There has been a ton of different celebrities and athletes that have taken over teams websites. The most successful I’ve seen this year has been the Knicks continued push to have celebs that are Knicks fans take over their twitter account during a game. The list includes John Leguizamo, Tracy Morgan, Rev Run (from Run DMC) to name a few. Tyson Chandler took over their account earlier this year as well. We’ve seen such great success with activating our guys through Twitter chats and live video that during All-Star it was a no-brainer to have our Rookie sensation, Damian Lillard take over the @pdxtrailblazers account.

First up, pre-promotion. We worked on a strategy to get the word out through as many channels as possible. Knowing that a lot of our fan base is still not using Twitter, we had to communicate through more traditional digital routes. For two weeks leading up to the event, there were inclusions in each of our newsletters, general fans and Season Ticket Holders. There was major presence on our homepage and blogs written about the event. We worked closely with Damian and his people to tease it on both Twitter and Facebook through his own accounts.

During the actual event, we sent a Vine out of Damian announcing he was starting his takeover and to use the hashtag #AskDame to get questions to him.

In all, Damian was on for 40 minutes, had 600 questions and was trending both in Portland and US on Valentines Day. The Portland trend lasted 12 hours. We saw an increase of 15% in comparison to a normal week in followers, and Damian saw 20%. Not bad. (read the full #AskDame takeover)

Our next engagement event will be a Facebook Takeover with Damian, so stay tuned. This won’t be the only social activity we do in the upcoming weeks (we’ve been doing Chirpify contests, an Instagram Takeover with a fan photographer and plan on a large fan simultaneous Instagram photo… 1,2,3 #WorldWideCheese, more on that later).

As time goes by, and we become accustomed to the way our networks are designed, we resist change. This is human nature in general. However, as we also become accustomed to “the way things are” the more we can see shortcomings or difficulties in UI/UX.

This week there has been rumors of changes for both Facebook and Google+ UI/UX. This change is expected from our networks (Move Fast and Break Things), but more importantly will help improve the user experience. I’m sure due to Human Nature this will take time to embrace, but we need to look at how these networks are being used, and evolve them in a positive manner.

Google+

Google has started to roll out profile pages that have these changes (from a G+ post from Sarah McKinely):

- A new tab for your Local reviews. In addition to your photos, +1′s and YouTube videos, there’s now a place for all your Local reviews. Highlight your favorite restaurants, or hide the tab completely via settings — it’s completely up to you.

- An easier way to edit your info. The ‘About’ tab now consists of separate cards (like Story, Places, and Links) — each with its own prominent edit link. As always: you can share specific fields with specific circles, or keep them just for you.

- Bigger cover photos, with a better aspect ratio. Cover photos are much larger than before (up to 2120px by 1192px), and they display in 16×9 when fully expanded. This way more images can be used as cover photos, and there’s more room for your selection to shine.

Larger Cover Photos

Reviews

About

Google+ needs to differentiate themselves from Facebook and creating robust, focused experiences in certain key areas (reviews from places, seamless photographic experience plugins from Picasa/Chrome, larger cover photos) could be a way they do this. Once those areas are improved, there needs to be a continued focus on getting the masses to use the network. Right now, we don’t see the engagement even though we have 400k+ that have us (Portland Trail Blazers) in their circles.

Facebook

The rumors have that Facebook has two changes that are set to release soon. One is for an updated Timeline and the other is an evolution of the News Feed. I welcome both changes as they will push the platform so users will engage with content in the two primary content consumption areas.

Facebook profile changes (that have been seen in the wild in New Zealand) from Mashable include the following rumored changes:

New Toolbar
The redesigned Timeline changes the top of the page in particular, removing the photo tiles for Friends and Photos, and moving Map and Subscriber information lower on the page.

Better center content layout
App updates and Likes are on the left side of the screen, while status updates are in the center. This is a great evolution as I always felt my eyes ping-ponging back and forth between the two columns. They never knew which had more weight, therefor I had a hard time focusing. I’m looking forward to this change with open arms.

Photo Grid
Photos have always been the way to bring a site to life. Facebook is adding a 3×3 grid of photos in the redesigned smaller left column. This will help break up the text heavy layout in the left column and will have specific areas for Instagram integration. The marriage between the two platforms continues to become tighter. The big question is if Facebook adopts hashtags or a different tagging system for Instagram is yet to be seen.

There are other changes that you can read at Mashable.

Facebook to update News Feed with multiple News Feeds
This is really interesting (Mashable) as Facebook hasn’t done a ton of updating to the Facebook News Feed over time. They have implemented EdgeRank to figure out what content goes into your newsfeed, but the approach from a user perspective hasn’t evolved. This is where the biggest impact could be had for users finding the content they want to engage with, not just content that Facebook’s algorithm thinks you want to engage with.

The rumor is that Facebook will roll out multiple categories for the News Feed. Music, Instagram Photos are the two that are mentioned in the Mashable article. (UPDATED and rumor showing up in Techcrunch story as well) We have had “lists” for awhile and with the encouragement of Robert Scoble, I subscribed to several lists (tutorial to create your own lists here). This has changed the look of my Facebook feed drastically, for the better. I now get a mix of pertinent topics mixed in with the mudane posts from ex-highschool friends. This is extremely valuable as the content I was getting from my organically found friends was getting stale. My Twitter experience is a much more vibrant one as I have sought out those people to follow. I needed to do the same on Facebook.

Where I get excited from a user and as someone who oversees social for a sports team, is the ability to showcase sports posts in a specialized news feed. It would be great if Facebook not only showed sports posts from Friends and Pages that have been liked, but also trending events and real-time updates during sporting events. THIS is where Facebook can and needs to catch up to Twitter. Realtime engagement of sporting events can either get buried on a news feed, feel like flooding, or never get to your feed in time. As an avid sports fan, it would be great to present the most “popular” sports topics or stories that I can explore, regardless of friends or pages that I’ve liked, but also feel like I’m up to date on the fast paced of sports. Showcasing items outside of my graph would get me to explore better content and use the platform more.

Changes to platforms will come just as the suns rises in the east and sets in the west. I’m sure there will be some complaining on social outlets on these changes. This should be expected as a) humans don’t like change b) people like to be negative or complain on social networks.

No other band defined me musically more than the Beastie Boys. I’m not going to get into a non-winnable argument about whether they were or were not the best band ever (I’ve seen this happen time and time again in college with my friends. There is never a resolution and in turn people end up pointing speakers at each others doors and blaring their favorite band at an ear shattering level). But if you were to ask any of my friends, “What is Dan’s favorite band,” without hesitation I’m pretty positive 99% would say The Beastie Boys. This hasn’t wavered since I was 12 years-old when myself and a friend of mine memorized the lyrics to Paul Revere at a school field trip on a hike in Alliance Redwoods.

The Beastie Boys were a band that defined my high school experience with Check Your Head. I played that album continuously in my first car, over and over to much of the chagrin of my fellow passengers.

In college, the Beastie Boys were my first concert I ever went to. Most people sheepishly answer when they are asked “what was your first concert” and the answer is “New Kids on the Block” or “Stryper”. Proudly I answer: “The Beastie Boys, DJ Hurricane and Bad Brains at the Bremerton County Fairgrounds in 1995. It was the Ill Communication tour and 6 of us from University of Oregon packed into a car and drove the 3 hours up and 3 hours back that day. It was the highlight of my freshman year in college.

Over the years, music has always been something that I have used to anchor me or fill time. Some people read books, some read comics (err, I mean graphic novels)… I would always listen to music; and Beastie Boys were always the band that I would come back to. Comfort food for the ears.

When I started working at KNRK in 1998, the second gig I had for the radio station was the Beastie Boys concert at the Rose Garden for the Hello Nasty tour. When I started doing my own Punk/Hip-Hop show, The Warped Hours, I would always have at least one Beastie Boy song on my playlist. Back in 2005, I invited a some of my friends, and listeners to vote on their top 10 Beastie Boys songs. I used that, along with a scoring system to create the following “Top Beastie Boy Songs” 1-33. I look back on this list and would probably jostle a couple around, but here’s the list:

1. So What’cha Want || Check Your Head
2. Shadrach || Paul’s Boutique
3. Sabotage || Ill Communication
4. Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun || Paul’s Boutique
5. Pass The Mic || Check Your Head
6. Shake Your Rump || Paul’s Boutique
7. Jimmy James || Check Your Head
8. Professor Booty || Check Your Head
9. Sure Shot || Ill Communication
10. Fight For Your Right || Licensed To Ill
11. An Open Letter To NYC || To The 5 Boroughs
12. High Plains Drifter || Paul’s Boutique
13. She’s On It|| Licensed To Ill
14. Stand Together/Blue Nun || Check Your Head
15. Hello Brooklyn || Paul’s Boutique
16. Root Down || Ill Communication
17. Paul Revere || Licensed To Ill
18. Alive || The Sounds Of Science
19. Body Movin’ || Hello Nasty
20. Time To Build || To The 5 Boroughs
21. Shes Crafty || Licensed To Ill
22. Hey Ladies || Paul’s Boutique
23. Super Disco Breakin’ || Hello Nasty
24. Get It Together || Ill Communication
25. Egg Raid On Mojo || Some Old Bullshit
26. Flute Loop || Ill Communication
27. Just a Test || Hello Nasty
28. The Brouhaha || To The 5 Boroughs
29. Cooky Puss || Some Old Bullshit
30. Heart Attack Man || Ill Communication
31. The Negotiation Limerick File || Ill Communication
32. I Don’t Know || Hello Nasty
33. Beastie Boys || Some Old Bullshit

If you have Spotify, I created this as a playlist for you to listen to and enjoy. || Weblink to playlist

In 2004 I was at the radio station when I got a note from my Program Director, Mark Hamilton, to come into his office. When you work in radio, that’s always a little anxiety producing, to be summoned into the PD’s office. He called me in to let me know that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys was doing radio interviews and he wanted me to be the person from the station to interview him. I damn near soiled myself. I eeked out “of course, that’s awesome…” or something to that effect. He then said, “great, he’s calling in 30 minutes.” Not a lot of time to prep. I will attempt to dig up my interview I did with MCA and will put the pretext on it… it wasn’t my finest of interviews. If anyone has done interviews, they can tell you phone interviews can be tough in making a connection. It can sometimes be tougher when you know the person on the other line has already done 25 of these “phoners” in the same day. Combine that you’re actually a fan… it can make for a rough interview. Thankfully he was a pro and it went ok. Stay tuned for that audio. I’ll update this post when I find it. **UPDATED with audio** Adam Yauch 2004 radio interview on KNRK

So, after hearing the news today that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed after being afflicted with cancer for the past 2+ years I felt a sadness that isn’t unique, but was for me. Having a public figure you are attached to, one that you have grown up and formed bonds and memories around, to leave. You know that you can never recreate your youth, but this solidifies that passage. There won’t be new Beastie Boys Albums, there won’t be any more tours. I won’t be able to have my son’s first concert be the Beastie Boys (hopefully it won’t be Justin Beiber-esque)… I do still have a crate full of white label pressings of Beasties records that I can pass on, my numerous t-shirts and XL Brooklyn Dust Elephant hat and will do my damnest to educate him on the finer points of why they were such an influence on our generation. So, while people argue which band was the greatest, these guys were the greatest band in forming who I am.

RIP Adam Yauch. Thank you.

I’ve always been a fan of slow motion in video. Helps tell the story. Let’s people focus on the now. Gives a different perspective on all the subjects in the shot. Or, things just look cooler when slowed down. Whether it is a Wes Anderson signature scene:
(Cue Royal Tenenbaums clip here)

Or Life Aquatic:

Or Rushmore:

or in replays of a sporting event. With the super hi-speed cameras becoming more and more accessible, it will be cool to see what different film makers and marketing geniuses come up with to help augment telling of a story. Here’s a fun reel to watch of some super slo-mo footage shot with a Phantom. (This agency seems to be channeling their inner 12 year-old boy with some of these stunts).

Ikea launched a 300×250 ad that contains over 2,000 of their products, making this banner, the smallest IKEA store in the world.

Two reasons why this is great:

1) Stays true to the IKEA brand.

When I think of IKEA, I think instructions that come in only picto-format (which I usually have to do twice) and making the most out of limited space. This ad takes a traditional 300×250 and makes it into a browsing experience (not quite shopping experience as you can’t purchase inline in ad) much larger than the traditional constraints dictate.

2) Brings the store to the consumer.

Getting someone to passively engage with a banner can be difficult (please look over here at me, I’m not a monkey that needs to be punched, I promise). Getting them to disengage with the website that they are currently on is even more difficult. This IKEA ad doesn’t require the audience to jump to the brand’s site on the first level of engagement. It lets the consumer browse through and let the viewer find the object that suits their fancy.

Where this can be improved is by creating the full purchase experience inline. Make it like a mobile app where space is limited, so you have to be smart about UX in your limited 300×250, yet make it fully functional.

Where professional teams can use this is porting the shopping experience for tickets and merchandise on affiliate sites. Buy the local newspaper website and have a fully operational ticket store (complete with discounts and offers) rather than just having a picture of the upcoming opponent.

Original post at Adverblog

This is an infographic from breakingcopy.com. Great site, check it out when you get a chance.

This is pretty accurate and does a good job in not showing all possible networks out there as these are now the major players in the game (maybe minus Tumblr). I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of these come off the table soon (LinkedIN, Foursquare G+) through acquisition or being shut down due to competition passing them by.

Google+ is still pretty new in the scheme of things. I’ve yet to find an audience on there that isn’t on twitter. For me, this infographic for me is partially true. The one workflow arrow that is lacking is the length of the message I’d like to convey. More or less than 140 chars? The ability to write more than 140 chars are Twitter’s strength and hold-up. Message length and threaded conversations (trying to see what someone else is responding to is difficult to follow). The audience on Twitter is right for digital and sports talk, but the medium is limiting to tell longer form opinions.

Facebook is another story as I have so many personal friends from High School and College that get tired of my work geek speak I find it counterproductive to post a lot of sports or digital notes on there. The audience (digital audience, not sports audience) is on Google+ and I’ve used it to be an outlet for longer form geek speak. It is no replacement for personal sharing like Facebook (nor do I need one yet), nor do I think it will become one.

NFC (Near Field Communications) is something out of science fiction. Walk up to a register, swipe your phone and credits are taken away from your bank account. Straight out of Brave New World, eh?

This has become a reality with Google Wallet, which debuted in September.

What you get with Google Wallet (or NFC in general) is eliminating one more thing to carry around in your pocket. Just swipe your card, punch your pin in, and you’re good. You can start to eliminate things in your life. That’s what technology should be for, make things simpler, easier… consolidate. This isn’t always the case (how many more social nets are there to join?) What does this mean for sports?

There has been a lot of focus on moving fans to electronic tickets. This saves money on printing costs, is greener without all that useless ticket stock that gets used per year and will combat fraud with fake tickets. The adoption of this however is the challenge (as most new technologies) and getting fans to transition to using e-tickets instead of their tide-and-true paper tickets. With Google Wallet you can have your “loyalty cards” on your account, so in theory, your Subway card could be on there (if Subway went electronic with their card), your Disney Park card could be on there, Southwest Airlines Frequent Flier Card and yes, your favorite sports team loyalty card. That loyalty card can hold your tickets. Want to go into the game, swipe your card. Want to forward your tickets, swipe your… wait, your friends don’t have a loyalty card. BUT they might have a Google Wallet account and with that, the potential to sign up for a Trail Blazers loyalty card.

In addition to having your tickets in a easily distributable mechanism, teams can provide additional benefits to both the fan and the organization on this loyalty card. This is something that we’ve been looking at doing for our Season Ticket Holders in Rip City United (our Season Ticket Holder loyalty program).

1. You can bonus concessions or merchandise to the fan on their loyalty card, or pass automatic $$ off at the register. This can now be just on their phone
2. As with most RFID/NFC devices, the club can be notified when people are entering the building. So if a high touch customer has walked through the gates, you can be alerted on where they have entered and if you have some proximity sensors, know where they are.
3. The ability to track purchases and habits of Season Ticket Holders in concession stands is extremely valuable for the organization that would be otherwise tough to capture. This might creep some people out, but knowing that Season Ticket Holders consume more of a certain beverage, or consume a specific candy at a certain time, is valuable information.  This information will help organizations make better decisions when planning menus and adding on additional items. There is also additional revenue potential by going after potential sponsors that would offer discounts or exclusive tastings for new products in market.

My 4 year old was able to unlock my iPhone at 1.5 years old. He has grown up with an iOS device in the house. It is crazy on how intuitive these touch devices are. As you can see in this YouTube clip, this 1 year old tries to get the old-school magazine to do things it “should” do when compared to the iPad. My two favorite moments are when she tries to get the page to stay down, and when she tries to pinch-zoom on a graphic in the magazine.

It goes without saying that this is the future of print media. What it means more to me, is how does this effect the way the future generation thinks and interacts with objects in every day life. Objects will start being viewed a multi-demenional, with the expectation they do more than face value. As if things become one large swiss army knife. This will definitely hold true to electronics, but what other things will be consolidated?

What we do here at the Trail Blazers, behind the scenes. We bring the community together. We are charged with coming up with ways for fans to connect to the team and fans with each other in authentic ways. This goes beyond in-arena, on broadcast, on the site. This is something that needs to be woven deeply into the core on who were are as a business and team.

If you’ve followed this rarely updated blog, or more likely my twitter feed (@darbison), you will know that this is the core to the initiatives that we have worked on for the past 5 years. From iamatrailblazersfan.com (v1, v2) to trailblazers.tv live shows, live chats during games and ongoing strategies through twitter (@pdxtrailblazers), Facebook and mobile. This will always be the first and foremost on our strategy, how does this premium content involve and engage. It is one thing to have a player with one of our hosts sit down and talk for an hour, it is another thing for the fans be the ones to ask all the questions.

This next season, I’m looking forward to pushing the envelope on what we do with fans during the games. A lot of people focus on the in-arena experience from a social perspective. I think that’s a short-sighted approach. Of course, these are your ticket holders and are the most important paying customer, however; they are not the most numerous. How we engage the audience that is watching at home on tv or following along in another country. That is where the masses are.

Our challenge is to answer this question. “How do you capture the excitement of being a fan in an arena with 20,000 other people, and bring it to someone who is by themselves on their couch?” As a fan, you want to feel like a part of something larger. Hence, why we have put so much into iamatrailblazersfan.com. Where iama, is a community that runs constantly and is there to fill-in the gaps between games, we need to figure a way to evolve the game-day experience for a digital fan.

In the past two years we’ve pushed our Game In Progress page as the homepage of trailblazers.com during the actual game (~7% of all total page views for our digital properties came from the Game in Progress Page). We have augmented this page as we have gotten feedback on fans like or don’t like. Adding in:

• Live scoring for the Trail Blazers centric mini-fantasy basketball game “Your Starting 5″
• Added live video of the pre game, half-time, post-game show
• Allowed “SuperFans” to be autopublished in the Game Chat
• Pulled in Facebook and Tweets that are tagged with specific game hashtags

Where I would like us build from here is the greater use of video, audio and simultaneous events. How do we as community and brand builders get the people at home to be chanting “DE-FENSE” like 20,000 of their fellow fans are doing in arena. We have some exciting features we are looking at rolling out for the game in progress page, so stay tuned.

So it’s been roughly a month since I’ve had the Apple iPad. Unlike the iPhone, I wasn’t anticipating this release. Well, that’s not true… when the rumors were swirling, I was extremely excited. When the announcement came, I was less excited. I, along with others, see this as a replacement for something. I was already mobile with my iPhone and this wasn’t going to be powerful enough to replace my MacBook Pro. So what was the tablet going to be used for?

I decided it would be wise for the Trail Blazers if I got one to understand the hype and see how our business could apply to the use of the iPad, for both engagement with fans and for our own internal business purposes. Once getting the device, my eyes were opened up.

A lot of people that haven’t used an iPad very much rightfully say “It’s just a big iPod touch”. The key word in there is BIG. The screen is amazing. The iPhone changed behavior, consuming/engaging with content and the full web, **ehem excuse me, the flashless web, wherever and whenever you wanted. It made some interactions possible that was difficult before or impossible (geo aware services, GPS, up to the second Twit Pics, mobile broadcasting). You could do some of these things, but you had to have a laptop strapped to your back at all times.

The iPad is about changing the presentation of the content. You are now able to view multiple pieces of content (video and written word) in a presentation that doesn’t make you multitask in each one of the apps. I don’t think we’ve seen too many apps that have pushed the presentation yet (I like what the NPR app does, Popular Science app) and I’ll do another post with the apps that I’ve found to be good and bad, but that is on the software developers to create those experiences. The hardware that is there (especially the real estate) to make completely new experiences available.

With being able to consume more content at once, the viewing of video is amazing. It is a completely different experience than what I’ve had before. We have a 46″ screen at home (great for communal viewing), I’ve been streaming shows to my laptop for a couple of years ago (anyone remember the Venice Project, aka Joost when it was in beta), and have watched many of episodes of The Wire and The Office on my iPhone. This experience is more intimate. I control where the screen is, what angle, how far to hold it from my face. I don’t have to have to concede watching Ugly Betty, there’s no keyboard to remind me I’m on a computer and the screen is a size where I’m not leaning in the whole time to block out the rest of my peripheral vision. The iPad makes this a unique experience that I can see a lot more solitary watching of movies/shows in the future. (Yeah, who knew we could find a way to NOT talk to each other more in the household when it comes to media). Side note, I would get a stand or something for the iPad on the lap if you are watching a lot of video on it as your arms might get tired after 3 hours.

Reading books have actually been surprisingly good. I have a Kindle and love it. Or loved it. It felt like I was reading a book with the E Ink technology, so I was skeptical about iPad’s backlit screen. That’s actually been one of the strengths. With a Kindle you need a light to read at night. I can dim the screen on the iPad way down at night so it doesn’t bother anyone else, but I can still read the screen. I haven’t had any sort of eye strain after reading 5 hours straight and after 15 minutes I forgot I was reading on a computer. Between Kindle and the Apple Books app, that’ll be for another review, but most of my books are on Kindle and they have some nice features in that app that I enjoy.

I also have made a concerted effort to use the iPad as a laptop replacement. I’m able to use a bluetooth keyboard seamlessly and great success, however, there isn’t a great way to navigate without touching the screen. I know that’s the point of the touch screen, but if you’re using a keyboard with it, it would be nice to have “Command+tab” to be able to cycle through things. (Side note about navigation, I’ve found myself about to touch my laptop screen as a way to navigation or close things out, it is just more natural). The rest of my experience using this as a laptop replacement is pretty good. Web Surfing has been solid. I haven’t run into too many sites that have been inaccessible due to flash. The speed is really good, however my iPad suffers from bad WiFi connectivity in places my laptop and iPhone don’t have issues.

One of the components that I bought for the iPad was the External VGA Video Connection Kit. Don’t buy it. Wait. This only works with apps that have unlocked this feature. You can’t mirror your iPad display to a larger monitor (you should be able to do this). I currently run my MacBook Pro with an external monitor when I’m at work and love the extra space. Why not allow that for the iPad? You can’t play iTunes movies on your Flat Screen TV (DRM issues), or any other VGA monitor that I could get my hands on. The only apps that work so far: YouTube, Keynote (for presentations) and Image Slide Shows. That’s it. If you know of others, put them in the comments… I would love to check them out because the Connection Kit is useless right now.

Word Processing is pretty good with Pages. I have yet to print something here at our office because navigating our network printers is a nightmare. I have cranked out several proposals using the blue tooth keyboard and haven’t missed MS Word at all on my MacBook Pro. Being able to export to Page Format, PDF or MS Word .doc has come in handy. And the new iwork.com has been easy to use, but there should be some Google Doc integration or plugin that you can export to. I know that this would be in direct competition, but would go a long way.

I also would like to see some sort of file structure that I can save and open all sorts of file types. Right now there are a couple of apps out there that does this, but the cost is somewhat expensive. In fact, that has been a gripe. There wasn’t a lot of QA that went into apps that were released for iPad when it first came out. TONS of bugs and several html coding apps just didn’t work and were $9.99 (CodeMonkey and HTML Edit to name two). There needs to be a trial period for these apps if their price is going to be over $4.99. You can plunk down $30 on apps and still not have something that works. You have to rely on user reviews on the App Store and sometimes those aren’t the most reliable… I know, people lie on the internet, crazy… Being an early adopter it is understandable to run into glitches. Totally get it. But if the Apple Store is going to really scrutinize the apps that go up, let’s make sure they work. And please, add a trial version for software.

The presentation of the hardware and what it can do is amazing. It will be up to the apps to determine how useful this will be now and in the future. In fact, my Facebook consumption has dropped off dramatically because there is no Facebook app. I have found myself engaging with Twitter more (TweetDeck looks great on iPad, freezes a ton though) because of so many more apps out there to try out. This just seems like a miss for Facebook. You have to remember “Oh yeah, I should check Facebook now”… and pull up Safari surf over to FB and login. As opposed to it being right there as an icon. The iPhone app ported over to iPad is a poor replacement. It doesn’t utilize the screen size that iPad brings.

This is what kickstarts me again in getting us at the Trail Blazers to do at least one Trail Blazers mobile app (with an iPad specific version). In the future, this is how people will engage with your brand. There will still be an online component… but an app has the ability to be mobile, and a consistent experience that reminds people to engage with you. Our e-commerece will be done through the app, our community building, content creation and consumption because it provides a better experience.

After a month I’ve learned for 90% of the populace, you can get an iPad and use that as your primary computer. You can surf, email, word process, blog, minor photo editing/sharing and other typical computer tasks. When I had to jump into coding and graphic creation I had to get on the MacBook Pro. I’m not the typical computer person though. I pound on my laptop pretty heavily, so if I was able to sparingly use my laptop, I think most will be really happy with the iPad. Check out apps, there are some amazing ones (BTW my EA Sports Madden Football for iPhone looks better for iPad than iPhone, I can’t wait for the next edition). Don’t get the connector kit, do get a bluetooth keyboard. The 1 millionth iPad was just sold (faster time period than the iPhone) so this is going to evolve. I think it will evolve quickly as more apps push the envelope on what you can do on it. I will do another post that includes what I think we can do with the iPad here at the Trail Blazers and would love to hear your input.