MCDonalds and the Red Cross _ REAL WINNERS ...

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: John French <mosshead7>
To: ; redeye@foxnews.com; newsbreaks@newyorker.com; snl@nbc.com
Cc: letters@latimes.com; letters@nypost.com; letters@nytimes.com; tips@theinsider.com; tips@gawker.com; letters@rollingstone.com
Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 AM
Subject: REAL WINNERS ...

Aside from those people out there who purchase goods & services endorsed by Charlie Sheen as promoted in his Tweets, here are three women of New Media Madness: an everyday art which the New Everyday Media finds smart and savvy (translation) = smoking RED HOT ... (coming soon to http://theneweverydaymedia.blogspot.com) ...

First there was the Red Cross, who capitalized on Sheen's "tiger blood" meme tweeting, "We may not collect #tigerblood, but we know our donors & volunteers have fierce passion for doing good! #RedCrossMonth." Then McDonald's hopped on board saying, "Despite all the rumors there r no plans 2 bring #mclobster or mcsushi 2 the US menu. We're working on a new menu item called McWinning." (Both McLobster and McSushi had been Twitter trends.)

I'm looking to hire a #winning INTERN with #TigerBlood. Apply here – http://bit.ly/hykQQF #TigerBloodIntern #internship #ad

As disclosed by the #ad hashtag, the tweet was an advertisement -- a message paid for by Internships.comand set up by Ad.ly, a Beverly Hills firm that writes tweets or Facebook status updates for celebrities.

In this case, Internships.com paid Ad.ly and Sheen to send the above message to Sheen's more than 2 million followers on Twitter, said Ad.ly spokeswoman Krista Thomas.

After about an hour, the message resulted in more than 127,000 clicks through to Internships.com via the Bit.ly shortened link in the tweet.

The link leads Web surfers to a listing on Internships.com for a social media intern for "TeamSheen."

The paid internship is described in the listing as follows:

Do you have #TigerBlood? Are you all about #Winning? Can you #PlanBetter than anyone else? If so, we want you on #TeamSheen as our social media #TigerBloodIntern!

This unique internship opportunity will allow a hard-working, self-motivated, creative, resourceful and social media savvy individual to work closely with Charlie Sheen in leveraging his social network. The internship will focus on executing a social media strategy that will build on the success Charlie Sheen has attained in setting the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to reach one million followers on Twitter. The #TigerBloodIntern is expected to be proactive, monitor the day-to-day activities on the major social media platforms, prepare for exciting online projects and increase Charlie's base of followers.

You will learn how to promote and develop the social media network of Hollywood's most trending celebrity.

An intern will be selected by March 14, according to the listing. Officials at Internships.com were not available for comment on the deal with Ad.ly and Sheen on Monday.

Internships.com has also added a pop-up window to its home page that asks, "Looking for the Charlie Sheen Internship?" and the Los Angeles-based site also posted an image hyping the listing on its Facebook page.

The tweet is the first paid endorsement for Sheen since he signed with Ad.ly on Thursday, March 3.

Thomas, the Ad.ly spokeswoman, declined to say just how much Internships.com paid for the tweet, which Sheen did not write himself, but rather was written by employees at Ad.ly and approved by Sheen before it was sent.

Sheen's first paid tweet might be coming at a good time.

On Monday, Sheen was fired by Warner Bros. from the CBS show "Two and a Half Men," a role for which he was paid about $1.8 million an episode -- the highest salary on TV.

On Saturday and Sunday, Sheen broadcast himself on UStream.com in a show that was done in a TV talk show style, with a few jokes, a descent amount of profanity, and fart noises in the background.

The Ustream show, which has been largely panned by critics, is called Sheen's Korner, and has pulled in more than 100 million views over two nights, according a message on Sheen's Twitter feed.

According to Sheen's Ustream page on Monday afternoon, the second episode has brought out about 661,735 viewers and the first episode was removed.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who is also an Ad.ly client, has said he's in talks with Sheen to do some sort of TV show for Cuban's HDnet cable channel.