Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. As of June 2008, Technorati indexes 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. The name Technorati is a portmanteau, pointing to the technological version of literati, or intellectuals.

Peter Hirshberg and Andreas Weigend have a fascinating discussion covering the following topics: the future of Twitter, People 2.0, Web 2.0, TV and books: are they going away?, the use of media and its meaning, shared moments, early film & stage (D.W. Griffith), birth of radio, Facebook, Google and much more!

A Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur and marketing specialist, Peter Hirshberg might just be the definitive voice on how new technology affects business and culture.

The Internet would change everything: it’s a truism now, but for some, this took years to sink in. Not for Peter Hirshberg. A marketing specialist at the epicenter of emerging technology, he has spent a quarter of a century charting the reverberations of all things high tech in culture and in business. (It’s big business, too.)

Hirshberg first helped bring Apple into the online services arena., then acted as strategic adviser to Microsoft, AOL and NBC. Along the way, he was CEO of Gloss.com and Elemental Software. He’s built a deep understanding of the fundamentals of content production and consumption – and how they’ve changed, both online and off.

Andreas Weigend is a former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and the author of over 100 scientific papers on the application of machine learning techniques to finance and business problems.

Video filmed and produced by Shaun Tai.

Friday, July 10th 2009. Adobe announced an Adobe AIR application called Adobe Wave that lets publishers notify their users of updates directly on their desktop. Twitter popularized this trend, lets see how Adobe runs with it…

Check out DigitalBeat‘s article, "Adobe Wave: Lets publishers “wave” hi to users directly from the desktop".

and…

If you want to give Adobe Wave a try, check out Adobe Labs where you can sign up to use the Adobe Wave Prerelease program.

Tuesday, July 7th 2009. TECHAFFAIR was fortunate to have attended Michael Jackson’s “INAUGURAL PUBLIC MEMORIAL SERVICE” at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.  The 20,000-seat facility for MJ’s public memorial was free of charge with swarms of invited media documenting the historic event. Millions watched the televised event, you know the story.

But even more intriguing, the millions upon millions of internet users at home, on their computer streaming the event live at CNN.com facilitating an open, interactive forum for adorning fans all across the globe… with the help of Silicon Valley, social networking giant, Facebook.

Michael Jackson will forever be immortalized not only as the King of Pop, but the King of Social Media. TECHAFFAIR crowns Michael Jackson MJ 2.0.

CNN claims hundreds of thousands of fans were logged into the Facebook widget (Facebook Connect) and 6,000+ status updates were coming in every 60 seconds (totalling over 6,000,000 status updates) – think instant feedback.  Fact check: that was more than during the Obama inauguration, an inauguration that took months of preparation, not days.

Remember Twitter (and nearly the entire Web) collapsed at the breaking news of Michael Jackson’s death and since then, the impact of new social media including real-time phenomenons such as Twitter; have become intertwined into daily life as a source of communication and news / social gathering.   

One thing is for sure, CNN gets the social data revolution and is utilizing these real-time tools correctly. Perhaps the immediate use of social media in response to the death of Michael Jackson can only be compared to the power that the Vietnam War gave television. Yes, MJ 2.0 is that powerful.

Michael Jackson transcends age, race, religion, borders, and now, music technology. MJ lived and survived through all of the music media transitions: from LP’s, to cassette tapes, to compact disc, to MP3.

Let’s take a brief look at a timeline of the history of music media:

1877 - Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, the first medium for recording and playing back sound. It used cylinders instead of discs

1887 - Emile Berliner invents the gramophone, the first flat record player

1900 – Eldredge Johnson perfects mass duplication of pre-recorded flat record discs

1906 – RCA Victor introduces Victrola model record player, which had variable turntable speed control that accommodated the wide range of records produced at the time

1908 – Columbia introduces the first double-sided phonograph records

1912 – Disc recordings become more popular than cylinder recordings

1924 – Electrical records replace acoustic discs

1928 – The 78.26 rpm speed becomes standard for all phonograph records.

1946 – German magnetic tape recorders are copied for commercial use by AMPEX

1948 – The 33 1/3 LP is introduced by Columbia

1949 – RCA Victor introduces large-hole 45 rpm records. It became the preferred medium for singles

1952 – The Recording Industry Association of America is formed.

1955 – 12" LPs become more popular than 10" LPs

1962 – Multi-track analog tape recording begins in recording studios

1963 – Phillips develops compact stereo tape cassettes and players

1982 – The compact disc is introduced. The first CD is released in Japan. It is Billy Joel’s “52nd Street.”

1983 – The first CDs are released in the United States

1986 - CDs overtake LPs as top-selling medium in the United States

1999 – Recordable CD-R discs become available

2000 – Napster is created. This is also the first year that recording sales declined, and the recording industry blames online music sharing.

2001 – Napster is slapped with a lawsuit by the RIAA. In October, Apple introduces its iPod portable music player.

2003 – Apple introduces its online music store iTunes, offering free music downloads at 99 cents per song.

2006 – In February, iTunes sells its billionth song.

2007 – Just over a year later, in July, iTunes crosses the 3 billion songs sold mark.

2008 – Present – The digital revolution has just begun…

Talent. Moonwalk. Thriller. 100+ Million Sold. Music 2.0. Technology. Twitter. Enter MJ 2.0.

Eminem and Bruno (Sasha Baron Cohen) get into an odd squabble at the MTV Movie Awards. The event has caused a stir, and shock at the MTV Movie Awards, leaving ‘anti-anything’ rapper Eminem red-faced in an apparent stunt gone bad at the star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles, California (May 31, 2009).

Eminem cursed out Cohen (of course MTV bleeped out the words), before bodyguards threw the shock-actor off of the rap megastar. Eminem got out of his seat and walked out of the event. He had performed minutes earlier live on stage to a standing ovation. Stunt or not, the whole ordeal was quite entertaining and quickly spread word-of-tweet via twitter and visible to the world online via YouTube (thus making it to TECHAFFAIR).

Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D. speaks with David Riemer (ex-Vice President of Marketing at YAHOO!) currently an executive in residence at the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.

Andreas Weigend is a former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and the author of over 100 scientific papers on the application of machine learning techniques to finance and business problems.

David Riemer is one of the leading marketers in the Internet industry. He spent the last decade developing and bringing great products to web users worldwide. Following his career as an ad agency President, David brought his strategic and marketing leadership to two start-ups and an internet titan, Yahoo!. In various roles over six years at Yahoo!, David led the marketing teams on both the BtoB and Consumer sides of the business where he managed marketing for virtually all of Yahoo!’s products across their customer base of 500M users.

David is now advising emerging Internet and consumer technology companies. He specializes in helping businesses clarify their product strategy, go-to-market approach and business model. David also serves as Executive-in-Residence at Haas Business School (Berkeley). David earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University, and an MBA from Columbia University. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and two (very web savvy) teenage children who help keep him honest.

Relevant read! The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing

Video filmed and produced by Shaun Tai.