This past Friday night, we (Machinima) held our third annual Inside Gaming Awards at the Music Box in Hollywood, CA, sponsored by Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Our Gamers’ Choice Award this year was sponsored by Verizon. Porter Robinson was our guest DJ.

Oh live production. Some last-minute emergencies came up and I unexpectedly got thrown in to a 12-hour production day/night. This, of course, wasn’t going to stop me from looking good while handling a few firedrills with grace. It wasn’t exactly what I originally had in mind for my night, but the way things went, I’m not going to complain. I still had an amazing night, just in a different way.

So if you missed the live stream of the show, you can actually watch the full thing on YouTube now. It starts about 35 minutes in:

I was in charge of that live Twitter ticker, some of the lower-thirds, and helping the lovely Jes V with the check-ins from the Social Stage. The amount of screens that we all had to pay attention to made me feel like I was working at a space station. It was definitely the biggest production I’ve had to work for Machinima.

Ground Control to Major Tom...

While running the social aspect of everything, and with the help of our wonderful fans, friends, directors, partners, colleagues, etc… we managed to get #IGAs the top trending topic WORLDWIDE… and all organically (and if you know anything about social media, you know that this isn’t an easy thing to do)!

So a HUGE thanks goes out to each and every one of you who made that happen. It was a great little parting gift for a “social media queen” during her final days with the company. This week is my last week with Machinima before I take a vacation, then begin my new job. I’ll say farewell to you for now, but trust me, this most definitely isn’t goodbye!

…Oh, and for those who were curious about the things I was sporting, here’s a little diagram for you:

I suppose I shouldn’t say “can’t.” You can do it if you want to, but allow me to tell you why you shouldn’t.

I take both a personal and professional interest in social media and how things work. As silly as it may sound, I have my set of “social media pet peeves.” One of which is one of the most common mistakes I see on Twitter, not just from friends, but from professionals, as well. It drives me nuts.

Let’s start with the structure of how @-replies work on Twitter. When you reply to someone’s tweet, their @-tag shows up at the beginning of the box, then you type in your reply. Hit send. From there, those responses are only visible to you, the person you are responding to, and any mutual followers that you two have.

Understanding that structure, please drill it into your head that this same structure applies to new tweets, as well. There is a reason why you will often notice someone using a symbol (usually a period) at the beginning of a tweet before an @-tag. That isn’t a mistake. That is fully intentional.

So why do this? Because you want all of your followers to see that tweet, not just the ones who follow you and also happen to follow whoever you are tagging.

For example, if you wanted your followers to know that I’m awesome, there isn’t much value in writing “@sarahdope is awesome.” Why? Because if you have 5,000 followers, but only 20 of them happen to follow me as well, that means that only 20 of your 5,000 followers are seeing that tweet. Those 20 people already follow me. They already know I’m awesome. Instead, if you are insisting on starting a new tweet with an @-tag instead of finding a word or two to put in front of it, then you want to write out “. @sarahdope is awesome.” Note that little period in front of it.

So why is this a problem professionally? Because, again, you are lessening the value and reach of your message.

Say that your company is trying to promote a new Xbox promotion. Your company has 98,000+ followers and you want to send Xbox some Twitter love to all 98,000 of your followers by @-tagging them. Only 1,000 of them actually follow your company and Xbox. Guess what? If you start off with “@Xbox has this great deal right now, blah blah blah”… your tweet will only pop up in the feed of 1,000 of your followers, not all 98,000.

So please… for the love of social media… stop making this mistake.

(Also, speaking of Twitter, if you aren’t already, feel free to follow me: @sarahdope.)

So I was gone all weekend taking a break from the internets and thought I might recap stuff that I missed in my absence and some stuff you might have missed:

• ElfQuest Fan Film & SDCC 2011 Panel Info
• Dexter Morgan Meets Casey Anthony
• SDCC 2011: Details for MTV’s “Death Valley” Panel
• LEGO Artist Orion Pax
• The Mortal Kombat: Legacy Finale is Coming!
• SDCC 2011: Hasbro’s Exclusive Premium Ultimate Optimus Prime
• Portal 2 Fan Music Video
• How Creatives Landed a Job with a Twitter Hack
• Star Wars Meets The Twilight Zone
• Breaking Bad Season 4 Trailer (Extended)

Clever, clever.

For the story, check out the article on TechCrunch here.

I realize I have been doing little to no posting in the past couple of weeks, and for that, I apologize. I promise to be better about that (again).

As a lot of you know, I recently left Disney for Machinima, so it’s been a little busy for me helping reorganize some things and planning for the future.

Other than work stuff that either I can’t talk about yet and/or you don’t really want to hear in detail anyway, here are some things about me you might have missed:

Some of my beloved, now former-coworkers threw me a very warming ad hoc farewell party on my last day at the Mouse. I continued the celebration at the Honor Society show at The Roxy… where I was slightly afraid to hear my buddy’s band for the first time, and left, honestly, surprisingly impressed by the show they put on.

Afterwards, I ended up at the Rainbow– somewhere I haven’t been to at all since Cain passed away. Granted, I stopped going (except for once in a blue moon) years before that, but once he passed and was no longer “living” there, it never felt right to return without his presence. Needless to say, being back there brought on a flood of memories.

Anyway.

I also attended the Inside Gaming Awards (again)…. where I, once again, pigged out on all of the free appetizers. For those who have been following me for years, you might recall that this is basically my favorite thing to do at fancy events. Pictured above: Matt and his ridiculous mustache that is thankfully FINALLY gone, and myself…. and pizza bites.

NOX Audio provided Specialist headsets for the event, as well as for the attendees. Considering I’ve never really bothered to go get some nice headphones for anything and always dealt with whatever came with the device, I’ve been pretty damn stoked on having these now.

I also got back into Warcraft… damnit. Also ended up getting into Minecraft… but at least now I can claim it’s all work-related, right?

In other news, a “little” movie called TRON: Legacy came out in theaters. FINALLY. After spending a couple of years busting my ass on marketing that campaign while I was with the Mouse, it was nice to see it come to an end. And sure, the dialogue may be cheesy, and the story may be mediocre, but it is visually and musically AWESOME and I recommend all of you to go see it in IMAX 3D if you haven’t already.

Annnd that’s about it. Now it’s time for me to go back to work (yes, I am still being a workaholic on our Holiday break… but to those who have been following my endeavors for years now, know that this isn’t a surprise at all).

• Follow me on Twitter: @sarahdope
• Add me on my public Facebook account that I finally got off my ass and made: http://www.facebook.com/TheSarahDope

The next update to the Xbox Live network will be coming Tuesday, November 17 according to Live’s General Manager, Marc Whitten (left). The new features are contributing to “turning Xbox and Live into this rich media portal that continuously surfaces the most engaging things to do in the living room.” he said.

As previously revealed, this update brings social networking to the Xbox 360 with Twitter and Facebook support–in an interface that has been tailored for the console. Whitten said, “We look at things like Facebook and Twitter as amazing social experiences, but also entertainment. We didn’t want to copy and paste from the PC.”

Craig Davison, Director of Global Marketing for Xbox, pointed to Facebook as an important new feature, “People are going to gravitate to looking at photos on the TV.” Though over 300 million friend connections have happened on Live, that may just be the beginning–users will be able to convert Facebook friends to Xbox Live contacts. Whitten said, “It’s going to be great for current users, but it’s also great for new users who can see who is on Facebook and get their first 30 friends on Live.”…

Read the rest of the article on Fast Company.

For those with Xbox Live accounts, how do YOU feel about this?

Personally, I’m not all that thrilled on it. When I’m playing Live, I’m not really going through urges to go view my friends’ Facebook photos or anything like that. All I want to do is play my game with my friends, and occasionally watch movies. But hey, who knows… Guess we’ll see how it turns out upon release, right?

Twitter plans to test a new feature with a handful of people to group tweets, but it has some wondering if the company recently valued at $1 billion has become a follower rather than a leader.
Nick Kallen, lead on Twitter’s Lists project, wrote in a blog post that the idea is to allow people to create lists of Twitter accounts, from the funniest Twitter accounts to athletes, local businesses, and friends. “Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you’ve created are linked from your profile,” he wrote

People subscribe to the lists, which makes the feature a tool to discover potentially great tweets and accounts. Twitter lit up with tweets, asking Kallen at @nk for a spot to test the service.

Moscow, Russia-based freelance Web developer Konstantin Kovshenin sent a tweet to Kallen requesting a space on the debug team. “I’m dreaming of the retweets GUI for ages, and now lists, and you all missed me again,” he tweets.

Some point to the fact that Twitter is playing catch-up with third-party application developers such as TweetDeck, which allow people to create lists and follow tweets in separate columns. Connectual Managing Partner Aaron Goldman says the difference between TweetDeck and Twitter is that the latter will give people the option to make lists public. He says it’s not unlike WeFollow, which aggregates lists based on specific interest categories.

(Read the rest of the article on MediaPost here)

What do you think?

My dear little Sonny Moore has now started his own blog!

To check it out, visit skrillex.blogspot.com.

Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter, too!

I don’t remember if I posted this here or not… but in case you missed it, here is the video for G Tom Mac’s “Cry Little Sister”– the True Blood/Blood Swamp Version!

To keep up with G, follow him on Twitter!

Taking another page from Twitter, Facebook is giving users the ability to “tag” friends and Facebook Pages in status updates and posts using the “@” symbol as with mentions on the microblogging service.

Facebook has long allowed users to tag photos, videos and notes with friends’ names. The latest step extends the popular feature for identifying and referencing people to other parts of the social networking site.

“Now, when you are writing a status update and want to add a friend’s name to something you are posting, just include the “@” symbol beforehand,” wrote Facebook’s Tom Occhino in a post on the company blog today. “As you type the name of what you would like to reference, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications and Pages.”

The post appears without the @ symbol, but just with a link to a person’s profile or a Page or group. When you tag a friend or other recipient, they get a Wall post linking them to your update and receive a notification. They also have the option of removing tags of themselves from your posts. Likewise, you get a notification when someone tags you.

To read the rest of the article from MediaPost, click here.

What do YOU think about it?

Personally, I am wondering if this is now going to screw with the Twitter application on Facebook…