The Inquisitr » viral

9 year old’s hockey goal becomes viral hit

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:23:26 +0000

9-year-old Oliver Wahlstrom of Maine can add “viral video star” to his list of accomplishments.

Oliver, a forward for the Portland Junior Pirates, scored a goal this weekend at the TD Bank’s Mini 1-on-1 Challenge that would make NHL players envious.

Check out Oliver’s impressive score, below:

[Source]

Video: Cardinals’ Matt Holiday catches line drive with his crotch

Kim LaCapria — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:25:48 +0000

Talk about adding insult to injury.

Not only did Matt Holiday take a careening baseball to the nads, but the 9th inning error lead to a 3-2 loss to the Dodgers.

Video of Matt Holiday’s error, below:

[Source]

Video: Shannon Brown dunk on Mikki Moore

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:13:53 +0000

The Lakers’ Shannon Brown pulled off an impressive play on the Warriors’ Mikki Moore during last night’s game.

A fan shouted down from the stands to Moore “you got dunked on!”

Moore replied, “it happens.”

So why does Johnny Walker come in a square bottle?

Steven Hodson — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:10:57 +0000

If there is one iconic brand name for scotch it has to be Johnny Walker. This video is the story behind Johnny Walker and its never changing square bottle or diagonal label. The question is why the square shape and why is the label set at 24° exactly?

Well follow along with Robert Caryle as he tells the true tale of Johnny Walker.

Oh and by the way the video was shot in one single shoot – mind you it took 40 attempts.

hat tip Steve Clayton

LOGICAL: Bill O’Reilly on Guitar Hero ad’s “nudity”

Chris Greenhough — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:45:34 +0000

Political commentator and beacon of fair, balanced journalism Bill O’Reilly has got his panties in a real bunch over a viral advert for Guitar Hero 5, which features what he terms “nudity.”

The O’Reilly Factor host described the ad as “shameless promotion,” and dubbed the female models “pinheads.” Publisher Activision is yet to comment, so allow us to do that for them: “LOL.” Here’s O’Reilly flapping his gums and replaying the “shameless” advert in question on his own show. You know, just so his viewers are informed. Way to take a stand, Bill.

Even by O’Reilly’s dazzling standards, this is crazy talk. For one, you’d see more flesh if the girls were wearing bikinis, while Bill is happy to overlook the “naked” guy who arrives shortly after, quickly becoming the focus of the advert. Conveniently, the producers cut that part out. Here’s the advert in full:

So I think we all know the biggest question raised by this, and that is: is O’Reilly actually on Activision’s payroll? Because this is the second Guitar Hero ad that’s enjoyed publicity from bleating Billy.

[Via GamePro]

Terminator Salvation launches Twitter game

Steven Hodson — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:20:20 +0000

Twitter gets used for a lot of different things but this one from the marketing department behind the summer movie Terminator Salvation have come up with something new. Using a combination of Twitter and a website Sony has launched a game called Resistance 2018 that involves users on Twitter joining different resistance squadrons to fight the Terminators.

To play the game you first need to follow @Resistance2018 on Twitter and then head over to Resistance2018.com and sign in with your Twitter ID in order to read the instructions for the game. The idea being that you follow orders that are tweeted out and gain points by doing so. The more points you get the more opportunities you have to join special squadrons.

Some of the tweets posted about the various assignments and such will come with different coding

RA (Resistance Assignments)
WM (Word Mix)
TR (Trivia)
PT (Partial Transmission)
SW (SkyNet Warnings
plus more……

As Alex Billington noted on FirstShowing.net this is the first time anyone has tried anything like this so it should be really interesting to see how it fairs.

[hat tip to FirstShowing.net / graphic courtesy of FirstShowing.nhttp://www.firstshowing.net/2009/04/20/sony-launches-terminator-salvation-twitter-viral-game/et]

Terminator Salvation expands Skynet to your desktop

Steven Hodson — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:37:26 +0000

Viral marketing is the nirvana that just about every company is looking to achieve these days. There are some good attempts and then there are some that drop with a dull thud. Usually they involve websites related in some fashion to the product trying to gain market share or some cutesy video that generally just wants to make you gag.

Terminator Salvation though look to have raised the stakes in their marketing campaign that they have been building on slowly in the lead up to the movie’s release. The most recent move in this campaign according to Alex Billington at FirstShowing.net has been the release of the Skynet Distributed Computing Platform (DCP).

Yup you heard that right – you can now download an application that will link in with every other computer in the world running the DCP. The application is located on the Warner Brothers servers (probably due to legalities) and you have to agree to the terms of service that come with the application, so as Alex suggests this might not be something to do at work.

Alex as well has a bit of a lowdown on what exactly the DCP does at this point which really doesn’t seem to be all that much

Once you launch the application, it shows you two primary views, one of the entire world with little yellow dots indicating where each computer that is connected to Skynet’s DCP is located. You can also click on the odd yellow/green graph in the lower left corner and it brings up another new display with more information. Also found in the lower right corner a section that says "Input Code" and a space for 9 characters. We’re guessing there is some code that can be entered here, but I have no clue where to find this or what’ll happen when you put it in. Any ideas? If you’re into this viral, I’d suggest you download this right away!

It’s interesting to see just how far some of these marketing folks will go to get our attention but given that the movie is already going to be insanely popular one has to wonder if all this extra stuff is worth the time and effort.

[picture of DCP courtesy of FirstShowing.net]

Going Viral: Does It Help or Hurt?

Guest Poster — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:41:00 +0000

This post is a guest post by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, contributing editor at The Industry Standard.

Two stories have gone completely viral in the blogosphere this month; one I played a part in, and one I didn’t. The first was the story of Dell’s application to trademark the term cloud computing, a trademark that was all but a done deal until the blogosphere errupted in a righteous fury over a company taking advantage. From the first post on Google Groups to its coverage on Elastic Vapor and onward, the story spread like wildfire, finally culminating in a preliminary denial of the trademark that Dell may or may not appeal. If I were to guess, I’d assume Dell would drop the application, not wanting to incite the anger of the tech community, nor let its competitors gain press for what’s certain to be an almost instantaneous protest of an appeal.

In the case of Dell, the outcome seems clear: Dell lost, the tech industry won, and the blogs and forums that pushed the story along certainly played a part. But what happens with a viral story that has no real winners?

The Bigfoot story may be that story. Since it’s first coverage (some of it here on The Inquisitr), it’s another story that spread at lightning speed, with one site after another either claiming the “find” was real, or expressing cynicism. By now, we all know that the story was a hoax, but there seems to be no winner. One of the individuals involved has lost his job as a Clayton County police officer due to his involvement. All three individuals are now known worldwide as liars. There seems to be no good that came out of the story.

Odds are that those involved in the Bigfoot hoax really had no idea how fast a story can spread. What seemed like a simple press release that might have gained a bit of local coverage snowballed, and the perpetrators of the hoax may simply have lost control of it. The idea of “going viral” is the dream of every entrepreneur, PR person, and blogger. It just may not have a good outcome.

Guest author Cyndy Aleo-Carreira is a contributing editor at The Industry Standard. She also writes about tech and start-up issues as well as freelance writing at Shakespeare I Ain’t, and does a weekly podcast with The Inquisitr’s own Duncan Riley at Things You Can’t Say About the Internet on Talkshoe.