Feed Editor Lite 28 Aug 2008 17:09:27 GMT With geeks and their lifestyles emerging as the new totems of coolness, marketers from a wide swath of companies are jumping on the trend for marketing opportunities, and there was perhaps no better target audience than the attendees at New York Comic Con. The annual gathering of comic-book and Sci-Fi aficionados and cognoscenti, which ended this past weekend, had Mattel Inc., Walt Disney Co.'s Marvel Entertainment, Nintendo Co., Barnes & Noble Inc., Scholastic Corp. and even General Motors Co. vying for the attention of about 116,000 fans, many of whom were dressed for the occasion. The people drawn to New York Comic Con "are people who are setting trends," said Dan Buckley, president and publisher of print, digital and TV at Marvel, in an interview. "They are the early adopters of technology. These are the people who start things and make them hot." 22 Oct 2012 16:00:26 GMT http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443624204578058751575262858.html 51534D53-00A2-477D-BB93-1235B9AFAF50 WSJ - October 15, 2012 As the holiday shopping season approaches, startups and retailers are gearing up for a very mobile holiday. Location-based shopping app Shopkick, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, and SV Angel, is the latest company to update its offerings in-time for the season. The startup has released a new version of its mobile app which adds digital catalogs, the ability to save product lists and more. For background, Shopkick’s free mobile app for iPhone or Android rewards consumers for walking into the store, as opposed to a more manual “check in” as with Foursquare. Instead, the app uses proprietary technology which involves in-store hardware that emits an inaudible signal that gets picked up by the shopper’s mobile phone. Shoppers are also rewarded for other actions, like scanning barcodes or trying on clothes, for example. Shopkick’s retail partners include big names like Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, Crate & Barrel, Old Navy, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Toys “R” Us, Simon Malls and others, as well as 40 brands (P&G, Unilever, Kraft, Colgate, Clorox, Disney, HP, Intel). 22 Oct 2012 15:59:10 GMT http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/17/shopkick-adds-digital-catalogs-saved-product-lists-and-more-to-location-based-shopping-app/ 10E3F9F5-A0F2-4B93-BC26-F21140C85EB5 TechCrunch - October 17, 2012 Q: In today’s depressed economy, how can publishers improve morale in the workplace and keep staff motivated and happy? Yasmeen Abutaleb, 20, junior, University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) Abutaleb is a journalism and microbiology major as well as editor-in-chief of The Diamondback, the university’s award-winning independent student daily newspaper. She also served as a business reporting intern for USA Today this past summer. A: When I filled out my college applications three years ago, I wrote that I wanted to go to medical school, but all of that quickly changed when I began writing for The Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s independent student newspaper. I was hooked. Journalism was my passion, and I was going to pursue that career no matter what it took. It may not be the highest paying field, but no journalist goes into this because of a fat paycheck. It may sound cliché, but that’s because it’s true: Becoming a journalist is about seeking the truth and working toward informing the public, even at the risk of upsetting some. And in a world where everything seems to be driven by generating as much revenue as possible, the seeking-truth mentality seems to get lost. As college students, we have hundreds of job possibilities, but it essentially boils down to two options: We can pick a career we’re passionate about that may not provide us with tons of spending money, or we can pursue something that will almost guarantee us a solid paycheck. Anyone pursuing a career in the writing or publishing industry almost certainly picked the first option. Working in today’s economy is no simple task. We’re constantly in a state of panic, it seems, and there’s always impending doom. 22 Oct 2012 15:58:13 GMT http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ASection/Article/Critical-Thinking--How-Can-Publishers-Improve-Newsroom-Morale- 933D3D51-575A-406B-8D3D-C7134829E10D Editor&Publisher - October 17, 2012 There are two ways for brands to react to negative feedback on their Facebook pages: They can go on the defensive, or they can have a little fun with it, taking into account that all publicity is good publicity. Bodyform chose the latter. British Facebook user Richard Neill posted the following rant on the sanitary napkin brand’s Facebook page Oct. 8 (unedited): As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things ,I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding , rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn’t I get to enjoy this time of joy and ‘blue water’ and wings !! Dam my penis!! Then I got a girlfriend, was so happy and couldn’t wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen …..you lied !! There was no joy , no extreme sports , no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no. Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving , gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin. Thanks for setting me up for a fall bodyform At the time of this post, Neill’s rant totaled 85,844 likes and 3,650 comments. 22 Oct 2012 15:56:34 GMT http://allfacebook.com/bodyform-video-response_b102293 81067264-1B08-4794-AA7F-2DA62B28CBAB AllFacebook - October 16, 2012 By now, we should all know that it’s dangerous to lie on a resume. But you know what? In the job search conversation between employers and candidates, a bit of fibbing sometimes happens on the employer side, too. Often, there’s no ill will intended. While there are a few bad apples in the bunch (as with the rest of humanity), most recruiters and HR folks are motivated by the desire to put the right people into the jobs they have to fill. The trouble is that overwork and overly large candidate pools can thwart good intentions -- so those little white lies meant to spare a job seeker’s feelings end up not doing the candidate any favors. We asked some recruiting experts to name the biggest lies recruiters tell, so you can spot the untruths and be ready to deal with them. 19 Oct 2012 15:55:27 GMT http://career-services.monster.com/yahooarticle/big-lies-recruiters-tell#WT.mc_n=yta_fpt_article_four_lies_recruiters_tell 9947BC0D-F887-4A70-A79C-F1BA6F853B03 Monster.com This year's presidential election was supposed to put a hold on retailers' usual onslaught of holiday ads. But one chain couldn't resist. In what appears to be the first opening salvo of holiday shopping spots, Target (TGT) aired a Christmas-themed TV commercial over the weekend (AdAge's report), eliciting a few "too-soon" cries from consumers who are just starting to think about their Halloween costumes. Though it feels as if they appear earlier and earlier each year, holiday TV ads typically start showing in early November. Online coupon site RetailMeNot.com recently issued a report dubbing the shopping season "OctoNovemCember," saying that 39% of consumers begin their holiday shopping before November, according to their survey. But snow and Christmas lights in mid-October? Just for the record, there are 37 days until Thanksgiving, and 70 until Christmas. 19 Oct 2012 15:54:30 GMT http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/target-decides-never-too-early-christmas-ads-190625179.html 6A5BD234-C24A-4AA1-9612-E2327E30EC86 YahooFinance - October 16, 2012 Actions have consequences, which is something Michael Brutsch is just starting to learn. Brutsch, aka "Violentacrez," was Reddit's biggest troll until Gawker exposed his true identify, revealing to the world the man behind questionable forums, such as r/creepshots -- a space dedicated to pictures of women unaware that their photographs had been taken. Now that the 49-year-old from Arlington, Texas, has been outed, his behavior has caught up with him. 19 Oct 2012 15:53:32 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/michael-brutsch-reddits-biggest-loses-job-identity-gawker_n_1967727.html?utm_hp_ref=technology 143B3AE4-67B3-49E9-98B5-86CA8DD6ED2F HuffingtonPost - October 16, 2012 Boxee, the streaming media company with the funnest name this side of Roku, has unveiled its latest Internet-connected player: It's called the Boxee TV, and it's a $99 box that contains an antenna to watch broadcast high-definition television and a DVR system that gives you unlimited online storage of your recordings. It is, according to Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, the first DVR system that has no storage limits whatsoever. Unlike other DVRs which store shows on a hard drive within the device, Boxee's "No Limits" DVR instantly uploads your recorded content via Wi-Fi or Ethernet cable into a storage locker on the Internet. You can access your recordings either on your television through the Boxee box, or on any Internet browser on your computer, tablet or smartphone on the Boxee website. With a monthly subscription fee, Boxee provides an infinite amount of online storage space for your recordings; if you choose not to subscribe to the service, you get a reduced amount of space. 19 Oct 2012 15:52:19 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/16/boxee-tv-media-player_n_1968378.html C63161C1-FEA1-4160-97F6-BAA63DF3C298 HuffingtonPost - October 16, 2012 If you’ve ever experienced the StumbleUpon effect, you know that counting clicks can be misleading. You wake up one morning to find that your traffic numbers have skyrocketed after your blog post became a featured item on the popular bookmarking site. 12,000 hits in 24 hours! Amazing. But the majority of those people only stayed as long as it took to hit the Stumble button again – maybe 2 seconds. No engagement, which means no ad views and they’re probably not coming back. 18 Oct 2012 15:51:03 GMT http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/10/youtube-to-rank-videos-by-time-watched-instead-of-number-of-clicks.html BFAAE530-FA98-4988-8D63-F48E04848AB9 MarketingPilgrim - October 12, 2012 Are marketers bad at math? The question arose in the context of an ID Media-sponsored panel session Thursday that explored Hispanic media issues and the growing Latino population in the United States. A pair of startling statistics was presented at the opening of the session: 16% of the U.S. population is currently Latino, while only 1% of U.S. marketing dollars are targeted toward reaching that population. Why the disconnect? Participating panelists agree that marketers aren’t mathematically challenged so much as they are risk-averse. But that fear of risk taking will hurt them in the future, as the Hispanic population is predicted to grow to one-third of the U.S. population by 2050, they said. “The future of your brands depends on it,” asserted Jose Garriga, vice president sales, Univision Sports. “Otherwise, you’re going to fail. It’s as simple as that.” 18 Oct 2012 15:50:16 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/185088/marketers-slow-to-embrace-hispanic-digital-media.html 30FDF115-1711-49AE-B250-657421F6D7C9 MediaPost - October 12, 2012 In March, a new start-up called Upworthy launched a site that promised to find viral content on important topics. It seemed an earnest aspiration — it’s like cat videos, but serious! — that was unlikely to work. Well, early traffic numbers have actually been rather good — Upworthy got six million unique visitors in September — so now investors, including venture capital firm NEA, are ponying up some money for a supersized seed round. Upworthy told us it has raised $4 million from NEA and a collection of angel investors including BuzzFeed co-founder John Johnson, Facebook co-founder and New Republic owner Chris Hughes and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. 18 Oct 2012 15:49:00 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121016/with-six-million-uniques-upworthy-gets-4m-from-nea-to-find-more-virals-that-arent-cat-videos/ 0DDCDC22-E66C-41E8-B5FE-92A1A7381FA4 AllThingsD - October 16, 2012 AUSTIN, Texas—Bobbi Duncan desperately wanted her father not to know she is lesbian. Facebook told him anyway. One evening last fall, the president of the Queer Chorus, a choir group she had recently joined, inadvertently exposed Ms. Duncan's sexuality to her nearly 200 Facebook friends, including her father, by adding her to a Facebook Inc. discussion group. That night, Ms. Duncan's father left vitriolic messages on her phone, demanding she renounce same-sex relationships, she says, and threatening to sever family ties. The 22-year-old cried all night on a friend's couch. "I felt like someone had hit me in the stomach with a bat," she says. 18 Oct 2012 15:47:58 GMT http://finance.yahoo.com/news/when-the-most-personal-secrets-get-outed-on-facebook.html 9D69D48C-04FA-43A1-A6B9-696AA68EB713 YahooFinance - October 15, 2012 While TV advertising revenue will continue to grow in the coming years, overall revenue from TV-related businesses will decline. Global TV advertising revenue will continue to climb, improving 21% from this year through 2016. But worldwide revenues -- now at 340 billion Euros -- are expected to have steady declines for the next four years, says Dublin, Ireland-based Research and Markets. The report hinted at a number of new media, cord-cutting and over-the-top services as the reasons for the decline: "It is particularly important to put into context the transformational movements in television, which have never been greater than they are today, in order to measure the revolution taking place." 18 Oct 2012 15:47:04 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/185160/forecast-tv-ad-revs-growing-overall-revs-to-dip.html 31CF84E2-4A0A-47CB-8A94-B959588D061B MediaPost - October 15, 2012 Most b-to-b e-news articles easily earn passing grades when evaluated on the basis of addressing high-impact topics, but once past that high point, delivery slides downhill. The biggest snag is absence of enterprise. And when it comes to basic execution, link usage and end-user input appear to be elusive qualities. These observations continue to be confirmed in e-news studies conducted by Editorial Solutions Inc. The initial project, launched two years ago, examined collective delivery of 446 articles by 50 b-to-b sites. Phase II -- another 50- site review covering 580 articles -- was completed early last year. Phase III is just past the review mid-point with 26 sites having been examined. Even at this stage, need for improvement is clearly reflected. Project methodology calls for examining at least 10 e-news articles posted on the review date -- usually tied to publication of a weekly or daily newsletter. Scoring considers execution of eight factors: (1) impact; (2) evidence of enterprise; (3) direct quote presence; (4) fast-paced intro; (5) Fog Index grade level; (6) average sentence length; (7) word count; and (8) embedded link usage. 17 Oct 2012 15:45:47 GMT http://abm.typepad.com/mediapace/2012/10/grading-b-to-b-newsletter-performance-many-fall-short-on-enterprise-link-usage-end-user-input.html 1F76DB52-1BB2-462F-8D26-9ED01565D96C AmericanBusinessMedia - October 10, 2012 We’ve always been told that one of the best things about building a large Facebook fan base is that you can build a community around your brand and share content with them rather than constantly having to pay for media. Brands have spent a fortune building up huge amounts of followers on their pages, but Facebook has been making some changes recently that are making a mockery of the whole notion of actually having people like your page. The bottom line is that Facebook is cutting back on the amount of updates people see from brands and it is probably to do with increasing its own revenues. Let’s have a look at what has been going on over the last month and what it means for your page. 17 Oct 2012 15:45:07 GMT http://www.simplyzesty.com/facebook/how-massive-changes-to-newsfeed-are-screwing-business-pages-on-facebook/ 47541933-52F4-4471-ADF6-636502353A17 SimplyZesty - October 14, 2012 People aren’t buying as many PCs as they used to. It’s a fact. . . according to Gartner, anyway. They say that computer shipments are down 8.3% worldwide and 13.8% in the US. Locally, Toshiba and Acer have taken the hardest hits. HP would have been in trouble except that they’re ahead of the game in worldwide sales. And there’s little Lenovo – the only manufacturer to show growth this past year. What’s going on? 17 Oct 2012 15:43:44 GMT http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/10/are-mobile-devices-cutting-into-pc-sales-or-are-we-too-broke-to-upgrade.html DE1ADA7F-2192-467A-8613-4F30EB375AF9 MarketingPilgrim - October 12, 2012 CHICAGO (Reuters) - Owners of Amazon.com's Kindle e-readers will receive refunds on past e-book purchases and see e-book prices drop if a judge approves legal settlements with publishers accused of fixing prices, according to the Internet retailer. Amazon told Kindle owners in emails on Saturday that they could receive a refund of between 30 cents and $1.32 for e-books they bought between April 2010 and May 2012. The books must have been published by three publishers who have agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused them of inflating e-book prices. The settlements are subject to court approval, and a hearing is scheduled for February. If approved, the settlements would also limit the publishers' ability to set future e-book prices, which should lead to lower costs for Kindle users, according to Amazon. "We think these settlements are a big win for customers and look forward to lowering prices on more Kindle books in the future," Amazon told customers in the emails. Amazon did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday about how many customers could be affected. 17 Oct 2012 15:41:55 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/14/kindle-ebook-refund-amazon_n_1964005.html 5385514E-532A-49C0-A24A-205BBF6E861D HuffingtonPost/Reuters - October 14, 2012 Once again, Coca-Cola was ranked the most valuable brand in the world, according to Interbrand, one of the nation’s top global brands experts. Apple, to the surprise of none, was very close behind. Considering the consumer electronics company’s growth, it will easily eclipse the long-time number one brand by next year. While some of the biggest brands — including Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), Samsung and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) – have grown their value by more than 20% since last year’s report, others have fallen precipitously. Goldman Sachs, still one of the world’s most valuable financial brands, lost 16% of its brand’s worth. BlackBerry lost nearly 40% of its brand’s value. Based on the Interbrand report, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Goldman, BlackBerry and eight other brands that lost the most value compared to last year. Several industries have grown substantially in the past year. Auto companies, still recovering from the recession, saw major gains in their brand value since the last report. Nine of the 11 large European, Japanese and American automakers on 100 most valuable brands list grew in value last year, up a combined 12%. 17 Oct 2012 15:40:35 GMT http://247wallst.com/2012/10/08/10-brands-that-lost-the-most-value/ F2924209-B458-4688-8D93-642A8EFFA439 247WallSt - October 8, 2012 Want to bring down a fraudulent financial company ? Talk to the bodyguard of Abraham Lincoln? Go to a "Mad Men"-era Beatles concert with Don and Sally Draper? Well, now you can, thanks to an innovative -- and peculiar -- new form of entertainment called transmedia. The word "transmedia," in the most literal sense, means that the content used in an experience crosses the boundaries of traditional media. But that isn't what makes these participatory entertainment experiences so special. The defining quality of today's transmedia is that it allows an unprecedented level of immersion to those who participate in the narrative. 16 Oct 2012 17:30:47 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/transmedia-immersive-experiences_n_1916500.html 2AB13EA2-73CE-44F9-A755-B51B86B50122 HuffingtonPost - October 11, 2012 If you and your company get an ugly divorce, does your company get to keep the friends? A controversial court ruling last week has shined a light on this made-in-the-digital age problem: Who owns Twitter followers, Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections when employers and employees part ways? With personal and professional lives mingled online as never before, a distinctly 21st Century fight is brewing over who owns your friendships. A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Oct. 4 rejected a claim by Linda Eagle that her prior employee had illegally accessed her LinkedIn account after she left her company, Edcomm. Workers there changed Eagle's password after her departure, preventing her from accessing critical contacts and, she claimed, damaged her ability to find new work. Advertise | AdChoices But the judge dismissed most elements of her lawsuit, giving fuel to those who argue that social media groomed at work belongs to employers. "The initial outcome of the case is very troubling," said Bradley Shear, a Washington, D.C.,-area lawyer who specializes in social media. It opens the door for employers to claim ownership of any social account -- even personal accounts -- because Eagle's account was created under her own name, he warned. "It demonstrates there's a need for people to become much more educated about this." 16 Oct 2012 17:29:11 GMT http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/12/14373762-when-you-and-employer-split-who-gets-your-friends-and-followers?lite 8D407D12-F5C7-4E38-A027-EC04C2D9C37A NBCNews - October 12, 2012 Moms have power and not just the power to make you clean your room or eat your veggies. Moms spend more than $2.1 trillion US dollars annually and you want some of that. To help you get it, BabyCenter LLC has put together a list of the five top trends you need to be aware of when marketing to mom. TREND #1: The Mobile State of Mom According to BabyCenter, 65% of moms have a smartphone. They use them to shop, bank, stay organized and they use them to take pictures and post on social media. If you’re not reaching out via mobile, you’re missing out. Minimally, you need a mobile version of your website. Or step up to a branded app and have you looked into mobile advertising yet? If mom is your target, it’s the way to go. 16 Oct 2012 17:25:16 GMT http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/10/5-trends-to-remember-when-marketing-to-moms.html E4DA4C1D-329F-4507-907E-80D05D702C86 MarketingPilgrim - October 11, 2012 NEW YORK (AP) -- Wendy's pigtails are getting a tweak. For the first time since 1983, the Dublin, Ohio-based fast food company is updating its logo in a move intended to signal its ongoing transformation into a higher-end hamburger chain. Instead of the boxy, old-fashioned lettering against a red-and-yellow backdrop, the pared down new look features the chain's name in a casual red font against a clean white backdrop. An image of the smiling, cartoon girl in red pigtails floats above — though this girl looks more vivid and not quite as childlike. In an interview with The Associated Press, CEO Emil Brolick said the current logo had served the company well for the past three decades, but that it was time for an update. Still, Brolick said he was encouraged by consumer feedback in testing dozens of new logo variations over the past several months. 16 Oct 2012 17:23:35 GMT http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wendys-pigtails-first-touchup-since-040522979.html 35B77E7B-FACE-4AA6-AF82-52844E118865 YahooFinance - October 11, 2012 Comcast contract workers in Seattle are taking bad customer service to a whole new level. Several residents in Seattle have complained that door-to-door cable service salesmen are making aggressive sales pitches that involve banging on doors, using threatening language and refusing to leave, King 5 News reported. Valerie Bauman felt so uneasy about the situation, she called the police. “You don’t have any right to put somebody in a position where you feel unsafe and threatened in your own home,” Valerie Bauman told King 5. She also turned to Twitter to share her experience: 15 Oct 2012 17:22:25 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/aggressive-comcast-workers_n_1949111.html D8560CC5-8715-4D06-AA42-CF512A4AAF4B HuffingtonPost - October 10, 2012 A new concept called ASETNIOP is a virtual touchscreen keyboard that uses just 10 keys, one for each of your fingers. When starting out, the keyboard and its “chords” for less-common letters can be displayed in a colorful format on the screen, but as users learn they can make the keys transparent or even invisible. Gizmag reports that a single press-and-release of each finger produces the most common letter that would usually be pressed by that finger on a standard QWERTY keyboard (i.e. left pinky = A, left ring = S, left middle = E and so on, hence the name “ASETNIOP”). The less-common letters are obtained by pressing “chords” of two or more fingers at the same time. The space bar is activated by one of your thumbs and the other thumb is used to activate the shift function or a predictive text/autofill feature. 15 Oct 2012 17:21:39 GMT http://www.psfk.com/2012/10/invisible-keyboard-easier-typing.html F43FCFCD-EBEE-4F49-96BD-B9D9C1BBC39B PSFK - October 10, 2012 Online and mobile digital cash network Dwolla is partnering with mobile banking and payments service provider mFoundry, the companies are announcing today at the BAI conference in Washington, D.C. This is Dwolla’s first publicly announced partnership with a financial service provider, and the deal opens its service up to mFoundry’s 800+ banks and credit unions using its cloud banking platform known as Fin.X. The two companies first began talking at the Finovate conference two years ago, but began to actively pursue this partnership following this year’s conference. While some may know of mFoundry as the company powering one of the biggest and most successful mobile payments program to date, Starbucks Card Mobile, the company is also the provider of a SaaS-based mobile banking solution to hundreds of institutions across the U.S. In December 2011, when the company had just raised another $18 million in funding, it reached over 500 banks and credit unions in the U.S. Today, it reaches 800, including Bank of America, PNC Bank, Zions Bank and more than one-third of the top 50 U.S. institutions. 15 Oct 2012 17:20:46 GMT http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/10/dwolla-partners-with-mfoundry-bringing-real-time-p2p-mobile-payment-capabilities-to-800-u-s-banks/ F7094998-4487-4BA2-8158-5C20AFE82F05 TechCrunch - October 10, 2012 Editorial calendars can help content managers, SEOs, and businesses organize content and blog posts efficiently. These flexible tools can turn your blog, social media, and outreach efforts into a content machine that regularly delivers intriguing pieces to your audience through a variety of channels. What are Editorial Calendars? Editorial calendars are a schedule of what topics to cover and when. A basic editorial calendar could be as basic as a theme for each month and a requirement to blog every Thursday, like this example for a plumbing site: hemes or recurring features can improve your content strategy in multiple ways. A monthly theme can recruit guest contributors. If you already have a few contributors, whether guests, employees, or freelancers, you can better match your resources to your theme. In our example, September’s “Back-to-school potty tips” can ask fans for their funniest potty-training moment, a guest blogger can contribute an article on ways to make potty training fun, and internal contributors can write about common problems that occur and how to fix them (i.e., diaper clogs a toilet, child fills toilet with paper so that it doesn’t flush). We chose something that doesn’t directly relate to plumbing. Why? This strategy builds a relationship with potential clients and can be used to build authority on home maintenance in general, plumbing and water management specifically. Alternatively, you can focus on activities that occur on a regular basis – weekly top 10 industry article summaries, monthly Facebook polls, or biweekly blog posts. Place each content channel in your calendar to remind you when each item is due. You can then choose to link your channels, leveraging the momentum from one channel to another and pulling the most productivity from a single piece. Additionally, readers come to expect their “Friday funny” or tip of the day. Consistency helps increase reader loyalty and interest. As your content strategy evolves, an editorial calendar can help organize your larger products, like a white paper launch: 15 Oct 2012 17:19:04 GMT http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2215885/How-to-Create-an-Editorial-Calendar-That-Will-Grow-Your-Audience 1B314E32-12FB-461C-BC51-15B3BE902EFE SearchEngineWatch - October 10, 2012 By now, most of us have grown used to the role social media plays in our lives: we message our friends on Twitter, share photos through Instagram or Facebook, and comment on our friends’ check-ins or look for travel tips on Foursquare. I am as immersed in this as anyone, since social media is a big part of how I do my job. But every now and then, I try to refresh my memory about how disruptive these technologies really are — and one of the most powerful aspects for me is the way that each of them can function as a kind of serendipity engine in our lives, if we want them to. In other words, they can randomize our experiences in ways that were never before possible, as they did for me on some recent trips to New York and San Francisco. One example: After arriving in New York for a conference and some meetings earlier this year, I decided to go for a stroll through The High Line park on the Lower West Side near the Meatpacking District — a wonderful park that used to be an elevated subway track and is now a huge green space that stretches for about 15 blocks. While I was walking, I decided to check in on Foursquare, since I had never been to the Highline before, and within a minute or two I had a message from someone who saw my check-in on Facebook: they were just a few blocks away and wanted to meet for a cup of coffee. 12 Oct 2012 17:18:26 GMT http://gigaom.com/2012/10/09/on-social-media-and-the-power-of-real-world-serendipity/ 21EC6B1F-9966-42C7-B181-6F39A4240CD8 GigaOm - October 9, 2012 Note: This post originally appeared on The Social Habit. Our new research debuts with our first subscriber’s webinar unveiling exclusive, new research on the social media space, on Oct. 11. Become a subscriber now and don’t miss the deepest look at social media usage among Americans 12 and older yet. With the advent of any new, exciting or sexy way of doing anything, the advocates for it will proclaim the old methods to be dead. The Internet was supposed to kill print. It hasn’t. Television was supposed to kill radio. It didn’t. Lately, social media has been said to be the next great “killer” driving things like email marketing to its death. That notion was largely behind my reason to pen The Rebel’s Guide To Email Marketing with DJ Waldow. Social will kill email? No, it won’t. Or at least that is our supposition. But why suppose? Why not ask? It’s kinda what we do here. In the latest edition of The Social Habit, we asked a representative sample of over 3,000 American social media users 12 and older if they read email from brands products or companies. Of those who responded, 61 percent say that yes, they indeed do read emails from such entities. Email marketing is dead? We think not. 12 Oct 2012 17:17:04 GMT http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/email-marketing-research/ 70DFF5A6-6F51-4C8A-9933-4570F3BD779D SocialMediaExplorer - October 4, 2012 If Twitter ends up running its own video service, this should help: The messaging service has bought Vine, a video-sharing start-up. We don’t have terms for the deal, but this looks a lot like an “acqhire”: Vine is a three-man company, based in New York, which formed in June. It has yet to launch publicly. (Update: Maybe not a garden-variety acqhire, we’re told. For instance, there’s a possibility that Vine could still live as a standalone service.) Twitter declined to comment. Vine’s landing page describes it as “the best way to capture and share video on your iPhone”, specializing in very short clips — a few seconds apiece. 12 Oct 2012 17:16:32 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121009/twitter-buys-vine-a-video-clip-company-that-never-launched/ F19ED8C1-4EC6-4B83-8B2C-64DC06D6DB7A AllThingsD - October 9, 2012 Are you getting the most out of Android? You may not know it, but some of the Google operating system’s most useful features may not be in plain view. This week, I gathered 10 tricks that could make using an Android device easier and more enjoyable. Since only a handful of devices currently run the latest Android operating system, known as Jelly Bean, I focused on features that work on the more prevalent version of Android known as Ice Cream Sandwich. Many of these tips work on devices that run Jelly Bean and some work on earlier versions of Android. Since there are so many Android phone models, names and wording may differ in some of these steps. 1. Easier Keyboarding To avoid switching from Android’s letter keyboard to its number and symbol keyboard, hold down the period key to see commonly used punctuation marks and symbols. Slide your finger to the menu that appears, lifting it to select the right key. If you can’t stand tapping on glass to type on a virtual keyboard, try not lifting your fingers as much. Many Android devices come preloaded with Swype, which lets you type by dragging your finger from one letter to the next; lift your finger up when the word ends. It’s remarkably accurate. To see if Swype is running on your device, spell out a word without lifting your finger. If connecting lines don’t appear between each letter, tap and hold the space bar to see the Select Input Method screen and choose Swype. You can still type the old way, tapping one key at a time. 2. Unlock With Your Face 12 Oct 2012 17:15:36 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121009/ten-ways-to-make-your-android-smarter/ 6A2972AE-019F-48E8-BD2E-A58D391E4D2A AllThingsD - October 9, 2012 South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Wednesday unveiled a deal with Anglo-Swedish music streaming service Spotify Ltd., that will allow direct streaming of music from Samsung television sets. The consumer electronics giant said that Samsung E-series television sets will be equipped with a software application adapted for television screens that allows music streaming from Spotify. 11 Oct 2012 17:14:56 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121010/spotify-signs-tv-deal-with-samsung/ 14F886DC-5571-4792-8096-0298F7AFC037 AllThingsD - October 10, 2012 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc's deal to purchase streaming movies from cable network Epix could transform the way such deals are done, thanks to a pay-for-performance sweetener that had not been previously disclosed. According to an executive directly involved in the deal, Amazon agreed to an earn-out provision payable to Epix over time if the number of subscribers to Amazon's Prime Instant Video service rises above a certain threshold. That comes in addition to a fixed upfront fee, the basis for most subscription video-on-demand deals up to this point. The generous terms of the deal, announced in September, provide the strongest evidence yet that Amazon is willing to pay up to be a player in this market as it faces a dwindling demand for DVDs - once its core entertainment offering - and tough competition for its Kindle Fire tablets. Film studios and TV network executives, meanwhile, now have a worthy foil to play against Netflix - once the only major streaming player - and possibly a template for future deals. 11 Oct 2012 17:13:47 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/amazon-netflix_n_1950079.html A4437BBB-9973-4884-83BB-E4164C01061F HuffingtonPost/Reuters - October 9, 2012 KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Say it's your birthday or you've just had a baby, maybe got engaged or bought your first house. If you're like many Americans, your friends are texting their congratulations, sending you an e-card or clicking "Like" on your Facebook wall. But how many will send a paper greeting card? "I'm really, really bad at it," said Melissa Uhl. The 25-year-old nanny from Kansas City, Mo., hears from friends largely through Facebook. "Maybe," she said, "an e-card from my mom." Once a staple of birthdays and holidays, paper greeting cards are fewer and farther between — now seen as something special, instead of something that's required. The cultural shift is a worrisome challenge for the nation's top card maker, Hallmark Cards Inc., which last week announced it will close a Kansas plant that made one-third of its greeting cards. In consolidating its Kansas operations, Kansas City-based Hallmark plans to shed 300 jobs. 11 Oct 2012 17:12:56 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/07/greeting-cards-social-media_n_1946216.html E85B9C87-C3DE-4C40-B60D-CDDC850E12CA HuffingtonPost - October 7, 2012 Hey, remember Reader’s Digest? It’s a magazine that I remember seeing on lots of shelves when I was growing up. Now Editor in Chief Liz Vaccariello tells me that the magazine has undergone a “digital transformation”, especially this year, and it’s finding a growing audience on tablets, with digital sales set to exceed newsstand copies by December. As with other large, general interest publications, Reader’s Digest has had a bumpy few years. Back in 2009, it went from 12 issues a year to 10, as well as cutting the guaranteed circulation from 8 million to 5.5 million. It even filed for bankruptcy. But the magazine is reversing that slide on at least one front — starting in January, it’s going back to a fully monthly schedule. Vaccariello says Reader’s Digest is also on-track to sell 211,000 digital issues in December, more than triple the 65,000 sold in August 2011 (though part of that growth may be due to the magazine’s traditional holiday season bump). It’s currently the number two magazine in the Kindle Store, and according to Vaccariello, the company has been told by Apple that it’s the highest grossing app in its “competitive set.” She even brought up the magazine’s social media presence, pointing to its 1.15 million Likes on Facebook and its Klout score of 88 (putting it behind, for example, the New Yorker’s score of 95, but hey, one point ahead of TechCrunch). 11 Oct 2012 17:12:17 GMT http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/readers-digest-tablet-numbers/ D54078E1-6FCB-4EB5-BEA4-86F22639A6FA TechCrunch - October 7, 2012 Gen Y is embracing science and entrepreneurism. PayScale and Millennial Branding's recent "Gen Y on the Job" study shows that Gen Y is more likely to choose the following college majors, relative to all U.S. workers: (1) neuroscience (1.95x more likely); (2) bioengineering (1.86x more likely); (3) entrepreneurial studies (1.82x more likely). The most surprising major that has recently exploded across the country is entrepreneurship. The Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit that supports entrepreneurship, estimates that more than 2,000 colleges and universities in the US offer a course in entrepreneurship. This is two thirds of the total amount of colleges in America and growing. A decade ago, no one would think that entrepreneurism would be something you could actually major in and now it's becoming very common. In my opinion, colleges are being forced to offer entrepreneurship majors, programs and courses in order to compete for top students from across the world. Gen Y is entrepreneurial and sees entrepreneurship as a means to creating a job in this bad economy. In a recent report by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, they found that the number of Gen Y's in the process of setting up their own companies increased by 50 percent in the last year alone. 10 Oct 2012 17:11:29 GMT http://blogs.payscale.com/salary_report_kris_cowan/2012/10/gen-y-report-gen-y-kids-are-nerdy-go-getters.html 799EFB99-0FC5-48A9-A22A-DACD4C3538E4 PayScale - October 2, 2012 You may or may not have noticed that sometimes Siri says crazy things. We recently noticed that Siri summarizes movies in a pretty funny way, too. Siri seems to have a distinct preference for Sci-Fi (who can blame her?), though she also has a few words to say about the classic Wizard of Oz, as well as Pixar's Toy Story. Siri also has several different answers when you ask her about The Matrix. Sadly, she has no thoughts on Gone With the Wind, nor can she tell us which version of Blade Runner is superior. Let us know if you find others! 10 Oct 2012 17:09:50 GMT http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/3/3449916/siris-strange-movie-reviews-its-tough-being-a-robot C69C671A-A3A0-486D-86C0-03039045EF2E TheVerge - October 3, 2012 In February, the online advertising industry declared that it would agree to honor "Do Not Track" options in Web browsers by the end of the year- a reversal of its previous opposition to the anti-tracking effort. Now, that year-end goal - announced with much fanfare at the White House - is looking less likely. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the industry "appears to be backing off from its commitments." 10 Oct 2012 17:08:55 GMT FTC Chairman: Advertisers Backing Away From 'Do Not Track' EC844EC3-BE35-4839-9B35-59694525ED8B HuffingtonPost - October 3, 2012 To do their job and to stay alive, troops need to be in shape. They need have the right equipment. And they also need to be psychologically sound. The problem is that soldiers aren’t traditionally very forthcoming when it comes to talking about their mental health. That’s why the U.S. Army is proposing to use computer games to help with the diagnosis of disorders such as PTSD and mild traumatic brain injuries. The Army has awarded contracts to the tune of about $100,000 each to three private companies: Vista Life Sciences, Empirical Technologies, and Aptima Inc. The firms have been tasked with creating a video game that could be downloaded onto a soldier’s smartphone and then beam data, based on the soldier’s performance, to a central computer. The idea is that the Army would then manipulate that data to determine the mental health and stability of a soldier. At the moment “there’re too many people coming back [from combat] that are not being diagnosed,” Michael Lutz from Vista Life Sciences, tells Danger Room. Lutz hopes to improve on that if he can develop a game that accurately charts mental health. 10 Oct 2012 17:07:46 GMT http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/pstd-game/ 23E37FE7-6D15-4893-8C4B-3146233A90EB Wired - October 4, 2012 I've spent the past 25 years talking to measurement types, and I've seen them all, from role models to rogues. Many of them resemble characters we love and hate from literature and the movies. Here is a sample of public relations and social media measurement character types. Role model or rogue: which one are you? Let's look at the role models first: 1. Lisbeth Salander, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" If there was only one literary character I could hire, it would be Lisbeth Salander. She is the perfect measurement geek. Her ability to find information anywhere about anything is the one superhero skill I'd love to have. More important, she understands both the strengths and limitations of technology. Of course, in order to solve the mystery, she ultimately needs Mikael Blomkvist's insight and gut. If you haven't read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," you might want to go read it and the rest of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series trilogy right now. 2. Hermione Granger, The "Harry Potter" series If you really want to know, this is who I want to be. I would love to have Hermione's discipline, talent, and enormous intellect. She is always the first in her class to master any spell. I love that the Harry Potter trio can only solve most of the conundrums they face with her help. If you share my admiration, study your textbooks. You too can work magic on those metrics. And here are the rogues: 3. The Ancient Mariner, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" 9 Oct 2012 17:07:16 GMT http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/45594.aspx DD558A46-D038-4F1A-A3B4-DFB1B487760D Ragan - October 5, 2012 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - After struggling for years, in late 2010, Driving Sports TV, a scrappy, two-person video production outfit led by Ryan Douthit, finally began supporting itself with advertising income from YouTube. It didn't matter that the channel's production set was simply a green screen in Douthit's cramped garage in a leafy Seattle suburb; Driving Sports TV's revenues were roaring like the rally car engines it featured. Achieving self-sufficiency on YouTube was Douthit's dream. Then it became a nightmare. Over the past year, Driving Sports TV's popularity and revenues have plummeted as much as 90 percent, Douthit said, as viewers abandoned him for slicker, more professional and better-marketed fare that's suddenly streaming onto YouTube. Douthit is among thousands of amateur video producers who helped Google-owned YouTube become the Internet's most popular video-sharing site. But YouTube's thriving amateur core now feels squeezed out by the site's sweeping transformation from user-generated clips to more professionally produced content, posing a potential dilemma for Google's long-term ambitions in online video. 9 Oct 2012 17:06:18 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/youtube-amateur-users_n_1940903.html 06E2FACC-7463-4D7D-892C-93E09394F4A8 HuffingtonPost/Reuters - October 4, 2012 Borrell Associates CEO Gordon Borrell believes print revenue will rise .5% next year, with smaller papers seeing the greatest improvement. “Mid-sized papers, those in the 50,000 to 100,000 circulation range, are expected to see mixed results, with revenue staying mostly flat,” reports Eric J. Smith. Borrell predicts large metro papers will continue to see declines in the 4% to 6% range. Borrell predicted that most markets will see local online ad revenue rise 30% in 2013. Targeted banner ads — those related to content readers care about — and video will be the primary drivers behind the rise, increasing 105% and 43% respectively. 9 Oct 2012 17:04:51 GMT http://jimromenesko.com/2012/10/04/an-upbeat-2013-report-for-smaller-newspapers/ DA3F854C-34A2-4FD6-9344-595CCB473D67 jimromenesko.com - October 4, 2012 Frustration among Web users interested in listening to music from Spotify or reading articles on TMZ continues to grow. Many want access to the free content, but prefer not to automatically broadcast their activity across social sites like Facebook. Earlier this year, Facebook finally cracked down on accidental sharing made possible through its Open Graph. Now Michael Olson, Janrain product manager, believes company engineers created an alternative to support OpenID and allow users to have more control with sharing content. They built an opt-out timer into the process. 8 Oct 2012 17:03:54 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184557/frictionless-sharing-may-give-brands-more-ad-optio.html 881B6707-8210-4DD4-A207-569F0CE01757 MediaPost - October 4, 2012 The Association of American Publishers has settled a long-running copyright infringement case with Google Inc., though the issue of whether Google had the right to digitally reproduce books in copyright is still being hashed out in court. The settlement disclosed Thursday allows U.S. publishers to remove digitized titles from the Google Library Project if they want. The settlement also “acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders.” Court approval isn’t necessary. The Authors Guild is still pursuing the legal case. Read the rest of this post on the original site » 8 Oct 2012 17:03:00 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121004/google-settles-copyright-case-with-publishers/ 6D84679C-B814-4D96-9A3C-F5DC578F1776 AllThingsD - October 4, 2012 Over the years, the integration versus unbundling debate has raged on within the advertising industry. One side would argue it's best to have all necessary expertise under one roof. Others would argue it's best to create or partner with entities that offer specialized focus. The integration camp would claim their approach provides for better collaboration. The unbundling camp would argue their approach provides better expertise and greater efficiencies. They are both right. And they are both wrong. Both specialization and integration have their benefits. But what's most important is working together in the best possible way to garner the best possible results for clients. If that's integration, great. If that's unbundling, great. We're not here to debate the finer points of either camp. We're here to offer up some real-world insight into how real-world agencies are tackling real-world problems. 8 Oct 2012 17:02:07 GMT http://www.adrants.com/2012/10/how-agencies-are-reinventing-the.php 34AE240A-B51E-42A2-9353-257B312708AC Adrants - October 4, 2012 You might want to think twice the next time you Like those Facebook pictures of your cousin's new baby or retweet something funny from your friends — especially if you live in the Philippines. According to the new Cybercrime Prevention Act, you can go to jail if you participate in cybersex, identity theft, hacking, spamming, pornography, and yes, even social media in the Philippines. The new law, signed into effect on September 12 by President Benigno Aquino III, is vague in its explanation of what online libel even means. "Who is liable? It isn't clear. The one who made the original post? The ones who share? The ones who tweet? Even you, if you post a simple, 'hehehe,' right? Does that mean you agree?" Filipino Senator Teofisto Guingona III said. 8 Oct 2012 17:01:25 GMT http://www.tecca.com/news/2012/10/03/facebook-like-jail/ 975357F2-157E-40C1-BDB6-97FC7258B26F Tecca.com - October 3, 2012 Coinciding with its announcement of reaching 1 billion users, Facebook today launched its first major ad campaign with a brand video called “The Things That Connect Us.” Facebook worked with Wieden & Kennedy, Portland to create the ad that will be promoted in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and Russia. “We believe that the need to open up and connect is what makes us human. It’s what brings us together. It’s what brings meaning to our lives,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in an announcement about the campaign. “Facebook isn’t the first thing people have made to help us connect. We belong to a rich tradition of people making things that bring us together.” The video, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, known for “Babel” and “Amores Perros,” draws comparisons between Facebook and things like chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges and other things that connect people. 5 Oct 2012 17:00:40 GMT http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/10/04/facebook-creates-first-major-ad-campaign-with-wieden-kennedy/ CB32C23F-B60F-49BB-A350-CE0BE5BDDD69 InsideFacebook - October 4, 2012 The New York Times has launched an HTML 5 web app (app.nytimes.com) for the iPad. The app is available to subscribers and organizes content in four ways: Times Wire, a live feed of the latest news and media; All Sections, which is pretty self-explanatory; Trending, a collection of the hottest Times articles on Twitter; and Today’s Paper, an assortment of the day’s offerings, just like they appear in print. By providing a way to get the Times on the iPad other than the Times’ app, it’s worth wondering if this is step one in the paper’s plan to abandon its iOS app completely. The Times has to pay Apple a whopping 30 percent of its app earnings for using Apple’s subscription service, so directing readers to a web app would cut that cost out. Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer for The New York Times Media Group, said in a statement that “We are working constantly to develop new products that distribute our content in innovative ways, and this web-based app is just one example of that.” 5 Oct 2012 17:00:00 GMT http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the-new-york-times-new-ipad-website-could-mean-end-of-apple-app_b69065 40A3583A-00B6-4BE7-BEDF-AEE9F50B8FE4 MediaBistro - October 2, 2012 Recent discussion among search marketers over whether lowering a keyword bid can lower quality score reminded me of a totally different topic: the way pharmaceutical companies sell us unnecessary and harmful drugs that keep us from getting healthy naturally. Drug companies make a lot of money by inventing diseases so they can sell drugs to people who would otherwise be considered healthy. For example, “high cholesterol” is now defined as a disease, rather than a risk factor associated with heart disease. Everyone with total cholesterol over 200 is encouraged by drug companies and doctors to take statin drugs to lower that number – despite the fact that lowering cholesterol artificially through drugs doesn’t seem to have any impact on heart disease or longevity. In other words, both your cholesterol level and your likelihood of developing heart disease depend on your lifestyle: diet, exercise, sleep, attitude, environment, and so on. Yet the marketing scare tactics have us all running around trying to manipulate our cholesterol through drugs with nasty side effects, rather than addressing the root causes of our declining health. Quality Scores are Like Cholesterol Numbers Similarly, AdWords advertisers tend to get paranoid about the quality scores of their keywords. And AdWords educators and consultants encourage this obsession by writing myriad blog posts deconstructing Google’s ad rank algorithm. Doing the math, they point out that the higher your quality score, the less you have to pay per click to outrank your competition. The logic seems airtight: if your quality score is 7, you should do everything you can to get it to a 10. And I was guilty of this until I got schooled in the subject by my colleague Joel McDonald. Quality scores, he avers, are to CPC what cholesterol is to heart health: A single number related to the end goal, but not a cause of it. 5 Oct 2012 16:59:00 GMT http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2214161/Why-Quality-Score-is-One-of-the-Least-Important-AdWords-Metrics 736F02AE-4D33-41BA-81CF-B14953DF9E51 SearchEngineWatch - October 3, 2012 Twitter is an indispensable tool for those who value real-time updates—and who needs those more than police departments? The Seattle PD has begun to see how it can best use Twitter through a service called “Tweets-by-beat”. It’s a virtual police blotter arranged by precinct in the interest of informing citizens about up-to-the-minute crime stats, enlightening the public on “the rhythms — and sometimes the tedium” of police work, and making the department itself as transparent as possible. (The project was created at least partly to control the PR damage stemming from a series of investigations that uncovered some bad behavior on the part of Seattle cops.) Tweets-by-beat utilizes the same elements that helped Twitter play such a central role in the recent events of the “Arab Spring”, when revolutionaries and their supporters used the service to figure out exactly what was happening where so they could better coordinate their immediate strategies. 5 Oct 2012 16:57:46 GMT http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/is-twitter-a-great-tool-for-police-departments_b46517 696C5B2B-2F06-45E9-B91E-2051A9A8AC24 PRNewser - October 2, 2012 Bots are becoming a big problem for online advertisers and social media. Ten percent of all online traffic is generated by bots, according to a study, and that means potentially $1.5 billion in ad spending will be wasted on the fake clickers. Solve Media, which makes an online advertising platform, noted in a new report that eMarketer predicts online display ad spend will reach $15.3 billion this year. But with a surge in bots, more and more of the clicks on ads are generated by software, not people. Solve Media says that since 2011, it has witnessed a 400 percent rise in "aberrant traffic" across online registration, voting, commenting, and contact services. Bots, computer programs that automate tasks, have become a big problem for online advertisers and publishers. They not only create fake clicks that cause companies to pay for ads that aren't actually seen by human beings and also generate false user accounts, inappropriate comments, and stolen content. 5 Oct 2012 16:56:57 GMT http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57523417-93/blame-bots-for-$1.5b-in-wasted-ad-spend-this-year/ F32CED0C-15EB-499A-AD26-26D84DCE985F Cnet - October 1, 2012 Most “social TV” apps want you to hang out with them instead of gabbing about TV on the social networks you’re already using, like Twitter. That seems like a nonstarter to me. Not so, says one of them. GetGlue, a start-up that’s been working on social TV for a couple of years, says that for some kinds of shows it has as least as much engagement as Twitter does — even though Twitter has many more users. GetGlue says that for many scripted TV shows — that is, excluding reality shows, news events, awards show or sports shows* — the company sees as much action, or more, than Twitter. 4 Oct 2012 16:56:26 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121003/what-if-social-tv-is-less-social-than-we-think/ 4C42CF5B-B04C-47ED-A43A-30ECC9B88339 AllThingsD - October 3, 2012 The Xbox 360 is a huge hit, and Microsoft is using it for more than just videogames: Redmond is using the gaming console to invade your living room, where it will serve up movies, TV shows and all sorts of other video goodies. That makes the device intensely interesting to all sorts of media and marketing companies, who figure it’s a good place to reach lots of Halo-playing dudes. And, according to L’Oreal, it’s a pretty good way to find women, too. Really? Really. The cosmetics giant is launching an app for the Xbox 360 Platform, where users can get fashion tips, watch video tutorials and buy product. Conde Nast’s Lucky magazine will help build out some of the content, which will be updated regularly and will run for at least a year. 4 Oct 2012 16:55:26 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121003/loreal-goes-looking-for-ladies-on-the-xbox/ 1BBEA94C-3E77-437D-8E1C-F65F5A10728A AllThingsD - October 3, 2012 Americans are fast turning to mobile devices to get their news, resulting in stunning viewership declines for CNN and existence-threatening readership drops for newspapers, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The winners: social network sites, online news and websites like the Drudge Report and Yahoo. In Pew's latest look at trends in news consumption, Americans said that they have turned away from CNN. In just four years, the percentage of those who say they watch CNN has dropped from 24 percent to 16 percent. Viewership of the competing cable giants, Fox and MSNBC, has remained fairly stable with Fox leading with 21 percent who say they watch it regularly and MSNBC third with 11 percent who say they watch it regularly. 4 Oct 2012 16:50:32 GMT http://washingtonexaminer.com/cnn-newspapers-hammered-as-americans-turn-to-mobile-news/article/2509299#.UGWfjI1lQ19 5F2BFA0C-5878-48D3-82E4-822626247AA2 WashingtonExaminer - September 28, 2012 Jennifer Bristol recently lost one of her oldest friends—thanks to a Facebook fight about pit bulls. The trouble started when she posted a newspaper article asserting that pit bulls were the most dangerous type of dog in New York City last year. "Please share thoughts… 833 incidents with pitties," wrote Ms. Bristol, a 40-year-old publicist and animal-welfare advocate in Manhattan. Her friends, many of whom also work in the animal-welfare world, quickly weighed in. One noted that "pit bull" isn't a single official breed; another said "irresponsible ownership" is often involved when dogs turn violent. Black Labs may actually bite more, someone else offered. [More from WSJ.com: Why Texting Turns Us Back Into Teenagers] Then a childhood pal of Ms. Bristol piped up with this: "Take it from an ER doctor… In 15 years of doing this I have yet to see a golden retriever bite that had to go to the operating room or killed its target." 4 Oct 2012 16:49:25 GMT http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-we-are-so-rude-online.html C937A189-3561-43EF-9B96-E098982409ED YahooFinance - October 2, 2012 Kid "hackers" are targeting common name Twitter accounts and reselling these accounts for a pretty penny. [Attention: The reporting below requires referencing profanities that may make readers uncomfortable.] In case you needed yet another example of why a simple password can come back to haunt you, a recently hacked Twitter account should have you heading over to your account settings. Daniel Dennis Jones, who had the Twitter handle @blanket, discovered that he was not able to access his account and realized that his password had been changed. After digging into the issue further, he found an alarming number of security flaws and lack of preventative measures on Twitter’s end. There’s a black market for Twitter handles, where commonly used names are being sold for less than $100 or simply being handed out to friends for what’s come to be known as the “lulz” — an Internet meme meaning “just for laughs.” Turns out, this is exactly what Jones fell victim to. Jones’ entry into the world of Twitter jacking began on Saturday when he was notified that his password had been changed. However, he was still logged into Twitter on his phone and eventually was able to gain access to his account via his email address only to realize that his user name was changed to the very NSFW handle @FuckMyAssHoleLO. Otherwise, nothing else on his account had been changed. After some digging, Jones had discovered an underground network of young kids who were jacking Twitter accounts with common (and short) names for pocket change. @blanket, he found was selling for only $60. Jones recounted his experience in Storify: “Twitternames that would have high value due to brevity: @hah, @captain, @craves, @abound, @grinding.” The medium for selling cracked passwords that @blanket and other hijacked accounts were being auctioned off was ironically through Twitter, and also a forum called ForumKorner. If you visit the forum, you’ll find anonymous individuals selling anything from jacked Minecraft accounts to Twitter usernames. So why is it so simple to crack Twitter passwords? First at fault might be the user. Simple passwords that can be found in the dictionary can be easily uncovered using the Brute Force Dictionary method. If you’re using a password like “Zebra” for example, it’s only a matter of time before the algorithm that rapidly inputs dictionary words to crack an account eventually enters the correct password, “Zebra.” But in Jones’ case, as he explained to Digital Trends, the password that he used was not as easy to crack as you might expect. His was a combination of a name and some numbers. 3 Oct 2012 16:48:34 GMT http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/blanket-has-twitter-account-stolen/ 335A12C1-5F60-40DD-A1BB-886975F17DFB DigitalTrends - October 1, 2012 For the final day of its 100-day campaign driven largely through Facebook, Oreo has installed a one-room ad agency in Times Square so it can take suggestions from the public and debut the final “Daily Twist” image on a digital billboard in New York City. Oreo has been celebrating its 100th anniversary with 100 days of images that use Oreos to represent current events and national celebrations, including the Mars Rover landing, the end of the NFL referee lockout, Shark Week and the Fourth of July. Often times, the images are decided on and created the same day they are released on Facebook and other social sites. 3 Oct 2012 16:47:46 GMT http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/10/02/oreo-takes-facebook-daily-twist-campaign-to-times-square-for-final-day/ 6BBFCA7B-B7DD-4505-B447-18C537EDAF8C InsideFacebook - October 2, 2012 When it comes to news consumption, mobile devices are expanding reach, rather than cannibalizing other media, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The proliferation of devices is creating a new kind of “multiplatform” news consumer embracing new technologies without necessarily abandoning older formats. More than half (54%) of tablet news users, for example, also get news on a smartphone, 77% do so on a desktop or laptop, and half read news in print. One-quarter get news from all four platforms. Also, 43% of tablet news consumers say their tablets add to the amount of time they spend with the news, and 31% say they are getting news from sources they didn’t use before. 3 Oct 2012 16:46:48 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184026/pew-mobile-expanding-news-consumption.html 7758E235-6E88-4B58-BBE0-4EBA064E67D6 MediaPost - October 1, 2012 Yahoo last week announced it had joined with Media.net to offer a new programme which enables publishers "to create and customise ad units that display relevant text ads from across the Yahoo Bing network". In a release, the companies outline that the programme "is designed to work for websites that have premium content, where placing contextually relevant ads could result in high user-engagement rates". Currently, it is available to publisher sites which see the majority of their traffic coming in from the UK, US or Canada. According to a report by the Drum the programme is "like Google's AdSense", in the way that "Yahoo will place text ads on small sites across the web, usually tied in with text found on a particular web page". The Drum adds that this follows the closure of Yahoo's "earlier text-based Publisher Network, also seen as Yahoo's answer to AdSense". 3 Oct 2012 16:45:58 GMT http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/yahoo-and-medianet-contextually-relevant-ads-for-publishers/s2/a550557/ 7B4A4B93-0944-4167-9137-72462F68A4C8 Journalism.co.uk - October 1, 2012 etting closer to delivering the holistic media measurement marketers want, Nielsen says it is leveraging its new online measurement service with its TV-based service cross-platform service. The two services: The Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, which has accreditation from the Media Ratings Council, and national TV-based Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign ratings. The new product is available today. 2 Oct 2012 16:44:51 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184180/nielsen-leverages-online-tv-metrics.html 1B0E5FC6-89D4-42F9-8701-D37E139151B8 MediaPost - October 1, 2012 Bloomberg TV is launching a new series, “Women to Watch,” that profiles the women that are closing the gender gap in the tech industry. The first report is slated for tomorrow night. Willow Bay, who is a Bloomberg special correspondent and the wife of Disney CEO Bob Iger, profiles several high-powered women in tech — including Carolyn Everson of Facebook and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of Accel Partners — and then hosts a roundtable discussion on the industry’s gender gap. “I want to shine a spotlight on a new generation of women, who are creating, funding and managing some of the hottest companies in tech today,” Bay told Glamour. “But I wanted to do more than share their professional stories. I wanted to share their personal journeys, too.” Watch a preview of the series here: 2 Oct 2012 16:39:43 GMT http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/bloomberg-tv-launches-women-to-watch-series_b147970 7FA12090-9C70-4DDA-88D8-22A4F636EED6 Bloomberg/TVnewser - September 30, 2012 I am not one to make announcements like this, and usually titles like this only mean the opposite. How many times have we seen the famous “SEO is Dead” title? A quick Google search for the term yields results less than one-week-old showing that people are still trying to claim that SEO is dead, or not dead, or they don’t really know, whatever. So while I’m completely aware of the risks of claiming that a marketing channel is dead, I’m making this announcement in a clear mind and support it by a little bit of data and few disclaimers. I believe that paid search for B2B companies is dead, or at least dying, and here’s why. 1 Oct 2012 17:22:28 GMT http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2213411/Why-Paid-Search-for-B2B-Companies-is-Dead-or-Dying 912E7A09-3D4D-4615-84C7-F1876131FD6A Search Engine Watch - October 1, 2012 ...is to avoid being one. At least among your most treasured peers. Surround yourself with people in at least as much of a hurry, at least as inquisitive, at least as focused as you are. Surround yourself by people who encourage and experience productive failure, and who are driven to make a difference. What's contagious: standards, ethics, culture, expectations and most of all, the bar for achievement. The crowd has more influence on us than we have on the crowd. It's not an accident that breakthroughs in music, architecture, software, athletics, fashion and cuisine come in bunches, often geographic. If you need to move, move. At least change how and where you exchange your electrons and your ideas. We all need leaders who challenge the tribe. We benefit even more when our leaders have peers who push them to be even better. 1 Oct 2012 17:16:56 GMT http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/10/the-easiest-way-to-thrive-as-an-outlier.html 19B8A6F0-B0C5-4C93-8921-FE73F3CDDE18 Bloomberg TV is launching a new series, “Women to Watch,” that profiles the women that are closing the gender gap in the tech industry. The first report is slated for tomorrow night. Willow Bay, who is a Bloomberg special correspondent and the wife of Disney CEO Bob Iger, profiles several high-powered women in tech — including Carolyn Everson of Facebook and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of Accel Partners — and then hosts a roundtable discussion on the industry’s gender gap. 1 Oct 2012 16:54:59 GMT http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/bloomberg-tv-launches-women-to-watch-series_b147970 A5CD4D9A-7A37-4234-A952-DD2D6D7180B0 TVNews - September 30, 2012 Getting closer to delivering the holistic media measurement marketers want, Nielsen says it is leveraging its new online measurement service with its TV-based service cross-platform service. The two services: The Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, which has accreditation from the Media Ratings Council, and national TV-based Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign ratings. The new product is available today. "This is the first time we can show the number of people who saw a campaign no matter where they lived," stated Steve Hasker, Nielsen's president of global media products and advertiser solution. Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184180/nielsen-leverages-online-tv-metrics.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mediadailynews+%28MediaPost+%7C+MediaDailyNews%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#ixzz283yvnNH5 1 Oct 2012 16:52:57 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184180/nielsen-leverages-online-tv-metrics.html 926A6FBE-0634-4168-A314-6526B0E51DB9 MediaPost - October 1, 2012 The new service, announced late last week, will give publishers a 'majority' share of revenues raised by user engagement with the advertising Yahoo last week announced it had joined with Media.net to offer a new programme which enables publishers "to create and customise ad units that display relevant text ads from across the Yahoo Bing network". In a release, the companies outline that the programme "is designed to work for websites that have premium content, where placing contextually relevant ads could result in high user-engagement rates". Currently, it is available to publisher sites which see the majority of their traffic coming in from the UK, US or Canada. According to a report by the Drum the programme is "like Google's AdSense", in the way that "Yahoo will place text ads on small sites across the web, usually tied in with text found on a particular web page". 1 Oct 2012 16:51:38 GMT http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/yahoo-and-medianet-contextually-relevant-ads-for-publishers/s2/a550557/ 5941BB2D-B893-4040-AEE7-99031DA53F7C Journalism.co.uk - October 1, 2012 When it comes to news consumption, mobile devices are expanding reach, rather than cannibalizing other media, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The proliferation of devices is creating a new kind of “multiplatform” news consumer embracing new technologies without necessarily abandoning older formats. More than half (54%) of tablet news users, for example, also get news on a smartphone, 77% do so on a desktop or laptop, and half read news in print. One-quarter get news from all four platforms. Also, 43% of tablet news consumers say their tablets add to the amount of time they spend with the news, and 31% say they are getting news from sources they didn’t use before. Nearly a quarter (22%) of adults now own some kind of tablet computer -- double the number a year ago (11%), and smartphone ownership has risen from 35% to 44%. As a result, half of all Americans now have mobile Internet access. Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184026/pew-mobile-expanding-news-consumption.html#ixzz283xn02Ph 1 Oct 2012 16:48:20 GMT http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184026/pew-mobile-expanding-news-consumption.html F69E12C9-83F1-4260-AA6B-192B8BF6CEFD MediaPost - October 1, 2012 Ten percent of all online traffic is generated by bots, according to a study, and that means potentially $1.5 billion in ad spending will be wasted on the fake clickers. Solve Media, which makes an online advertising platform, noted in a recent report that eMarketer predicts online display ad spend will reach $15.3 billion this year. But with a surge in bots, more and more of the clicks on ads are generated by software, not people. Solve Media says that since 2011, it has witnessed a 400 percent rise in "aberrant traffic" across online registration, voting, commenting, and contact services. Bots, computer programs that automate tasks, have become a big problem for online advertisers and publishers. They not only create fake clicks that cause companies to pay for ads that aren't actually seen by human beings and also generate false user accounts, inappropriate comments and stolen content. 1 Oct 2012 16:44:47 GMT http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57523417-93/blame-bots-for-$1.5b-in-wasted-ad-spend-this-year/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title 25C2C426-449F-4C04-AFC6-58B48E97CAFC CNet - October 1, 2012 The Compact Disc format changed the way we listened to music in the 1980s. Sony's first player, the CDP-101, went on sale on October 1, 1982, in Japan, and six months later here in the U.S. At $1,000 it was pretty expensive, but supplies were limited, so every one sold for full price. Before the CD arrived, the mainstream music market was split between vinyl albums/singles and cassettes, and strangely enough, it wasn't just CD's sound that won over the masses, it was digital audio's no-wear durability and noise-free sound that drew raves. Audiophiles' reactions were mixed; some loved CDs' clarity, but many thought CDs sounded cold and hard. I was in the second group and waited until 1989 before I bought my first CD player. (Credit: Sony ) The CD was an evolution of the analog video LaserDisc format that debuted in 1978. Prototype players were developed by Philips and Sony independently in the mid- and late 1970s. The two companies collaborated on the development of the CD. 1 Oct 2012 16:36:14 GMT http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57522445-47/it-was-30-years-ago-today-the-cd-began-to-play/ 9080D9FF-7A00-4F83-97EB-30C5D366F97D CNET - October 1, 2012 Iran’s news agency can take some comfort in the fact it isn’t the first to treat a story from The Onion as legitimate. That said, the organization did look kind of silly crowing about a poll that showed Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as more popular than Barack Obama among rural Whites. The story was, in fact, pulled nearly verbatim from an Onion piece. The Israeli embassy, in particular, had some fun at Iran’s expense, suggesting it might want to go with the real Gallup when looking for polling information. The Iranian news organization Fars apologized Sunday for mistaking satire for fact, as noted by Al-Jazeera English. 1 Oct 2012 16:29:35 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20120930/iran-news-agency-apologizes-for-taking-the-onion-seriously/ 2E2EF7B4-6E42-4E4C-BB3B-2507A4FFAF56 AllThingsD - September 30, 2012 Heads up: It’s “Advertising Week” in New York, which means that lots of ad-related companies are going to put out press releases with even less substance than usual. That said, we can at least do some scene-setting for you courtesy of new forecasts from ZenithOptimedia, the media buying/research group. The official headline today is that Zenith has cut its global ad spend forecast for the year from 4.3 percent to 3.8 percent, because a big chunk of Europe is melting down. 1 Oct 2012 16:28:31 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20121001/why-google-doesnt-own-the-next-chapter-in-web-ads/ 78F7C5A9-ADBE-4B50-A244-7F50D41ED87C AllThingsD - October 1, 2012 In the checkout stand at the grocery store, the front page of a publication is what grabs a reader’s attention. Online, headlines and high-quality images are still valuable, but the homepage is not always a reader’s first point of entry. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ also play their part in distributing the news. Do social shares actually lead to more page views? According to the Financial Times, they do. In the last six months, referral traffic to FT.com from social media sites has grown by 20 percent, and at a faster rate than any other traffic source, according to the publisher. The Financial Times reaches 3.9 million readers around the world on social media channels, 49 percent of whom are in the UK or the US, with the remaining 51 percent visiting the site from other countries. The UK-based publication’s customer and market insight team surveyed more than 1,000 readers in June and July 2012 to find out how they were using social media to catch up on the latest business news. 28 Sep 2012 15:35:07 GMT http://socialtimes.com/financial-times-calls-social-media-its-fastest-growing-source-of-referral-traffic_b105412 DB3124A9-4315-425E-BFF4-3B12BB27BED5 SocialTimes - September 25, 2012 The Forbes list is an annual ode to the American dream. The roster of richest Americans is filled with stories of entrepreneurs who started with little (or at least not a lot) and built a business and personal fortune through hard work, good ideas and perfect timing. Recent additions include Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (FB) and Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. But a new report claims that the story of self-made wealth on the Forbes list is just that -- a story. The report, from the left-leaning United for a Fair Economy, says that 40 percent of the Forbes 400 richest Americans inherited a "sizeable asset from a spouse or family member." 28 Sep 2012 15:33:46 GMT http://finance.yahoo.com/news/many-forbes-400-really-self-204426982.html 124FAB9D-F7FC-498A-A570-B2E4BC2A61E5 Yahoo Finance - September 25, 2012 In a hilarious court ruling, Apple got denied a trademark on its orange music icon (the one that's on iOS devices) because trademark judges said consumers might confuse the logo with one owned by MySpace. Hah! Yes, My_____ or ____space or whatever it's going to be these days, is screwing with Apple's plans. Take a look at the two logos to see if there are similarities beyond being orange: 28 Sep 2012 15:31:51 GMT http://gizmodo.com/5946470/apple-cant-trademark-its-music-icon-because-of-myspace E2BCF139-8B55-46DA-B77A-4B170304BEC6 Gizmodo - September 25, 2012 The 2000's were a simpler era. There was no timeline, MySpace was still the social network of choice, and everything on Facebook wasn’t broadcast to the world. So when people started crying foul that Facebook was publishing private messages, they were misguided. Facebook’s timeline shows wall posts from 2009 and before, when many people used the wall feature to post messages they believed only the recipient would read. TechCrunch first reported the “bug,” Monday. It’s been something that Facebook has had all along, but it came more into view with timeline, as it allows users to scroll through their profile by year. Facebook confirmed that these are not private messages, but simply evidence of a time when users posted to friends’ walls not knowing that later everything would become more public. 27 Sep 2012 15:41:41 GMT http://allfacebook.com/wall-posts-not-message-leak_b100471 2DFF14F9-80B8-4321-9014-7C70FF571154 AllFacebook - September 24, 2012 I can't believe I'm typing these words, but the new Myspace redesign is bringing sexy back. Gone are the glitter unicorn backgrounds that made the interface impossible to view or navigate. Gone, too, is the crappy logo that we all knew was just lipstick on a pig. The whole thing has been redesigned from the ground up. Justin Timberlake broke the news in a tweet that linked to a video introduction to the new interface, which seems well designed to handle the needs of musicians in particular. Timberlake is not just a hired spokesman for Myspace—he's part of the group of investors who completed the redesign. Word is he's also been beta-testing it with all his celebrity friends. "With every obstacle comes an opportunity, and I see this, as it speaks to somebody like me, as bridging the gap," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. 27 Sep 2012 15:40:12 GMT http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/justin-timberlake-tries-bring-sexy-back-myspace-143976 0BDC9311-4CDC-400B-84E4-83BCF07BFB4A AdWeek - September 25, 2012 Oh, it's ON. In one of the best brand-on-brand tweets ever, cinema chain AMC Theatres on Tuesday expressed its displeasure with Oreo after the Nabisco brand asked fans if they ever sneak cookies into a movie. "NOT COOL, COOKIE" admonished @AMCTheatres, which sparked an impressive 200-plus retweets. Credit for the post goes to Shane Adams, interactive marketing manager for AMC. While it's unlikely that this will spark any sort of long-term rivalry, it's still nice to see a company having some fun with another brand in the vein of Taco Bell and Old Spice. It's also a telling example of why @AMCTheatres has 136,000 Twitter followers, compared to Oreo's 53,000. Where are those 28 million Facebook fans to defend you now, Oreo? Hat tip to Deb Ng for sharing on Facebook. 27 Sep 2012 15:37:41 GMT http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/oreo-gets-dunked-one-best-twitter-replies-ever-143992 6E5A95A4-AF6A-465E-8165-03B72697ED55 AdWeek - September 26, 2012 Win a chance to play Words With Friends against John Legend, Snoop Lion or Eva Longoria — but not Alec Baldwin – in Zynga’s first-ever Words With Friends Celebrity Challenge. Zynga is partnering with American Express — and a few other celebrities — to give $500,000 to charity. The games begin tomorrow and end Oct. 3. 27 Sep 2012 15:36:20 GMT http://allthingsd.com/20120926/words-for-charity-zynga-launches-celebrity-mobile-games-challenge/ DB9D61E7-FA82-4158-9A7D-413A8062D4E1 AllThingsD - September 26, 2012 A new Gallup poll released on Friday found that U.S. distrust in the media hit a record high. The results are based off a survey distributed between Sept. 6-9, 2012. The results were consistent with years past, as distrust in the media typically increases during election years from the year before. However, this year's distrust was the highest since Gallup started recording results to this question in the 1990s. When asked "how much trust and confidence" respondents had when it came to the media "fully, accurately, and fairly" reporting the news, 60 percent of respondents said they do not trust the mass media "very much/at all." There is a 20 percent difference between negative and positive views of the media, with only 40 percent of respondents saying they trust the mass media a "great deal/fair amount." 26 Sep 2012 15:50:08 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/21/us-trust-media-record-high_n_1903176.html?utm_hp_ref=media E20A9F3B-AA74-487F-A7A6-D841DA3A84AA HuffingtonPost - September 21, 2012 "I work for Comcast, and it is ruining my life." That's the title of a new Reddit "Ask Me Anything" post that popped up on the public forum last night. The apparently very disgruntled cable employee, known on the site as "dienoxx," then spent hours answering a multitude of questions about his employer. The original post documents the employee's initial joy when he was first hired. "I thought it'd be the job of a life time [sic]," he writes. "I love the internet, computers, and love helping people. I'd like to think I'm a really nice computer guy." Sadly, the honeymoon period didn't last long. 26 Sep 2012 15:47:19 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/comcast-employee-tells-world-he-hates-his-job-reddit-ama_n_1897425.html CCEB1D29-B566-456B-AF98-818C91AA4C7B HuffingtonPost - September 20, 2012 In 1902, the caustic American satirist Ambrose Bierce – who once reviewed a book by observing that its covers were “too far apart” – proposed a new social convention. Modern life, he complained, involved being introduced to far too many people: you’d meet a friend in the street, then a friend of his would stroll by, and before you knew it you’d have a new, unasked-for acquaintance, with all the obligations that entailed. Bierce blamed the democratic spirit of the 20th century: in the older, more formal days, stricter rules governed who could form acquaintanceships with whom. “It is to be wished,” Bierce wrote, “that some great social force, say a billionaire, would set up a system of disintroductions.” He imagined a generous gent, a Mr White, resolving to disintroduce two friends of his, Mr Black and Mr Green. “Mr Black,” he might say, “knowing the low esteem in which you hold each other, I have the honour to disintroduce you from Mr Green.” Mr Black (bowing): “Sir, I have long desired your unacquaintance.” Mr Green: “Charmed to unmeet you, sir.” Mr White: “I’m sure you will become very good strangers.” It’s probably best, for Bierce’s sake, that he never lived to see Facebook’s People You May Know. Ever since the widespread adoption of email in the 1990s, in fact, the phenomenon he bemoaned has reached a scale he could never have imagined. Technology exposes us to vastly more opportunities for making social connections, and far more effortlessly than even a stroll down the street and a handshake. Yet an etiquette for terminating those links, should they outlive their mutual benefit – if they ever had any – remains as absent as ever. Even “unfriending” someone on Facebook, the closest equivalent to Bierce’s proposal, feels like delivering a slap in the face (and not even a well-timed slap, since you can’t be sure when they’ll find out). Facebook itself hates unfriending, for commercial reasons, and thus makes it easy to hide updates from tiresome contacts without their knowing – a deeply unsatisfactory arrangement that leaves you at constant risk of meeting someone face-to-face who assumes you must already know they’ve got engaged, or had another baby, or been dumped, or fired, or widowed. via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/09/unfriending-unfollowing-twitter-facebook.html#ixzz283i6BNMB 26 Sep 2012 15:45:30 GMT http://www.psfk.com/2012/09/unfriending-unfollowing-twitter-facebook.html 20204EE7-2CAD-464A-86AB-789CBBBED322 PSFK/TheGuardian September 14, 2012 The New York Times announced Thursday that the paper would end the increasingly common journalistic practice of "quote approval," which allowed news sources greater control over what quotes from interviews could appear in articles. In July, Times reporter Jeremy Peters called attention to quote approval in a story detailng how the Obama and Romney campaign wield control over the press corps covering them by rarely agreeing to on-the-record interviews. Instead, campaign officials asked reporters to speak "on background" under ground rules allowing them to later approve or disapprove which quotes could be used on the record. 26 Sep 2012 15:42:56 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/new-york-times-quote-approval-policy_n_1901440.html?utm_hp_ref=media 3445C4B4-91F9-49AA-A478-4B2CD2A50D53 HuffingtonPost - September 20, 2012 The only way to succeed in social media is to experiment A LOT! One out of ten tries will be successful and two out of three will be somewhat successful, says Garrett Graff, editor-in-chief, Washingtonian. A panel at the National Capital Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America on Sept. 18 confirms his statement. All the panelists look for ways to communicate the experience, especially in relation to food. 25 Sep 2012 15:58:00 GMT http://www.burrellesluce.com/freshideas/2012/09/experiment-in-social-media-by-communicating-the-experience/ 7FA55992-A26E-43AD-A0B5-EDEE675864AC BurrellesLuceFreshIdeas - September 25, 2012 A recent spate of fake online reviews is just the beginning of a trend, according to Gartner research. The book publishing world was roiled by the recent disclosure that self-published author John Locke bought Amazon reviews and author Stephen Leather used “sock puppet” accounts to build online buzz for his books, as GigaOM’s Laura Owen reported earlier. This kerfuffle comes after months of reports about too-good-or-bad-to-be-true restaurant and other reviews on Yelp and other online review sites. Well, get ready, because it’s just the beginning, according to Gartner, which expects that 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews will be paid for by companies within two years. As companies seek to cash in on consumer time spent on online review sites, Facebook and Twitter, it’s not surprising that companies would try to steer consumer perception of their products. 25 Sep 2012 15:56:15 GMT http://gigaom.com/2012/09/17/gartner-predicts-raft-of-fake-online-reviews-by-2014 FA4649AE-D098-4257-B5A2-020E93563BC5 GigaOm - September 17, 2012 What behavioral psychology reveals about your online photos: Comments and approval from other users end up being more important than the way you look. PROBLEM: Social networking profiles say much more about you than you can ever control. But the manufactured feel of most profiles can be transparent. The factors that shape people's perceptions of our attractiveness based on profiles photos are complicated -- they don't just take things at face value as they're thrown into the Facebook ether. In making oneself look good (or bad), what really influences people? METHODOLOGY: Researchers recruited 104 college students and showed them various Facebook photos of the same user. They tested for reactions to two variables: social cues, which the study's authors define as nuggets of personal and social information about the user that can be gleaned from the photo; and congruence, which was measured in terms of the positivity of the comments associated with each photo. 25 Sep 2012 15:54:36 GMT http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/study-social-cues-are-the-key-to-an-attractive-facebook-profile-picture/262421/ 749AE5C8-0807-4F9B-8FAD-A391CEAE34E3 TheAtlantic - September 17, 2012 Facebook gives users a plethora of emoticons, with everything from the basic smiley to Chuck Norris in play. But Facebook Content Strategist Amy Thibodeau warns that, just like with most good things, moderation is key when it comes to emoji. Although it may seem fine to soften the blow of a serious message, overuse of the emoticon can get out of hand quickly. Thibodeau says users should read messages out loud if they’re concerned about conveying the proper tone. This is a general grammar lesson, as not every message necessitates an exclamation mark. 21 Sep 2012 16:07:13 GMT http://allfacebook.com/facebook-messages-emoticons_b99773 D287E6EE-633B-4B04-9932-9A2AFBC955EE AllFacebook - September 14, 2012 A new report reveals that when it comes to worldwide unauthorized BitTorrent downloads, users in the United States are the most prolific, followed by those in the UK, Italy and Canada. When zooming in on the UK, citizens from Manchester download the most per head, with those from the capital beaten into a lowly 20th place. Interestingly the world’s most downloaded artist is very happy with his record, as is the UK’s number one, who’s filling venues despite 80% of his fans paying nothing for his music. The Digital Music Index is a report produced by Musicmetric, a data and analytics company that maps the trends and preferences of music fans around the world. The data collated and crunched is then supplied to the music industry to provide a better understanding of who and where fans are, and which artists are best engaging with fans through online channels. The first edition of the DMI has just been released and claims to be the most in-depth study ever of the global digital music landscape. 21 Sep 2012 16:05:49 GMT http://torrentfreak.com/top-bittorrent-countries-in-the-world-top-torrent-towns-in-the-uk-120917/ F63CD4CD-75C8-46B1-96EA-11F7568CBC44 torrentfreak.com - September 17, 2012 A common definition for infographics is graphical representations of information. They use graphs and charts to give consumers information on a complex topic. These representations are increasingly important with the explosion of Internet marketing and sales. Businesses have an increased demand for unique infographics that show case their unique place in the market. However, businesses are finding there are common problems with these graphical representations. Overcoming these problems is important for maximizing their impact. Here are seven of the problems to consider: 21 Sep 2012 16:04:31 GMT http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/45501.aspx 3DB1C3FB-602F-47F6-B31E-AF19185BE41F Ragan.com - September 17, 2012 Today is National Punctuation Day, a celebration of the little-known or forgotten information about those tiny dots, curves, and symbols that add so much character to our language. I thought I would contribute to National Punctuation Day by shedding light on some uses of punctuation placement that will help keep your grammar skills sharp in this age of texting and email. I discuss these issues--and many more--in my book The Big Ten of Grammar, which grammar enthusiasts will be happy to know is currently available free on the Kindle. 24 Sep 2012 16:02:16 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-b-bradshaw/national-punctuation-day-_b_1908136.html 183DF80D-EBC7-479F-969A-2EFF7D1DF128 HuffingtonPost - September 23, 2012 Though it’s incredibly valuable to be an early adopter of 2012's tech trends, it won’t hurt your company to be right on time with everyone else who is just discovering them now. It’s not too late to set up a presence on Pinterest and Instagram, and mobile apps aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. However, as always, new tech trends are on the horizon. From breakthrough online products to new features from established platforms, today’s startups should be jumping on the most promising of tomorrow’s trendy technology. I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs the following question: 24 Sep 2012 16:00:57 GMT http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/09/16/13-tech-trends-adopt-years-end/ D6223FDE-93E4-4833-9988-902F79D9BFFB TheNextWeb - September 13, 2012 Most people don't realize that Facebook (FB) can continue to monitor their internet activity, even if they are no longer logged into the site. Using "Facebook Connect," and other social plug-ins, Facebook is able to set up a cookie on any site that has a "Like" or "share" button, giving Facebook access to a startling amount of user information. Technically, the purpose of these plug-ins is to authenticate users, but it still has the ability to collect personal information such as the IP address of your computer, browsing data, outside login information, phone numbers, etc. The cookie, known as the "datr" cookie, has been a controversial topic for the past year. Using this cookie, among other things, Facebook knows what you have read on a web page even if you did not click the "like" button. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "for this to work, a person only needs to have logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month. The sites will continue to collect browsing data, even if the person closes their browser or turns off their computers." 20 Sep 2012 16:13:24 GMT http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-to-stop-facebook-from-tracking-you.html 91282123-4EA5-4446-B28F-2C16A784EF1F YahooFinance/BusinessInsider - September 13, 2012 WASHINGTON (AP) — So much for silence from telemarketers at the cherished dinner hour, or any other hour of the day. Complaints to the government are up sharply about unwanted phone solicitations, raising questions about how well the federal "do-not-call" registry is working. The biggest category of complaint: those annoying prerecorded pitches called robocalls that hawk everything from lower credit card interest rates to new windows for your home. Robert Madison, 43, of Shawnee, Kan., says he gets automated calls almost daily from "Ann, with credit services," offering to lower his interest rates. "I am completely fed up," Madison said in an interview. "I've repeatedly asked them to take me off their call list." When he challenges their right to call, the solicitors become combative, he said. "There's just nothing that they won't do." 20 Sep 2012 16:10:52 GMT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/16/do-not-call-complaints-robocall_n_1887822.html?utm_hp_ref=technology 7AF0F006-6060-4C1A-9065-7396D35A6852 HuffingtonPost - September 16, 2012 Forget raises and big bonuses, there are much simpler and cheaper ways to keep your employees happy. From offering benefits to giving them flexibility, companies can find a number of creative ways to keep their employees happy and productive. Here are a few to get you started. Offer room for growth Employees are unlikely to be happy if they continue to come to a job that offers no room for growth and advancement. A recent study proved this, showing that employees who felt they had no opportunity for advancement were not as happy in their jobs. As a result, those employees were more likely to begin searching for a new job. "We found that providing developmental support, such as training opportunities and career mentoring, to employees who do not believe there are attractive career opportunities for them within the company 20 Sep 2012 16:15:04 GMT http://news.yahoo.com/11-things-workers-happy-092718054.html 4DAB2AED-2BAE-4ACA-9056-4D16F7D068E6 YahooFinance - September 18, 2012 In early August, Forbes Leadership put out a call for nominations for our inaugural list of the best career websites, largely inspired by ForbesWoman’s annual list of Top 100 Websites For Women. We endeavored to assemble a comprehensive guide to smart and engaging sites. To accomplish this we challenged you, our readers, to submit your picks for the best online destinations for interns, job seekers, business owners, established professionals, retirees, and anyone else looking to launch, improve, advance, or change his or her career. 20 Sep 2012 16:09:03 GMT http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/09/14/the-top-75-websites-for-your-career/ 103D688C-F19A-4088-97BD-DF8192E8E93C Forbes - September 14, 2012