Whether by design or sheer luck, updating my profile was incredibly easy… because everything I needed was already in my completed LinkedIn profile. I was able to pull dates and copy/paste descriptions straight from LinkedIn, saving a tremendous amount of time. My profile was done in about one-third the time I had set aside for the project – time I used instead to fill in some holes I discovered on LinkedIn. I then transferred the information to Plaxo.

Join my network

Plaxo profile complete, it was time to find people. I took a cursory look at my recommendations (”People you might know”) but realized that until I had built at least a small network, I was unlikely to get many good hits. So I did something I swore never to do: I allowed Plaxo to pull information from another network.

Like most social networking sites, Plaxo offered a tempting shortcut to finding friends: tapping into an existing wellspring of information. In this case, my options were limited. There were the sites I don’t use (Yahoo!, Gmail and AOL) and the account I wouldn’t use (my personal Hotmail account). My attempt to follow LinkedIn’s directions were a miserable failure. There was one candidate for success, however: Facebook.

Double exposure

I studied the text carefully and confirmed that yes it would only bother people in my Facebook network who were already registered Plaxo users. I clicked the button to access my Facebook account, and noticed an immediate change in my Plaxo view: a photo appeared in my profile. Plaxo had co-opted my Facebook image – an Xbox Live avatar – for my professional profile. Panicked, I immediately went to update my photo… and found several photos of my child. In my Plaxo profile. That I had not uploaded to Plaxo.

Apparently, when I tied my Facebook account to Plaxo, it took the liberty of pulling my various friends-and-family-only photo folders and added them to the “Photos” tab of my profile. While there was nothing incriminating (keep your Facebook clean, folks), I don’t want strangers to have access to family photos – even if they are just my child drinking hot chocolate at Starbucks.

All images were in folders, just as they appeared in Facebook. Fortunately, Plaxo allowed me to delete entire folders, saving me a lot of time. If I had to delete each image individually, odds are the only thing I would have deleted was my Plaxo account itself.

After I finished cleaning out my personal photos and updating my profile pic, I reviewed ALL sections of my profile to ensure no other stray Facebook goodies had moved over. It appears contacts and photos were the extent of the damage.

Contact Us

Satisfied with my damage control, I moved on to the final section: Websites and Personal Info. Opening the Websites section results in an icon explosion – add your Facebook! Share your Amazon Wish List! Tell the world your twitter name! (Just one? I have two, but had to choose…). Not to mention Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm, MySpace, LiveJournal, Tumblr… and that’s just a very, very small fraction. If you’ve ever shared content online, odds are you can share it with your Plaxo network. (Or everyone. Or just Friends. Or just Family. It’s up to you.)

I chose a few resources, reviewed my restrictions and unleashed my profile on the world. All this took about an hour, during which time I received numerous mails in the background. I finally went to catch up and discovered I had four new Plaxo and two LinkedIn requests/friends.

Every single one was from Facebook.

Twittelator for iPad (click for larger view)

We picked up an iPad for our social media, Web consulting and copywriting business based largely on positive feedback from many people we trust on Twitter and our own great experiences using iPhones for the past two years. It’s a remarkable device, but expensive for what you get and very limited for many usage scenarios.

I’ll be blunt: The iPad is not a laptop/netbook replacement, and it’s a poor choice for anyone who really needs a full-featured Windows or Macintosh computer. The iPad is a touchscreen slate that’s limited to running approved apps from Apple’s iTunes Store and isn’t particularly good out of the box at accessing documents from your computers or file shares. And no slots or USB ports means you can’t just plug in an SD card or flash drive to access your media. Expect to purchase one or more apps to facilitate file sharing or else spend a lot of time e-mailing files to yourself!

We went with the WiFi only version to save some money and because AT&T has capped its already overpriced 3G plan. Frankly, we’d rather pay hotels for the occasional WiFi key than give AT&T a monthly stipend for so-so service we’ll rarely need.

You can (and should) add a Bluetooth keyboard to make the iPad passable for writing and light editing. You’ll have to reach up to tap the screen anytime you want to move the cursor, which takes a bit of getting used to and isn’t as efficient as using a mouse. It’s not a pressure-sensitive tablet, so it’s only moderately effective for sketching, and its built-in mike is adequate but it’s not going to replace my Zoom H2 for podcast recording.

I’ve been eyeing the ClamCase (due this fall, price unknown), which promises to give it a hard shell and attach a keyboard, making it look (and hopefully work) a little more like a laptop – but in the meantime I went with a $25 case that doubles as a stand and a $30 Vakoss TK-853-BK keyboard from Fry’s, which has different buttons to power it on and off but functions reasonably well once you get it working. (I’m pretty sure the first one I picked up was defective, but I might have just been pushing the wrong button!)

All that said, I rather like the iPad and it is highly effective for certain tasks. Namely gaming, e-mail and Twitter. I won’t dwell on games here since I’m focusing on its features as a work machine, but it is most definitely the best portable gaming device I’ve enjoyed to date – and as the founder of BusyGamerNews.com, I’ve tried nearly all of them over the years. The larger screen and fluid finger touch interface makes gaming even more fun than on the Nintendo DS, my previous go-to game portable. But unless your business is gaming, this won’t be enough to sell you on an iPad for the office.

Overall, social media is a mixed bag. The current iteration of the Facebook app is the iPhone version pixel-doubled, and this really shows its flaws under a magnifier. Sure, it works as well as the iPhone version - but the iPad deserves better here. Honestly, you’re better off just bookmarking Facebook.com on Safari, which on the iPad is more like the desktop version of the Web browser than the puny iPhone Safari app (though you will still run into the occasional mobile app restrictions and of course Flash is still completely blocked).

In the end, Twitter is where it’s at for the iPad – at least for me – and there are three apps that I’ve found that excel in different ways at helping you manage your tweet streams:

Twittelator for iPad ($5). The iPhone version of Twittelator is the gold standard for iPhone Twitter apps. It’s fast, full of useful shortcuts and – most importantly – fills in missing tweets and remembers your place if you have to quit and come back. It makes poring over hundreds of tweets reasonably efficient. The iPad version is in mostly even better than its iPhone predecessor but in a few ways takes some steps back. In landscape mode, individual tweets or streams (such as @ replies, direct messages and searches) that you select appear off to the right of your main timeline. Scrolling is fast and twitpics appear larger in the feed by default, making it easier to see whether you want a closer look. The downside is that, at this writing, it loses tweets greater than the 200 it can grab at once, doesn’t save your place if you quit, clicked links appear as an popup window instead of adjacent to your stream, and there’s no way to save images except to switch to Safari (which, again, loses your place!). But overall, getting through a couple hundred tweets is faster and more enjoyable here than with any other app I’ve tried. I’m hoping future updates address timeline bookmarking and recovery of missed tweets.

TwitePad ($2). This is sort of like the free TweetDeck – with lots of optional columns you can summon – but unlike TweetDeck (and Twittelator for iPad!) it remembers your place in the timeline and has a Web browser that opens at the far right alongside them. It even lets you open multiple links and keep them waiting as thumbnails along the bottom of the browser area. Ultimately, this isn’t as elegant as Twittelator and thus hasn’t replaced it as my primary app, at least not yet. The developer is aggressive at releasing feature-rich updates, so it’s definitely one to watch. For now, this is a good choice for Twitter accounts you monitor less often, say daily or even weekly, since it can easily fill in what you miss and it saves everything for offline reading in its own local database. For that reason alone, it’s perfect for my social media consulting!

Osfoora HD ($4). I bought this on impulse during a brief sale, and it has real potential. If you’re very methodical, you’ll appreciate the option to keep tweets marked as unread and there are up/down buttons to move through your timeline, though I found using this method slowed me down though may be useful for timelines that I need to focus on more closely (and finger scrolling is still an option). It does have those two very important features that Twittelator lacks: the ability to keep your place in the timeline if you quit and fill in missing tweets.

Other must have apps (all free):

EverNote. This is great for getting down drafts of articles while they’re fresh in your mind and then passing them to another device (e.g., PC, iPhone) through its cloud-based storage. No, I didn’t write this article on the iPad due to the level of editing required to make it sing. But if I did, I would have used EverNote.

WordPress. I’m a big fan of Windows Live Writer, but for some reason it always messes up my WordPress posts to this blog. So I thought I’d try this free app. Still, when it came time to post this article, I didn’t have the patience to try it out. But if I had a quick post with little to no complexity, it would be perfect.

iBooks and Kindle. The iPad doesn’t have the crisp display of the iPhone 4 (at least not yet), but the larger form factor makes it feel more like a solid ebook reader. I’ve avoided the Kindle and Nook because I prefer a backlit device, even if it’s not (supposedly) as good for long-term reading. I tend to read for short periods these days, and I like the flexibility to be able to switch to other apps when I want, so the iPad is now my preferred digital book platform.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend the iPad unless you find that your needs greatly overlap mine, or you can’t overcome your technolust for shiny new gadgets. Consider it a nice-to-have, particularly if you do a significant amount of work on Twitter.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and the problem with social media isn’t all of the noise. Sure, there are a lot of things that you could care less about passing through your Facebook wall and Twitter timeline – but one person’s noise is another’s signal, right? I actually enjoy picking up bonuses in the Facebook games I’m playing, but many of my friends wish they would all be banished from existence.

The sad thing is that Facebook nearly had the answer, but they missed the boat. And Twitter, from what I can see, hasn’t even found the right paddle.

The answer is something I’m dubbing “streams.” And, as our friends the Ghostbusters proved, crossing them isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The idea is simple: Classify different types of content and let users turn them on and off at will. Really, that’s it. But let’s delve a little deeper into why this isn’t just possible, it’s plausible.

For awhile, Facebook actually allowed app specific filtering of your news feed until their most recent overhaul, which – for some inexplicable reason – completely did away with it. Instead of expanding news filters, they banned app-specific notifications which bothered nobody since they could easily be surpressed.

Filtering was only half the answer to Facebook’s problems but a definite step in the right direction – and removing it moves them away from where they need to be. Rather than just allow me to filter and quickly scan all of my friends’ Farmville posts all in one place, they should have offered the option to block all Farmville posts (or posts from any other app) from their feeds. Maybe block is too harsh. Let’s suggest a “toggle” since you could, theoretically, turn it back on whenever you wanted, view it as an entirely separate feed or create an aggregate stream with all of the posts from your games of interest.

Now you’re getting it, right? Social media, just like my iPhone, works best when I can customize it the way that I want it. Make me play in your sandbox your way, and I might go find another sandbox.

Twitter has partly solved the problem with hashtags, but do these really work all that well? You can create search queries against hashtags, and some Twitter readers like TweetDeck allow you to filter on keywords in your selected feeds but – again – these are half measures. Hashtags, I’d argue, are really just a hack, a poor man’s search meta data (hacktags is more like it!).

First, hashtags are prone to user error: One typo or a bad guess at what the prevailing hashtag is for an event or product you’re tweeting about and you’re already out of the game. And hashtags eat into your already constrained 140-character limit. Bah, there has to be a better way!

Here’s what I think needs to happen for all social media that wants to stay relevant: Streams that segment your timelines or news feeds based on different themes and let you decide how (or even if) you want to consume them.

For example, I’m not playing foursquare, and I find the endless barrage of notifications whenever someone I follow visits a Burger King bathroom to be intrusive and a waste of time when I’m poring through a backlog of 150 tweets from the past hour or so. But these alerts are generated via an application (API), right? How hard would it be to use a hidden API code that’s passed with the tweet to define a stream and pass that to the Twitter client outside of the 140 characters being transmitted?

I know these exist to some extent today. I can see that someone posted using Twittelator even though it doesn’t say Twittelator anywhere in the tweet itself. Or, look at this, from a recent foursquare tweet:

That information has got to be passed along with the tweet via the existing API, am I right? So, Twitter devs, let’s use those as a starting point to define streams that can be quickly toggled on and off to make your timeline more manageable.

There are two additional areas that have become barriers to pure Twitter enjoyment, at least for me: contests and live tweeting “events.” But I see a stream-based solution there too. Build these in as switches that the tweeter can activate when posting. For instance, the person launching a contest could set the flag as a contest originator, and any replies or retweets to him get a secondary response flag. That way you could always see the original post to enter if you like, but you could ignore the stream or – if you’re a contest devotee or just curious once you’ve caught up on your core Twitter stream – peruse the contest stream separately.

When you’re going to live tweet something, you could have a secondary Twitter account set aside just for this purpose. But that’s a lot of trouble, so most people don’t bother. Instead, they post something that says, “If you don’t care about (FILL IN THE BLANK), unfollow me for the night.” Well, maybe I do care about – let’s say the Lost finale – but I’m watching it two hours behind you. I want to enjoy your observations on my own schedule. So rather than leave you behind, possibly forever if I forget to refollow you in the morning, let me separate your stream from my regular timeline for a few hours until I’m no longer concerned about spoilers. Perhaps the tweeter could create a custom code (like a hashtag, but hidden outside of the tweet and tied to just their account). I could just click “Joe’s Lost stream” on my client and toggle it off for now and then go back and view it later.

The same stream filtering and mix/match capabilities could and should be applied to keywords, hashtags, lists, whatever you want – but API codes would be the most reliable and “go to” choice whenever they are available.

Think of the power of this approach: You could consume your social media your way, all of the time, crossing to different streams as time permits and only after you’ve quickly caught up on the stuff that matters most to you. Or you could mix them together anyway you like, on the fly.

What’s the worst thing that could happen, total protonic reversal? It didn’t phase the Ghostbusters in the end – they were hailed as heros.

Don’t get too excited about streams: This is just one observer’s idea on how to “fix” what’s wrong with social media today. But I believe it’s a modest one that builds on features like Facebook filters and Twitter API codes that have already been created and could be put to better use.

So, social media makers, why not give it a try? Are you a “god”? Please say yes, and go fix this.

By default, Twitter posts are viewable and searchable by anyone. Using your real name or providing enough private details could make it easy for anyone to figure out where you live. If you don’t want to protect your tweets by making them private, you should not use Twitter to share your vacation exploits.

Here are some tips to help you stay safe in virtual space – and the real world one:

Twitter. The safest thing you can do is protect your updates and only accept followers that you know. This sort of defeats the potential of Twitter since none of your witty wordplay will be seen except by a select few and you’ll never get a gajillion followers. If this is important to you, just open two Twitter accounts – one for friends and the other for your public persona. Then just make sure that you only post the private stuff to your trusted friends.

Facebook. On the whole, Facebook tends to be a safer place to share your travel plans since most people only accept friend requests from trusted friends. But there are some ways you can fine-tune your privacy. Click on Settings in the top blue bar and select Privacy Settings. From there, you can choose who can see your profile and personal information, tagged photos, etc. If you or someone you know is going to be posting and tagging photos of your family to Facebook while you’re out of town at obvious tourist locations, you might want to limit these to just your friends. Be sure to go to Contact Information and set your current address to No one. Your friends will know where you live or can call you if they need this information. There’s a nifty feature that lets you preview how a specific friend sees your profile, which will give you a good idea whether you’ve done a good job locking down your private details.

Blogs. If you have a blog, you should use private domain registration so if someone looks up your domain contacts, they don’t get your home address and phone number. As a quick fix, you might be able to update your contact information to your ISP’s, so that any lookups and inquiries go to them. Private registration may cost a little more, though some places do offer it for free.

If your blog is only updated sporadically (once a week or less), taking a week off shouldn’t be any big deal. But if you have a following and readers have come to expect daily updates, you’ll probably want to mention that you’re taking a break and that updates will be a little less frequent while you “enjoy some personal time” (saying it this way doesn’t signal that you’re leaving town). You don’t have to be specific about your plans unless you feel comfortable doing so. You might also preload some posts and, if your blogging software supports it, schedule them to go live on the days you are away. In my case, I alerted readers that some regular features might be incomplete or delayed and then preloaded several posts that I then published remotely each day using the Movable Type for iPhone interface.

This week represents the motherload of all Twitter cycles, as the Twitterati descend upon San Diego Comicon (SDCC). There is a long and glorious cross-over between technophiles and comics/sci-fi/fantasy fans–and SDCC is their harmonic convergence. (It’s so much more than a “nerd prom.”)

The obligatory marketing tool for this year’s SDCC is Twitter itself. Every major media outlet has set up either a general Twitter account for “reporting” or individual accounts for reporters… in many cases, both. Through cross-promotion through traditional media (house ads in magazines), online (”follow us on Twitter” announcements on Websites and stories) and Twitter itself, everyone is attempting to get your attention.

I follow several of them normally, and this week, I’m getting spammed with SDCC coverage. I appreciate the effort, but a vague tweet and link will not get my attention. (The Ausiello Files actually tweeted “I just had a really interesting interview with…” and a link. You had to click to find out who it was.) While this may seem cute and intriguing, I found it cloying. I’m already reading hundreds of tweets. Give me a reason why I should click yours.

What I find far more interesting is the artists themselves. Actors, comic artists, writers, and others all can be found on Twitter, discussing their experiences and providing tips on where to find them. (Heroes alum Brea Grant mentioned she was going to return to a booth unannounced for additional signings after numerous Twitter followers failed to see her during a scheduled signing.) Many artists also share goofy personal photos from the floor that won’t show up in People.

HBO, Showtime, SyFy, and other SDCC-friendly networks are trying out a similiar approach this year, setting up show-specific Twitter accounts for shows represented at the con, including True Blood and Dexter. The accounts focus purely on giving fans insider info about the shows. Show-related panels are announced early enough that fans have a shot at getting to the right hall and scoring a seat. Personal appearances, including some “surprise” appearances at partner booths, are also slip-streamed. It’s a small thing, but it means a lot to fans. And for those who couldn’t get there, videos and other tidbits are posted and linked in a timely fashion.

This fan focus shows an awareness of what comicon truly is and isn’t. Yes, it’s a major promotion opportunity for the production companies, comic artists, actors, and so on. But it is also the world’s largest celebration of all things geek, which certainly includes Twitter.

Well, this year, anyway.

TweetDeck for iPhone

Back in April, I deconstructed what I thought was wrong with TweetDeck. Now I only do this sort of exercise with products I think show real potential. I did the same on BusyGamerNews.com for the Nintendo Wii user interface and twice for the Xbox 360 (but never got around to the PS3).

I critique because I care.

It appears that someone at TweetDeck is listening. But they have their own ideas too. And it’s hard to tell whether it’s getting better or I’m just getting used to the ever-growing array of columns that stretch off the right side of my screen.

The big news is that TweetDeck is now available for iPhone. And it’s free. The column metaphor actually seems to work well with a touch screen where you can swipe to quickly flip columns. I currently trade off between TwitterFon (slightly old version since people dissed the latest update) and Twinkle (nice for community tweets though Seattle lately has been overrun by overly dramatic teens and tweens with iPod Touchs who feel the need to text for attention every 12 seconds or so!). I’ve also toyed with Twitterific but so far it hasn’t stuck.

TweetDeck for iPhone looks promising, though it is a little crash prone (not unusual with first gen iPhone apps). What might keep me coming back is this: Sync with my desktop TweetDeck. The way this works is that you either use the iPhone app or the newest PC version of TweetDeck to create a TweetDeck account (yes, another password to remember). You then login to the other version and it offers to sync your columns – to a point. The iPhone version doesn’t support Facebook (at least not yet) so that’s not carried over from your desktop. Nor are any secondary accounts you add. You have to manually add these in both places. And sync’ing doesn’t seem to work from the iPhone back to the desktop, though I could be wrong. I’m still testing this.

Wait, did you catch that? Multiple Twitter accounts are now supported – on both versions! Other new desktop app features include unlimited columns, trends for any column, reply all, YFrog support, spam reporting and smart filtering. Supposedly there’s a conversation window, which sounds great - but I couldn’t find it.

Still, all in all, TweekDeck continues to show promise. Just when I was about to go fishing for alternatives.

There are thousands of plug-ins to choose from, so from time to time I’ll call out the ones I have found indispensible or at least highly valuable, plus the occasional one I’ll suggest with reservations (and helpful tips to save you the trouble we had implementing it). Here are some of my favorites so far:

WPtouch iPhone Theme. I found this theme when browsing a friend’s blog and immediately installed it for our own. It greatly speeds up load times and improves readability for iPhone visitors, who have the option to turn it off if they prefer your default view. The way this makes your site look like an iPhone app is pretty compelling (see picture at right).

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button. If you write something worth sharing, you want it to be as easy as possible for your site visitors to do just that. You can select which social networking/sharing mechanisms are displayed by default. Hovering over the Share or E-mail This Post link opens up the full list, which is constantly expanding (see icons and link at bottom of this post).

WP to Twitter. This highly configurable plug-in automatically tweets your blog posts. We use this only for new posts, so any updates/edits do not result in an unwelcome Twitter flood. URLs are automatically shortened using the Cli.gs service, though we had some problems until we created and entered a Cli.gs API key.

Simple Tags. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time adding tags (aka keywords) to your posts, this plug-in can help, although it can be tricky to get working. First, you have to add at least one tag to a post before it will function at all (you’ll get a “Javascript must be enabled” message but that’s probably not your problem). The autotagging feature only pulls tags you have entered previously and applies them, where relevant, to existing posts. Once it’s up and working, use tag suggestions to find common keywords in your articles and apply them quickly. After you have a decent set of local tags, the auto-tag feature can help you quickly generate tags for older posts that don’t have them.

Have you had different (better, worse?) experiences with these plug-ins? Have a favorite plug-in that nobody loves but you? Let us know!

Facebook on Xbox 360

Normally I wouldn’t post gaming news to this site (that’s what BusyGamerNews.com is for) but the news flash that Facebook and Twitter are going to launch on Xbox 360 consoles this fall should interest everyone who works in social media and community.

The game is about to change (again). It’s one thing to tweet and post status updates from a mobile phone. Typically, you’re out in the world tapping in texts about your work, meals and entertainment. Usually with bleached out twitpics of food that hopefully tastes better than it looks. We’re all used to that.

Now, expect a lot more gaming chatter. Once this feature launches as part of a long overdue Xbox 360 dashboard update, people will post pictures and achievements from their games. Trash talk will go a lot wider. And scheduling for group play of games and other activities, such as movie watching via Netflix Instant Queue parties (also launching soon), will compete with tweetups and Facebook events for your attention.

If you make your living in social media and don’t play games, now is the time to start.

UPDATE: Nintendo announced that its portable, the Nintendo DSi, will be getting Facebook integration this summer. But it will be limited to uploading images taken with the DSi’s camera. So the only impact here will be an influx of crappy low-res pictures, many with special effects such as stamps applied using the DSi’s primitive photo editing tools. Still, more evidence that social media is going to become more gamer-centric.

Bruno (Sacha) sells his movie

How do you solve a problem like the “Bruno” movie? You let life imitate art. Sacha Baron Cohen pulled off one of the year’s great publicity stunts Sunday at the MTV Movie Awards, in the clip viewed round the world. Susan Boyle who? Between Sunday night and Monday, it was all about the backless chaps and Eminem’s outrage—at least until the target audience discovered E3 had started.

The actual event was not all that shocking for the venue. Howard Stern also ascended in backless chaps from the rafters way back in 1992 to promote Fartman, a movie he never got around to making. Older viewers may also recall Eminem’s 2002 MTV Movie Awards showing, in which he made homophobic comments about singer/producer Moby and attacked Triumph the Insult Dog, essentially throttling a puppet.

Over the top aerial stunts? Homophobic reaction? Mock(?) outrage? In short, we’ve seen this show before. And yet, it worked. Within 20 minutes of the moment airing live on the East Coast, blogs (including mainstream entertainment sites) were buzzing about the confrontation. #Bruno and #Eminem began trending heavily on Twitter. And everyone tried to add the clip to their Facebook.

As the day progressed, bloggers studied the video like it was the Zapruder film. Everyone agreed that Baron Cohen’s descent was carefully planned and rehearsed. But why didn’t Eminem move? There was plenty of time for him (or anyone in that section) to get out of the way, but they all stayed frozen in their seat. Conclusion: He was in on the joke.

By late Monday morning, the Internet had decided, and “sources” had confirmed, that the rapper knew Bruno would be descending into his lap. He just didn’t know it would dressed like a fallen angel from the West Hollywood Victoria’s Secret. We all know the rapper is a homophobe—remember Moby? And the “Bruno” persona is all about bringing out the worst in homophobes for laughs. Match, point, game over.

At least, that’s what the social networkers decided for a couple hours. By late day, yet more insiders (my money is on people from the Universal Studios, MTV and possibly Eminem camps) had leaked that the entire thing had been planned, and everyone knew everything. Yes, even that. The audience had been mass punk’d.

E3, perhaps the only event on the planet save Comicon that could have pushed this out of the Internet zeitgeist, took over the early afternoon. By late afternoon, Bruno and Eminem were overtaken by Left 4 Dead 2, Xbox 360 Facebook integration and other news from the event. By the time you read this, it will be old news.

And it’s almost exactly 24 hours since the whole thing began.

So what did we learn?

1. You can still reach a mass audience in today’s splintered entertainment world. Between 500+ cable networks, Internet radio, iTunes, Hulu and the gazillion social networking sites, it has become almost impossible to reach everyone. The stunt may have been in bad taste and NSFW, but you can bet it was passed around heavily today.

2.Traditional marketing doesn’t always rule. Bruno, a comedy, is set for a July release in the U.S. If this was say, a Judd Apatow release, you would have seen the trailer approximately 10,502 times by now. Yet until just a few weeks ago, Bruno’s only real exposure was a Red Band (restricted) trailer on MySpace. Even with a regular trailer in theaters, you’re unlikely to encounter it with the same painful frequency as say, “Land of the Lost.” The clip of “Bruno” landing face first in Eminem’s lap is likely to stay with you a lot longer than the sleestaks, however.

3.Your target audience doesn’t have to be watching for you to reach them. You don’t have to be a Disney-level marketer to figure out that the squealing young girls who sent Twilighters to the stage time and again are NOT the target audience for either Bruno or Eminem. Nor are they old enough to enjoy either one without an adult to buy the ticket or album. It doesn’t matter. All it takes are a few high-profile blogs and tweeters to describe what happened, often with colorful descriptions of Baron Cohen’s outfit, to get the Internet abuzz. You may not have seen the New Moon cast, but by now, you’ve seen Bruno’s full moon.

As the stunt fades into the distance, the question becomes, “who won?” Well, let’s examine the not-so-scientific evidence:

• Baron Cohen and distributor Universal Pictures will have to wait until July to see if the movie enjoys any bounce, or if people are so over Bruno by then. (Universal expects a small opening followed by long legs, similar to Baron Cohen’s Borat film.)
• Eminem was nowhere to be found on the iTunes top 100s the day after, but his fans might be more likely to buy a physical CD than go to iTunes. Or perhaps they just want to discuss his behavior—his musical performance does not appear to be the topic of conversation. Which leaves…
• MTV, which managed to squeak a buzz-worthy moment out of an overall lackluster, and often dull, show. By cracking down early and often on illicit video postings, MTV controlled where you could go to find the video. I found plenty of places where I could view it other than MTV.com—but the official videos were clearly imprinted and credited to MTV. The network is also no doubt counting on a bounce for future showings. Eminem’s attempt to beat down Triumph the Insult Dog gave a nice bounce for repeat viewings—but that was before the Internet became a television set.

So hats (pants?) off to a marketing trick that managed to be both smart and stupid at the same time. I for one can’t wait to see Bruno.

TweetDeck

I recently downloaded TweetDeck, overcoming my aversion to installing Adobe Air (I think it’s because I expected it would force a reboot; it didn’t!). Based on all of the tweetbuzz, I frankly expected more – though I do quite like it and have made it my preferred desktop Twitter tool.

By default, at least at my screen resolution, I can see four columns of viewable tweets and Facebook status updates, which is great – but really it’s on the beginning of what I believe it could do. To be fair, it’s only a beta program now but there’s some untapped potential here that I wanted to examine after using it for a few weeks.

Overlay option

My main TweetDeck columns are populated by All Friends, Facebook, Replies and Direct Messages. These last two are just wasted space for me most of the time. Unless you are a serious power user, you probably only get @replies every day or so and direct messages even less often. A good option would be to let the user select to overlay these on top of the rightmost visible column(s) only when something new comes in. This overlay approach already exists in TweetDeck when you click on someone’s profile, so why not put this code to even better use.

That would give me back two columns I could use for groups to better segment my incoming tweets. And speaking of adding columns, groups are great but what about saving filters as columns too? Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a column populated solely by retweets?

Power users know that you can click the filter button on a Twitter column and enter a keyword or character such as “?” to find any questions that need answering, or “RT” to find the retweets of the things other people thought worthy of sharing with their networks. This is particularly helpful if you follow a thousand of more people, since at that point reading every tweet would be a full-time job. Instead, you need to mine for the nuggets of interest. Something on the news about Obama? Just enter “Obama” into the filter box and see what the people you’re monitoring have to say.

Note: You can enter a Search term such as “RT” or “Obama” and it will be added as a new column. But this groks everything on Twitter, which is great for some topics but if you use it for “RT” you will be drowning in retweets.

Make your own decks

It took me a couple of days to notice that you can add additional “off-screen” columns to the right of your visible ones. And even now that I know, I really hate it. Horizontal scrolling is just wrong. I’d much rather have the ability to create sets of columns (let’s call them profiles or tweetsets). This would make TweetDeck much more manageable. You could create sets of however many columns easily fit on your screen and then use dropdown selector to quickly flip between them depending on your task or frame of mind.

Another feature I expected but didn’t find is multiple Twitter account support. I use one Twitter account for work and another for my gaming blog. Here’s where profiles would really shine! One or more tweetsets for work, others for play.

Nips and tucks

Now I don’t know if it will be TweetDeck that pioneers this, but someone really needs to create a method to quickly view people’s tweets mixed with their @replies. So if you see an interesting tweet, you can quickly jump to the responses – almost like reading a chat log. This is the heart of Twitter interactivity, yet everyone seems to bury it so that it takes far too much work to easily access.

This is finicky, but it would be great if there was setting in TweekDeck to move names before the tweets. They are so far away from the picture that I often get mixed up about who is tweeting what when I’m quickly scanning.

One final suggestion: a mute button. The incoming tweet alert sounds are nice when I’m not busy cranking away on a project, but they can be distracting. I could simply quit TweetDeck or press the mute button on my laptop, but one more button on the already busy TweetDeck interface isn’t going to make it implode.

Or will it? What do you think – is TweetDeck just the way you like it, or would you appreciate some of these suggested improvements?