Don McLean Does Social Media

During my early years of music discovery (we're talking like age 12), I came upon Don McLean's American Pie. I was drawn to song writing and lyrics so I wound up memorizing American Pie. I still know the first 2 verses but am fuzzy about the rest (kind of like those Dead shows that I wen to). American Pie's lyrics have been analyzed by some, considered a moving tribute by others, part of our musical and cultural heritage by some others, and the worst ever by yet some others. American Pie represented some of my more refined musical taste as I did spend some time deciding if my favorite band should be Black Sabbath, Survivor, or Journey with the quality of their logos and patches for jeans jackets being as much a factor as their actual music.

Luckily, I discovered U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and went on a predictable path of U2 to classic rock, reggae, and Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. I never made that well-traveled leap of Grateful Dead to jazz. Instead, I stayed with jam bands for a while, picked up some punk and ska tastes like the Pogues, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and the Clash before pit stopping on bluegrass. My 2 latest musical purchases were Hot Buttered Rum and the Dropkick Murphys so I'm still pretty much split between drunken Irish pirate music and bluegrass (drunken hillbilly music?). Like most white guys in my demographic, I get my hip hop recommendations from NPR (Yeah K'Naan!).

I digress about my musical tastes. Real purpose of this post is about a video clip of the digital media age and advertising story over the last 2 years that is sung to the tune of American Pie. I don't know enough about media history but this Mad Avenue Blues video got me curious with some great lines like "There we were all in one place/Our business models lost in space".

If anyone watches this and fully understands it, can you help me with the following questions in the comment section? Here's a reminder of my Luddite tendencies around social media for context about why I'm asking these questions.

• It looks like the 2nd half of 2007 was great for digital advertising but than the "buyers began to have some doubts?" What time period does this cover and what was going on? Who had the "clout"?
  
• Who is Sir Martin and what was his role with Facebook and Myspace?
• What are TimeWarner and Comcast doing or not doing well specifically?
• "The buyers [Omicrom, WPP] with the biggest fees/Were brought to their knees" Were they bypassed/tech made their role irrelevant?