Yaybia Weekly Link Love: January 19-23, 2009

Welcome to our first of many weekly recaps, where we'll harness the rumblings of the interwebs into one post for your reading pleasure.

ON THE WEBS: In case you were under a rock and/or wasted all week (it's ok if you were!)

• We got a new President on Tuesday!  Google searches took a nosedive while we watched his speech, and a lot of us were watching online.  J9 talked about Facebook/CNN connect and how awesome it was.  To bring the federal government into 2009, the new administration overhauled whitehouse.gov at exactly 12:01pm--and it looks rll good.
  
  
• Another bad week for print as 3-year-old Wondertime magazine went under and Google nixed its newspaper ad network.  
  
  
• Google brought video to Gmail chat windows.  Anyone who knows what I mean when I say "AIM Aptus" is dying inside.
  
  
• Mashable posted awesome examples of how Twitter can help you IRL.

ON YAYBIA:

• Lam & Lib teamed up to give AgencySpy readers the lay of the land of 10,000 lakes
  
  
• The University of Minnesota embraces blogging and Twitter. Go Gophers!
  
  
• Click in the next 10 seconds and we'll DOUBLE YOUR ORDER!

LOVERS & FRIENDS: Shoutouts to our loyal readers and fellow bloggers

• Jacey and the crew at space150 hosted Deepspace 2009 Trends
  
  
• AS brings us more State of the State posts from Chicago and Denver.

LAWL: Links Lam and I sent each other in Gchat all week

• Be good, kids.  The President is watching...
  
  
• BOB! HELP! 
  
  
• We. Love. The. 90s. 
• 

CNN and FB Win on Inauguration Day

So CNN and Facebook aligned their forces for some refreshing news coverage. Like all of you, I was sneaking coverage of the Inauguration since the early hours. To my surprise, a partnership with Facebook added a new element to CNN's coverage. On the right side of the video, viewers could open up their Facebook profile and watch people's responses to the live events. And of course, they could submit their own comments.

Here is why I think this partnership is a win:

• High Involvement: CNN said they are receiving over 2,000 comments per minute, wowser.
• Exchange: The news is no longer static and CNN allowed viewers to voice their opinion about this highly emotional event.
• Listening: The simple act of letting people share responses show's viewers that CNN values their opinion. The positive responses of this partnership is proof that people appreciate this simple gesture.
  

One final note, advertisers may not be crazy about this open comment format. A Starbucks ad all about the "grassroots" movement was highly booed by Facebook commenters. Apparently, people did not appreciate Starbucks pretending to be a "grassroots" company.
[I have yet to find this ad, but I'll post it if I come across it]


"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

[The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama]

CNN = Politics, Yaybia = Ideas

With only 27 days left until one of the most important elections ever, more people than ever are tuning in for their daily dose of politico. I too have given more time to my channel of choice, CNN. The more I watched the more I began to notice how well CNN has positioned themselves as THE place for politics. CNN = Politics. Their advertisements, blogs, and podcasts boast this online and on air the corners of the screen are graced with the CNN = Politics 97.6% of the time.

I think CNN has done a fantastic job of being the place for politics. Campbell Brown rocks Election Center , Anderson takes his 360 look at politics, and Larry King invites celebs and politicians to the show to voice their opinions about the election. Everything about their programming is tied back to CNN = Politics. It’s consistent, credible, and c’mon, they have Anderson Cooper!

But what about after the election? Will people think of CNN as their place for news after the elections are done? Sure, politics never go away, but how many people use CNN as their default news station? I think that CNN will either keep the viewers that have become comfortable with the network in the past few weeks or they will lose a significant share because they will lose their main source of content. What do you think?

Context FAIL

New York Times: "McCain Seeks to Delay First Debate Amid Financial Crisis" flanked by FIRST DEBATE FRIDAY NIGHT! CNN banners. Granted, this is breaking news. But somebody on the CNN media planning team needs to have their servers hold off on those for a hot minute.