This blog I thaw today

It's been 159 days since my last post. That's 5 months and 7 days. Embarrassing.

So what did it take for me to post again? An Irish holiday? Longer days? The spring thaw? March Madness?

I like the thaw idea, especially since I can finally see patches of my lawn again, but there are really two main reasons why I'm writing again today...

MOVE OVER FAN CAM

Reason #1: Today FanChatter officially made money, so now every year when I wear green on St. Patrick's Day it will commemorate cash and not shamrocks. Thank you Minnesota Twins!



Yes, the Twins, my favorite team with the best logo in baseball (above), has partnered with FanChatter to offer our Big Screen Mobile Photo Sharing feature at all 81 of their home games this season at the Metrodome.

REWIND to last fall, when I needed a way to promote FanChatter.com and our new mobile photo sharing feature. I figured one of the best ways to reach sports fans was through the Jumbotron at the games and I bet that photos from your phone would look as good up there on the big screen as they did on our site.

My friend at the University of Minnesota sports office thought it was a cool idea, so he let me try it out at some Gopher football games. Fans sent in their photos, we put them on the big screen -- "powered by FanChatter.com", of course -- and I was right. The photos looked awesome. In an instant, the roving video Fan Cam was old school, and the new school was us. The fans had taken the cameras into their own hands. Me Media had hit the stadium circuit and there was no looking back.











The best part was how creative the photos were. The other best part was how quickly we realized the sponsorship potential of my little marketing idea.

FAST FORWARD back to today, where FanChatter Stadium offers an entire suite of in-arena mobile interactivity features led by Big Screen Photo Sharing. Every fan that sends a photo receives a reply message that can be branded with anything from product messaging to coupons to access codes for special offers and the list goes on. If you're a sports-minded advertiser and you're looking for a way to get into mobile marketing, this is it.

So I was busy even though I wasn't writing. Then tonight something else happened to help me break out of my slump...

THANK YOU MATT DICKMAN



Reason #2: Matt Dickman is the Director of Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland and the blogger behind Techno//Marketer. He's also the guy who spoke tonight at the Future of Advertising gathering in downtown Minneapolis, which I attended.

Matt gave a solid presentation on trends in advertising and he showed me a lot of things I hadn't seen, like Hurricane Kohls. He focused on MicroMedia and told of how Twitter was buzzing about the Minneapolis bridge disaster last summer a full hour before any news sites had published a report. Absolutely amazing.

(Speaking of MicroMedia, I told him about FanChatter in hopes that he'll give me an honest review of the site and advice on where we can improve -- and I welcome the same from all of you out there, too.)

But it was his discussion of blogging that reminded me of who I need to be. How can I hope to build a successful web startup without the support of the blogosphere? And how can the blogosphere respect a guy who lets his blog hibernate all winter?!

He also talked about the strong relationships he's built through blogging and Twittering, and after I got home I helped him prove his point.

Watching by beloved Timberwolves finish off the sorry Clippers, I chattered via SMS in the Twolves group at FanChatter about reaching win number "SWEET 16". A short while later I received a mobile chatter alert on my phone. It was JJDacotah, a Wolves fan from North Dakota who I've never met in person, chattering back:

"sweet! didn't realize they played tonight. Off topic, my wife game birth to our second girl yesterday! Another baby wolf fan!"

I was amazed at how happy that made me feel to learn about this other fan's good news. The kind of news that makes you forget about basketball for a little while (and not mind it at all). I chattered back from my phone congratulating him, one Fan/Dad to another.

So I'm back. There will be lots more to tell about the Twins and Big Screen Photo Sharing with the Season Opener just two weeks away (exactly). And I look forward to reading Matt's blog as I commit myself to writing more in mine.

Thank you for reading. I promise the writing will improve as soon as I'm fully thawed.