Some people watch the Super Bowl for the game; others watch it for the commercials. In fact, the commercials are one of the biggest draws of the Super Bowl, especially for the non-sports fanatics of the world. The hype surrounding the 10 second teaser of the Ferris Bueller inspired Honda commercial has been phenomenal. TV-goers immediately took to Twitter to dissect, speculate and rate the clip. It spread like wildfire over the Internet and through social media networks.

Realizing how social media has changed the way fans enjoy the game, Mullen, Radian6 and Boston.com are sponsoring Brand Bowl 2012, a social media event that will analyze the Twitter commentary and rate the most popular and disastrous Super Bowl commercials. The virtual event at BrandBowl2012.com will feature an up-to-the-minute stream of tweets about Super Bowl commercials to determine which brands are the most and least effective. The brands will be ranked based on volume (who has the most/least chatter) and sentiment (who has the most/least positive and negative comments).

Were you always picked last in dodgeball, baseball or soccer? Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to be recruited to play in the Brand Bowl. The power to rank commercials you liked best, or least, is in the palm of your hand – or really, fingertips!

For those of you who plan to tweet your opinions about this year’s Super Bowl commercials, include the hashtag #brandbowl or reference a specific commercial in your tweet. The tweets will be streamed live on Boston.com during the game.

Brands are beginning to realize the influence the armchair advertising critics of the world have in the social media realm. The savviest brands are recognizing the power of social media and are releasing their commercials before the Super Bowl to build buzz online, and are orchestrating large-scale social media campaigns to maximize the impact of their multi-million dollar investments.

Will you be participating in Brand Bowl 2012?

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Technorati Tags: Advertising, Boston.com, Brand Bowl, brands, commercials, Giants, Patriots, Super Bowl, Twitter

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A few weeks ago, around the Consumer Electronics Show, I saw a Wireless Week article that talked about 2012 being the “year of the ecosystem” in mobile devices. This comes on the heels of the buzz we began to see last year around the mobile ecosystem. In both cases, ecosystem refers to the coming together of products, services, technologies, channels, service providers, end-users and other elements that combine to define a new, more interconnected world.

It got me thinking that with the broadening of the world of technology PR – in terms of the services we provide, the channels we use, the audiences we reach and how these are all integrating — we should be talking about a “PR Ecosystem” (while I assume this could apply to any area of public relations, I believe this ecosystem is particularly relevant to the tech space, which is Topaz’s focus).

The PR ecosystem encompasses agencies like Topaz that provide an expanding suite of media relations, content development/placement, social media and digital communications services. The ecosystem also includes clients and the other corporate PR and communications groups that are involved in these areas, often in partnership with firms like ours.

The PR ecosystem includes service providers we use to distribute news releases, analyze and target influencers, leverage social networks, create online videos and monitor, and measure and report on our work.

The PR ecosystem of course includes traditional media outlets, a community which has changed dramatically in recent years and contributed to this ecosystem in new ways. Today this media piece of the PR ecosystem includes more online resources, content placement opportunities, journalist bloggers, media-sponsored events and custom publishing services.

The role of influencers and opinion-shapers has evolved, and as a result the PR ecosystem has grown to include the growing number of “citizen journalists” who can impact a company’s reputation with blog posts, online comments, tweets, Facebook updates and other types of social media.

Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and new online channels like Pinterest are all part of the PR ecosystem as well, and we can use them to supplement traditional PR efforts.

And finally, the ecosystem includes other marketing services firms that we partner with – those who provide SEO, Internet marketing, advertising, email and other support that often leverages the same content we’re using.

I could go on, but I hope you get the point: PR has grown far beyond the days of news releases and media calls. The scope of our work has grown, the resources available to us are far greater, the audiences we target have evolved, and there’s far more intersection of PR with other communications disciplines. Together, this begins to define the PR ecosystem.

I’m interested in hearing what others think, and seeing what other areas you feel contribute to the PR ecosystem.

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If you wanted to catch a TV show or movie for free, Megaupload was the place to go. If you wanted to view something that was on a long time ago (Rambo movies in my case, for example), somewhere on the Megaupload website someone had uploaded that file for you. Others used it for other purposes, including file storage and home video and photo uploading, for example.

Those days are now over. The US government has shut down the website. The homepage is gone, replaced with a notice saying “This domain name associated with the website megaupload.com has been seized pursuant to an order issued by a U.S. District court.”

The Associated Press is reporting the government wants to begin deleting data stored on the site as early as Thursday. What does this mean for users? This will not be the last attempt by the government to shut down file-sharing sites. Those of us older than 20 recall Napster and the RIAA’s filing of lawsuits against every single person in America who downloaded one too many songs from the site. More recently, Limewire was taken down by the Feds. Owners of file-sharing sites will have to take care to either not store consumers’ data, or else will need to change business practices.

Consumers should keep in mind the government will likely come after other sides which give customers free data, such as alluc.org and crackle.com. My personal recommendation is to not share credit card info or personal data on these sites. Not only for security reasons, but if the government goes after those sites as well, they will have a list of who was using the site and for how much. Who knows, depending on what you did, the government could be after you next.

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