Box Office News:
Kid flick has worst B.O opening in history
via Variety – Latest News http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118058911.html?cmpid=RSS%7CNews%7CLatestNews
Obama’s Speech Blows up Twitter
According to the Twitter government and politics team, President Obama set a Twitter political record by driving 52,757 tweets per minute during his 38-minute convention speech Thursday night. The team added that his line, “I’m no longer just the candidate, I’m the President,” spurred the second biggest TPM spike for Obama with 43,646 tweets-per-minute, while “I will never turn Medicare into a voucher” scored the third highest with 39,002 TPM. The peak figure translates to almost 880 tweets-per-second, or total nonsense if you don’t believe Twitter has a role in shaping people’s attitudes about political moments.
By comparison, the First Lady peaked at 28,003 tweets per minute during her speech, with Bill Clinton at 22,087, while Romney topped out at only 14,289 TPM during his acceptance.
The Obama campaign is certainly keyed into Twitter political chatter: The campaign noticed that users were mocking Joe Biden’s affection for the word “folks,” and abuse of the word “literally,” so they turned it into lemonade. The Washington Post reports that the campaign took out an ad on the word “literally,” causing a promoted @BarackObama tweet to appear when users searched the word.
Twitter has grown substantially since 2008 when Obama ran for and won the presidency. That year, users sent 300,000 tweets per day, according to the Telegraph. On the company’s sixth birthday this March, it announced that its 140 million active users dispatched an astonishing 340 million tweets a day. Some users much more often than others, like Alec Baldwin who opined on the state of the race on Twitter yesterday, writing, “If Obama was white, he’d be up by 17 points.”
Read more posts by Brett Smiley
Filed Under:
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via Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/obamas-speech-twitter-politics-record.html
Obama Makes Steve Jobs Ad Lib, Drops Google Reference
The Apple fanboy-in-chief made an interesting switch during his convention speech. Mashable notes that in his prepared remarks released to the press, Obama said, “We believe that a little girl who’s offered an escape from poverty by a great teacher or a grant for college could become the founder of the next Google.†As delivered, the line ended, “could become the next Steve Jobs.” The switch may have something to do with Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, attending the convention with Chelsea Clinton this week — or maybe the president just really wants to get his hands on an iPhone 5.
Read more posts by Margaret Hartmann
Filed Under:
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,tech feuds
via Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/obama-swaps-google-shout-out-for-steve-jobs.html
Mitt, met
He was so sick of cornfields. Oh god all the cornfields. Not just in the well-edited ads, but in the real life, in the real truth of the bus wheels rolling. Back in the early days, in Iowa, in towns like that state has, it was all ghostly old stalks or it was new ones, fruitful and burning with worms. It was all corn, this country. But those places were still where everything was centered, the yellow heart of this blue country. So he went, shook bony hands, kissed unfamiliar cheeks, smiled basic smiles in prairie wind, in farmland heat. Oh how life had always said something to him! Oh how there was always this voice, this thing prodding in him, this spirit, this loud and undeniable call, his dad’s last gift, to move on up and ahead. America is a big place, is all he could think as he watched it all drift by — whether up close from some creaking wooden stage, or faraway in a jet, coursing over the deserts and grass and disappearing trees of the old eastern mountains. There he was, doing the business of turning strangers into friends, of cheering into the night about such harsh intangibles. The common good, the civic spirit, the lost ideas we all once had, buried somewhere in our easy, privileged DNA. He longed to key into that, to open that treasure box up and bathe in its light. But instead everything was hard, it all tasted like Massachusetts stone. He longed for the salty wind, the cool leafy caress, the wooden embrace of home. And yet here he was. Looking at corn. More corn. Will there ever not be corn. Will we ever not exist, when our planet is even older. Will heaven be enough, out there in space. He caught himself in the grip of a deep sadness, felt its power clamping over the important parts of his spirit. And he wanted to shake it off, part of himself wanted to be rid of it. But another part fell into it, relaxed into it, said Hey. Hey. We feel this way. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we feel this way. So he let the corn be the corn, and as the light burst in through the window, Mitt Romney steeled his heart, he breathed in a rush of confidence, he pressed on. Oh gods old and new, he pressed on. There, into the air, above the fields. Lost, but known.Â
via O Pioneer! http://richardlawson.tumblr.com/post/31043371848/met
No Joke: Leno Took 50% Pay Cut
“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno took a 50% pay cut as part of last month’s budget-chopping effort, NBC said. The network hadn’t previously disclosed the scope of the changes.
via WSJ.com: Media & Marketing http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577635841079042920.html?mod=rss_media_marketing
Ryan Lochte not winning any gold medals with his E! news hosting gig
Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte loves the camera — but TV execs who have hired him to cover New York Fashion Week worry he won’t be…
via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/lochte_no_splash_as_journo_9LPrm7wlzFRd1JLWdxjxpI?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six
Which Famous Twitter Personalities are Forecasting the Medium’s Demise?
The Twitterverse is swarming with A-list actors, best-selling authors, snarky comedians, and bloviating politicians, displaying varying degrees of tweet talent. What could possibly spell trouble for the social network’s future?
via The Latest from VanityFair.com http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/twitter-personalities-most-followers
Literally Not Figuratively
CHARLOTTE — Ad-libbing: It’s what Irish-American pols do best. There was nearly as much riffing in Joe Biden’s speech as there’d been in Bill Clinton’s.
TEXT: That’s the President’s job.
SPEECH: That’s what presidents do, or at least what they’re supposed to do.
TEXT: I just don’t think he understood what saving the automobile industry meant — to all of America
SPEECH: What I don’t understand — what I don’t think he understood — was what saving the automobile industry meant.
The extra ands and repetitions and literalies — folks, literally not figuratively, they work in a setting like this. And Biden’s speech-crafters have figured out how to say odd things without setting off the fact-check monitors. Who were these mystery opponents complaining that “America is in decline?” Has anyone literally said to Biden, “hey, I’m betting against America?” If Clinton tried to talk through an intellectual argument in jess-folks language, Biden started with jess-folks and ended up parked on the ranch house’s lawn.
via Slate Blogs http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/09/06/literally_not_figuratively.html
For media, convention coverage is expensive but essential
For the economically challenged news industry, the calculation looks something like this: Seven days of coverage spread over two weeks. Thousands of reporters scrambling for a limited pool of stories. Enormous expenses. Limited viewer, reader and advertising upside.
via Style: Culture, Arts, Ideas & More – The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/for-media-convention-coverage-is-expensive-but-essential/2012/09/06/daf5cdb4-f849-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html?wprss=rss_style
Obama: Romney attacking ‘fictional Barack Obama’
President Barack Obama told USA Today in an interview published Monday that Republicans led by Mitt Romney have so twisted his record and his words that they may as well be taking on “a fictional Barack Obama.” That message, delivered on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, follows days and weeks of […]
via Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-romney-attacking-fictional-barack-obama-234023101–election.html