ColemanMedia Report

Officials with the San Diego Center for Disease Control confirmed early Friday that a pandemic-level outbreak of Nerd Flu occurred in and around the San Diego Convention Center last week, potentially affecting thousands of victims.  Officials positively diagnosed over 542 known cases inside the annual Comic-Con International event, but fear that many more cases may go unreported.  The R2D2 strain is considered by many health officials to be far more dangerous than the H1N1 virus, as it can be easily and quickly transmitted via Facebook, Twitter, or SMS messages.  ”It’s especially communicable with jailbreaked iPhones using Skype or some other free service,” said SDCDC president Lars Van Winkle.  ”It’s important that people recognize the symptoms of Nerd Flu so that it can be treated in the early stages.  If you find yourself becoming overly giddy over Tron footage or a near-mint copy of Sandworms of Dune, you should immediately get yourself to the nearest Sports Bar.”  ED. NOTE: Senior Manga Field Reporter Greg Sher contributed to this report.

Just hours after announcing their $850 million dollar acquisition of beloved online shoe retailer Zappos, Seattle-based Amazon.com confirmed that they will change Zappos’ business model from selling shoes to participating exclusively in social media marketing.  According to Amazon officials, the flood of media analysis from the blogosphere calling the purchase the “biggest social media deal of the decade” helped cement their decision.  ”We initially bought Zappos because they had one of the best customer service models we’ve ever seen,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.  ”They built their entire business on it.  But because everyone at Mediapost, Advertising Age and Brandweek kept pushing the social media angle, we have decided to prove them right, and turn one of the most successful online retailers into a misguided advertising case study.”

Director of West Coast Sales Joey O’Brien left the 56th follow-up to his introductory email Tuesday morning to the voice mail inbox of Senior Media Planner Chet Petersen, according to sources at the San Francisco office of Publicease North America.  According to Petersen, the follow-up calls and emails began approximately 37 seconds after Petersen sent a cursory e-mail response thanking O’Brien for his interest in his clients’ media strategies, and have continued at a rate of approximately 3 per hour since then.  “This is ridiculous, man,” said Petersen.  ”I answered his email as a courtesy, now I can’t get rid of the guy.  I mean he started out by asking if I had time to meet tomorrow, and now he’s accusing me of doing a disservice to my clients by ignoring him.  Relax, man, I’ll get back to you as soon as I deal with the 600 other sales reps that called me yesterday.”

Telecom giant AT&T confirmed in a press conference Monday afternoon that it temporarily blocked calls from Web designer Scott Bluthenthal’s ex-girlfriend Tracie for approximately 3 days.  Fending off denial-of-service accusations from several privacy groups, officials with AT&T defended their position by claiming that they were not denying access to Scott, but rather protecting him from getting back into what would ultimately be another abusive relationship with Tracie.  ”AT&T has no right to control what Web sites we visit, or what calls get through,” said Irene Pricklibottoms of the Center for Internet Rights.  ”It doesn’t matter if that person is just using you to get back at the guy that stood her up on Saturday, or Rick from work, who doesn’t return her calls anymore.  We have a right to unfettered access to booty calls.”  AT&T did not respond, but sources reported spotting AT&T having dinner with Tracie on the patio of Lucques on Melrose Tuesday evening.