Mi Vida

Traffic, It’s Only Going To Get Worse

A study conducted by UCLA professor Donald Shoup showed that at any moment between 8% and 74% of downtown traffic congestion is a result of motorists slowly meandering for parking. In larger metropolitan areas motorist spend anywhere from 3.5 to 14 minutes searching for a parking space, thus creating a domino effect, creating more traffic in areas that already heavily populated and difficult to navigate through. 

The worst part is the number of cars in the U.S. hasn’t even reached its peak. Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. estimated that by 2050 the number of cars on the road could go jump from 800 million to nearly 3 billion. So, how we combat traffic for the next 50 years?

OK, Ford addressed the problematic issue, does that imply they have a potential solution? Fortunately for us motorist, they do. Ford envisions a system in which cars are connected to each other and to cities, which would enable drivers to avoid traffic, calculate driving time with real-time updates and effortlessly find parking via traffic and parking sensors.

The Innovative Solution To Metro Traffic

What’s a traffic and parking senor? They’re generally, a low-power sensor and smart meter that track the occupancy of parking spaces throughout a specific district. The sensors are the size of a coffee cup lid and are securely buried into the street asphalt. Naturally, these senors enable smart meters to be attached to regular meters which, in turn, send out a signal to mobile-device users who easily locate that space and then pay at that meter with their mobile phones.

By consistently collecting this information from the sensors, a city may elect to

Change pricing on its parking depending on demand — raising it for a special event or a particularly busy hour, for instance. The information also alerts enforcement officials about expired parking meters or other parking violations and reduces the time they spend driving in circles.

Currently, this information can be accessed by drivers through the free, mobile app Parker, “the app alerts drivers where they are or are not likely to find an available parking space so that they can save time cruising around.”

In the span of just three shorts months, the city of Los Angeles saw a return on its investment, according to the company that conceived and implemented the software technology, Streetline.  Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City and Roosevelt Island in New York City as well as the University of Maryland have all installed  begun experimenting with the sensor technology.

Streetline Vice President Kelly Schwager said,

Once you have this infrastructure of sensors throughout a city, you can use these networks in a number of different ways,” she says. “We’re starting in parking today, but eventually you can envision this being used for measurement of pollution or to detect if a water pressure system in a fire hydrant is operating at the right pressure or if a streetlight bulb needs to be replaced. … there are lots of smart city applications that can be built on top of this.

Crowdsourcing Traffic Data & Self-Navigating Futuristic Cars

On average, the rate for installment and for the Streetline’s sensors is about $20 to $30 per sensor per month, a relatively expensive investment for most cities’ budgets. Meanwhile, a handful of other companies have utilized crowdsourcing information to assist in improving congestion data, rather than solely relying upon new, expensive technology.

Brooklyn-based Roadify uses a system which awards users who spot and provide parking information with “StreetCARma points.”  Users input the location of a spot that they are leaving or one that’s vacant so that other users nearby will see that spot on the app if they search the area.

Since the launch of the Roadify app in November 2009, about 50,000 spots have been “found” and “given” in New York City. Although the parking element of the app has a ways to go before becoming a genuine, real-time parking space map, it’s has paved way for developers and companies to expand upon the notion. Eventually, metropolitan areas will have access to a fully-functional app that helps motorist navigate around traffic delays and quickly locate parking spaces in congested areas.

For the parking technology concept to prevail, companies will heavily rely upon city data, while hoping user engagement and crowdsourcing will further enhance efficiency and above all else, accuracy.

Unless it had massive adoption rates, Roadify’s app wouldn’t be as useful without city data. As more cities open their databases to the public, the number of applications designed for navigating transportation and traffic like Roadify is bound to increase.

Other cities like Washington, D.C., San Francisco and even Paris have willingly made some of their data available for developers to access. But while cities are slowly adopting and creating parking technology, BMW has begun envisioning a futuristic, self-navigating smart car that may forever revolutionize transportation. The cinematic theme of robotics making certain human characteristics, such as driving, dispensable may be just around the corner. Buckle up, the road is about to get bumpy. 

For the longest time sports organizations seemingly had a strong, structured monitoring system of player personnel. They have a drug policy, performance standards, guidelines and expectations, and somewhere nestled between the opening clause and the “sign here” point of the contract, professional sports organizations have their fair share of unwritten and written law for a slew of affairs.

Now, I am not sure if professional sports management are that far behind in adopting and fully understanding social media, or whether general managers and directors of player personnel are just trusting gentlemen. In reality, the aforementioned is besides the point. So why isn’t there some clear, definite clause that screams; “you cannot utilize Twitter in a manner that will reflect poorly upon your image, thus the organizations?” Isn’t that the least a player can do whose pocketing $110 million over six years? Doesn’t seem like a tall,complicated task does it?

The Self-Proclaimed King James

Take Lebron James, arguablly the NBA’s prima donna, and his mishap. When early speculations were made about his desire to be traded from the Cleveland Cavaliers, owner Dan Gilbert lashed out with a multi-page e-mail that would later fuel Lebron to tweet, “Crazy. Karma is a b****.. Gets you every time. Its not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything,” eluding to the Cavaliers embarrassing loss to the Los Angeles Lakers 112 to 57 immediately after his departure. 

At the time of the tweet, Lebron had been recently acquired by the Miami Heat, which naturally put his newly-formed relationship with the organization at question. Not to mention, the sports media had a field day, painting an immature, ungrateful image of the superstar and fueling an undeniable dislike of the Heat amongst the NBA community.

Buffalo Bill’s & The Scapegoat

In week 12 of the 2010 NFL schedule, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson was at the receiving end of one of the biggest mishaps since the Music City Miracle in 2000.

The Bills and Baltimore Ravens found themselves in sudden-death overtime when Bill’s quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick launched a near-perfect pass to wide open Johnson who dropped the pass at the threshold of the end zone. The Bills would later lose the contest to the Ravens, prompting Johnson to tweet his notorious rant against the higher power.

Parallel to James’ aforementioned stunt, Johnson received a harsh spotlight of critical analyst and sports journalists, thus putting the Bill’s PR office at the forefront of an organizational, image crisis.

If James and Johnson’s emotionally-driven, immature Twitter mishandling weren’t enough, here’s a few more.

Dancing With The Twitter Star

Chad Ocho Cinco, formerly Chad Johnson, of the Cincinnati Bengals who, like fellow teammate Terrel Owens, has gained a reputation for being an NFL bad boy. For those who follow Cinco via Twitter, we’ve grown all to familiar with his irresponsible self image. After using his mobile phone to tweet his feelings regarding an on-the-field call, the NFL fined Cinco for his misconduct, in which he later responded with a follow-up tweet,

Dear NFL, I apologize for tweeting during the game but that was 2 months of my Bugatti payments you just took from me, I won’t do it again.

Unnecessary Roughness: Bashing Management

As if Brett Favre, of the Minnesota Vikings wasn’t already a tall task for the organization’s PR office, tight end Visanthe Shiancoe tweeted this during pre-season workouts,

Zzzzzz zzzzz zzz zzz (in meetings lol)..Introducing the staff.

The frequency of professional athletes reckless and irresponsible tweets inspires two essential questions; why not forbid them from social spaces such as Twitter, the second, do athletes who have felt a sense of entitlement most their adult lives fully understand their role within organizations? The answer to the latter is no, quite frankly they won’t and probably never will.

With the rate of defamatory and offensive remarks being publicly broadcasted via Twitter growing, it would be wise for someone within anyone of the 32 organizations to stand tall and declare a league-wide ban, or penalty system for remarks such as the above. If not, then I along with the majority of the NFL community will keenly await the next slew of tweets that make us unethically chuckle or cringe.

World, brace yourself for a revolution of new-wave, amateur filmmakers and their new-found, limitless potential. These witty, resourceful film enthusiasts have discovered their blank global canvas; Vimeo.Vimeo, is a free, Hi-Def video hosting site which has innovatively altered online-video viewing and creation beyond any filmmakers’ wildest reverie.

Sure, YouTube is still around, but how long will surfers of the Web passively stand for the obligatory 15 to 30-second ads before nearly every video? We’ve all grown so weary and concerned with the flux in the print industry that we’ve sadly neglected to understand the same transformation taking place in filmmaking.

Amateurzation in film and video production as hit an all-time high, based on how simplistic it is to host and broadcast content via the web, and how inexpensive high-quality, semi-pro equipment is. Canon, the leading innovator in DLSR cameras, or digital single-lens reflex cameras, which are digital cameras that use a mechanical mirror system to direct light from the lens to an optical viewfinder, has an array of models in the $600 to $1,000 spectrum. For those just starting out that may seem pricey, but in reality the national rate for a videographer is nearly $20 an hour which makes a $600 camera sound like an absolutely lucrative investment.

So where does Vimeo come into play? Well, it just so happens video producers and filmmakers no longer need expensive domains and host sites to showcase their talent and work. Vimeo’s freeimum account affords a 500 megabyte limit, while the premium package, which is $9.99 a month, enables filmmakers to upload 5 gigabytes per week. Unlike any other video host, Vimeo provides daily analytics for both its freemium and premium members.

Aside from being a host site, Vimeo has become one of the largest growing video communities on the Web. With some 4 million plus members, Vimeo has unfolded as a forum of complex videography discussion and a foyer for creativity.

Vimeo is a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. We provide the best tools and highest quality video in the universe.

Although what differentiates Vimeo from YouTube may seem insignificant; the ban of commercial videos, gaming videos, pornography, or anything not created by the user to be hosted on the site, to the eyes of filmmakers this difference means the world to them. It means that this isn’t a host of static, irresponsible and meaningless content, but rather this is a gallery of esteemed and passionate works.

Vimeo has enabled a renaissance within the film world. It has promoted an era in which the creativity of a young amateur can be seen by the eyes of someone around the world who bears a name of prominence. Vimeo has granted filmmakers a level playing field, it doesn’t require a degree in film like traditional videography insists upon, it merely calls for a zealous conviction in the works created. 

Remember the Gutenberg Press? Well it’s hard to ignore the parallel effects Vimeo may potentially have with good ole Johannes’ 15th century concoction. It goes without doubt that the ideas, concepts and output, of both amateur and professional film alike, will utterly burst with a new-found, liveliness. Who knows, perhaps humanity’s expression will be primarily voiced through film, in a similar manner in which the world relied upon literature for the last twenty centuries.

Are you familiar with the “there are over 360,000 NCAA student athletes and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports” commercials? Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics, which is arguably the single most influential and insightful book to date on social media, is a clear testament to the NCAA student-athlete campaign.

2009: The New-Born Stage of Social Media

Socialnomics was written in 2009, and for a book that hones in on one of the world’s largest and significant social movements, two years can seem like light years. Over the last 24 months, aside from surpassing Google as being the most visited site on the Web, Facebook grew from 150 million users to a ridiculous 600 million strong. Putting user-ship to the side, social network advertisements have hiked from 2009’s $2.4 billion mark to an estimated $6 billion in 2011, while U.S. online advertising has reached $30 billion up from $24.5 in 2009.

At the time, Socialnomics touched upon nearly every relevant social media element, while painting a vivid picture of social media’s influence on not just social interactions but politics, business and more importantly humanity. With an incontrovertible, constant flux at hand, the social media realm is turning the corner to what may become a movement that’s only hit its premature stages.

So what can we expect from Qualman and Socialnomics 2.0? Well, there’s wasn’t a whole lot he missed, kudos to him. But then again, the minds behind social media are always turning and ideas are eternally brewing. Below, is one highly important and emerging notion Qualman should consider.

QR Codes: The Shortest Distance Between Curiosity & Information Retrieval

Parallel to a great deal of other social media sites, tools and services, QR codes, or quick response codes, are slowly but steadily being adopted by the public. Marketers have begun to notice the incredibly low cost of QR codes and their amazingly effective ROI.

Grammy-nominated rapper, Lupe Fiasco, employed an international QR-Code campaign for his highly-anticipated album Lasers (seen here) which offered fans hyperlinks to behind-the-scenes content, exclusive product and an early streaming of an unreleased single. Within a week of Lasers’ release on March 8, 2011, Lupe skyrocketed to the No. 1 spot on both the Billboard top 100 and iTunes chart.

The Travel of Hyperlinks From Cyberspace to Reality, Courtesy of QR Codes

Hyperlinks are transcending from the conventional computer screens and into the real world where they’re placed onto tangible items like, product packaging, magazines, billboards, skyscrapers and virtually anywhere else traditional advertisements had gone before. QR codes, enable consumers to immediately and effectively access information and content regarding a brand with a simple click.

Hamilton Chan, CEO and Founder of Paperlinks, a QR code generator, scanner and analytic service, is a front runner in the creation and adoption of QR Codes being utilized by marketers. In an article he wrote for Mashable, Chan said,

The beauty of QR codes is that they are an open-source and freely licensed standard. They cost nothing additional to add to printed materials and can be scanned by free readers on all smartphones and even some feature phones…The ability to measure click-through rates on real world items, while capturing temporal, geographic and demographic data will make QR codes a favorite among advertisers.

Why Qualman Should Integrate A QR-Code Chapter

Sure, QR Codes sound like an absolute God send for marketers but there’s a little more to them than what appears on the surface. Another more recent implementation of a QR-Code campaign was late-night, TV star Jimmy Fallon who broadcasted a QR Code which led to mobile-friendly site, hosting a music video of the guest band who was scheduled to perform during the episode. Here’s Fallon’s mistake: why send viewers away from the show to see, what is essentially, a redundant performance they’re minutes away from seeing anyways?

Simplistic errors and misuses of social media resources are commonly addressed throughout Socialnomics as it is, why not enlighten readers on what has the potential to become one of the most interactive, effective and user-friendly avenues marketers have had in decades?

Interactiveness, is the core persona of social media, and QR Codes will, if they already haven’t, inevitably take marketing and social media to a higher plateau by utilizing that unique trait. People are constantly looking for answers to their endless inquisitive concerns and eventually people will come knocking for insight on QR Codes. Who better to ask than the Warren Buffet of social media, Erik Qualman.

I believe the tipping moment will occur as a result of a major media event, such as QR codes serving as an alternative to texting in your American Idol vote or QR codes being used regularly by a major retail brand such as Costco or McDonald’s. Those advertising icons are also pragmatic and they, along with us, will be watching for that magical moment of impact.

If the CEO of one of the largest QR Code companies in the world (Chan) feeds me a line like the latter, then I rest assured with due time we’ll see a flux from URLs to QRLs. Finally, marketers are about to become creative again. It’s about time.

Print, may I introduce Digital. Digital, meet Print.

Journalism was once undeniably a professional industry built upon structure, tradition and the distinct aroma of an infusion of ink and paper. Now, with a digital canvas available and more and more of the public engaging in participatory street journalism, conventional journalism’s future lost its full-head of steam and came to an abrupt halt.

With modern journalistic resources and the internet so closely entangled, citizen journalism has naturally paralleled the Web’s vast expansion. Individuals who were formerly known as the audience have taken active roles in the process of gathering, reporting and distributing news and information. The ease of attaining information has grown tenfold since the eras that left you no other alternative but the city library, press conferences or wining and dining your closest sources.

Despite what all the traditional journalist fought for in the “print” era, a wave of accessible, niche specific and devoted citizen journalists have unmasked themselves. Those whispers of citizen journalism potentially being the catalyst to the fall of the print world have harshly accelerated into a screaming reality.

Journalism’s New-found Persona

The physical presence of suits, fedoras and notepads has now been replaced with one critical element; web presence. As for tape recorders or transcripts, try picking up a smart phone. One of the transformed dynamics of journalism is the rapid pace in which content is now created. Content is essentially effortless, highly inexpensive and has a instantaneous global outreach all with the simple click of “post.” 

The three aforementioned benefits of citizen journalism has undermined the logic for hiring on field reporters and traditional journalistic professionals. Why pay big bucks, travel expenses and 401Ks when you can pick up a well-versed college student to do some inexpensive freelance?

There’s often the question of credibility, but in this day and age, credibility is based upon information and professionalism. If you haven’t taken the time to notice, the Web curtain, or the screen that separates you from your readership, enables anyone to appear to have a certain degree of validity.

As big-name publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal look to monetizing their Web content, gradually a shift from our current Web 2.0 to 3.0 will occur. Once the internet has become monetized there will be one of two parties. The first will be the party which readily adopts subscriptions or paying for content, the second party being the individuals which will resort to relying heavily upon free citizen-journalism content.

Should a vast refusal in adopting to pay for Web content emerge, especially in older generations, it becomes apparent the role and idea behind citizen journalism may entirely transform journalism as we know it. The concept of writer and audience may cease and a unified harmony between the two may transpire. 

When all the major social media venues initially emerged, onlookers prematurely deemed these platforms as solely entertainment-like outlets. It seems as if these venues are slowly but surely becoming the future of journalism. Why? These social media venues have one advantage print media doesn’t; an interactive edge, or an incredibly accessible reality which print journalism lacked and utterly fell victim to. 

Now, people, more so people who lack professional journalism training, ultimately can utilize the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create and augment their very own information and content, leaving media corporations and long-standing newspapers cringing. But is this all really a surprise? After all, when didn’t the audience have the final word?

The Quake and Tsunami

At 2:46 PM local time an 8.9 offshore earthquake struck Japan. Minutes later the earthquake unleashed a 23-foot tsunami along Japan’s northeastern coast. The earthquake unfolded to be the fifth-largest earthquake the world has seen since it began recording magnitudes in 1900.

Initially the death toll was reported at 2,000 but officials have confirmed they anticipate the toll to reach nearly 10,000. As the disorder and chaos runs rampant throughout Japan, social media has provided the world a simplistic alternative to offering its support and aid to the victims of this catastrophe.

Social Media Relief

Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have teamed up with the Red Cross in creating a Causes campaign which hoped to raise at least $25,000. As of now, the campaign has collected $86,500.

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs and the people at iTunes have conceived a similiar effort in which iTunes has placed an image on its home page, linking consumers to a donations page. Donation options range from $5 to $200 and are directly sent to the Red Cross.

Aside from donations, Google has also created a person-finder site, in which individuals can add to a listing of missing names or list information of a found person, as well.

Here is a limited list of numbers you can text to donate:

• American Red Cross: text REDCROSS to 90999
• Convoy of Hope: text TSUNAMI or SUNAMI to 50555
• Mercy Corps: text MERCY to 25383
• Salvation Army: text JAPAN to 80888

• ADRA Relief: text SUPPORT to 85944

With a vast number of social media venues utilizing their technological advances, the disaster in Japan may be terrible and costly, but there’s no denying a humanitarian effort has been set forth with social media at the helm.

Skimming Twitter accounts for last-minute deals, scanning QR codes to see exclusive content or posting a comment of grievance on a company’s Facebook page. All the aforementioned are merely a few social media influenced PR efforts consumers have come to adopt.

Over the last few years social media and public relations have become one in the same. As social media platforms evolve they are simultaneously enabling PR campaigns to outreach consumers on a mass level previously inconceivable.

The Benefit of Social Media PR Campaigns

PR use to be a one-way communication tool and many of the campaigns didn’t always hit the designated target audience. Just because a campaign was created and implemented didn’t necessarily guarantee instant successful results. Not to mention the archaic technique of measuring traditional campaigns and how painfully slow and ineffective it is when compared to modern social media analytics.

Traditional PR use to rely on the consumers frequent usage of old media such as newspapers and television. Those once flourishing and lucrative venues have nose dived, paving way for social media emergence. Take the print industry for example, advertising revenue is projected to drop from $45.4 billion in 2007 to $28.4 in 2012.

Now, individuals in PR must seek and utilize social media platform that bear beneficial value. These social media venues must be a location where the target audience is present and can be easily reached and connected to. Both Twitter and Facebook have become prominent vehicles for innovative and appropriate PR campaigns.

Healthy Choice was determined to increase its Facebook page fan base so they conceived a campaign which introduced a coupon which progressively increased in value with every addition of a new fan. Healthy Choice’s PR team outreached to bloggers, encouraging them to spread the campaign by word of mouth and via other social networks. It worked. The Healthy Choice fan base went from just under 7,000 to nearly 60,000 in just two weeks.

Why Use Social Media for PR 

Cara Stewart, founder of Remarx Media said “that mass social platforms, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, will continue to be important on some level, but niche, industry-specific networks will be of greater value in the future.”

Social network vehicles are highly efficient in establishing product-consumer relationships and for marketing one’s product to a specific target market. Social media has enabled PR professionals to build brand loyalty amongst its consumers by creating campaigns that build a bond between consumer and product.

Giveaways are a perfect technique in which consumers can gradually transition from their traditional buying roles to what marketers call product fans. Upon gaining the fanship of an individual a company is naturally one step closer to gaining a new and strong brand-loyal customer.

In correlation to what Stewart said, understanding the power of niche, industry-specific networks is a critical requirement of any PR professional. Social media has granted PR the opportunity to not only broadcast their brand but to also listen to feedback and communicate with consumers.

Unfortunately, the issue with niche markets is the scattered research involved in locating these industry-specific networks. But once these niches have been discovered social media presents endless innovative  possibilities in reaching out to consumers.

One of the most beneficial niche-specific networks is within the fashion world and the blogs that avidly review product and update the public on release dates and events. These blogs are highly credible fashion experts who tailor their message for a specific market, thus offering additional PR for a company or entity. Whethere it’s good or bad PR is unpredictable.  

In the end, there may be a handful of cons associated with the usage of social media in PR like the inability to curb negative consumer feedback but it goes without doubt the benefits far exceed the problems. Utilizing appropriate social media vehicles to aid in PR campaigns and efforts is just one evolving technique that is soon to become a traditional method for PR professionals.

The Super Bowl has plagued marketing aficionados with the daunting task of catching every last detail of a 30-second TV ad over the belligerent shenanigans of unruly sports fans. Not easy, especially when a core element of the campaign is up on the screen for a blink of an eye.

In the days leading up to the highly-anticipated release of multi-million dollar campaigns, social media platforms rang with hype. Twitter, above all others, was overflowing with product hash tags and tweets eluding to sneak-preview information of specific Super Bowl ads. Audi was the front runner in creating initial buzz via the Web with its #ProgressIs campaign. The campaign enabled individuals to Tweet some form of innovative, authentic and sustainable progress that they wished to see in the near future.

Not only was the grand prize, a trip to Sonoma, California, for a test drive of the Audi R8 supercar later this month and $25,000 to a charity on behalf of the grand prize winner, but the interaction between product and consumer brought upon a rather unique exchange of social interaction.

As a result of the #ProgressIs contest and campaign, Audi received tens of thousands of new followers, hash tags and even more @mentions and Re-tweets than any conventional campaign would have achieved.

Looking into one of Audi’s main luxury-car competitors, Lexus whose company’s Twitter time line was absolutely silent throughout the duration of Super Bowl weekend, it becomes apparent that Audi has a leg up on competitors who’ve yet to fully grasp the significance of a social media approach. Does that mean anything? Sure, the whole marketing world is talking about Audi’s ad, how it utilized niche motifs to subtly attract a new demographic e.g. dog lovers, Kenny-G followers and an older refined and wealthy audience. The odd themes may have seemed just that, odd. But there was an undeniable psychology to the randomness and also to the emphasis of exercising social media.

No one is talking about Lexus. Its TV spot was great but the lack of implementing the new marketing route really shows how prominent integration of social medias have become. Audi went as far as to incorporate Flickr and display to the public its pre-game party that featured big name A-list stars like Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Justin Timberlake.

Oddly, it appears as if America’s greatest sports event has unintentionally transpired into marketing’s annual renaissance.

Verizon, one of the largest global broadband and telecommunications providers, has over the last year been developing and facilitating a business model strongly influenced by a social-media strategy. After fully adopting various social mediums, Verizon has enabled itself to market its brand to a wide range of lucrative audiences.

Perhaps Verizon’s most efficient social mediums is Facebook, providing consumers with the ease and convenience of receiving direct customer service responses to “wall posts.” Aside from the direct exchange between brand and buyer, Verizon also uses Facebook as a route for announcing both events and promotions.

Sure, Facebook is relatively a mainstream social-media platform for countless Fortune 500 companies, but Verizon goes to the lengths of also using Flickr, a online photo management and sharing application, for displaying images of conventions, events and other relevant showcasing Verizon is engaging in.

But of all the social media options, Verizon has irrefutably become highly dependent upon the simplistic nature of Twitter and the vast consumer outreach it ensures. With Super Bowl XLV a week away, Verizon launched a NFL sweepstakes campaign, encouraging followers to tweet pics of their “games faces,” halftime snacks and food menu and touchdown celebrations to win prizes ranging from $25 gift cards to a trip to Dallas for Super Bowl XLV. 

In the end, does any of this really surprise you, a telecommunications outfit using technology to its benefit? It all seems inevitable; the next step in a fluctuatin g human-behavior process. Rather, Verizon bears a long history of teaming up with already established entities ( e.g. Apple, MCI and Bell Atlantic–GTE), in hopes of building upon the empire it already reigns over.