Muppets have a growing popularity with people outside of the shows target audience age of 2-4. It has become common to see teens rocking t’s with characters such as Cookie Monster and Elmo on them and videos featuring muppets have been circulating the web. Some have even achieved viral status like Grover’s Old Spice commercial parody. In 5 days almost 3 million views – at least ten of which are from me – and Mustafa is nowhere to be seen, towel clad or otherwise.

This isn’t the first pop culture reference on the popular kids’ show. Sesame Street aims to entertain adults as well as kids to encourage co-watching much like Disney and Pixar. While Grover’s Old Spice parody was the only advertisement spoof I could find, Sesame Street has not limited themselves in media exploration. Several television shows have been interpreted into educational muppet filled spinoffs including True Blood The Oprah Show The Closer and many many others. The Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody has almost 16.5 million views, over twice as many as the official Bohemian Rhapsody video. Beaker singing Ode to Joy in a style much like Mystery Guitar Man has over 11.5 million views. My personal favorite, Stand By Me, has drawn in a meager 2 million. The future seems bright for a Sesame Street as they hone in on ways to appeal to more audiences.

Celebrities are also featured regularly on the children’s program. Most noteworthy being Katy Perry who caused a scandal with a low-cut top in a clip of her singing Hot n’ Cold with Elmo. Sesame street did not air the clip because of negative parental feedback but still allowed it to be posted on youtube and addressed concerns on their Facebook page.
Perez Hilton blogged about the video and Katy appeared in an SNL parody 5 days later. Most celebrities from Colin Farrell to Will.i.am have a noneventful experience.

Other sources have helped to promote Sesame Street. Last year Big Bird and Sesame Street turned 40 and Google honored them with a doodle on their homepage. (check Google November 4th for a 41st birthday honor.) Michelle Obama also appeared on the 40th anniversary episode to promote healthy foods and has worked with the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, the Sesame Workshop. There is a wiki dedicated to the muppets along with many fan sites and a live show that is touring the country. All of these have contributed to the fame of Sesame Street but not nearly as much as their expansion into social media.

Creating accounts on some of the more popular social media websites, Sesame Street regularly updates content to continue to draw users back for more. Their Facebook page has 114000 followers and Twitter has over twice as many followers. In numbers alone they are ahead of many in the new social media wave. As Jeff Esposito points out,

“Their accounts on Twitter and Facebook allow parents to check out upcoming content before its aired. It also allows those without children to reconnect with a long-lost part of their childhood.”

We can expect future generations to enjoy Sesame Street in new ways as the show continues the innovation they stared in the 60s. Other companies can learn from the way they’ve expanded into social media and addressed consumer concerns (or the parents of consumers concerns.)

For the next few weeks the now massive social networking site will be rolling out new features and site designs.  Along with the new site design Twitter debuts its new logo witch incorporates the popular “tweet bird”.

The new look starts with the timeline.  Your new timeline will have links to mentions, retweets, searches, and lists all right above your timeline, with your followers and trends to the right, just like the old design.  They have also added infinite scroll so you no longer have to click more at the bottom of your timeline.  The new features also include the ability to get more detailed information about a tweet.  Just click on a tweet and an info pane will show up next to your timeline that displays related content like who retweeted and replayed to the tweet.  Another new addition is that media such as YouTube, Flickr, twitpic, twitgoo, twitvid, and Vimeo will be shown in an info pane next to your timeline as well.

The one thing that the new design lacks is real-time-new-tweet updates, there is a notification for new tweets but you still need to refresh the page to see the new tweets.

The design overhaul is long overdue because it seems like we have been looking at the same old Twitter for the past 4 years.  Or have we?  Will this help bring Twitter users back to their home base or will people still continue to use 3^rd party applications for tweeting?  Twitters next step should be to overhaul the twitter iPhone app.

However, just when I think that I have mastered an interface, know where everything is, have uncovered all the secrets and learned all the shortcuts you go and change it on me. Some sites I’ve come to expect that every few weeks I’ll log on and be lost in a new design but not Google. Ever since I can remember Google has had the same design, same layout, despite their ever growing number of other sites and programs. Now I look at the familiar home page and see a deceptive cover for the changes underneath.

The latest “search enhancement” is called Google Instant. Previously Google would guess what keywords I was typing in a small drop down; now I can see each guess’s search results unfold in real time. Google claims the benefits are worthwhile.

By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Maybe I liked those seconds where I actually typed out what I was looking for, maybe I like not being distracted by all the other things I could be looking for and maybe I never really liked when you started trying to guess what I was looking for in the first place.

Please understand, it’s not you it’s me. Without all this change the growth of the internet would be stifled, there would be fewer opportunities for competition and content would not be user driven. You like to move fast and I don’t know if I can keep up but I’m going to try my best and hopefully we can make this work out in the long run.

Sincerely yours,
~ Greta