MySpace Events Platform Surpasses Evite: Things aren't so hot these days for former social networking Web site of choice MySpace, but one arena the News Corp. property is succeeding in is online invitations. Traffic reports show that the MySpace events platform has beat out Evite for the first time, with a reported 700,000 invitations sent out every day compared to Evite's 600,000. That doesn't mean MySpace is No. 1, though. Facebook doesn't publish exact figures for its events feature, but it did recently say that the site houses 2.5 million new events per month. [TechCrunch]
Ben Stein Misses Meetings: The American Spectator published an op-ed by former Nixon staffer, media personality, and renaissance man Ben Stein this week, in which he chides the federal government for trying to put the kibosh on business meetings. To add weight to his argument, Stein suggests that meetings of Congress and the Supreme Court are on the same level as business meetings and that eliminating events would do nothing but prolong the recession. Choice line: "Meetings and business travel did not cause this recession." [American Spectator]
Meetings Web Sites Turn to TripAdvisor: Traffic statistics for travel database TripAdvisor are enviable enough for a group of meeting and event review sites to adopt TripAdvisor's social model for success. I-Meet, MeetingsUniverse, and Meetings Intelligence Exchange are among the larger Web sites that have been encouraging meeting and event planners to rate and rank hotels and other vendors on how well they service the industry. [Successful Meetings]
Procter & Gamble Woos Female Bloggers: Cleaning products may not be the most glamorous items on display at a technology convention, but at last week's female-focused BlogHer 2009 conference in Chicago, Procter & Gamble got more than 500 attendees to check out its new Swiffer mop by hosting a pampering pop-up Lounge on the convention grounds. Instead of delving into the ethical gray area of underwriting travel costs for bloggers—a not uncommon practice—Procter & Gamble instead invested the promotional budget into an actual event. [NYT]
Game-Maker EA Fails With Comic-Con Stunt: One promotion that wasn't too well received at this year's San Diego Comic-Con was EA's "Sin to Win" contest, in which the company encouraged attendees to "commit an act of lust" with any "booth babe" to promote its latest title, Dante's Inferno. By inviting contestants to behave offensively with female staffers and document their acts on photo, the stunt didn't just alienate women attendees, it's given the company plenty of bad press. [Wired]
