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September 7th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

As Entourage fans most likely know, Season 5 of the hit HBO show debuts this evening. Last Thursday, I attended the first ever “in-flight” television premiere, a co-promotion between HBO and Virgin America, who was using the opportunity to launch the maiden voyage of its New York to Las Vegas route. While the event was choc-full-o free drink, party schwag, celebrity sightings, and an advanced look at the new season of my favorite TV show, it was also a chance to use some of the tools we talk about incessantly on Mashable for some real world social networking.

I actually got the ball rolling on the experience earlier in the week, when I posted an article from Variety and note about the event to Facebook. Of course, this automatically was sent to my mini-feed and in turn my friend’s news feeds, letting them know what I’d posted. While primarily I was simply looking to share the experience and maybe make a few friends from high school jealous, within a couple hours someone I knew from Mashable events had commented on the item, letting me know that they were also going to be in Vegas. Considering I was going on the trip solo, it was nice to know that I’d know at least one person once I got to town.

Moving on, once Thursday rolled around and things were getting started at a private hangar at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, my weapons of choice for keeping people updated on my whereabouts and activities were Twitter and the Facebook for Blackberry application, which allowed me to upload photos to my profile immediately after taking them. This proved especially useful later on, as my Blackberry decided to have memory issues that required me to continuously delete pictures to make room for new ones.

After a couple hours of partying and mingling in the hangar, the event got started when the cast of Entourage (minus Jeremy Piven aka Ari Gold) and Sir Richard Branson himself emerged from the plane for their photo opp. While this part of the story admittedly doesn’t have much of anything to do with social networking tools, it does provide an opportunity to inset some cool photos, which you can see after the jump

Getting back to the story, as you may know, one of the more interesting features of Virgin America’s entertainment system is its chat capabilities, which allow you to converse with other people on the flight. This was tightly integrated into the in-flight Entourage experience, as the crew asked everyone to login to the chat room and mention their most memorable moment from the previous four seasons of the show for a chance to win a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. Of course, the chat also provided an opportunity to get to know some of the other travelers and discuss the premiere after it was showed over the entertainment system.

Once on the ground, the party moved over to The Palms, where my camera phone captured some of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen (if city sky lines are your thing), which were immediately uploaded to Facebook. From there, the real world social networking began, with the usual furious exchange of business cards leading to the mandatory social profile connecting the next day.

While putting in an honest day’s work on Friday from my hotel room, I set my sights on the evening’s activities. After running a few disappointing Google searches that were dominated heavily by annoying SEO-gauged content, I moved onto Yelp for reviews of places to go. What’s great about reading user reviews versus the generic ones provided by the many of the sites atop the search listings for terms like “Vegas nightlife” are that just about every review provides value of some sort, as one person’s negatives (“it was too crowded!”) are another’s positives.

After reading reviews of dozen’s of places, my indecisiveness was ultimately cured by some new Facebook friends who were heading over to Tao, a nightclub at the Venetian. From there, my Twitter timeline documents much of the night, including talk of a Michael Phelps sighting from the night before and even a celebrity encounter of my own – or so I thought. Of course, there comes a point in any good night out in Vegas where your Twittering *should* come to an end, and I certainly made sure to disconnect once that point was reached

As for the moral of the story, for me, not only was the trip a ridiculously good time, but also a reminder that some of these tools that many take for granted and others often question the value of really do have a purpose. When used properly, they can do an excellent job of making your travel experiences more fun and social – especially when going it alone. As for the season premiere, I think Entourage fans will definitely enjoy it, but I’ll leave the TV reviews for another day and a different blog (feel free to leave comments about the show though after watching the premiere!).

Source:Mashable!

Lots and lots of advertising companies are taking the opportunity given by the recent Google-Yahoo search advertising trial and the subsequent autumn revelation made by the Google CEO last month to let the U.S. Department of Justice know they’re not so comfortable with the recent dealings between the two largest search giants on the Web. The ANA, or the Association of National Advertisers, a group that collectively manages north of $100 billion in business, decided to issue a letter today to the assistant attorney general of the antitrust arm of the DOJ.

According to Dawn Kawamoto of CNET News, the ANA, which “includes a range of Fortune 500 companies such as the Kellogg Co. and The Proctor & Gamble Co. to Johnson & Johnson and The Walt Disney Co.,” the delivery was preceded by “a comprehensive and independent analysis of its members” as well as “in-person discussions with (Google and Yahoo).”

As has been mentioned by many a news and analysis source, Google last week celebrated it’s 10th year in operation, and in light of the milestone its VP of search products and user experience, Marissa Miller, spoke with the LA Times about the company’s presence in advertising following its DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 (made official in March 2008). If trends continue, the company’s numbers are only growing larger. In fact, the ANA foresees that “a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory” which will in turn “likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search and advertising.”

All things considered, this news only adds further to the fairly compressed period of trouble for the last several months have been for Google. Yahoo as well. Google is now being hit with increased privacy concerns from European reaches, the US Government, consumer advocates, city and town residents, and various other parties big and small. Yahoo, meanwhile, is coming off an attempt by Microsoft to purchase its business, an effort which Redmond abandoned, only to see activist investor Carl Icahn net three Yahoo Board seats for himself and two other individuals, a story which seems far from complete. Where will this go? Perhaps not the way Google and Yahoo originally intended for. The extra level of attention given by the ANA that regulators parsing the deal between both companies cannot weight kindly. Keep in mind, it is only weeks until the “grace period” given to inspectors by Google and Yahoo is through.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 9:30 pm and is filed under News, google, advertising, web, yahoo, local, San Francisco-San Jose, ANA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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400 Advertisers Tell U.S. Justice Dept They Feel Bad About Google-Yahoo Play

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