Sunday night’s Super Bowl provided an incredible opportunity: getting a cool group of brand-savvy marketers from around the country together on Twitter to tweet about Super Bowl XLIV ads. As opposed to larger hashtag groups, the #BZBowl group was more intimate (with nearly 70 participants and no spammers). We had a lot of great IRL and online Brainzooming friends (both new and previous ones) navigating a few Twitter overloads and sharing more than 900 perspectives on Super Bowl ads throughout the game.

Update-wise, our recaps will unfold over the next few days. Barrett Sydnor is preparing a recap based on the SUCCESS formula spelled out in the book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. It will be interesting to see how this assessment compares to the popular opinion and buzz-oriented evaluations.

The situation was desperate for the Denver Broncos. On the first Sunday of the National Football League’s 2009 season, with only 28 seconds left in the game, they trailed the Cincinnati Bengals 7-6. The ball was on the 13-yard line — their own 13-yard line. On second down, Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton heaved the ball downfield, only to see a Bengals defender deflect the pass away from the receiver. And then something remarkable, close to miraculous, happened. Instead of falling to the ground, the ball popped into the air and landed in the outstretched arms of Broncos wide receiver Brandon Stokley, who started racing down the field. All across America, in living rooms and basements and sports bars, people broke into cries of wonderment and delight, heartbreak and disbelief.

Then they witnessed something even more startling.

Just before he reached the end zone, with 17 seconds remaining, Stokley cut right at 90 degrees and ran across the field. Six seconds drained off the clock before, at last, he meandered across the goal line to score the winning touchdown. For certain football fans, the excitement of a last-minute comeback now commingled with the shock of the familiar: It’s hard to think of a better example of a professional athlete doing something so obviously inspired by the tactics of videogame football. When I caught up with Stokley by telephone a few weeks later, I asked him point-blank: “Is that something out of a videogame?” “It definitely is,” Stokley said. “I think everybody who’s played those games has done that” — run around the field for a while at the end of the game to shave a few precious seconds off the clock. Stokley said he had performed that maneuver in a videogame “probably hundreds of times” before doing it in a real NFL game. “I don’t know if subconsciously it made me do it or not,” he said.

"Twitter is a different animal because it's a micro-blogging tool, and because it forces you to post 140 characters at a time; it's nothing like any of the other sites," said frequent "tweeter" Eric Manassy (e_man), 35, of Hawley, Pa.

Twitter is a lot simpler than its social networking brothers and sisters. LinkedIn is geared toward career-minded folks looking to network professionally, while Facebook and MySpace are more personal, allowing users to create extensive profiles, photo albums and more.

"I think of Facebook as people I personally know, and Twitter as people I have never met but are getting to know," Manassy said. "I have pockets of people I interact with depending on the topic. If I talk Jets, the same 10 or so converse with me. Once I go tech, another pocket talk, and if I talk about local events, again, a pocket of local peeps interact. It is really cool!"

This is a piece that I showed up in originally in April 2009 in the Weekender.

There have been a bunch of new business books launched recently.

The stack on your night table is about to get a whole lot higher. Here are ten new business book that are worth checking out right away:

• Connected - The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler. Many people are calling this the online social networking book for the TED crowd. I've just started to dive in and it's some high-brow thinking (in the best possible way).
• Crush It! Why now is the time to cash in on your passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. I finally got to meet Gary this past week on his book launch tour, and he is the real deal. His book (which hit #2 on New York Times' best-seller list) is a shot-to-the-gut reality check on how New Media is changing everything.
• Inbound Marketing - Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. Dharmesh presented shortly after me at Mesh Marketing the other week. This book brings together some new thoughts and new techniques on how to change the way you market your business. Here's a visual: this book will help turn your business into a magnet for customers.
• The New Community Rules - Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg. Weinberg is the Blogger behind Techipedia, and she knows everything there is to know about how to grow and manage a community. This book is perfect for companies trying to figure out the role online communities will play in their business and how to find the right people to help manage them. 
• Socialnomics - How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman. I have not had a chance to deep-dive into this one, but it is next on the pile. This books looks at the latest trends in Social Media and what it means to businesses the world over.
• Superfreakonomics by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt. You know Freakonomics was an incredibly fresh and fascinating book. Superfreaknomics seems just as challenging and fascinating.
• Trust Agents - Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Good friends, co-hosts of Media Hacks and overall caring and giving guys. Their debut book is a New York Times Best-seller and it deserves all of the attention and praise it is getting. If you don't have trust (online or otherwise), you're going to struggle in building your business. These guys know trust. They live it. And, in this book, they teach it.
• Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg. Penenberg first wrote about the concept of a viral expansion loop in Fast Company magazine (Ning's Infinite Ambition). That article lead to a major book deal, and that book just came out. The article was fascinating and I can't wait to read - in detail - how new companies grow their market share.
• Web Analytics 2.0 - The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by Avinash Kaushik. I wrote a testimonial for Kaushik's latest book. Here is what I sent him (unedited): When it comes to the Digital Marketing channels and understanding what and why people do things online, there is no one smarter than Avinash Kaushik. His first book, Web Analytics - An Hour A Day, should be on every Marketer's desk. Now, with Web Analytics 2.0, there's something to put on top of the first one. When people ask, 'who is the smartest guy in the room when it comes to Online Marketing?' only one name comes to mind: Avinash. I'd tell you to buy this book, but I would prefer if you didn't. I'd love to keep these concepts and theories all to myself and my clients. Yes, it's that powerful, awesome and actionable.
• What the Dog Saw And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell. If it's at all possible for the business book industry to have a rock star, that person would be Gladwell. HIs latest is a collection of 19 essays from The New Yorker, and each one validates his rock star status. If you just finished Outliers and need another fix, this is perfect and will hit the spot.

The long haul - there are a lot of people who say, "ok, I started a Blog about a month ago, what am I doing wrong? Why are there no comments? What can I do to build my audience faster?" Always remember, that this is not an advertising campaign where you can buy attention. You have to earn it. Building community and trust takes time, effort and then more time (for more on this, please read the book, Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith). It's not easy. So, even though you may be doing everything "right," building community does takes time. You will be earning it one person at a time, and it's important to stay the course (you can read more about this right here: In Praise Of Slow).

This one is a tough one for me! I'm always impatient. I know that to be successful, you need to keep at it, be consistent and be in it for the long haul. Once you sow the seeds, wait.... and they will grown.

The fact that Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk hit The New York Times bestseller list at #2 after one week's sales is great... though not necessarily so remarkable. What's interesting about this story is that he is living proof that the free tools of the Internet do work! I hear over and over, from authors as well as my colleagues in house, "OK, but does Twitter sell books?" (I don't know why they are so reluctant to believe...)

Gary built his brand using these free tools (Facebook, Twitter, Ustream, Tumblr, etc.) and he used the tools that he wrote about in the book to succeed with the book itself. Yes, the mainstream media did play a role, but not at first, and Twitter and Ustream have been every bit as big a driver of sales as traditional media.

If you have not checked out his book site, do it! It is a marketing masterpiece and a lot can be emulated and learned from, for sure: www.crushitbook.com Some of it is just "so Gary" -- I don't know if there's anyone else out there who could pull it off... but even the typical stuff you see on an author's website (i.e. About the Book, About Gary, etc.) is more interesting than what you usually find on a typical book website.

Here are some of my favorite aspects:

• The Experience -- Be sure to watch the videos. If you're going to watch just one, watch the 35 books video. This clearly has Gary's DNA all over it, but I can think of a zillion supersize bundles for other authors too (e.g. for the self-help author: 35 book gets you an hour session with the author; for the novelist, 35 books gets you a call to your book club from the author; etc. etc. etc.)

The Tour -- This is not your run of the mill back-breaking killer book tour. Check out the RSVP links that go to Facebook fan pages and the follow up links so people can post their pictures and comments after the event. And here's my favorite: The Hudson Hustle Tour http://crushitbook.com/hudson-hustle-tour/ 6-cities, 24 hours. Who does that? The man is a maniac. Do not try this at home.

Special Offers -- I don't even know where to begin. Gary has partnered with people most of us would never even have considered. Buy a custom Wordpress theme? Get a copy of the book; Fan of Click Time? Get a copy! LOVE the Digital Bonuses. Moral of the story: Think of a partnership for everyone you encounter and make an offer. Clearly people are open to this type of thing.

The Street Team -- This is like a political campaign. I'd think you'd need some serious momentum from your tribe to pull this one off. But noted for the future!

For Professors -- Think your book is good for college course adoption? Offer a Discussion Guide and Key Points E-book

Twitter Avatar for the Book -- Seems hard to pull off, but Gary has 611 people with his book jacket on their Twitter Avatar. Opportunity available for anyone to do on Twibbon.com

There's a TON more in there, from Forums to the World Market Tour -- so be sure to click around.

So while you might not be right for TVs in gas stations , and highway billboards aren't what's going to sell your book, there are a ton of ideas in here that any author can copy and do their own version of what Gary has done. The days of having to wait for the media to give you the opportunity to tell your story are over.

By now, if you're a Twitter user, there's a good chance you've seen Twitter's new list functionality.

Here are some ways your brand can use Twitter's new on-site functionality:

• Segment and grow your local customer base: If you're a global brand with a local -- or even hyperlocal -- customer base, enable your consumers to connect with each other through you. For instance, a world-famous chain of coffee bars could set up meetup groups through local lists, and when it's ready to execute on some local programs, it already has its local influencers lined up.

Reference list for who's really paying attention to you: Your brand may have thousands upon thousands of Twitter followers, but are they really paying attention?

When I worked at Tribune Interactive and the Chicago Tribune, as Colonel Tribune, I tried as hard as I could to thank all of my new Twitter followers. On my personal Twitter account, I still do keep track of my new followers, and I thank people who are local, or people who share the same passions as I.

At the end of the day, you can't thank everyone who follows you; just those who are very engaged. Lists are a great way to identify them.

(NOTE: I recently started sending "thank you" direct messages to people who added me to their lists; I've noticed I'll usually get an instant response.)
- Daniel B. Honigman

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The wonderfully talented Russian graphic designer, Pavel Kulinsky, has created an awesome series of posters for a promo company in Moscow. The posters feature Matryoshkas (Russian nesting dolls) that have been stylized to suit popular rock bands and artists.

Check out the rest of these traditional dolls with modern flare here!

By Catherine Faas.