Hollywood Gets a Social Makeover Hosted by Financial Times

This is why I am all awake and lively at 9am Pacific. There seem to be some technical difficulties, but the panel description sounds really cool and interesting, so I hope the Social Media Week folks can get it all streaming.

Hosted by the Financial Times, a global media partner of Social Media Week, this conversation at The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills will explore how studios and other global media companies are using digital and social media to advance their businesses and reach new audiences, seizing on opportunities and managing challenges posed by new platforms. 

Matthew Garrahan, Los Angeles Correspondent for the FT, will moderate the discussion, and panelists include:

• Tom Lesinski, President, Paramount Digital Entertainment
• Jake Zim, Vice President of Digital Marketing, 20th Century Fox
• Courtney Holt, President, MySpace Music
• Ross Levinsohn, Managing Partner, Fuse Capital

Why is MySpace shooting itself in the foot blocking so many sites?

I know social media pundits are all going on about what is causing MySpace to falter and a lot of the blame is being placed on Facebook and a bit on Twitter, but I think the difficulties come from within the way MySpace manages its own FOX Interactive properties. Their biz dev people really ought to be paying less attention to what Facebook and Twitter are up to and more attention to how they themselves are doing business.

For example, why is MySpace blocking so many sites? There is no point to me having 60k+ "friend" on there, if half the sites I might want to post a link to -- including my personal site -- are blocked and maligned as a matter of some sort of policy. I thought the site concept was a profile which was supposed to be *MY*space, so what the heck is up with MySpace calling lots of links "spam" or "phishing" or some such nonsense, when that's false to a libelous degree? Sooner or later, someone is probably going to take them to court for this sort of libel and a class action could even be put together. And, really, what is the benefit to MySpace?

And don't tell me they are blocking mild nudity because I totally see straight up adult sites with *full* nudity posting their actual updates on here, with no impediment.

Why is MySpace shooting itself in the foot blocking so many sites?

I know social media pundits are all going on about what is causing MySpace to falter and a lot of the blame is being placed on Facebook and a bit on Twitter, but I think the difficulties come from within the way MySpace manages its own FOX Interactive properties. Their biz dev people really ought to be paying less attention to what Facebook and Twitter are up to and more attention to how they themselves are doing business.

For example, why is MySpace blocking so many sites? There is no point to me having 60k+ "friend" on there, if half the sites I might want to post a link to -- including my personal site -- are blocked and maligned as a matter of some sort of policy. I thought the site concept was a profile which was supposed to be *MY*space, so what the heck is up with MySpace calling lots of links "spam" or "phishing" or some such nonsense, when that's false to a libelous degree? Sooner or later, someone is probably going to take them to court for this sort of libel and a class action could even be put together. And, really, what is the benefit to MySpace?

And don't tell me they are blocking mild nudity because I totally see straight up adult sites with *full* nudity posting their actual updates on here, with no impediment.

Pornstar Little Lupe Courtroom Drama Saves Fan

Pornstar Little Lupe Courtroom Drama Saves Fan

by Amelia G : April 16th, 2010

Although the photo at the right does not show her in a red cape with boots, Lupe Fuentes should really be wearing a Mighty Mouse costume right about now. Last week, she flew from Spain to Puerto Rico to give crucial testimony on behalf of her fan Carlos Simon-Timmerman.

See Carlos Simon-Timmerman took a trip to Venezuela and made the error in judgment of buying a DVD called Little Lupe The Innocent, Don’t be Fooled by her Baby Face . . . at a flea market. On his way back to New York, he was arrested during a stopover in San Juan and his DVDs were seized. A flea market pirate DVD is not likely to have a lot of information on the packaging about who produced the videos or photos or how to get in touch with them. So Carlos Simon-Timmerman spent months in jail, awaiting trial on charges of possessing and transporting child pornography, crimes which could result in a twenty year stretch in prison. Fortunately for him, Assistant Public Defender Héctor L. Ramos-Vega and his legal team know that the thing MySpace is most effective for is getting in touch with pornstars. They contacted Lupe Fuentes aka Zuleidy Lapiedra aka Little Lupe and she agreed to come to Puerto Rico.

Lupe Fuentes was really the last hope the defense . . .

( Read more )

Pornstar Little Lupe Courtroom Drama Saves Fan

Pornstar Little Lupe Courtroom Drama Saves Fan

by Amelia G : April 16th, 2010

Although the photo at the right does not show her in a red cape with boots, Lupe Fuentes should really be wearing a Mighty Mouse costume right about now. Last week, she flew from Spain to Puerto Rico to give crucial testimony on behalf of her fan Carlos Simon-Timmerman.

See Carlos Simon-Timmerman took a trip to Venezuela and made the error in judgment of buying a DVD called Little Lupe The Innocent, Don’t be Fooled by her Baby Face . . . at a flea market. On his way back to New York, he was arrested during a stopover in San Juan and his DVDs were seized. A flea market pirate DVD is not likely to have a lot of information on the packaging about who produced the videos or photos or how to get in touch with them. So Carlos Simon-Timmerman spent months in jail, awaiting trial on charges of possessing and transporting child pornography, crimes which could result in a twenty year stretch in prison. Fortunately for him, Assistant Public Defender Héctor L. Ramos-Vega and his legal team know that the thing MySpace is most effective for is getting in touch with pornstars. They contacted Lupe Fuentes aka Zuleidy Lapiedra aka Little Lupe and she agreed to come to Puerto Rico.

Lupe Fuentes was really the last hope the defense . . .

( Read more )

In the Year of the Pig Fish

In the Year of the Pig Fish

by Amelia G : July 31st, 2009

I went to a fashion show soiree last night. My friend writer/gadfly Clint Catalyst organized the event for designer Jared Gold. Clint and I are both eclectic individuals and we have kind of a lot of random points of intersection. And we’ve both been doing what we do for a while.

So the most unsettling part of the shindig was trying to place who people were. This is difficult when a person could be someone I photographed nine years ago and haven’t seen in between. Or the person could be someone who did my hair once. Or the person could be someone I’ve only seen in media. There is always a risk when greeting someone on dim non-specific facial-recognition alone because they could turn out to be someone you’ve only watched on television or MySpace or someone you would shoot (not with a camera) if you had a license to kill. But a significant portion of folks there are people I know and like but may not have seen recently. So it was like a real life wetware version of one of those aging programs they use to find missing children.

One person at the event I saw and could not place was artist/designer Elizabeth McGrath. I attended her Broken Dolls fashion show in like . . .

( Read more )

If I’m so connected, why do I feel so disconnected?

If I’m so connected, why do I feel so disconnected?

by Amelia G : February 8th, 2009

I enjoyed LiveJournal because sometimes I have fragments of ideas which are not ready to be an official article, but it is nice to be able to start giving the words shape. I also felt like I could actually get to know people on there. Like, if I met someone at a rock show, we could exchange info and continue getting to know one another. I was extremely bugged, however, when I started seeing people out at night and I’d ask them how they were and be told to read their LJ. Why bother leaving the house if you refuse to have a conversation? Over time, people started taking LJ more and more seriously. This meant that, first of all, that, if I complained about work on there, some dick would take it as uber-personally and big deal as if I had sent out a press release and posted “I had a hard day because blah blah” to every high traffic site I operate. Secondly, there started to be too many people on my LJ list for me to keep up with what everyone was up to. Most disappointingly, treating LJ as a publishing platform rather than a diary meant that other people started writing less and less personal entries and more and more press release-like entries which had more to do with how they wish to be perceived than who they truly are.

At first, I hated MySpace because it seemed like a service whose only application was to allow other people access to my Rolodex without having to say “thanks for the introduction”. Then I also hated MySpace because it seemed to pull audience from LJ, which I had enjoyed the interactivity of, and MySpace didn’t really seem to . . .

( Read more )