Popular ESPN sports reporter and blogger Erin Andrews is making headlines once again, this time for a unauthorized online video that shows her naked in her hotel room via peephole. From Manolith “Erin Andrews Peephole“

I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge sports fan, actually I’m not a sports fan at all. I enjoy the World Cup when it comes around, but obsessively following your favorite sports team and players always seems like a huge waste of bandwidth to me.

That being said, I do waste a ton of bandwidth (both literally and figuratively) tracking online trends.  During my travels ESPN reporter Erin Andrews has come up several times. Usually it involves how inappropriately hot she is, other times she’s getting hit in the face with objects.

Her latest online trend with this peephole video is going down in classic style. The nature of the content, and target audience isn’t hard to break down. I could unwrap the demographic like an onion, but it would likely offend a few of you. So instead let’s go through the typical life cycles of this type of juicy digital content.

1. Birth: These types of photos or videos are usually first published by some random site few people have heard about. The domain name is almost always horrible and difficult to spell. In this case it was NSFWpoa.com.
2. First Shots: Almost right away this site is hit hard by lawyers representing the party involved. Because these blogs are usually small home based operations they cave, who wants to get sued to death after all?
3. The Great Hunt: Once the original source removes the material, the hunt is on. Word begins to spread about its existence and the desperate masses converge trying to find those illusive copies. In almost every case, content like this is copied locally by someone, somewhere. It’s just not hosted anywhere yet. This forces users to go into a “deep search”, hitting some 10-20 sites in the process.
4. Opportunity: As major news outfits break the news, the spammers and adsense opportunists come out in droves. They create a huge network of performance focused (read: shit ton of ads) blog posts and lure in eager clickers. Done right they can easy bring in 100,000 or more visitors. They almost never include the actual content people are looking for.
5. Re Birth: Once a risky piece of content hits the net it will never disappear completely. It may not be easy to find but it’s out there. It lives on questionable file-sharing sites like RapidShare, in BitTorents and of course the dark corners of IRC. Those with the dedication (there is no shortage) will eventually find what they are looking for, satisfy the need and move on. In the process they begin to share the content with a broader audience through back channels. They use email, IM services and the classic “Hey dude, come over here and check this out” modes of distribution.
6. Retirement: Eventually (within 1-2 weeks) interest in the content dies down. Those who wanted to see it have, others have just given up. The content continues to get long tail like exposure, but never like its initial buzz.
7. Reincarnation: Hooray! There is life after death, even for content. Down the road (even years later) an event will trigger renewed interest in a video like this. This usually happens in the form of a radio broadcaster rehashing the story during a show. Howard Stern is probably the best known trigger for something like this.

So there you have it, a snapshot of what this video will go through. To those who landed here looking for the actual video I apologize. See Opportunity above, oh and happy hunting.

SHOCKING!

Some more docs over here.

TechCrunch is running one hell of story about confidential Twitter documents landing in their inbox. It’s not pretty, and I can’t help but feel bad for those hacked. An event like this is every geeks worst nightmare, at least it should be. I know it’s mine. As we put more and more sensitive information into the cloud (Google Apps in this case) this is going be a real problem.

So about those docs, Mike is going to publish some of them and likely take a lot of heat for doing so. TechCrunch will exclude anything too confidential (employee information, access codes etc), basically just use good judgement with the material. A lot of people are going to cry foul regardless, but I think you’ll see the released material is nothing earth shattering. If anything, more entertaining than damaging.

Judging by the bravado of this hacker, these docs are getting out one way or another. In fact the whole lot of them will probably circulate in some form. Mike is pushing the envelope here no doubt, and I can’t help but admire that. But really if he can some how stop all these docs from getting broader distribution, he would actually be helping Twitter.

So while we wait to see the docs in question, go grab some popcorn, oh and start deleting those uber sensitive docs from your Google Docs.

Update, are the docs:

• Final Tweet: Twitter TV show pitch
• Twitter’s forecast for users and revenue

I’m not sure if this is a mistweet or not, but it appears funny guy John Mayer mistakenly posted his cell number to Twitter. We called and got voicemail, here is what I said:

I hope he gets the msg and comes to pickup these damn dildos.

Live stream of the Michael Jackson Memorial

I’m no PR expert, certainly not when it comes to PR in Silicon Valley. I’m learning through, thanks in part to this article from the NY Times. So if you’re also confused, I’ve gone ahead and made up a little flowchart that breaks down the process.

Enjoy!

Click to ENLARGE

What Others are Saying:

• TechCrunch
• C.K. Sample III
• Scoble

Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin shocked the political community today when she held a press conference to announce that she was resigning as the governor, effective at the end of July.  The move comes at a time when two of Palin’s public health officials have resigned within days of each other.  The announcement was made from her home in Wasilla where Palin was surrounded by her family.

Via Manolith – Sarah Palin Turns In Resignation

For those interested, here is a copy of Michael Jackson’s Will.

Michael Jackson’s Will

Billy Mays passed away today, he was a great man.

In the above video Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur shares a new direction for his startup.

I agree, video conversations will definitely be part of the web, just not today. So instead Loic is focusing on his social application Seesmic Desktop and the upcoming web and iPhone versions. Smart move.

It’s not easy to adapt to the modern Internet; after all, it moves so fast. However it’s vital to know when to let some aspects of your business go, shifting to focus on what’s actually working.

And since the foundation of the social web has already been laid, it’s a better move to improve that experience, not add to it.

What Others are Saying:

• Mixergy
• CenterNetworks
• VentureBeat