Last night was not the kindest of schedules. I had the great opportunity to leave the house and see "The Dark Night" yesterday evening, but the film didn't start until 11:15 p.m. Allowing for previews, credits, and the two and a half hour runtime, it was 2 a.m. by the time the movie ended. Following a quick trip to Safeway, I didn't get home until after 2:30 a.m., finding Sarah stirring, but Matthew, luckily, asleep. That left me on feeding duty for Sarah, first, around 4 a.m., and Matthew, just after, finishing about 5 a.m. So, no, I didn't get much sleep. By the time I posted the great guest post from Rob Diana at 5:30 a.m., and made sure all was well, I saw a mysterious tweet from Jason Goldberg, CEO of Social Median, the online social news site, who I first covered back in April.See below or on Twitter itself:
Having gotten virtually no sleep, and it being about six a.m., the sun rising, I was sure my mind was not in its proper working state. So I asked Jason what was up, and it turns out that Jason and the Social Median team were running a contest, where the service's users would follow "Newsmakers" on the site, and by midnight yesterday, the top two non Social Median employees with the most followers would be the lucky recipients of iPhones.
I knew Social Median had recently made updates, and I've seen quite a few notifications in my e-mail from people following my account there, but, being busy, I hadn't given Social Median enough attention this week, though I had planned to eventually, and I certainly wasn't aware of the give-away, or lobbying for it. So, silly me, I backed into the win. Very cool. Jason even added his own comments on FriendFeed, saying, "This brilliant part is that Louis didn't even try to be *popular* -- our users selected him as their newsmaker on their own."
So now, assuming availability, shipping and receipt, it looks like I'll soon have a brand-new iPhone 3G to play with, courtesy of one of the more interesting new entrants to the market this year in the social media and aggregation space. Now, given that my company pays for the cell phone service on my Blackberry, the question becomes:
- Do I open an account with AT&T and pay that way for a new number on my own?
- Port the BlackBerry # to the iPhone and hope work pays for it still?
Also: If anybody thinks that winning the iPhone is in return for favorable coverage to date, or will lead to future favorable coverage (like a bribe), I don't believe this changes anything. To date, I've written everything about Social|Median in a fair way, and without expectation of any payout. Winning this is a lot of fun, but I plan to keep watching them as I do many other startups in this field. Of course, let me know if you disagree.