All in Music
Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith -- aging front men of rock bandsTonight I'm headed to historic Fenway Park in Boston, MA to see two iconic bands that got their start in Boston. One is a major recording artist that has toured the world and the other is a relatively local band that has seem some success, but are considered royalty in Boston.
The bands in question: Aerosmith and the J. Geils Band.
Yes, we all know that Michael Jackson died. It's hard NOT to know considering the amount of media coverage the King of Pop's passing has received and continues to receive. Don't worry, I'm not going to write about his music, the allegations, how much of a freak he was or wasn't, etc. This post is about what the media madness around the MJ story has taught me as a PR professional, former journalist and social media hound.
I first caught wind of something being "up" with MJ via my Blackberry Storm by way of a New York Times news alert. The headline read, "Michael Jackson hospitalized with heart problems," or something to that extent. I was hanging out with my co-workers at the time and after I announced that to the group, someone said, "Oh man, imagine if he died?" Within a second of that comment, I received an instant message on my BB from my wife, "OMG...Michael Jackson died!" I turned to the group and gave them the news. We all immediately grabbed our mobile devices and started checking out Twitter and Facebook. We then turned the TV channel to CNN.
I remember when the news broke that Magic Johnson had HIV. I heard a rumor in school and it was that MJ had aids. I was thinking Michael Jordan, not Jackonson or Magic. I got home after school, just in time for the press conference on one of the major networks - think it was ABC at the time. However, from the time I heard the rumor to the time I actually confirmed the news, it was a span of two to three hours. With the Michael Jackson story, I got initial word, rumor confirmation, web confirmation and finally news confirmation all within 20 seconds of each other. That's how fast news spreads in today's internet-based news environment.
Starting a new Friday post about the Twitter posts I saved as favorites. I come across a lot of interesting things on the interwebs, but Twitter brings out the best. So with that, here are this week's #favfriday (not to be confused with fab five freddy and yes, I know, it's a play off of #followfriday):This whole #unfollowdiddy thing is quite interesting from a branding perspective. For those of you with your head in the sand, I'm talking about the recent explosion of Twitter use by celebrities to "connect closer with their fans," i.e. build up their brand empires and grow their celebrity status. Hello @aplusk and @oprah, et al. After the "race to one million followers," there seems to be a little bit of back lash by the general public about celebrities crowding the space that we at one point seemed to own.
Twitter is now populated with more content and more "hey look, follow me" type people than it was when I joined nearly two years ago. I'm guessing the #unfollowdiddy backlash comes from the huge turn off Twitter can be if used by people that are all about themselves, the hey, look at me crowd. I'm guessing Diddy is one of those types of users. His updates are now protected so only his followers can read what he says. Good move? No. Diddy has to understand that no matter what he does, there will be a set of consumers that don't like his music, don't like his clothing line or just don't like him period.