ColemanMedia Report

Fresh on the heels of news that Facebook knowingly shared personally identifiable data with 3rd party applications, 22-year-old waitress Sarah Tobias reported that she had received unsolicited text messages and flowers from a man only identified as “roger@zynga.” According to police reports, Tobias received 38 text messages over a 48-hour period before receiving a “Sentimental Surprise” bouquet of flowers at her Burlingame, CA apartment, all from a Zynga email account, the company responsible for the popular Farmville social game. The text messages, which complemented Tobias on her Farmville eggplant patch, music interests, and “Halloween 2009″ Facebook photo gallery, have Tobias on edge. “Um, I have no idea who this guy is, how he got on my profile, or how got my phone number,” said Tobias. “But if asks me to send more pics of me in my Dorothy costume again, I swear I’m gonna lose it!” Zynga and Facebook officials declined to comment for this story.

Box Office Mojo and the Center for Unusually Shameless Puns reported early Monday that Sony Pictures’ quasi-controversial movie The Social Network reached profitability nearly 257 times faster than any actual social network in existence. The $50-milllion movie, which chronicles the fictionalized story of Mark Zuckerberg during the founding of Facebook, brought in $80 million in under 3 weeks, a far cry from the 5 years it took its namesake to reach profitability. “The Social Network‘s earnings are just incredible,” said Erik von Snideowitz from popular social blog Mashable. “If we compare its time to profit to, say, that of Facebook or MySpace, one could conservatively value it at approximately $800 billion by 2014. More optimistic projections value it at 2.4 trillion, or enough to pay off nearly 1/6th of the national debt.” Snideowitz’s projections have been challenged by many in the media and entertainment industries, however. “If The Social Network grosses anything close to Avatar,” said famed director and megalomaniac James Cameron, “I’ll personally see to it that Fincher never works in this town again.”

Officials with Department of Justice and the State of Oregon jointly confirmed late Tuesday that the Mayor of the Burgerville on SW Canyon Road, local college student Jimmy McSeamus, has been charged with 16 counts of election fraud in 9th Circuit Federal Court. According to court affidavits, the charges contend that McSeamus, who has held the Mayorship of the Beaverton, OR fast food location on Foursquare for over 6 months, illegally obtained his appointment by checking in numerous times from across the street, while walking to his day job nearby at Video Only. “We have more than enough evidence to convict McSeamus,” said Deputy District Attorney Conrad McMasters, “including GPS location data and several solid eyewitness accounts. And we intend to throw the book at him. Blagojevich may have gotten away with this one, but McSeamus is going down.” If convicted on all 16 counts, McSeamus faces up to 12 years in Federal prison, the loss of his Mayorship, and the loss of his Adventurer badge.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed early Tuesday that nearly 230 million people across the United States have been injured in the social media “explosion” that has rocked the country over the last 12 months.  According to FEMA officials, the injuries, which range from mild annoyances to severe head traumas, have been caused by the perfect storm of rising social media usage, a surge in social media marketing campaigns, and chief marketing officers demanding to know what their social media strategies are.  ”We predicted back in 2008 that social media presented a significant health risk,” said Lon Dolittle, Chief Emergency Response Officer for FEMA.  ”But we had no idea it would be this bad.  This ‘explosion,’ as so many sales reps and media journalists have aptly named it, has not just torn a hole in the fabric that was everyday physical human contact, but it’s created arguably the most over-hyped and inflated media phenomenon this country has ever seen.”

In an effort to treat his increasingly obvious addiction to broadcasting the mundane details of his life, part time Starbucks barista and full-time social media maven Rodney Pinkleberry checked in to Social Media Rehab through Foursquare Monday afternoon, according to his Foursqure, Gowalla, Facebook and Twitter feeds.  Pinkleberry admitted himself to a Santa Monica, CA facility at his own will, after finally realizing that he has a problem.  ”It didn’t really dawn on me until I ousted PickleD36 as the Mayor of 2nd handicap parking spot at Trader Joe’s in WeHo,” said Pinkleberry.  ”I had my Adventurer badge, my Explorer badge, but I knew things were getting bad when I earned my Overshare badge.  I mean, people stopped responding to my updates.  So I checked in to Rehab.  Where it’s gonna take me forever to oust LindsayL as Mayor.”

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced the release of the widely anticipated next generation of the Internet, Web 3.0, at a press conference in Burlingame, CA Monday afternoon.  The new version, slated for release June 20th, promises several key enhancements over Web 2.0.  ”The new Internet is like Web 2.0 on steriods,” said ICANN spokesperson Karl Schnaubhauser.  ”It does everything Web 2.0 does, but 1,000 times better.”  According to Web 3.0 specification documents, the new version will render things like actual social interaction, short-term memory, and free will totally obsolete.  ”It’s amazing.  With the new system, you won’t need to know anything: your friend’s phone numbers, your address, or even your name.  Web 3.0 will know all of that for you, along with your likes, dislikes, and things you didn’t even know you like.  The best part, you won’t even need a device to access it.  It will come to you.  Whether you like it or not.”

Fresh off the heels of releasing their Open Graph Platform, which has drawn the ire of lawmakers and privacy advocates, Facebook announced the release of its new OpenPassword feature, which automatically releases password information, social security numbers and complete dating histories of its users to any person, entity or hacker that requests it.  The new feature, announced yesterday and quietly released 6 weeks ago, will allow critical information to travel more freely and efficiently across the Web, according to Facebook founder and privacy adversary Mark Zuckerberg.  ”We live in an openly social world,” said Zuckerberg, “so why not share the information that people really want to know?  I think our users will really like it once they get used to it.  If they don’t, we’ll just sell their bank account numbers to Phil in Lagos, Nigeria.  Or their estranged exes.”

The United States Department of Justice revealed a complex and sophisticated plot by the nation’s Smartphones at a press conference Monday afternoon, charging the devices with attempting to not only take over wireless Internet browsing from laptop computers, but to ultimately enslave the entire nation into an unnecessarily expensive and connected lifestyle.  According to officials, the plot includes detailed plans to convince Smartphone users that it’s necessary to continuously update their location, activities, opinions, and irritations to a global network of other Smartphone users with text, photos, videos and nearly indecipherable icons.  ”We’re very lucky we caught this when we did,” said Lt. JT Smackhouser.  ”This could have very easily resulted in an entire nation of people eschewing actual human interaction to update their virtual contacts at a personal cost of billions of dollars per year.  Now that we’ve pulled the cover off this thing, people can go back to buying their groceries without being an inconsiderate prick in the checkout line.”

According to a report issued Monday by the social media watchdog group Friend Feeder, Facebook users have created more than 16 million new fan pages with the express purpose of generating more fans than every person, public figure, or brand that they dislike, don’t agree with, or simply want to make fun of.  The pages and groups, which started as jokes about pictures of domesticated animals getting more fans than Glenn Beck or Nickelback, have quickly snowballed to collectively waste more than 189 million hours of Facebook user time in the last week alone.  ”We see this as the beginning of the end for Facebook,” said Matthew P. Whipplebottoms, a research analyst at Friend Feeder.  ”It started with lost cows wandering on to people’s walls, where the utility of keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances gave way to the mindless time suck that is ‘Let’s see if this one-eyed mole rat can get more fans than the Verizon Guy’s glasses.’”

Accomplished journalist, television personality and attention whore Anderson Cooper brought himself to tears during a live broadcast of his popular show AC360 Thursday evening while reporting on the recent changes to popular social network Facebook’s privacy policies.  The reporter, who leaped to popularity after crying on air in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, lamented through sobs that the new privacy policy, – which broadcasts his Facebook friends’ status updates as a default – is “one of the greatest crimes against humanity.”  ”I’ve witnessed some pretty terrible things in my life,” weeped Cooper.  ”I’ve seen utter destruction wrought by nature, I’ve cried in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing could have prepared me for this.  This is almost as bad as if we subjected our viewers to unfettered coverage of the personal life of Tiger Woods for two weeks.  Oh, wait.”