Dear Miami: Get ready for the Who Dat Nation coming for the Super Bowl

By Mark Lorando, The Times-Picayune

February 01, 2010, 2:06PM

Scott Threlkeld / The Times-PicayuneSaints fans celebrate the overtime win for the NFC Championship on Jan. 24 — and the chance to go to Miami.

Dear Miami,

The Saints are coming. And so are we, their loyal, long-suffering and slightly discombobulated Super Bowl-bound fans.

While there’s still time to prepare — although a few hard-core Who Dats will begin trickling in Monday, most of us won’t arrive until Thursday or Friday — we thought we’d give you a heads-up about what you should expect.

First things first: You need more beer.

Yeah, we know. You ordered extra. You think you have more than any group of humans could possibly consume in one week. Trust us. You don’t.

New Orleans was a drinking town long before the Saints drove us to drink. But it turns out beer tastes better when you’re winning. (Who knew?) So let’s just say we’re thirsty for more than a championship; adjust your stockpiles accordingly.

And look. When we ask you for a go-cup, be nice to us. We don’t even know what “open container law” means. Is that anything like “last call”?

It’s Carnival season in New Orleans (that’s Mardi Gras to you), and we’ll be taking the celebration on the road. So don’t be startled if you walk past us and we throw stuff at you; that’s just our way of saying hello.

Oh, and sorry in advance about those beads we leave dangling from your palm trees. We just can’t help ourselves.

Times-Picayune archive

February is also crawfish season, and you can be sure that more than one enterprising tailgater will figure out a way to transport a couple sacks of live mudbugs and a boiling pot to Miami.

When the dude in the ‘Who Dat’ T-shirt asks if you want to suck da head and pinch da tail, resist the urge to punch him. He’s not propositioning you. He’s inviting you to dinner.

And if you see a big Cajun guy who looks exactly like an old Saints quarterback walking around town in a dress … don’t ask. It’s a long story.

We know that crowd control is a major concern for any Super Bowl host city. Our advice? Put away the riot gear.

Reason No. 1: Indianapolis is going to lose, and their fans are way too dull to start a riot.

Reason No. 2: New Orleans showed the world on Sunday that we know how to throw a victory party. We don’t burn cars. We dance on them.

Reason No. 3: Even if we did lose, which we won’t, leaving the stadium would be like leaving a funeral, and our typical response to that is to have a parade.

Speaking of which: If you happen to see a brass band roll by, followed by a line of folks waving their handkerchiefs, you’re not supposed to just stand there and watch. As our own Irma Thomas would say, get your backfield in motion.

And hey, Mister DJ! Yes, we know you’ve already played that stupid Ying Yang Twins song 10 times tonight, but indulge us just one more time.

To us, “Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk)” isn’t just a song; it’s 576 points of good memories. It’s the sound of a Drew Brees touchdown pass to Devery Henderson, a Pierre Thomas dive for first down on 4th-and-1, a Garrett Hartley field goal sailing through the uprights in overtime.

It’s what a championship sounds like. You may get sick of hearing it. We won’t. Encore, dammit.

Inside Sun Life Stadium, you may find your ears ringing more than usual. We’re louder than other fans. Seven thousand of ours sound like 70,000 of theirs.

Don’t believe us? Ask the 12th man in the Vikings huddle.

Some people think it’s just the Dome that heightens our volume. But you’re about to discover a little secret: We can scream loud enough to make your head explode, indoors or out.

It’s not the roof. It’s the heart.

Well, OK, and the beer.

Susan Poag / The Times-Picayune

Don’t be surprised if there are more Saints fans outside the stadium than inside. A lot of us are coming just to say we were part of history, even if we can’t witness it up close. The Saints are family to us, and you know how it is with family: We want to be there for them, whether they really need us or not. Because we know our presence will mean something to them, whether they can see us or not.

Come to think of it, seeing as how you’re taking us in for the week, we pretty much regard you as family, too. So we’re warning you now: If you’re within hugging distance, you’re fair game.

Hugging strangers is a proud Who Dat tradition, right up there with crying when we win.

Most sports fans cry when their teams lose. Not us. We’ve been losing gracefully and with good humor for 43 years. Tragedy and disappointment don’t faze us. It’s success that makes us go to pieces.

Hurricane Katrina? We got that under control. The Saints in the Super Bowl? SOMEBODY CALL A PARAMEDIC!!!

So anyway, don’t let the tears of joy freak you out. We’re just … disoriented.

OK. Let’s review:

Order more beer. Throw me something, mister. Suck da heads. Wear da dress. Stand up. Get crunk. Hug it out. Protect your eardrums. Pass the Kleenex. Hoist the trophy.

See you at the victory party.

Faithfully yours,

The Who Dat Nation

Features editor Mark Lorando can be reached at mlorando@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3430. Comment and read more at NOLA.com/superbowl.

NOLA.com | Dear Miami: Get ready for the Who Dat Nation coming for the Super Bowl (by Mark Lorando, The Times-Picayune)

Apple plans to upgrade their users almost over night to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service.

Apple’s recent acquisition of digital music startup Lala rekindled speculation of an iTunes subscription service…but after talking to a wide variety of insider sources it’s clear there is no upcoming Apple subscription service and Apple has far different plans…Lala will play a critical role in Apple’s music future, but not for the reasons cited above.

What is of value is the personal music storage service which was an often overlooked component of Lala’s business…The Lala setup process provides software to store a personal music library online and then play it from any web browser alongside web songs they vend. This technology plus the engineering and management team is the true value of Lala to Apple.

An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience.

Apple will link the tens of millions of previously sold iPods, Touches, AppleTV and iTablets to mobile iTunes giving users seamless playback of their media from a wide range of Apple branded devices. (full article…)

TechCrunch | Apple’s Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical (by Michael Robertson, Guest Author)

I wasn’t sure about Jucifer – sludge metal isn’t really my music – but I was interested to see a hardcore band with a female lead. Some of the songs I dialed up online were curiously beautiful, and I hoped we’d hear those.

But their live show is brutal and relentless from the moment Amber Valentine slashes out an opening chord. We were doomed.

I think I counted 13 amps in their stack, driving sound in brain-melting waves through a towering white wall of speakers. I’ve never heard anything that loud in my life. Fog erupted from multiple points and wove its way in and out of pulsing laser spikes, and a set of blinding white floodlights sent regular shock treatments directly into the upturned faces of the crowd. Edgar B. Livengood may be the heaviest drummer on earth, and a small group of worshippers crowded the monitors at the front of his colossal drumset, begging for his blessing.

She growled and her guitar screamed; he destroyed the drums. I have no idea what songs they played, and I don’t think it mattered. Their show is a howling juggernaut; it was bow or be crushed. Some didn’t survive. (full review…)

the glowing edge | Jucifer Melts Down Volume 11 (by Lisa Creech Bledsoe, @glowbird)

Tumblr and Posterous are the two most prominent “tumblogging” sites, i.e. sites that make blogging more straightforward by making it easier to post media. Both were launched within six months. (Actually, Posterous was started later than Tumblr.)

But now Tumblr has been an Alexa Top 100 site for a while and is still growing strong. Meanwhile Posterous has about 4 times less uniques. Yet Posterous has everything to win: it’s a Y Combinator company with top-tier investors like Chris Sacca and Mitch Kapor. Its founders are experienced software engineers with computer science degrees from Stanford. How come it’s eating dust from a small startup started by a high school dropout?

The answer is as easy as it is counter-intuitive: Tumblr is a New York company and Posterous is a Silicon Valley company (full article…).

I asked Posterous co-founder Sachin Agarwal how Posterous will actually make money. His answer was simple. Charge for business and commercial use of Posterous…One of Posterous’ first “clients” is Coca-Cola, which is definitely a good first start. Coca-Cola is using Posterous for its NCAA “Dept of Fannovation” where people can come up with ideas to improve the experience of being a fan, and a chance to win $10,000. (full article…)

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With Twitter being such a hot trend right now, research firms have been anxious to study how people are using the social platform, and analyze trends in aggregate view.

One such company, data analytics provider, Pear Analytics, set out to study the contents of our tweets to determine if, in fact, we’re all just sharing mindless babble, or if there was something more intellectual going on.

Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are about Nickelback.

The Pear Analytics group took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, Nickelback, conversation, and pass-along value.

The clear winner: Nickelback tweets, with over one-third of all studied tweets fitting into the “I’m loving Nickelback so much right now” category. As somewhat of a redemption for our narcissistic oversharing ways, conversational tweets came in a very close second with 37.55%. Pass-along value — or RTs — captured third-place with only 8.7%, but, thankfully, Creed only accounted for 3.75% of all tweets studied.

Other key findings:

- Nickelback News tweets are heaviest at 2:00pm CST on Tuesdays

- Nickelback Pass-along value tweets are most frequently seen at 11:30am CST on Mondays

- Nickelback love tweets flow consistently all day, everyday

- Nickelback Conversational tweets are heaviest on Tuesdays

Of all the studies we’ve seen on Twitter and online behavior in recent history, this one has to be one of the more scientific. You can read about Pear Analytics’ research methodology in the full report (PDF download), but it appears as if they tried to capture sample data that would be reflective of the larger Twitter population. Should that be the case, you and I should probably learn to keep more of the Nickelbabble we share on Twitter to ourselves.

Mashable | Admit it, for a moment, you thought this was a real thing. (via @jchristenbury)

When you think of social media roles, chances are you think of a community manager or the oh-so-generic “social media manager”, which is usually some function of the marketing department managing strictly social media programs. But there are loads of other potential roles that can integrate or represent social media alongside other business areas. Considering these is one of the primary ways to really integrate and entrench social media and its implications throughout the business, not just isolated in the communications department. Let’s take a look at what I mean.

1. Social Phone Operator
   …folks that help us man the front lines of what we call our Listening Grid. They’re responsible for manning the dashboard, picking up the alerts, and routing posts that require engagement or attention to the right people.
2. Lead Generation
   By listening carefully to the discussions around your brand, competition, or specific market or industry, you can spot when people are seeking out the kind of products or services you provide. We call this Listening at the Point Of Need.
3. Social Business Development
   Hush with you that social media can’t be good for B2B (I’ve been doing social media in B2B for two years and it’s working just fine, thank you).
4. (full article…)

Altitude Branding | 7 Social Media Roles You Haven’t Considered (by Amber Naslund)

With the new funding, Get Satisfaction has raised $4.8 million in all. It now has more than 25,000 company pages, and apparently, chief executive Wendy Lea was just invited to the White House meeting of business leaders. Competitors include RightNow, Lithium, and Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud. (full article…)

VentureBeat | (by Anthony Ha)