Future:Media:Change

YouTube – Manu Ginobili catch a bat Spurs vs Scacramento kings.

Yesterday was Halloween and it was a day of firsts in the sports world. I thought the night couldn’t get much better after Oregon Ducks routed USC and gave them their biggest loss since 2001, but then A-rod finally hit a ball…out of the park and into a TV camera.. Just when I think my head might explode from joy, I catch this video of Manu Ginbili swatting a bat out of the air in the middle of a basketball game.

In order to pretend this is all relevant to this blog and not just an excuse to brag and show a cool bat video, I will say that I wouldn’t have found the Ginobili clip except for the clever headlines Yahoo!’s editorial staff creates several times a day to help drive traffic. I had to check out “Basketball player turns into ‘Batman.’”

Before you start crafting your own clever headlines, remember that Yahoo! is the most trafficked homepage in the world. The visitors are on their site already and their habit of “blind linking” — the user doesn’t know what the content will be when they click — works in that context. They often use questions or clever puns. The rest of us are better off sticking to the advice that Huffington Post gives their bloggers, “Think, ‘What would I type into Google to find this post,’ when creating your title.” This is good advice considering that 80% of most sites traffic come through searches.

Yahoo! can get away with “Batman,” but Huffpo’s choice of Manu Ginobili Catches Bat (VIDEO): Spurs Player Swats Bat, Captures Animal On Basketball Court, is far more instructive for most of us.

Obama Jack-o-Lantern

In pumpkin news: Organizing for America was promoting Barack O’ Lanterns with their friends at Yes We Carve. Did you see any?

I spotted one “Sexy Nurse” with a “I support the Public Option” sign, but no Barack O’ Lanterns in the big city. Come to think of it, not many carved pumpkins at all, Hope-themed or otherwise. Nonetheless, I like the efforts to revisit last year’s Obama-mania in support of the Administration’s policies.

FLOTUS and POTUS welcomed trick-or-treaters to the White House. I HOPE (get it) they defied convention in our overly-sensitive “Stranger Danger” culture and offered up something homemade instead of packaged, “safe” crap.

Finally, Kanye West visits the White House in this strange cartoon. Enjoy. Happy Day of the Dead to all!