LUDADAY WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS FROM COURTCRED.COM

#LUDADAYWEEKEND RECAP :: JOSH POWELL & CHARLIE BOY GANG

Check out Atlanta Hawks' Josh Powell #Beefinitup with Charlie Boy Gang at the Ludaday Weekend Charity Basketball game

Catch me at 22secs and 1:54 marks...lol

FYI: Me and Matt Verden were coaching #TeamBieber and we won by 2 points

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

BRANDS BY BIEBER

If you’re old enough to remember Dionne Warwick plugging the Psychic Friends Network or Eric Estrada hawking swampland retirement property in Florida, you know that the brand-endorsement business used to be the domain of C-list celebs, not A-listers at the height of their careers. Well, no longer. The proof: a 16-year-old Canadian kid named Justin something.

Currently at or near the apogee of his fame, Justin Bieber went on an endorsement tear late last year and has been slapping his name on everything from headphones to nail polish ever since. Hold on—nail polish?

“This stuff makes sense to his core audience, so there’s nothing completely off-brand for him,” says David Reeder, vp of L.A. talent agency GreenLight. “[And] the taboo’s been broken; celebrities are less concerned about doing commercials than they were in the past.”

OK, but given Bieber’s current worth of $100 million, it’s not like the kid needs the money. So why all the product endorsements now? Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, didn’t call us back, but some of the answer may lie in the singer’s Q Score—the standard numeric index of a celebrity’s popularity.

“What I suspect is that Justin may not have as long a potential as [some would] like,” says Q Score’s president Steve Levitt, citing Bieber’s positive Q of 36 percent with the 6-11 age bracket and, even worse, a mere 20 percent among 12-17-year-olds. That’s right, folks, more people loathe the cherub-faced mop top than like him. And for watchers like Levitt, that means one thing: “If you’re going to sell something, you’d better hurry up.” Here’s a roundup of brands riding the Biebster’s coattails.

JACK DORSEY (CEO OF TWITTER) ON CHARLIE ROSE

Twitter Chairman and Square founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose last night to talk about Dorsey’s unique position of being responsible for two technology startups based on the idea of simplicity: Twitter and Square. Watching this interview you realize that Dorsey’s accomplishments have little to do with luck, and more with his focus on creating the purest products by throwing away any unnecessary flourishes. “It’s really complex to make something simple,” he tells Rose.


Dorsey describes himself as an “editor” who edits technology and teams “so that we have one cohesive product that we tell the world.” In the clip above (provided by the Charlie Rose Show), Dorsey talks about how he got the idea for Square and how hard it is to make mobile payments no more complicated than swiping a credit card.

Dorsey believes the most powerful technologies are those which disappear, like the iPad disappears:

“When you’re using the iPad, the iPad disappears, it goes away. You’re reading a book. You’re viewing a website, you’re touching a web site. That’s amazing and that’s what SMS is for me. The technology goes away and with Twitter the technology goes away. And the same is true with Square. We want the technology to fade away so that you can focus on enjoying the cappuccino that you just purchased.”

In the clip below, he talks about how he got the idea for Twitter from his obsession with cities and dispatch systems, but how he felt those systems were missing one thing: the people, his friends. Now Twitter is not just about status updates but about pointing to, and carrying via short links, other media on the Web. He boils down the essence of Twitter into this: “Any media that you can imagine it can point to a carry in real-time. And the only other technology I know that’s done that well is the web itself.”

Dorsey also pegs the number of registered Twitter users at 200 million (when I checked with Twitter to confirm this number, I was told it was very close, but not quite there yet—so chalk that up to rounding). Also, asked at the end whether Twitter is making any money, Dorsey said the company has revenues but it didn’t sound like it’s got any profits yet.

JUSTIN BIEBER :: HAS HIS OWN TWITTER TEAM...LITERALLY!!!

Crazy!!  But dope!  There's an employee at Twitter whose only job is to monitor tweets about Justin Bieber (I know you have all seen him trending every morning!!).   At any given time, 3% of their server space is being used up by mentions for Justin, which means racks and racks of servers are for Bieber ONLY!  Nice Twitter game!! Show em how it's done!