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Here are a few funny, entertaining and inspiring things I collected along the way this past week.  The only common thread is that I’ve seen all these things discussed in numerous places, both online and offline.  What did I miss?

GOOOOAAALLLLLL

If you missed the US Women beat Brazil to advance to the World Cup semi-finals, you missed one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen.  In the final seconds of overtime, Megan Rapinoe landed a ball on the head of Abby Wambach, who finished with authority.  This sent the match into penalty kicks, where the US prevailed (since then, the US has advanced to the finals).  The Internet exploded with excitement, and despite FIFA’s best efforts, it can be found here (the break starts about 5 seconds into where I linked the video).

By the way, this is what you get on YouTube when you search for the official video clip of the goal [insert sad trombone here]:

Kenny Powers - MFCEO Of K-Swiss

Not since Old Spice have I seen a brand receive so much Internet love as K-Swiss did this week.  Eastbound and Down is an HBO show about a has-been professional baseball player called Kenny Powers.  Kenny is pretty much the most despicable character on TV, but in a really funny way.  Anyhow, K-Swiss broke a brilliant campaign this week in which Kenny Powers is named CEO of K-Swiss.  There are a series of great video clips on Funny or Die (NOTE: the language is not for the modest) and a cleaner TV version.  Like it or not, this is a brand doing something big, bold and inescapable.

GIFs GIFs Everywhere

Animated GIFs were all the rage this week, apparently because you can post them to Google+.  GIF Shop seems to be the go-to source for creating them yourself, as I’ve done.  Fascinating, I know.  My apologies for not including a cat, which seems to be pretty standard.

How New Yorkers See The Rest Of The US

Thanks to Ogilvy’s Gavin Becker for this gem.  As a former New Yorker I know there’s a lot of truth to it.  The LA-SF note is my favorite.  Click on it to expand.

Who among us does not enjoy a good social experiment? As you have probably heard by now one of the themes rising out of this year’s SXSWi is the importance of game mechanics and how people engage when a game layer is added to community.

Seth Priebatsch of scvngr.com ended his presentation with a little social experiment that was a great illustration of how the game layer can bring people together. As we entered the auditorium everyone was handed one of two cards that were color coded.

One card was blue on one side and green on the other while the other card was gold on one side and orange on the other. As Seth wrapped up his presentation he announced he was launching a social experiment. The challenge: Without getting out of your seat, work with the people on your row to determine what color card your row was going to be and then negotiate from your seat to get the color card you needed. He gave us a time frame and if we made the time his company would donate $10,000 to a charity. He counted us down and the game began.

On my row and the rows around me, we had several empty seats and while you would think it made it easier to choose a color it was actually harder to communicate. As the game began, each person was created equal because each person in the auditorium was working toward their own goal as well as making their row or team reach their goal - celebrity status did not matter. Quickly, my row decided we would go green, and then the race was on to use our influence to negotiate with the rows and people around us to trade cards so that each person on my row had a green card. We quickly determined how many “greens” we needed and then went about making the necessary trades to secure green cards. The process was exhilarating and challenging and at the end of about 150 seconds, Seth called time and asked each row to hold up their cards.

Personally, I was concerned as I found myself wanting to win and for the charity to win. As we all held up our cards, much to I think everyone’s surprise, we (meaning the entire auditorium of 2,500 people) had accomplished the goal. Each row had come together and worked not just with the people on their row, but also the rows around them. It was quite a moment; 150 seconds and 2,500 people had come together and made the experiment a success.

So why am I so energized by this experiment? I think there are several reasons:

-    While Seth’s presentation was interesting I think his point was made stronger through the “game.”
-    The experiential side of this exercise made it more powerful; this was experiential learning at its best. One of the guys sitting next to me commented that he never thought he would fall for game mechanics but as soon as the challenge was on – he was all in to win.
-    Your influence comes with accountability and responsibility and you never know when you will need to exercise it. Someone sitting in front of me had a minor kerfuffle and I noticed as we started the experiment it took his row longer to embrace him. I could not help but find myself wondering if he was wishing he had made different choices about how he joined that row.

In the end, I think Seth did a great job of proving his point that a game layer not only breeds participation but that it can breed cooperation. However, I also find it troubling that the game layer is what motivates people to come together. I’ll admit the gaming made it more fun but is that what we are becoming as a community? Do we need a game to work together?

The social media world moves fast and there’s an insane amount of best practices, latest news, studies, reports, case studies, metrics etc. that go along with it. For those who make social media their profession (or part of it), it’s nearly impossible to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest. Below, in no particular order, are six resources that help me stay on top of things – or at least help me keep the façade of a social media “specialist” up for one more day.

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Apologies that Facebook Friday is coming at you a day late this week but here in Washington DC we got TWO blizzards so I hope you’ll forgive us. The 2010 Winter Olympics started yesterday and of course every major athlete, organization, and sponsor has a Facebook campaign going on. Here are some recommendations for getting the most out of the games using Facebook.

The Officials - Inside Facebook has a good run-down of the main Facebook pages from the IOC, Visa, Vancouver, and NBC. None of these stand outs but some are a great way to keep track of scores and upcoming events if you’re a hard core fan. The majority of them simply repurpose content or sweepstakes from their website or YouTube and the applications are action oriented, inviting fans to learn about the sports or get into the action with virtual skiing, speed skating, or hockey.

The Athletes- There are lots of Athletes who manage their own fan pages and if you have a sport or an athlete you love these are really fun and the best way to feel like you’re there. Brand pages make it easy for athletes to share their stories and experiences with fans through status updates, blogs, and multimedia; today USA’s Lindsey Vonn posted a status update that she was in her condo baking banana bread and is her injury is healing nicely. Vonn and other athletes and also using Twitter but in Vonn’s case you can tell it’s linked off of her Facebook so the posts don’t make much since when their cut off at 140 characters.

Your Friends- Last week, Facebook quietly rolled out their next jab at Twitter: a search feature that letsyou look at friends’ posts and everyone else’s. Search for “Olympics” and you can see status updates, photos, videos, or links your friends are sharing related to the games. The search functions aren’t nearly as flexible as Twitter search and the use of hastags hasn’t appeared yet but if privacy advocates don’tcomplain about this new feature I think we’ll see a new version of the now-dead Lexicon in 2010.

Overall, I’m underwhelmed with branded Facebook campaigns this year because they didn’t take advantage of human element of platform.

In 2008, our team worked with Lenovo to build the Voices of the Summer Games. We found 100 relatively-unknown Olympic athletes from around the world, armed them with Lenovo products, and asked them to blog about their experiences. The reason the program was a success was because it reminded people about who these athletes are: not everyone is going to win gold; most of these athletes have jobs andfriends and families outside of their competition and are living the dream of their moment to compete against the best in the world. Had this program been done today with the flexibility of brand pages, Facebook would be the perfect platform to bring these great stories to life and cheer on the unsung heroes of the games.

Briefly noted- USA Today had an article about broader social media use at the Olympics: here.