Spidered Web

I occasionally chide some of my fellow PR bloggers for their endless obsession with all the new digital gadgets and applications that pop incessantly with aplomb in their RSS readers.

I mean who, other than the micropersuader, can keep track of all the twitters, mash-ups and widgets to which the social media set gloms on for breathless, but often short-lived reverberation in the blogopshere?

The challenge for us PR types lies in understanding which among the myriad technologies can actually make a measurable and redeeming contribution to our clients’ communications and business objectives. Most of us get the virality of YouTube, del.icio.us and Flickr, but can Twitter be deployed for PR purposes?

We’ve seen the novelty of Second Life exploited by quick-hit PR types, but this only has produced many PR-wary avatars. How can we now show our faux faces in the virtual community so that our clients’ products, services and even their social or political agendas will be embraced by the virtual skeptics?

Anyway, after bloviating a bit, I arrive at the impetus for today’s post: a cool new Google Earth mash-up that’s being used to market the third installment of the Spiderman franchise, which bows in theatres May 4. Reported on the MIT AdvertisingLab blog, the application allows users:

“…fly around Peter Parker’s Manhattan with Google Earth. Go on a web-slinging tour of the city and check out some of the locations from the new movie drawn with Google SketchUp.”

Boeing, take note. There’s more out there than podcasting.