You might have missed it, but last night, one commercial aired during the Super Bowl that had a direct tie to the Silicon Valley. It was the Best Buy “phone innovator” commercial and aired featuring Philippe Kahn, the inventor of the camera phone, Ray Kurzweil, the inventor of text-to-speech synthesis, the founders of Shazam, Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, and the creators of Words with Friends (with a great hat-tip to Alec Baldwin). It was a great spot that featured some of the tech world’s biggest, brightest, and legendary inventors and mobile pioneers. It kind of is a backhanded compliment to have it be associated with Best Buy though, in my opinion, but it still is a great commercial. Nice of them to also focus on some of the people you didn’t know were part of the startups – like with Square, the only founder most people know is Jack Dorsey.

Anyways, what did you think of this Best Buy commercial? You can watch the whole thing here.

Yesterday, we bore witness to one of the greatest sporting events in the history of the modern age. A clash of titans, as it were…the New York Giants slugged it out against the New England Patriots and emerged to come out victorious in what is now being called the most-watched television program in US history and also the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years! Congratulations to the New York Giants!

But while we remember the game, let’s not forget all the other news that are happening around the Internet simultaneously as the big game. Not only was this the first time the Super Bowl was livestreamed on the Internet to mobile and tablet devices (leading to more viewership, I’m sure), there seemed to be a greater play on social media by not only the NFL and the NBC Network, but also advertisers too. Twitter reported today that the service set a record for the most tweets sent per second (TPS): 12,233 tweets! That’s an amazing amount since in 2008 during the Super Bowl, it was 27 TPS, and in 2011, it was 4,064 TPS. Of course, this massive record of tweets per second occurred during the last three minutes which is when Twitter says an average of 10,000 TPS were sent. But what does this all translate into? Well during the Super Bowl, there were 13.7 million related tweets sent out during the five hour game. These numbers are absolutely staggering!

And what about the other part of the game? The so-called “Brand Bowl”? Well some of them did very well in terms of the conversation, but it’s a bit of a mixed reaction. First, let’s see which of the brands succeeded in getting the most comments:

In Advertising Age this morning, Bluefin Labs analyzed data of all the television commercials to see which one of them earned a spot in the top 10 highest rated spots with the most response. It should be noted that Bluefin only reviewed content pushed on two major networks: Twitter and Facebook. I wonder how these would be changed with Google+ or on social sporting networks like on OnShare?

Regardless, each ad was tracked for 45-minutes after it began to air and what’s surprising is that one of the first commercials to air during the game was the David Beckham H&M underwear commercial and received 108,914 comments – a sign that the first is the best? Either that, or sex sells…

Not surprising, Chrysler’s hit ad featuring Dirty Harry himself, actor/director Clint Eastwood in “It’s Halftime in America” was a rousing success with over 95,000 comments and came in second. It was definitely one of the big winners of the evening and people are STILL talking about it today! But nowhere on this list was the GoDaddy commercial – perhaps a sign that after years of the racy ads, the public is getting tired about ripping on them and decided there’s much more worthy commercials to talk about?

Perhaps the biggest stumble in the “Brand Bowl” this year was the use of the hashtag in commercials. In light of the McDonald’s hashtag debacle, it might not have seemed good to throw out a hashtag unless you were 100% sure that your commercial would ellicit the response you were hoping for. Some had a pretty good chance at positive reactions, like the Audi vampire commercial (#solongvampires) and the Bud Light Platinum (#MakeItPlatinum), but then there were others like GE’s commercial with the hashtag #whatworks — a friend of mine said that he would tweet out “#whatworks not this commercial”. Hashtags were genuinely a gamble for advertisers in an attempt to get into the social scene.

But did advertisers really embrace the role of social media this Super Bowl? According to the Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang and Brian Solis, maybe not and they’ve discovered five interesting trends out of the 87 advertisements:

• Brands heavily invested in promoting their traditional websites
• Many did not promote a call-to-action
• Only a sixth of ads explicitly promoted social media
• Hashtag marketing emerged to stimulate continual engagement
• Cutting edge marketers teased with new marketing tactics, including Shazam

So while I think that the hashtag attempt on commercials was a fumble, it’s a trend of the Super Bowl nevertheless. But is anyone still surprised at any of these trends? The website is here to stay and advertisers will continue to push people to them just like they asked them to call their 800 numbers for several decades. There are a few risky marketers who will ask people to tweet at them using the hashtag, but if anything, the Super Bowl is showing us that advertisers are starting to be a slightly bit more innovative in how they reach people, especially on television. Just take a look at this breakdown from the Altimeter Group:

Maybe the 32% of brands during the Super Bowl were airing ads more as brand promotion, but the question is why aren’t you giving your customers something more to take away from it? Even those commercials that asked viewers to use Shazam were giving them a song that would forever be associated with their commercial (lasting branding) and also invited them to rate their commercial (feedback), but by not doing anything like that leaves much to be desired.

So I leave you with this fascinating tip from the Altimeter Group report: promoting traditional websites still king with brands while social integration is “nascent”. Yes, that’s right…brands seem to be gun-shy at using social media to help converse with their customers and the viewers. If anything, the most successful commercials from last night will become viral and people will be talking about it. But will the brands actually be listening?

Photo Credit: Football field by Juggernautco/Flickr

Are you on Facebook? What about Google+? Twitter? MySpace? Have you ever thought what happens to all the data that you put in there? Take your Facebook account, for example…you have so much useful information that you’d like to export and place into another place, but unfortunately you can’t. Robert Scoble tried that once and Facebook booted him off their network. The data that you enter into these social networks, while it’s your information, is being treated as if it was proprietary for the network. There’s no sharing allowed. And no matter how much you might think that the adage ”sharing means caring” might apply here, think again…the web is the wild wild West and its every social network for themselves.

Just read this latest post from Mr. Scoble as he comments that the common web is dead (or at least it’s too late to save). In 2008, he tried to export his Facebook information so he could apply it elsewhere, but Facebook wants to protect it and boots him off.  It seems that what you put into making your profile relevant is what you can’t get back. This was further reinforced, according to Scoble, on Friday’s episode of the Gillmore Gang where he once again rehashed his Facebook exile:

Facebook should be allowed to be a data roach motel: data can come in, but damn you Scoble if you want to take that data back out.

At this point, the open web is dead – Scoble has given up and feels that the struggle for data rights (my terminology), akin to basic human rights, is over  – the social networks have won. But is it? The data portability world still has its heroes, like Dave Winer, John Battelle, and Chris Saad. These three are not giving up on promoting the open web and fighting the good fight, but do most of us honestly care what happens to our data? Four years ago, John Battelle predicted the data constrictions we’re seeing now: “The web as we know it is rather like our polar ice caps: under severe, long-term attack by forces of our own creation.” We created this technology and now it’s evolved into a point that, over time, has slowly eroded away our feelings about data portability.

In today’s New York Times, Lori Andrews wrote an opinion article about how Facebook is making their money off of  our backs. In this article, Ms. Andrews states that unlike other big-ticket corporations, Facebook (estimated to be worth at least $75 billion), doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones.  Rather, the inventory consists of personal data. If you look at Facebook’s S-1 filing and also what I wrote about this when news first came that they would go public, most of Facebook’s revenue will come from advertising. And it’s no surprise that in order for advertisers to get more bang for their buck, Facebook allows them to target to us by key words or details that are associated with your profile or social graph (almost like a Klout perk, except being advertised to isn’t a perk). Whether it’s your relationship status, location, activities, favorite books, employment, etc., advertisers can have their pick of the litter of the entire 845 million users. This tactic has been especially beneficial for Facebook having made over $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year and making up 85% of the total revenue. So it makes perfect sense for Facebook to want to protect the data that you put into it. No network wants to allow you to share your data you willingly give it because they want to protect its cash cow! Sure you get some minimal benefit by connecting with your friends and family, but for social networks, your data is virtual gold and worth more than anything else.

And while Ms. Andrews states her arguments about Facebook, the same can be said for Google+, MySpace (they’re still around), Twitter, and startups too…your data is invaluable to them and the only way they’ll probably give it up is if their service gets shuttered.

So is there any point in trying to resurrect the Open Web? Technically it’s not dead (yet), but there are certain steps that may be applicable to stem the damage and make things accessible. Echo’s Chris Saad penned a post in response to Mr. Scoble’s in which he agrees that the Open Web is in real danger, but also points to a bigger problem: we’ve lost sight of the things that matter. You can read his entire post here, but I wanted to highlight a few things that Mr. Saad says in his post that he believes would revitalize the open web:

Add to the web’s DNA
According to Chris, almost every startup he sees is focusing on building an “app” and calling it a “platform”, but they wind up being nothing more than “proprietary, incremental and niche attempts at making a quick buck.” The thought is that companies should think deeper and more long-term. He asks companies what are they doing to change the fabric of the web’s DNA forever? Are you being a true game-changer by contributing to the “essence of the Internet” like other technologies like TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, JS, etc have done?

Don’t just iterate, innovate
Of course, someone has to build Apps. We can’t all be working at the infrastructure layer. But too many of the Apps we chose to build (or champion) are incremental. As startup founders, investors, and influencers, it’s so easy to understand something that can be described as the ‘Flipboard of Monkeys’ instead of thinking really hard about how a completely new idea might fit into the future. Sure there are plenty of good business and marketing reasons why you shouldn’t stray too far from the beaten path, broadening it one incremental feature at a time, but the core essence of what you’re working on can’t be yet another turn of a very tired wheel. If you’re shouting ‘Me too’ then you’re probably not thinking big enough.

B2C, not Ego2C
Silicon valley is clearly a B2C town. We all love the sexy new app that our mother might eventually understand. Something we can get millions of users to use so we can show them lots of ads. Besides the fact that I think we should focus a little more on B2B, the problem is we’re not really a B2C town at all. We’re actually more focused on what I will call Ego2c. That is, we pick our favorite apps based on how famous the founding team is OR how easily we can use the app to build yet another niche audience for ourselves (and brands/marketers). It would be a tragedy if the social web revolution boils down to new methods of PR and marketing. But that’s what we seem to be obsessed with. As soon as any app from a famous founder gets released we give it tones of buzz while plenty of more deserving projects get barley a squeak. If the app gets a little traction (typically the ones that have Ego mechanics baked in) you see a million posts about how marketers can exploit it. Inevitably the app developers start to focus on how to ‘increase social coefficients’ instead of how to help human beings make a connection or find utility in their lives.

“Users don’t care”
Speaking more specifically about the Open vs. Closed debate, too often we hear the criticism ”Users don’t care about open”. This is absolutely true and the reason why most open efforts fail. Users don’t care about open. They care about utility and choice. This is why the only way to continue propagating the open web is to work with BUSINESS. B2C. Startups, Media Brands, The bigco Tech companies. They care about open because the proprietary winners are becoming more prominent and successful and that usually means there are at least one or more other startup/company out there who needs a competitive advantage. They need to team up and build, deploy and popularize the open alternative.  This is why Chris believes that open will win.

There are more interesting points that Mr. Saad makes in his post and you can read it all here.

But suffice it to say, there is a small war being waged on the Internet over proprietary sites and the Open Web. The average consumer probably doesn’t consider this in their factor as much, but whether or not it’s a consideration, the lesson here is that the data you put in, while it’s your personal information, no longer belongs to you. Be careful with it.

Photo Credit: Burns Library / Flickr

Many here in Silicon Valley are eagerly trying to get funding for their startups. Out of those few who are able to get funding from Venture Capitalists, I wonder how many actually hear what’s in the above video. Following in line with the “Sh*t” memes that are the flavor of the month on YouTube, August Capital’s David Hornik posted this hilarious one about “Sh*t VCs Say”.  There are some really great gems in this video like poking fun at the negotiating process (e.g. “$10 million pre”) and much more…here are a few of my favorites:

• Is an 11 good on Klout?
• Is that the biggest plane they got?
• I got one word for you: participating preferred
• That’s what you’re doing? Are you kidding? I had that idea 3 years ago.
• S-1, baby!
• What if we put it in the Cloud?
• Mary, can you come here for a second? I need you to tweet something for me!
• I just got back from Paris.
• You’d be better off with Snooki on your board.
• What? You only have 7 million users.
• Why in the world are people skiing on the weekends when the lines are shorter during the week?
• You gotta check it out, it’s like the AirBnB for cosmetics

Thanks David Hornik for the laughs this Saturday morning. You can watch the whole video here.

This Sunday, the world’s most watched event will be aired on television. For many, Super Bowl XLVI is one of the greatest moments of the year, leaving them glued to their seats as they watch the championship game against two formidable teams. Or, perhaps they’re just interested in the commercials (that, in of itself, should be a sporting event). And if you’re watching the big game, then chances are you’re hanging out with your friends. But unfortunately, there are many that don’t get a chance to have glamorous Super Bowl parties or even are able to watch it. But this year, technology has made itself available to help you enjoy every moment of the game!

In December, the National Football League (NFL) announced that the Super Bowl would be livestreamed for the first time in history. This Sunday, the matchup between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants will be shown on NBC, but also on NFL.com and NBCSports.com. It will also be available on mobile using the NFL Mobile only from Verizon app. According to Wired, the NFL has  ”experimented with live and mobile streaming of regular-season games, but has never before opened up live video of postseason games beyond broadcast TV.” It will be interesting to see the statistics on Monday to see how many people primarily watched the game on their mobile device instead of on television. Will this open up a whole new sports paradigm that leads to a revolution of games being livestreamed more and more?

To that effect, just yesterday, according to the Verge, the NFL released the official Super Bowl app for Android and the iPhone. If you happen to be one of the lucky few to actually BE at the game, don’t get lost around Indianapolis…this application will give you a detailed guide to local restaurants, nightlife, and official Super Bowl events. And regardless if you’re there or not, this app will give you a chance to join the conversation with millions of fans around the world – the app will allow you to follow all the social media buzz with NFL Huddle.

Another way is to use a brand new app that just became available to the public. ConnecTV is what TechCrunch calls an “ambitious new service for socializing the TV viewing experience” and using mobile and web-based applications. Primarily available now on the iPad, ConnecTV is a service that supports over 250 channels with partnerships with 10 leading broadcast groups. If you don’t have a Smart TV, but want to have something that will allow you to still communicate with your friends and social graph, then using ConnecTV might be the way to go. Akin to a “Shazam for television”, the app uses a mic to listen to what you’re watching while also linking up with two of the largest social networks: Twitter and Facebook. Whether this becomes a huge success remains to be seen, but this app holds some serious potential for making you part of the game. whether it’s offering a fan favorite for MVP, or talking about the most recent play.

Okay, so chances are you don’t have an iPad or an Android tablet on you. Well then you probably have at least a mobile device on you like an iPhone or an Android phone, right? Well, being social and watching the Super Bowl doesn’t have to be a complicated thing…you can just watch the game and resort to your traditional social media behavior — snapping photos and posting them to Facebook and Twitter and sharing related comments. But what if you want to get more bang for your buck? You can definitely post as much as you want on your social feed, but what are the odds that everyone that follows you is interested in your sports posting? Well OnSports is an app that will allow you to connect specifically with like-minded sports fans, some who are actually AT the game and some that are not. Have polls, talk about the MVPs, discuss the game and share photos/videos. Could be pretty useful because aside from politics, isn’t one of the most discussed industries on the web about sports? That sounds about right, but if you want to keep in touch and get a virtual experience of the game, this might be worth using. This application is available right now for the iPhone and Android.

Are there any other apps that you’re planning on using to help keep you up-to-date about the Super Bowl? Feel free to share them in the comments below!

Welcome to the 2011 Crunchies!

Here in Silicon Valley, there’s no question that there’s an enormous amount of talent everywhere you go and it’s this talent that’s going around and creating some of the most memorable and successful startups that the industry has ever seen. Just who’s talking about these guys? Well besides us at Bub.blicio.us (small plug), you’re going to hear about it from at least one of the most influential tech publications out there: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and GigaOm. Each year, these three competitive groups join together to celebrate all that is tech and have what some may consider to be the industry’s version of the Oscars: the Crunchies.

Last Tuesday, entrepreneurs, journalists, investors, VIPs, fanbois, and those passionate about tech gathered at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco to bear witness to some of the best of the best appear on stage, interested to hear who would win. Many were nominated for a chance to win from among several categories, including Best Technology Achievement, Best Social Application, Best Mobile App, Best Design, and more. But it wasn’t all just limited to the company and the technology. Other categories were created to celebrate the individuals themselves and not just the startup team, but the investors themselves.

Bobby Hammer performs!

The show opened up with a great opening monologue by Harris Whittel and then an outstanding performance by Bobby Hammer, son of MC Hammer, singing “Is The Name“ before we dive right into the show. And what a show there is…nearly everyone from the tech scene is here. From Path’s Dave Morin to Google’s Marissa Mayer and Don Dodge to Ron Conway and Mayor Ed Lee! A bevy of who’s who showed up for this once a year celebration of tech!

Path's Dave Morin accepts the award for Best Design

Some of the biggest wins of the night went to Google+ for their award for the Best Social Application what may have been an upset against Instagram (runner-up) and even Path 2.0. In the category of Best Mobile Application, Evernote dominated the field against worthy competitors Flipboard (runner-up), Square, and Pandora. In a tough-battle, in the Best Design category, Path 2.0 took the award over recent blossoming startup, Pinterest. And in what would be the start of a great night for Dropbox, the cloud-based storage service took home the award for (what else?) Best Cloud Service, besting their rival Box.

Heather Harde addresses the audience at the Crunchies

In-between the awards, we took a quick break to pay a much-deserved tribute to former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde for all her hard work over the years with the tech publication. Legendary Angel Investor Ron Conway took the stage to give a fitting tribute of Ms. Harde and even a brief interview with her industry colleagues was shown…it was quite moving and the only time a standing ovation was bestowed.

Twitter & Square founder Jack Dorsey accepts Founder of the Year

In the individual awards category, the Angel of the Year award went to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman while the VC of the Year award went to Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz (who coincidentally also announced they’re raising another round of funding). The Founder of the Year award went to Jack Dorsey for both Square and Twitter denying Dropbox’s Drew Houston a chance at a third major Crunchie award. But it was LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner who took the win for CEO of the Year denying Spotify’s Daniel Ek.

Lastly, the most important awards were for the newbie startups and also for overall in the year. In 2011, the winner of the Best New Startup of 2011 went to Pinterest over Codecademy and the Best Overall Startup of 2011? Why that’s Drew Houston’s Dropbox returning the favor to Jack Dorsey’s Square.

And so there you have it…the winners of the 2011 Crunchies!

Oh, but wait, there’s more to fun to be had at the Crunchies…now we get to talk about the after-party, complete with photos!

Ben Parr, Twilio's Danielle Morrill, VentureBeat's Jolie O'Dell, and Aaron Gotwalt

8Tracks' Kate Imbach and Pandora's Tom Conrad ("Shit Silicon Valley Says")

Google's Don Dodge & TextPlus's Heather Meeker

Evernote's Phil Libin & TechCrunch's Susan Vander Kooi Hobbs

We won a Crunchie!

The legendary Ron Conway wheeling & dealing

Bessemer Venture Partner's Ethan Kurzweil claims a Crunchie!

This startup won a Crunchie!

Saleforce.com's Kevin Marks, Hubspot's Laura Fitton, & Seesmic's Liza Sperling

Shasta Ventures' Jacob Mullins & VentureBeat's Dylan Tweney

PandoDaily's Paul Carr & founder Sarah Lacy

Sarah Lane, CrunchFund's MG Seigler, TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld, Travis Kalanick, Menlo Venture's Shervin Pishevar, & Ana Pishevar

For more photos of the 2011 Crunchies, you can view them on my Flickr photostream by clicking here.

Photo Credit: All photos shown here are from Ken Yeung.

Update: Learnvest has an interesting infographic on their post about the Facebook IPO and who owns Facebook. This data was gathered by the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian.

If you were like me this morning, you woke up early wondering if Facebook was eager enough to file their intent to go public at 9am EST. Sadly, here on the west coast, at 6am, there wasn’t a peep about it. My Twitter stream wasn’t flooded with people retweeting article after article from sites like  TechCrunch, Mashable, All Things D, Pando Daily or even from MG Seigler. Turns out, as All Things D’s Kara Swisher so eloquently points out, there seems to be some sort of delay in the filing and everyone was just eager to find out when would Facebook decide to make the inevitable move.

Well wait no more, because as of a few minutes ago, Facebook just filed their Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. Yes, that’s right…get ready folks because one of the largest social networks in the past few years is going to enter the world of the stock market and, if experts and analysts are correct, will become one of the largest publically traded companies in the world. And as a result, millionaires and maybe even billionaires will be made. Facebook has also enlisted the help of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and Goldman, Sachs & Co. to help them through this process.

Now that Facebook has officially filed its papers to go public, under the rules of the Securities Act of 1933, Facebook will need to wait until the SEC staff declares the registration statement effective. And we will basically see all sorts of news severely limited or blocked because laws are in place to limit what information Facebook and related parties are able to share with the public.

The company intends to raise $5 billion in their Initial Public Offering . In 2011, they received over $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion with over 845 million monthly users. Where does all of this come from? Advertising and platform developer payments.

MSNBC has analyzed the filing and they are reporting:

Facebook’s billionaire chairman Mark Zuckerberg, 27, made $500,000 in base salary last year, plus a $220,000 first-half bonus, apparently making him the company’s highest-paid employee, at least in cash compensation, according to an initial look at the filing. His salary will go to a nominal $1 a year at his request effective in 2013, Facebook said in the filing.

The New York Times’ Bits blog has really scrutinized Facebook’s filing. In their post, they’ve posted some interesting tidbits:

Perhaps after the long-awaited filing for their IPO, analysts and the public are wondering what the recognized stock ticker symbol will be. The New York Times says that Facebook will seek to have “FB” for its shares. And there was rumors of a war between exchanges on who would receive Facebook’s prized listing? Well that remains unclear as the filing doesn’t mention it.

And if you don’t think that Facebook gives a damn about Google+, then you’re wrong. Claire Cain Miller from the NY Times reports that the filing has more space allotted to it and the social network states “we compete broadly with Google’s social networking offerings, including Google+, which it has integrated with certain of its products, including search and Android.” Will wonders never cease…this should make for an interesting competition both in the stock market and in the future who will come out victorious.

More about these fun facts can be found here.

Mashable has embedded the SEC filing on their site so I’m embedding it here for your convenience.

Facebook S 1

You can read the entire SEC filing here.

Photo Credit: Jeanette Runyon/Flickr

I often compare new social tools to the Velveteen Rabbit story from when I was a kid. When does something stick around long enough and make enough of an impact to become a “real rabbit”? I’ve felt this way about social recruiting as I’ve struggled through my job search for the last six months.

TweetMyJobs.com apparently had the same question and spent some time doing some research. Their conclusion? Basically that by the end of 2012, social recruiting will be a “real rabbit” but it’s not quite there yet.

Some stats that struck me:

• Currently, 92% of companies allocate less than 10% of their recruiting budget to social.
• Only 16% of companies have a Twitter account dedicated to HR  / Recruiting.

So why, why why why, am I wasting so much time socially looking for a job? Because job boards sure as hell aren’t cutting it for me. Like the other thousands of candidates out there, I spend at least 50% of my time on job boards. But it feels so fruitless and it’s definitely hard on the psyche and the self-esteem. I want recruiting to go social.

The good news for me? TweetMyJobs.com estimates that 45% of companies will increase their social recruiting budgets in 2012.

I wonder by how much. Isn’t it time to become a real rabbit?

Here’s the 2 minute video chock full of information about the current state of social recruiting:

Is Social Recruiting Real?

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Michelle is a recent, wide-eyed transplant to the San Francisco Bay area. She still runs Write Technology, where she specializes in training, social learning strategy, and social marketing. Michelle is the executive editor of My Wine Education and recently started steps towards becoming a sommelier just for the hell of it. Michelle also blogs at Total Learner, where she intends to wax poetic on what should be and what isn’t within the field of learning. Oh, and she’s looking for a “real” job so feel free to reach out.

Note: Technology press releases should be sent to michelle[at]writetech[dot]net.