The WWE did something unique last year – it announced the main event for Wrestlemania over a year in advance. The big match featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a huge cross-over star, and John Cena, the current flag bearer for the company. Recognizing the challenges of trying to keep interest for the match a year in advance, the WWE turned to social media. I wanted to some of the people driving this initiative, both on- and off-screen. Jason Hoch, SVP of Digital Operations for the WWE, discussed his social media strategies for fan engagement and social TV.

Since joining the WWE, Hoch undertook a huge project to re-launch WWE.com with a totally new UX with social media at its core. Rather than just putting as Jason says “plug-ins” or social areas, they have tried to build the entire site to be socially enabled. This included deep integration so users could follow their favorite stars on multiple social networks and interact with them seamlessly. Throughout the event, WrestleMania and related hashtags dominated Twitter. As they push hard into social, Jason specifically recognizes that social media fatigue is a key element that needs to be closely monitored to determine what level of interaction is appropriate and doesn’t turn off fans in its broadcasts and other media.

I also interviewed Zack Ryder, who talked about how he has elevated his career due to social media. Zack has been one of the key individuals who helped push social onto the WWE radar and elevate its corporate importance. While he isn’t the biggest star in the WWE, his usage of social has elevated his position in the company and allowed him to better engage his fans. He points to this and says if he didn’t embrace social media and make some waves he would have likely been fired. This is a good example of how employees are using social media to elevate their status within a company and make themselves more valuable employees in the eyes of their employers.

So far, their engagement strategy appears to be working. The WWE feels like they are more up-to-date and engaged. In many cases, WWE wrestlers were actively retweeted, followed and engaged by fans. One stat that is very telling was the number of followers and likes they have on Facebook and Twitter.

The numbers behind this are impressive. Between all of the stars’ accounts, they have over 60 million Twitter followers and 20 million Facebook likes. In 2011, they received over 1 billion views on their YouTube channel (those are Justin Bieber-like numbers, folks). Aside from social statistics, the actual event WrestleMania broke both attendance and gate records at the Sun Life Stadium with over 78,000 fans. However, the real telling statistic will be PPV buy-rates and how many the WWE is able to generate. Like all live PPV events, the WWE fights piracy from multiple live streaming sites online. The expectations and pressure are high, especially bringing back The Rock in such a marquee match to help raise buy-rates.

Last night at Wrestlemania, over 110 individual terms trended during the night. The #Wrestlemania hashtag was mentioned over 600k times delivering nearly a billion potential impressions with a reach of over 130 million people.

Echo is one of WWE’s technical partners. They provide technology that translates the thousands of tweets/likes they receive per second into actionable information that they can integrate into their live broadcasts. Khris Loux, CEO of Echo, says that whenever someone tweets or likes something in the “WWE Universe” it is like a synapse firing and they are able to track and analyze it. Since the WWE is so vertically integrated (between talent, production and content), they were able to execute an integrated social media strategy that ties into web, broadcasts and live events. Khris said that WWE definitely has an advantage over other mediums. Khris cited other examples that have multiple legal entities that need to be coordinated and get approval from for rights and access.

People who quickly dismiss the social WWE’s success due to it being “wrestling” are missing the boat. The reality is that it is a well-oiled media machine integrating multiple moving parts seamlessly with social at its core.

It’s the eve of WrestleMania 28, and I got a chance to meet with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. What does that have to do with tech? Well, in the video interview, Johnson shares his thoughts on how social media has changed the game, what is his favorite tech and how he uses it to engage his fans.

Johnson says he launched his Twitter account a little more than a year ago, and that it’s “one of the greatest things” he’s ever done, because it gives him a way to connect directly to fans.

“A lot of people would have had a team coming in … these great business minds, but I wanted to strip away the business of it all,” he says.

You can see more, including a peek at Johnson’s iPhone, in the video above. (The background noise is a little loud at first, but Johnson comes through loud and clear.)

Well, the sad truth is that after spending over 10 days on an amazing cruise ship the journey is over. These past days have been fantastic on a number of fronts. When you are constantly moving, you rarely have time to stop and reflect on life. This trip was truly the opportunity I needed to stop and take stock of where I have been and where I need to be going.   I enjoyed the time away, and here, in a nutshell, are some of the highs and lows of the trip:

Top 5 things about the cruise

1. Spending some undivided time with my best friend and wife- After our first year of parenthood, spending time as a couple is often more luxury than reality.  For 10 days, we got to spend time together as a couple. Even just having the chance to speak together for more than 5 minutes uninterrupted was amazing. It was hard to leave our daughter at home, but I think it was a much-needed break.
2. Our Cruise ship – This was our second cruise on the Oceania cruise line. This time, we were on their brand new flagship boat, the Marina. This ship didn’t disappoint. While it is smaller than some of the floating cities offered by other lines, it was large enough to provide amazing amenities while still feeling intimate. The staff was great and the whole cruise was very inviting. We will definitely cruise on this line again.
3. Fantastic meals – One of Oceania’s claims to fame is its food. Laura and I are foodies and we didn’t want to go on any old cruise with a crappy buffet every night. Oceania provided some amazing dining options.  The first was Red Ginger, a Pan-Asian Restaurant that gave us tons of options and kept us coming back for more. Jacques, the new signature French restaurant had many well-prepared options. Finally, La Reserve was a restaurant with a 7-course tasting menu, each course paired with amazing wine from around the world.
4. Wonderful excursions – We had three lovely excursions on our trip. The first was a snorkeling adventure, where we went via chartered boat to a reef. We adventured at two sites, seeing fish of all colors. The second was a zip lining adventure where we zipped over tree tops from platform to platform. The third was easily Laura’s favorite. We went horseback riding on a beach and had the horses take us for a ride in the ocean.
5. Warm Caribbean Air – It was nice to walk around in a t-shirt. While we haven’t had a bad winter in Canada, it was still nice to escape to the warm air. There is something about putting your feet in the ocean or taking a dip in a warm pool in February that is amazing.

Top 5 pet peeves

1. People who complain incessantly – Our cruise line wasn’t just a regular cruise line. The service and food and all the elements on the cruise are well considered. Despite all of this, there was a long line of whiners on the cruise who would look for any excuse to complain. The staff of this cruise line is international, and unfortunately we witnessed fellow passengers treating the staff poorly. There were a number of times I felt like yelling at these people. I probably would have if I thought it would help and not draw the staff member into a further issue.
2. Lack of High-Speed Internet – Ah Internet, my old friend, how I missed you! It was probably a good thing for me to disconnect, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss the Internet. I found a way to mooch Internet from just about every Caribbean island that I stopped on, just to satiate my junkie-like habits. I do however wish they had high-speed for free on the ship.
3. The Age of the fellow cruisers – One of the problems when you go on a nicer cruise line it attracts an old demographic. While I don’t mind older folks (many of whom were very nice to speak to), this cruise could have been a casting call for a Cocoon movie. While I wasn’t looking for a drunken Kegger every day, it would have been nice to have a more lively nightlife.
4. Fox News – Fox News was the defacto news channel on our cruise ship. I found myself watching Bill O’Reilly and just going nuts. I sat with a pen and paper to keep track of instances in which he would purposefully twist the truth or out and out misstate things. After watching that, and listening to talk radio in the states in January, I can see why so many US citizens are pissed off. People like Bill O’Reilly can whip you into such frenzy that “pissed-off” is the only emotion left! On the sea of serenity, this was the only maelstrom. That said, it was amusing watching the “expert commentators” dissect the current train wreck that is the Republican Presidential candidate nomination and spin it accordingly.
5. My newfound self – No I am not talking about introspection. I am talking about the part of the cruise I am taking home with me – all the food I ate. The next few weeks will be spent in the gym and on the running track to help me leave this part of the cruise behind.

While it was an amazing trip, we definitely thought about our little angel every day. We missed our Anna so much while we were away, although we were fortunate to have our family send us countless pictures of her smiling via Facebook. We are eternally grateful to our parents for letting us take a bit of time for us.

So now on to the future, this cruise will definitely mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. I have so much exciting news to share with everyone in the coming days and weeks. That news, however, is for another blog post. Please stay tuned, as I can’t wait to share the news with everyone.

We just finished a lovely 10-day cruise and headed to Miami International Airport. We were already rather annoyed by the fact that our flight would not be leaving for 7 hours after our transfer from the ship arrived at MIA (although this is not the fault of AA, but rather poor scheduling by the cruise line), but we decided to make the best of it.  Both my wife and I were quite anxious to get home to our lovely daughter. Take-off time couldn’t come soon enough!

Our headaches began in the check-in line. Firstly, it was woefully understaffed by probably the surliest group of individuals I have ever met. It was as if I just met the 7 dwarves, except they were all named Grumpy. I went to ask them some basic questions, only to be shuttled back and forth as they decided whose responsibility it was to answer my basic question. Instead of just answering us about check-in details, we were throttled about like a bloody ping-pong ball from line to line. The net result? Sitting in lines with our luggage for another 2 hours before we could check-in.

Once we actually got to the Express Check-in, we were greeted by the unfriendliest piece of software that I have ever seen. Rather than taking the pieces of information that were already entered into the system, they required us to manually re-enter everything. Having just read the Steve Jobs book, and being captivated by his attention to detail and user experience, I could only imagine what his reaction to this system would have been. After 2 attempts and 10 minutes we finally got our boarding passes.

(Oh wait, looks like we are about to take off)

Next we were off to the lounge to wait for our flight. This was bearable, but longer than it would have ideally been. I always am leery of domestic flights and always listen to all the announcements. I knew something was immediately afoot when they started asking if anyone would give up their seats for some cash, a hotel and a new flight. Yes, you guessed it – AA oversold the flight by 6 people. As soon as they made the offer a stream of people (who, by their appearance, I can only assumed owned and operated a series of neon massage lounges) made a beeline to the customer counter. They quickly found 5 of the 6 people they needed to solve the issue of the oversold flight. In the back of my head, I kept waiting for them to call my name and bump me from the flight. (luckily, this didn’t happen).

So we board the plane and we sit, and sit, and sit some more. Apparently, they can’t take off because their navigational systems are not working correctly. Now I am not in favor of any plane taking off with a bad navigational system. The joke of it was they called into maintenance to get a tech to check it out. The problem resided with the huge concrete building immediately next to our plane blocking the satellites and reception. Rather than a quick 2-second call to maintenance to find out that it was a known issue, we sat for 30+ plus minutes before they realized the issue.  So we are going to take off now, right? Wrong. We find out that despite giving 5 passengers money to take a later flight, their baggage may or may not be still on the plane, and this would need to be sorted out before take-off. Instead of cruising in the air on our way home, the headache continued.

Over an hour later of our plane baking on the tarmac in the hot Florida sun we finally prepare to take off. So now we are flying to our destination. I must say the captain on the flight and the crew have been completely professional. I also noticed some of the new features in the cabin, like the calming lighting and music. I am also really jazzed about the in-flight Wi-Fi. This experience, however, illustrates a key point. No matter how good the individual elements were, the user experience was broken at a number of key points – at check-in procedure, the overselling of the flight, and the flight crew operations finding the bags of the oversold individuals. If I was another employee working at this company, I would be furious. Here I am busting my ass to make the company successful and there are assholes and crappy processes undermining my work. User experience (UX) matters folks! You can’t just sweep stuff under the rug and hope that the user wants to repeat the experience (unless they are a masochist, that is).

After reading the Jobs book, I realized that there is no reason to keep kid gloves on when something is wrong. The gloves are off! I am going to call out shit where I see it, and hopefully the people selling it will actually address it instead of just letting other hardworking employees cover up the smell.

Ok back to playing Words with Friends

Over the past year we have accomplished some amazing things:

• 500% Increase in Traffic and Sales
• 1000% Increase in organic traffic
• 10’s of thousands of happy customers who keep coming back for more

This is not the end for me and StickerYou. I will be staying on in and advisory capacity. Whenever you spend so much time taking something to the next level, you want to make sure it continues to succeed. This is a testament to the relationship I have made with so many people. They make StickerYou what it is and are its heart and soul.

To the StickerYou staff, I can say your dedication is only outstripped by your talent. While our team has changed over the year, I am more convinced than ever this is the best team to handle the upcoming challenge for the next year to continue to evolve this company.

To the StickerYou board, I have always had an excellent relationship with you. You have provided thoughtful advice both to succeed and grow personally and professionally. I look forward to both the continued personal and professional relationship that we have built over the years.

To Andrew, this is your baby. Please continue to nurture it and help it grow into the company you envisioned, when you started this journey. You are truly passionate and committed to its success.

While today is my last day I can look back and be proud of what I accomplished and the impact I have made.

Now to the Future

What does the future hold for me ?!?! Well a number of people have been already asking me whether I would come work for them, whether I would consult, whether I would start my own start-up or even whether I would escape into the Himalayas and regrown my Movember beard. The honest truth is I haven’t decided where I want to throw my time and energy just yet. If you have any ideas as to what or where I should spend my time I am open to ideas.

I leave for a much needed cruise and vacation this week, where I can contemplate these life changing decisions on a beach.

I am always available via Twitter @Jpuopolo or email joseph@jpuopolo.com. I would put my ICQ number here, but that might date me .

For the uninitiated, gamification, said simply, is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Over the last year, even large companies and enterprises are starting to get in on the game, with Gartner saying that all CIOs should have gamification on their radar, and M2 research predicting that the gamification market will reach 2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016.

Okay, so it’s on the rise, we get that, but let’s take a look at some of the players that are helping to take this trend to the next level. Three companies in particular are currently creating some buzz in the space: Badgeville, Bigdoor and Bunchball.

Badgeville started by making a big splash center stage at Disrupt in the fall of 2009. The company took home the Audience Choice Award at Disrupt, has since gone on a tear and is poised to have a great 2012. (Check out Rip’s original post on Badgeville’s prospects here.)

Badgeville Co-founder and CEO Kris Duggan pulls no punches when it comes to one of the most visible and early adopters of gamification, the check-in king: Foursquare. The CEO says that Foursquare was early in its attempts at gamification, but that its incentivization models remain fundamentally flawed.

Duggan points to the “Mayorship” system within Foursquare: “You have literally hundreds of people and only one mutually-exclusive point of recognition, the Mayor. What happens to the other hundreds of people? Not only are they not engaged, but you don’t take into consideration different types of users.” Duggan believes you need to engage not only the heavy user, but medium and light users as well. Rather than a one-size-fits-all methodology, you can appeal to each user type and incent them accordingly.

From a marketer’s perspective this is a huge hole in the way Foursquare approaches gamification for
brands. The ability for brands to own their engagement strategy is key for them to grow their model. A vanilla badge strategy will only allow them to go so far and without real control of the experience and rewards it won’t be a rich experience.

Keith Smith, CEO of Big Door, has seen large adoption of their gamification platform. And, in particular, the CEO recognizes a big opportunity selling to marketers: “Marketers today spend more money on acquiring users than working to retain those users and providing them with a reason to come back to a site”. By focusing on retention, marketers could get more value from their marketing dollars.

Big Door has been able to secure marquee customers including Dell. Dell took gamification beyond their website and used it for a live event to create multiple ways to engage attendees through Journeys, which were part of the conference tracks during the event. Each Journey was customized to a specific conference track. QR codes were located throughout the event and attendees were encouraged to scan codes and were rewarded with achievements for every scanned QR code and every journey they completed.

Big Door has even produced a very simple and easy to use widget that I implemented on my blog.
After the implementation I started seeing increased interaction on my site. For those looking to try out gamification out on their site, it is a great bet.

Molly Kittle, VP of Digital Strategy for Bunchball, notes that until recently, one of the biggest challenges for gamifiers has been in educating potential clients about the difference between gamification and social games. Molly sees a shift from education to adoption of gamification strategy in the future.

“I agree that some gamification does come off badly, and slapping some badges on a site isn’t professional or powerful, and we don’t want our customers to do that” she says. The quick-fix isn’t sustainable for most brands. Molly thinks there will be a huge change of perception across industries, catalyzed by a growing number of enterprises embracing gamification to solve real business challenges. Hey, there’s even gamify.com, with one of the best domain acquisitions for the market.

Travel companies, too, are getting in on gamification, with Trippy, Gogobot, and more offering gaming elements to their user experience. But, again, for startups and companies to be successful in this approach, gamification has to go beyond badges.

There are some common threads to the trends that Badgeville, Bigdoor and Bunchball see in the
gamification space:

1. The space has quickly evolved from place where they are educating the customer about gamification to earlier customer understanding in their offering
2. Frictionless installs are a necessity. They all recognize that if it is difficult to implement, then clients will not want to implement it.
3. A world beyond badges: Badges will increasingly become less and less important, and the rise of true virtual currencies will become more prominent to offer users more than vanity accomplishments in the form of badges.

So what does the future hold for Gamification?

It is clear that it is unveiling a far larger market opportunity — the concept of what Duggan calls “behavior lifecycle management.” Some of the elements of gamification will further permeate into other applications. In the interest of driving increased user interaction, expect to see some form of game dynamics coming to a business application near you. Over this past year, gamification has shed its acne and awkward voice to come of age.

The Internet is a key segment within this postindustrial world identified by Florida. Since the emergence of Webernets, two distinct classes that have emerged — those that create content and those who consume it. For every content creator there are far more individuals that consume content. Like other class systems, there are inherent advantages or disadvantages with each class. While content creators have had their share of benefits, the concept of mass content creation also comes with its own risks.

The rise of the content creation class

Content creators have enjoyed advantages over content consumers since the dawn of the internet. They enjoy higher amounts of influence; they have the potential to earn more money and fame. The only prerequisite to be part of this class is to create content; you do not need to be creative, correct or even factual. Bloggers are a great example of this — some blog just for blogging’s sake, while others have made it into a career or in some cases a successful business.

Whether it is through paid promotion, advertisement or Google Adwords, people make thousands or tens of thousands of dollars monthly creating content on their blog. This system is has been used and abused by paid bloggers and those looking to bend the Google algorithm to their will to bend a torrent of traffic to their respective site. Thin content is a common problem, and parasitic to the Internet as a whole. It is still however, a part of content on the web, good or bad.

Filling the content vacuum

The content vacuum requires new content and it doesn’t seem to matter what it is. People will consume it. This isn’t to say that the better content won’t command more eyes, but even bad content will find viewers. This is another key differentiation between the creative class, you don’t need to necessarily be creative or factually correct to create information on the Internet.

The reality is those that create either good or bad content will still see a benefit from it. A prime example is YouTube, there is tons of questionable videos that garner hundreds of thousands of views. As eyes continue to shift from traditional channels and to the Internet, there is tons of potential to fill the web with content good and bad, which in reality mirrors society on the whole.

Social media has changed the content creation paradigm

Social media has added a new dimension to content creation and changed the paradigm. While it has allowed many more people to become creators, it has also magnified existing content creators to previously unheard of levels. Whenever a key creator puts out a new piece of content, hoards of followers are ready and waiting to magnify that content even further.

There is also a question of equivalency, what is more important or relevant, 10,000 microblogs (140 character tweets) or 10 to 20 2,000 word blogs? While the barrier to become a content creator is now lowered, it also increased the ability to adept content creators to be even more effective using new tools. These tools have been used to push people from the background to center stage.

From obscurity to fame or infamy

People can literally create their own 15 minutes of fame (or infamy) through content creation on the Internet. There have been countless pieces of content that have come from obscure blogs to become national news. Bloggers without an established network to distribute their content have had various distribution mechanisms tip influence to their favor. Teens have been able to distinguish themselves from the crowd and gain further notoriety by building a blog presence — heck, Justin Bieber was discovered via his videos on YouTube.

Internet content creation has almost become a feeder system to more traditional media outlets. The content creation class is driven by a sense of meritocracy and the thrill of letting the mob decide whether you get a thumbs up or down. While cute kittens are driving eyes, it isn’t just the cute and cuddly that is catching attention on the web. A content creator has emerged to serve each niche and some are finding big business around it, especially mom bloggers.

As new trends emerge, new laws follow

This rise of the content creator class has led to the rise of some new issues, though. For example, those who record videos have been opened up to prosecution. In the last two years there have been incidences of people being arrested for filming activities of policemen on duty.

The reality is, in today’s world you have to assume if there is something going on, there is likely a person with a camera or a video camera in their phone to capture it. Courts have now become involved in determining what content is legal. Recently, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a ruling that would make it illegal to film on-duty cops. Content creation has become an important check and balance for democracy or internationally, those trying to achieve democracy.

Content creators internationally

Internationally, content creators were simultaneously exalted and persecuted this year in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. One could make the argument that without social media and content created by individuals, people vying for freedom would not have been able to maintain momentum in their cause. Yet at the same time, anyone posting content in these situations has cause to fear for their lives.

This article speaks to that some of the issues surrounding this. When journalists are not able to expose what is going on during uprisings, citizen journalists take on a lot of risks to ensure the world knows about their plight. They have adeptly help cut through the fog of war. That ability to shed light on dire circumstance provides those individuals with power and influence over many both locally and internationally. This is especially true when this information becomes the fuel for governmental policy or even military action.

In Summary

While handheld devices has made it easier for all to become content creators there will continue to be an inherent divide in who chooses to participate in content creation shared to the masses. A new class system has quietly emerged. The content creation class will continue to enjoy greater advantages, but like anyone sticking out their neck they will also face challenges. Anyone who creates content has the potential of being judged, either by a snarky comment or a legal court and that fear is what segments the Internet into two groups, the content creators and the content consumers.

It is the hope that people at the party, will Tweet, Facebook and share products they like during the party while watching the big game. We have our first sponsor Hollywood Gelato, that will be providing Gelato for the event.

Looking for Sponsors

We are looking for a variety of sponsors, whether it be food, drink or swag. If you want to share your product with social media savvy people this is your chance. Contact me at joseph@jpuopolo.com

Sponsors 

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Thanks to Tom Petty, a California original lending some music to the video. This music is not owned or created by myself.

I will state honestly that I did not know what provoked this incident, but having been to over 10 NFL games previously (in cities across the country – Oakland, Buffalo, Foxboro and even Toronto) I have never seen a police response like this, which is part of the reason that I am writing this post. I can say in all of my dealings seeing the SFPD they have accorded themselves with professionalism and compassion. This, however, really shocked me.

The police, after not being able to get the person in question to leave their seat, proceeded to club the subject repeatedly. Everyone in our section was aghast at this. I grabbed my video camera to capture the tail end of it. What I captured was an office taking multiple swings at a seemingly unarmed with a blunt weapon in an apparent attempt to remove the man from his seat. I have seen drunk fools removed from their seats before at NFL games, but I have never seen anything like this. I was then accosted by the Usher 137, who yelled at me for recording this on video at the end of the video, seemingly knowing that she had precipitated this incident to spiral out of control with her attitude.

For the rest of the game, Usher 137 continued to harass and intimidate paying fans who were there to cheer their team to a Superbowl. She seemed to relish her position of power and was using it to lord over people there just looking to have a good time. Now those saying that I am just doing this to get attention, I first attempted to go through the official channels to notify the right authorities about this.  I sincerely hope this issue is appropriately addressed.

Here was another video showing more of the incident and the usher yelling at me when I shot video of the incident.

I then took to Twitter to notify the official 49ers #Hashtag about the incident and got no response. (PS meant to say Usher not User)

Earlier today I then sent a note to the official Twitter handles of the San Francisco Police Department, the 49ers and the NFL about the incident and got no response.

I took this action because I don’t think any fan should be beaten with a club unless they used significant violence against an officer or another fan. I can appreciate what has occurred this year and the sensitivity about creating a safe environment. That said, I think when a playoff game where people are paying hundreds of dollars to cheer on their team, it should not be turned into police state. I hope that a balance can be struck between fan responsibility and maintaining appropriate security. I write this to hopefully stop future fan abuse, and demonstrate what happens when power gets out of control.

I encourage you to share this in the hope that action can be taken to prevent this in the future.