Posted by Joe

With all the talk about the Internet destroying newspapers, magazines and television, The New York Times ran an interesting take on how the Internet is working to improve television ratings.

Times reporter Brian Stelter notes that social media Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter are encouraging people to watch TV while they chat about programming like the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympic Games. The numbers don’t lie. The Super Bowl was the most-watched program in U.S. history and the Winter Olympics are on track to be the most-watched foreign winter games since 1994.

So what does this all mean for TV? As mediums continue to converge, interactivity is going to be essential in attracting the masses. Interactivity is the reason American Idol continues to dominate the ratings war, even when many of its past performers have seen their fifteen minutes fizzle faster than a Clay Aiken comeback.

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Posted by Aurora

As the top athletes from around the world approach the Olympic podium this year, they will be taking home more than just gold, silver or bronze medals. They will be the recipients of… our discarded, broken and unusable electronics?

For the first time in Olympic history, the 2010 Vancouver Olympic medals contain metals from electronic waste, commonly referred to as e-waste.

A study published in the Science Journal last year found that e-waste had become the fastest-growing component of the U.S. solid-waste stream. According to the study, more than 1.36 million metric tons of discarded cell phones, MP3 players and other electronic items sit in landfills and elsewhere.

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If ever one needed stark evidence of how social media is changing the way we interact, we have yet another living example in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti. Mobile and social media networks have been an invaluable resource in disseminating information, connecting loved ones and keeping the world aware of this disaster. Now, companies like Verizon Wireless are stepping in to contribute some if its core corporate competencies with social media to make a big difference in funneling money to aid groups.

Verizon Wireless is offering its short-messaging platform as a fast conduit for the public to quickly direct funding to the American Red Cross. In addition to traditional media relations, Jeffrey Nelson, the company’s veteran executive director of corporate communications, was a force on Twitter to make users aware they could text 90999 to donate $10 specifically for Haitian relief and drum up momentum by offering real-time, running tallies of the donation totals.

We can’t prove it, but leveraging social media – a big source of wireless data traffic these days – must have had a huge impact on the initial wave of texted donations.  According to the New York Times, the American Red Cross reported $35 million in donations in the first day days following the quake – much more than in a similar period for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or the Indian Ocean tsunami.  Further, the millions of dollars wireless carriers reported collecting via texting thus far is astonishing, compared to the $190,000 in total text donations following Hurricane Ike in 2008.

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