NFL Video Giveth and Taketh Away

The NFL is an interesting study in how social media can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The NFL is a media savvy, marketing powerhouse and is now the center of the sports world with baseball gone and other leagues just getting under way. Thursdays and Sundays belong to the NFL and there is a lot of talk in between as well.

So what’s different this year? Social media. There is a lot of talk about how players can or cannot use Twitter. Well known teams like the San Francisco 49ers have just started their official Facebook page. Everyone is talking about the NFL. That can be good and that can be bad. What happened yesterday, however, with the owner of the pitiful Tennessee Titans might have been just an urban legend a 10 or so years ago. A few drunken fans could reminisce that they were there when the owner, Bud Adams, lost it a bit. Evidence would have been their blurry memory. Now the blessing of ubiquitous video is a curse. Here’s why. Cover the kids eyes, please. Apparently Mr Adams, who is 86, was directing this show to the Buffalo Bills sideline. Call it the heat of the battle I suppose .

Wow! I think we know how he feels! What does the NFL do about this one?

Dear Twitter, We Want to Be You. Love, Yahoo

Let’s face it—everyone wants to be popular, at least when it comes to business. And these days, you can’t deny Twitter is popular (or at least it sounds popular with all the media attention it’s getting—though that may be about to change). So you can’t really blame other companies for a little envy.

Especially when that company is a perennial second in almost everything they do. Yahoo looks like the latest Twitter wannabe, according to Matt McGee at Search Engine Land, and you can see it in so many areas. All of their social pursuits seem to resemble the most popular microblogging service in some way, including:

• Yahoo Meme—Microblogging site, plus pictures, video, and following and reposting others’ posts. (Launched a few months ago, Portuguese only.)
• TweetNews—created by a Yahoo developer, this search engine resorts Yahoo news results based on their Twitter popularity.
• Yahoo’s new homepage—now with status updates
• Yahoo Mail—more status updates and socialy features

The list goes on. And on. Seriously: Yahoo Mojo, Important People and Sideline are the three newest projects, and all are Twitter-related, analyzing your tweets and others’.

Now, let’s pause here. Aside from the tools based directly on Twitter, do all these moves mean Yahoo is courting or competing with Twitter?

Yes and no. Yes because of scarcity (hello, Econ 101)—we all have a limited amount of time online, and in that time we generally have to choose between Yahoo and Twitter (or, you know, some other site). It’s hard to use them simultaneously, even if you do tile your windows.

But just because they’re looking to add more real-time social features to their products doesn’t mean that they’re taking on Twitter per se (except when it does, of course). It’s a good sign that Yahoo sees real time and social as two important directions the web is going today—woot for hopping on that clue train, eh?—and they’re trying to incorporate the features people want and expect into their products.

So good on Yahoo. But seriously, quit copying Twitter.

What do you think? Is Yahoo coveting Twitter’s traffic? Are they courting an acquisition? Or are they just part of the larger real-time social trend?

Ning Rings VC Bell Again

With all of the talk regarding social media it seems that the inordinate amount of the attention goes to the big 2; Facebook and Twitter. While they do tend to generate significant drama and even some real news there is more to the social media space. In fact, there are those who see the social media universe fragmenting into very specific verticals so those of like mind can gather online without having to see that your friend just had a great breath of air. There’s got to be more right?

One of the biggest ‘sideline’ players in this space is Ning. They are doing very well despite some recent decline in numbers. They are doing so well that they picked up some more VC investment. The amount of the investment is not the focus, however, as pointed out over at AllThingsD. It’s the valuation that the investment is based on, which is a hefty $750 million. Not bad for getting just a small percentage of the attention that social media gets in the online press. For the uninitiated here is an overview of the company

Ning is working in a different corner of the social media space than the others

Ning is a platform aimed at offering customizable tools that lets users create their social networks about their interests, such as for fans of the movie “Twilight.”

Ning puts online ads on the sites, using Google (GOOG), and is also working on its own advertising platform. It also offers an array of other services and is planning more soon, such as a virtual gift offering.

Founded in early 2007, it currently has 29.3 million registered users, using 1.3 million social networks, and it adding one million registered users every 15 days, said the company.

Despite the positive news of investment interestTechCrunch reports

In the U.S., unique visitors actually declined 10 percent from May, 2009 to June, 2009, according to comScore. Ning had 5.1 million visitors in the U.S. in June (its worldwide audience is about three times as large).

The company attributes the decline to “some downtime in June as we expand and optimize our infrastructure to support the growth that we are expecting in the next 12 months.” Ning says it is adding 4,000 new Ning Networks every day and one million registered users every 15 days.

Ning lands this relatively small investment while it wasn’t even seeking more. Having Lightspeed Venture Partners on board, however, makes the roster of investors more impressive as the folks at Ning continue to grow their business. that can carry some value later on when they may actually look for money intentionally.

What is your experience with Ning? Do you have any experience at all with the service? What place does a service like Ning truly have? Ning CEO Gina Bianchini says that “We want to be the social network for interests and passions online.” Are there ways one can express passions online without such a service? Give us your passionate thoughts on the subject.