This week’s edition of Harf Time focused, again, on the amazing power of Twitter, with the Pope recently joining with his own official handle, and a courageous new journey into crowd-sourcing by an American motor company.
#TwitterBrekky Sydney
Sean discussed the Sydney version of #TwitterBrekky, and how panel members used the medium. Wendell Sailor (@RealBigDell) talked about how he likes being able to talk to his fans and discuss RUOK day, of which he is an ambassador.
TV presenter Shaynna Blaze talked about using Twitter to follow along with the audience when they watched Selling Houses Australia or The Block. A type of interaction Sean likes to call, “commentweeting”.
The third panel member, comedian Scott Dooley, talked about how much he liked hashtags and a few anecdotes from his time in Charlie Sheen's house during his infamous Twitter meltdown.
The Pope joins Twitter
The Vatican has jumped on board the Twitter Express, with the Pope now on Twitter. Using the handle @Pontifex, Pope Benedict XVI is yet to tweet, but is set to do so in the coming days. Who thinks #dontputhandprintsonthepopemobile is a good hashtag for him to kick things off with?
Jimmy Fallon and Lincoln motor company
Everyone knows how much time and effort goes into making Super Bowl ads, and it look like Lincoln motor company is going all out for February's big dance.
The motor company has tasked comedian and TV host Jimmy Fallon with writing an advertisement script using, of all things, crowd-sourced tweets! Using the hashtag #SteertheScript, Fallon will curate tweets from users to write a script for the commercial that will air during the Super Bowl.
It'll be great to see how it all comes together and will provide a fascinating case study.
Until Next Week
Listen to Harf Time on Wednesdays (at 2:45pm) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Daniel Harford.
Tune into Harf Time over the weekdays from 12-4pm on 1116 SEN.
Subscribe to or Sports Geek Podcast in iTunes.
Podcast transcription
Harf: So I want to find out what’s happening in the digital world, our sports media digital media from SportsGeekHQ.com Sean Callanan is back with a very sexy t-shirt, how are you doing Sean?
Sean: Good day Harf how are you doing?
Harf: Going well thanks, Australian flag sort or variety there, not quite Australian.
Sean: It’s the Twitter logo for Twitter AU on Twitter.
Harf: Is that their logo?
Sean: That’s their Avatar, yes.
Harf: I wasn’t aware of that.
Sean: The original one had half a union jack, bit of blue and red and I sort of said, doesn’t look that great, it looked more like a Fiji flag, so we said go with the green and gold and they came up with this. It’s the Twitter AU.
Harf: Twitter AU, I believe there’s some more Brekkie being had?
Sean: Yeah we had the Twitter Brekkie in Sydney up at the SCG yesterday morning, it went really well. We had big Wendell Sailor or @RealBigDell as he’s on Twitter and it was good of him to share his experience. He’s one of the first guys that jumped on Twitter from an athlete point of view. He took his handle from the real Shaq, that was Shaq’s handle originally. And he does a great job in one talking to the fans but also promoting his charities and his foundation, he’s an ambassador for ‘Are you okay?’. So he talked a little bit about bullying and things like that and how it’s important for people to keep an eye out and things like that. We also had Shaynna Blaze from selling Houses Australia and The Block and how she uses Twitter differently in engaging with people who are doing renovations. But also she was live tweeting or ‘commentweeting’ as we’ve called it before as the show is on. So it’s a really different experience, people are talking about the show to be interacting with the fans of the show. Again, it really deepens the ties. We also had Scott Dooley, who is a radio and comedian, works at Nova and he told his story about…
Harf: He’s big on Twitter.
Sean: He’s big on Twitter and he was able to get in the inner sanctum of Charlie Sheen’s mansion when that meltdown was happening. So he was hanging out with Charlie Sheen, he was helping Charlie Sheen develop the hash tags and really just messing with the medium.
Harf: What?!
Sean: Yeah he pretty much just went over to LA and eventually…
Harf: Knocked on his door and said I can help you with hash tags?
Sean: Yeah! And was sort of part of that experience. He said ‘I don’t tweet him anymore, I just text him’. He doesn’t reply back for some reason.
Harf: Tell me what they expect from the Pope on Twitter too?
Sean: Oh well that’s the thing.
Harf: I wanted to mention that.
Sean: We did mention it.
Harf: Because the Pope is on.
Sean: The Pope is on, he’s on in several languages. We’re still waiting for his first tweet.
Harf: December 12th it’s coming.
Sean: December 12th, also when the world is going to end.
Harf: Is it the same day?
Sean: I don’t know, the 12th of the 12th.
Harf: I hope not! If he’s waited this long.
Sean: Well the thing is, the Pope doesn’t use a computer. So first of all is he’s going to write them all longhand? Is he going to have a priest there counting the characters? Like ‘Oh sorry Pope, you’re up to a hundred and forty two, we have to delete’.
Harf: But the number does it for him, minus two when he gets to…
Sean: No he’s going to write them! He’s going to do it longhand; the Pope isn’t going to use an iPhone.
Harf: So the Swiss Guard are going to do it for him?
Sean: So there’d be a Cardinal there counting as the pope is writing saying ‘Sorry Pope, go back a couple of characters
Harf: Surely he’s say great to GR and number eight, shorthand for it.
Sean: And I’m looking forward to the first papal hash tag. Whether it will be something clean like #BlessYou or #DontPutHandsPrintsOnThePopeMobile, something along those lines. But what we did talk about is using Twitter to engage the fans and it’s interesting in the states, the Superbowl, that’s where Twitter will break its next tweets per second record at the Superbowl in January. But one of the big things is the ads which also drives a lot of the tweets. And Lincoln, a motor company have decided one of their ads, they’re going to employ the services of Jimmy Fallon, who is a very funny guy and is mad for Twitter, always tweeting and getting content for his show using social media. He runs regular late night hash tags to get fans involved and they’ve asked Jimmy to curate the tweets coming in and write an ad off those tweets.
Harf: On the back of the people?
Sean: On the back of the people. So they’ll be prompting the fans with the hash tags, steer the script and they’re going to be asking fans, so it’s moving into that crowd sourcing area which a lot of people are doing to produce content, saying we’re going to pull in all the Instagram shots of a cricket match or an AFL game which is great, gives that different perspective. It will be a mighty task for Jimmy Fallon to pull in all these things and who knows what he might come up with.
Harf: You know this has been done before, but back in the early days of the Simpsons, this is what happened when they tried to build a car and sell it through people, The Homer was created for the power motor company.
Sean: For the cheap price of $82,000 dollars.
Harf: It was a disaster! I hope Ford know what they’re doing here!
Sean: Well at least hopefully, Jimmy Fallon can wrap it together but it will engage fans with Lincoln and everyone will be tuned in to see if they contributed to the, ad so that’s what they want.
Harf: The Homer wasn’t a success, I’m concerned for Jimmy! Thank you mate, chat soon.
Sean: No worries mate!
Harf: Sean Callanan from SportsGeekHQ.com