: nobody cares.

The project that I’ve been working on with SRAM for the last two months reached a big milestone this week. The Road Diaries went live! The site itself is a multi-author, multimedia blog written by the SRAM road team. We’ll be producing exclusive behind-the-scenes content that we’ll upload at events using mobile technology to give it a real-time, immediate, personal feel. We’re focusing a lot on video and will be using Kyte to broadcast live, interactive shows.

We’ll have content from the Tour de France with SRAM teams Saunier Duval-Scott and Agritubel over the next three weeks, plus some other big interviews coming up. Stay tuned.

The Road Diaries RSS feed

The Court of Arbitration for Sport announced earlier today that it will uphold USADA’s suspension of Floyd Landis, whose website is currently down. That was Floyd’s last chance to be exonerated through the global sporting establishment, although it is possible that he’ll continue through civil court.

I’ve never been able to commit to a position on Floyd’s guilt or innocence. Both are plausible scenarios and there are arguments to support each one. But from the early going, it was clear that his innovative defense strategy would have a far-reaching affect on anti-doping hierarchy. By opening the Malibu hearing to the public and though the inaptly named “Wikipedia Defense“, Floyd drew back the curtain on a previously opaque system and exposed it as sloppy, arbitrary, and vindictive. He fought back through the media, particularly online social media, and almost pulled it off.

Regardless of whether he doped, Floyd sent a message any bureaucracy would be wise to heed:

If you don’t show people what you’re doing, someone else will show them for you.

As always, Trust But Verify has the best Floyd coverage.

Puma has released I-Cycle, a series of video shorts featuring the founder of the Recycle-A-Bicycle program in New York, actor Matthew Modine’s Bicycle For a Day, the guy who had the first pedicab in New York, the organizer of the Bicycle Film Festival, and Puma’s bike collecting CMO.

One thing that jumped out at me immediately was that the interviews were done on the bike, not in the studio. Being able to see the person talking instead of just hearing a voiceover during a riding shot makes it feel so much more personal. Also, Puma branding is almost non-existent. I noticed a shot of the Bike Film Festival guy wearing Pumas and there are obviously some kicks in the video with their CMO. But Puma has smartly told interesting stories about bike culture, not about their products

via PSFK

The BBC has published a guide for its producers on how to use social networks and other social sites to promote the BBC and its programming. The principles that they outline are essential for any marketer who wants to use social web sites in a way that feels natural and appropriate to users. Here are their spot-on recommendations about Tone of Voice:

We should be sensitive to the expectations of existing users of the specific site. If we add a BBC presence, we are joining their site rather than the opposite. Users are likely to feel that they already have a significant stake in it. When adding an informal BBC presence, we should “go with the grain” and be sensitive to user customs and conventions to avoid giving the impression that the BBC is imposing itself on them and their space.

For example, we should respect the fact that users on site X are not our users; they are not bound by the same Terms of Use and House Rules as we apply on bbc.co.uk. Attempts to enforce our standard community rules on third party sites may lead to resentment, criticism and in some cases outright hostility to the BBC’s presence.

This is not to say that behaviour likely to cause extreme offence, for example racist insults, should be tolerated by the BBC on a BBC branded space on a social networking site. It should not. Neither should behaviour which is clearly likely to put a child or teenager at substantial risk of significant harm. But where we do decide to intervene, we will normally need to do so with a light touch, sensitive to different expectations and a different context from bbc.co.uk

via NewTeeVee

TechCrunch reports that garbage and recycling company Waste Management has launched a social network called Greenopolis that encourages users to “Learn. Act. Reward. Together.™” It’s a full-on social network with user profiles, friends lists, blogging and media, forums, etc. It’s also an example of a company hopping on the social networking bandwagon a bit too eagerly, even if a $20 billion dollar company like Waste Management can afford to throw some promotional weight behind Greenopolis.

Still, the site is unlikely to have nearly the impact of the (Lil) Green Patch Facebook application. As a user, all you need to do is add the application, plant something in your friends’ patches, and get back to doing whatever else you do on Facebook. There’s no new profile to create, new blog to write, new media to upload, new forums to use, etc. With 5.5 million profiles and over 615,261 daily users, the (Lil) Green Patch reaches a lot more people than it looks like Greenopolis ever will.

For whatever reason, green social networking hasn’t taken off, at least not in proportion to the size of the population that cares about environmental issues. The sites are out there but they haven’t really gained traction with users. Maybe the problem is that we’re already doing as much social networking as we can handle in a 24 hour day, so a niche social network is a tough sell to new users unless there’s already a thriving community in place. Like Dogster.

In any case, brands - whether green or not - are probably better off taking a cue from (Lil) Green Patch and tapping into existing social networks rather than starting their own. If Waste Management had done that, maybe they’d have more money for their U-23 cycling team.