So I'm a big Seinfeld fan, and one of my favorite characters from the series is the Soup Nazi.  For those unfamiliar with this Seinfeld character Wikipedia offers the following description:

"A stone-faced immigrant chef with a thick Stalin-esque moustache, he is renowned throughout Manhattan for his soups. He demands that all customers in his restaurant meticulously follow his strict queuing, ordering, and payment policies. Failure to adhere to his demands brings the admonishment, "No soup for you!", whereupon the customer is refunded and denied his or her order."

"No soup for you."  In 1995, that line became a pop  culture phenomenon and was used by just about everyone at one time or another to turn down a a request in an inconsiderate but somewhat funny manner.  Saying "no soup for you" is a lot like saying "I don't care that you're my customer even if you're acting very nice and going out of your way to let me know how much you want what I have. I'm going to not help you because I can and feel like being a jerk right now and like I said I don't care that you're my customer because I have plenty of those and oh yeah I know you want what I have that's why you're in line, stupid.".

Ouch, right? Being a customer and told "No Soup for You" sucks.  Completely.  

Well, that's basically what the A.P. said to an affiliate in response to the affiliate embedding video from the A.P.'s YouTube channel on their website.  TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld has written a great series of articles on this and the AP leading up a few days before the incident down through the A.P.'s response and apology.  

•  04/06 - Behind the A.P.'s Plan to Become the Web's New Cop.  The A.P. announces that thy will "begin to police the web" and "developer a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used".  Their content includes articles, video, headlines, etc. Clearly, the A.P. feels the need to protect their content, and is looking to implement a means that allows them to -- much in the same manner as the RIAA and movie studios have done with music and video.
  
• 04/07 - That Whining Sound You Hear is the Death Wheeze of Newspapers.  Similar to the A.P., newspapers are complaining these days about the Web "stealing" both content and subscribers - which is leading to the death of newspapers as we've come to know them.  To give you an idea where in the death march of business newspapers are, their industry contracted by $7.5 billion last year.  They blame the web, in some way, but also realize they need the web if they want to continue existing; and there lies the drama.  
  
• 04/08 - A.P Exec Doesn't Know It Has a YouTube Channel: Threatens Affiliate for Embedding Videos.  Well, it looks like all this talk by the A.P. about "protecting our content" at the Wednesday morning scrum got one executive super motivated to make a statement.  A radio station in Tennessee received a warning from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from A.P.'s YouTube channel.  The exchange between the A.P. and the affiliate deserves to be called what it is: embarrassing, humiliating, and a reflection of the disconnect in their organization.
  
• 04/09 - The A.P. Apologizes, Admits to a "Misunderstanding of YourTube Usage".   What a difference twenty-four hours makes.  Doing an about-face that was nearly as quick as the one Facebook did when it changed their TOS, the A.P. apologized and said in an official statement "There was a misunderstanding of YouTube usage when the Tennessee radio station was contacted by the Associated Press regarding the A.P's more extensive online video services".  Apparently, the A.P was trying to recommend a better video service to their affiliate, and decided to make their point with a threatening e-mail.  Like Erick said, "at least they apologized".

Note: As I begin writing this post, the Reading Rights Coalition's online petition for allowing everyone access to eBooks has 4,280 signatures.  I'll get to why this is important in a moment.

My goodness, it's early. I'm off to nap for a few hours before getting up and going into New York to tweet the Authors Guild protest today. For more information on this and why I am going, check out my blog post To Kindle-2 or Not:Discriminating Against People That Cannot Read.

The hashtags I'll be using are #kindle2 and #right2read.  The protest is scheduled from 12:00pm to 2:00pm EST.  Tune in if you can.  In addition to tweeting, I'll blog about the experience later this week. 

Good night. Zzzzzzzzzzz......

To be honest, I'm not sure how I caught wind of this. It must have been a happy accident, a random tweet coming through one of my TweetDeck search streams letting me know that Marie Claire Magazine was tweeting a live blind date at 7:30pm on 4/6. Really? My, how wonderfully interesting and potentially entertaining. People, after all, love drama and Marie Claire promised some with their tease "Marie Claire web associate Diana Vilibert is on a blind date with NYC comedian Adam Conover and they're both Twittering it live! Follow along and watch the drama unfold." So far so good, right?

Ok -- so let me get this straight. Dating? Check. Tweeting? Check. Drama? Check. All in one take? Check. This, in my mind, has the potential to be better than most of the things on TV tonight. Just like that, I was sucked into a brand that normally I would not spend any time on. At all. Marie Claire? Yes, I knew it was a magazine but if you had said that name to me, I would have said 1) that name sounds familiar, and 2) did I go to high school with her. There lies the power of social media, though. Chosen brand sponsors an interesting event, captures an audience, and in that moment has an opportunity to let me know what they're about.

Now it's 3:30pm EST. I've got hours before the blind date (note: someone needs to come up with a clever 'tword' for a blind date on twitter - blind tweet? blind tweetup?), and I cannot help but think that someone else had to have done this before. Twitter has been around for a few years, right? Marie Claire cannot be the first ones to do this, can they?

Enter Rob La Gesse and his blog Stuffleufagus. Rob is the Director of Customer Development at Mosso, a division of Rackspace. Rob was a Twitter early adopter, and in January 2008 he tweeted a blind date. Nice. Here's some context, something to set the stage or expectation for tonight. His twitterbud was Linda Sherman, who writes about "International Women's Lifestyle, Work, and Empowerment" in her blog It's Different For Girls. She caught his date, and basically went along for the ride. Overall, his date was crazy entertaining and Rob blogged about it. He and Linda had fun with the moment and interacted with the tweeples following along. The date did not work out for Rob, but their tweeting did as it they were interesting and captivating to read, knowing that these events occurred in real time. Their exchanges were spontaneous, chaotic, and authentic. People loved it.

At this point, I cannot wait to follow the date. I'm thinking that this type of planned event could spawn a new type of Twittertainment (could we call it the reality Tweet-com), almost like reading a book in real time and having to rely on your imagination to fill in the blanks between 140 characters. The beauty of this is that everyone, at one point or another, has gone on a blind date and can relate to the emotions, anxiety, fear, and anticipation that comes with meeting someone for the first time. Telling the world about it 140 characters at a time as the date unfolds could only magnify these feelings, right?   

The Good

The Bad

While the event was entertaining, Marie Claire just barely scratched the surface of engaging the audience. Diana and Adam did not really have enough time to do anything other than provide their status without risking date momentum. The audience (me included), had questions and comments that mostly went unanswered. That being said, here are some suggestions for the next tweet date.

• Promote the event. On the Marie Claire home page, there is a less than obvious reference to the tweet date. This could have been called out more, as it blended in with the other articles. Events that are opportunities to create fun, engaging, and memorable experiences for customers should be promoted as such.
• Promote the participants. On the "twitter blind date" page, there is very little information about the date participants. Links do exist so that you can learn more about Adam, but there is no context behind why he is doing this. For Diana, her name links to her Twitter page. As someone that writes for Marie Claire, could that link have led to her bio? Or a list of articles she has written? I found some, but I had to find her homepage first. Promote your participants; the more your audience knows about them before the event, the more they will care and be invested in participating.
• Include a narrator / color commentator. I am curious if a 3rd person / moderator "secretly" narrating the event would have helped engage the audience more. A 3rd party observer / narrator that leaves the tweet-daters alone but still tweets about what he sees while interacting with the audience could create a much more sticky experience (ex. a dating expert that narrates the date while fielding questions from the audience).
• Take pictures. When Diana complained about her bowling shoes, I wanted to see them. Twitpicing at opportune moments would have brought the audience in even more. Again, a narrator / observer taking pictures of the event would have added a lot.
• Make sure that technology doesn't sabotage the event. Both Adam and Diana complained about their phones. For a staged event like this, there is no reason that the tweet-daters should have to worry about tweeting on a janky-ass phone.
• Pay attention to details. It's not "Twittering", it's "Tweeting". Sure, it's minor. It does, however, show the Marie Claire is new to this.

In the end, Marie Claire, Diana, and Adam deserve credit and kudos for making this a success. I imagine that we will begin to see more and more of this type of event; a reality Tweetup of some kind for people to observe and participate in. People could tweet dates, engagements, reality events, with each event being sponsored by a brand that draws in viewers over time (imagine Tweeting the Bachelor, or the Amazing Race).   That is what is so exciting me about this event and social media in general; there is just so much possibility and potential. 

Hmmmm; I think I may start a Reality Tweet Production Company (RealiTweet).

When I heard on Friday via Twitter that Adobe was offering Free Flex Builder 3 Professional licenses for unemployed developers, I was very curious what the developer community's reaction to this announcement would be. Flex is fun, sexy, and is in demand by businesses all over. Businesses cannot find enough talented Flex developers (especially good ones), and the work pays well (as a contractor, you can earn anywhere from $50-100 per hour depending on locale and skill set in the US). Experts can surpass this.

Reading this for the first time, I thought the announcement was a great move on Adobe's part. Right on. Adobe gets good press, create some positive buzz in their developer communities and beyond, convert new developers, demonstrate goodwill, and can be perceived as being compassionate in this moment. Seriously, what is the downside of this announcement - both for Adobe, and the developer community? There is none, especially in today's economy. Of course, Adobe is looking out for their own interests; don't be fooled by that. More developers will mean more licenses, as Adobe wants you to get a job working with their products since your future employer will probably need to buy you a Flex Builder license at some point. This, however, does not change that if you are developer that was just let recently let go or is out of work, feels unchallenged, or needs to learn something new to jump start your career - then consider taking advantage of this opportunity. To be license eligible, you will need to: