CEO Bloggers' Club

media trend links

• Generating Cash From User-Generated Media - Executives from Blinkx, MTV Networks, Revver, and Yahoo talk about how to make money from user-crafted content. - Red Herring
• The New World of e-Lections - "If you think of the Internet as a city, those social networking sites are virtual town squares where people spend time, where they share ideas, show their opinion, share information," said Keith Dailey, press secretary for Strickland's campaign. - Adam Sichko @ Post Dispatch
• Researching the Ebb & Flow of Brands - But in a world of spreading social influence due to the internet, brands are sets of values and ideas whose importance ebbs and flows among communities. - Marketing Web
• Do-It-Yourselfers Coming Out of the Woodwork - the 2.0 of real estate: The DIY - do-it-yourself - category is picking up some of the slack in the renovation market left by lower home sales, say national home improvement retailers and suppliers. New materials and products are making it easier for even shop class dropouts to achieve passable results. -Joanne Cleaver @ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
• Don't Get Bogged Down By Employee Blogging - Some employers are finding blogs are useful, too. For example, General Motors Corp. has a Web site called fyi.gmblogs.com, which includes employee blogs, complete with posts from visitors. One recent post by Brian Akre, director of the Executive Communications & Global Corporate News Department at GM, tries to debunk a persistent story about the Chevrolet Nova, a compact car that supposedly sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries in the 1970s because "no va" means "no go" in Spanish.-Wanda L. Ellert and Judson L. Hand @ New York Law Journal
• YouTube to Redefine TV Ad Industry? - YouTube will eventually be "sued into oblivion" due to copyright violations, predicts dot-com veteran Mark Cuban. - Forbes
• Online Marketing: What Works? - Amsterdam's Picnic '06 conference offered insights into advertising's future, from creating Internet buzz to social networking for customers - BusinessWeek
• YouTube's Video Poker - In an interview this week, Mr. Hurley, not surprisingly, portrayed himself as mainly trying to improve the site for its users while working to find arrangements that will satisfy Hollywood. - Saul Hansel @ New York Times
• ‘Long Tail' Author Shakes Up Retailing at NextFest - Wired's reporters and editors handpicked the exhibitors for their innovations in areas like design, environmentally friendly living, and social games. - Phil Wahba @ New York Sun

media trend links

• The Rebranding of the British Conservatives - David Cameron has the best chance in a decade to put the party of Margaret Thatcher back in government, thank to his reasoning that by shifting Britain's Conservative Party to the center of the political spectrum, he will pick up swing voters who previously supported the Labour Party. - Aaron Patrick @ The Wall Street Journal
• Google Office - Google will try to capitalize on collaboration options that Microsoft Office is lacking. But Microsoft has its own plans to shore up the vulnerability. - Aaron Ricadela @ Information Week
• Burnishing A Broken Board's Image - Fixing the Hewlett-Packard board in the wake of the current scandal will require a leader who can bring together a cohesive team—to start - By Jena McGregor @ BusinessWeek
• Web 2.0 Business Models Affecting Enterprise Systems Design - "Web 2.0 is really the acceleration of transformation," he said. "It's not that users got smarter or more social. It's that technologists figured out what consumers wanted." -Wyatt Kash @ GCN
• Bad Things Happen To Brands When Companies Run Out of Ideas - "Almost every category of consumer goods is in the process of forming into pools at both ends of the market," writes author Michael J. Silverstein in his new book, Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer. "In category after category, premium entries are growing, bargain brands are stealing share, and the middle is shrinking. " -Tom Asacker @ MarketingProfs
• How to Talk With Your Customers - A recent In Focus iMediaconnection did about what brands were doing with MySpace struck a chord (or nerve, as the case may be) with some of our readers-- to some, MySpace didn't count as true conversational marketing. -Nanette Marcus
• Mixed Outlook for US Online Spending - The US online advertising market continued its rapid growth in the first half of this year, although some changes in buying patterns, together with Yahoo’s recent warning about an advertising slowdown, could point to a more mixed picture ahead, according to analysts. - Richard Waters @ The Financial Times
• Advertisers Seek Safe Haven on User Sites - To overcome reluctance, MySpace has created several content channels, on topics from sports to books to movies, which assures brands they will not appear adjacent to racy MySpace profiles. It also sells placements on entry pages, where users tinker with their profiles. - Brian Morrissey @ AdWeek

media trend links

• The Image Problem - Back in the 1990s Cornell regularly ranked in the top ten, but after U.S. News changed their system, we fell substantially. Cornell is heavily penalized for its large classes, relatively high admittance rates and the low test scores of our matriculants. Mitch Fagan @ The Cornell Daily Sun
• Big Advertisers Chase Small Video Bloggers - Two prominent video bloggers -- former Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon and digital and performance artist Ze Frank -- have scored separate sponsorship deals with Ford Motor Company and GoDaddy.com, respectively, a clear suggestion that marketers are targeting new forms of online media in search of eyeballs. -Ryan Naraine @ ClickZ
• Google: Chaos By Design - The inside story of disorder, disarray, and uncertainty at Google. And why it's all part of the plan. (They hope.) - Adam Lashinsky @ Fortune
• Social Networking Sites Beginning to Drive Shopping Visits - Need shoppers? Hire a search engine or a social networking site? Hitwise recently announced that Google was the top U.S. search engine responsible for 14.93 percent of U.S. upstream visits to the Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006, while Yahoo! Search was the second most popular, accounting for 4.69 percent of upstream visits for that week. Meanwhile, Social networking site MySpace.com accounted for 2.53 percent of all U.S. upstream visits to Shopping and Classifieds category for the week ending August 26, 2006, up from 1.28 percent six months ago.- The Center for Media Research
• Podcast Customer Acquisition Strategies - From the ad:tech Chicago session "Customer Acquisition Strategies Revealed" with panelists from Sony Electronics, AllState and University of Phoenix. - imediaConnection
• Blog Ads Must Get Buzz To Work - Social networks are especially critical of bad ads, since reviews of poor or out-of-touch creative can be shared virally, said panelist Brian Clark, president of ad agency GMD Studios. "Social networking is far more punishing of bad creative," he said. - Shankar Gupta @ MediaPost
• How to Get Attention In a New Media World - Featuring blogger, Steve Rubel, the WSJ covers how to use New Media in the attention economy - Gwendlyn Bounds @ Wall Street Journal
• Can Blackberry Hook Japan's Market? - It's a great idea for RIM to reach out to Japan (as a stepping stone for U.S. corporate workers on their way to China), but the question is, are the tech savvy Japanese going to like the Blackberry? - Amy Chozick @ The Wall Street Journal
• Democratic Party - Social networking and homegrown content have generated a flood of creativity online, leaving Hollywood looking for ways to monetize the self-expression trend. - Diane Mermigas @ Hollywood Reporter
• Click Fraud: The Dark Side of Advertising - Randall S. Hansen, a professor of marketing at Stetson University in Deland, Fla., said: "We are just beginning to see more and more mainstream advertisers make the Internet a bigger part of their ad budget, and move dollars from print and TV," says Hansen, who has held marketing jobs at The New Yorker and People magazines. "But if we can't fix this click-fraud problem, then it is going to scare away the further development of the Internet as an advertising medium. If there is an undercurrent of fraud, then why should a large advertiser be losing $1 million, or maybe not know how much it is losing?" -Brian Grow and Ben Elgin, with Moira Herbst @ BusinessWeek

media trend links

• Young Internet Producers Bankrolled, Seeking Act II - Silicon Valley is awash in serial entrepreneurs, those who start a company, run it for a while, and then after success, failure or something in between, move on and start again - Miguel Helft @ New York Times
• Is This The Future of Advertising? - An attractive woman comes up to you and asks if you'd be kind enough to take her photo in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. Naturally, you agree. As you're lining up a good shot, you can't help but notice the camera's sleek, lightweight design. Sucker. - Drake Bennett @ The Boston Globe
• Click Fraud Is Growing On The Web - Pay-per-click advertising fraud is becoming more pervasive as spurious clicks can be generated through automated programs. - Karen Bannan @ The New York Times
• Wikipedia Founder Looks to Add Accountability, End Anarchy - Larry Sanger, who has had limited involvement in Wikipedia for the past few years, is working on a parallel project that would take a copy of Wikipedia's more than 1 million English-language articles and put them under the control of editors who post their names and credentials. - San Diego Union Tribune
• Organic SEO Or Pay-Per-Click Advertising - Which Should You Choose? - In an ideal world, you would use both strategically to maximize your site's profile. However, budgetary constraints often make this impossible, and trying to do both on a limited budget or with minimal resources can result in neither campaign producing ideal results. In this case, it's usually better to focus on one or the other. But which is best for you? - Scott Buresh @ The American Chronicle
• Where All the Beautiful People Are Ho-Hum - In an era when anyone can have a celebrity following (at least a small one), his popularity raises questions about the meaning of fame: If someone is celebrated for not being a celebrity, does celebrity itself still have any value? -New York Times
• Virtual Fashion - in the fast-growing virtual world of Second Life, many players are too enmeshed in the game's online fashion community to dissect what Vera Wang or Baby Phat sent down the catwalk in New York. - Andrew Lavallee @ Wall Street Journal
• Future Internet to Create 'Virtual Addicts'? - If people find social sites like MySpace and online role-playing games engrossing now, just wait. By 2020, people will spend more time online in connected, virtual worlds that will boost productivity but may lead to addiction problems. - Mark Walsh @ MediaPost
• Boomers: A Web Marketing Bonanza - only a few smart Internet sites have figured out how to appeal to a large constituency with time to spend and money to burn - Olga Khariff @ BusinessWeek
• Social Networking Sites Keep Local Flavor While Going Global - While companies like MySpace and Facebook have dominated the American social networking scene, several homegrown sites in Asia have been independently experiencing the same kind of success. Now, East and West are trading places. - James Shih @ International Herald Tribune

media trend links

• The Impact of Social Networking On Society - via New Scientist article: "I Saw The Best Minds of My Generation Destroyed by Google" - Slashdot
• Meet Google's Credibility Cop - Google's reputation and profits rest on the belief that its search results are relevant--untainted by hucksters, spammers and other charlatans.Standing guard at the company's gates of credibility is a former Defense Department intern who learned his craft blocking unwanted porn from showing up in Google's search results - John McCormick and David Greising @ Chicago Tribune
• Critiquing the Long Tail - This week Chris Anderson was interviewed by Jack Trout about the Lee Gomes critique of the Long Tail. What was most interesting was the discussion about the "old school" business heads, and traditional companies who are staring at the pages of the Long tail, wondering why it's a best seller and asking "what the heck do I do with this stuff." As producer of the program, I was a fly on the wall. Though I've read the book, followed the discussions online and read a few of the research papers; I found several good "Ah HA's" in the interview - Errol Smith @ Trout & Partners
• What Ever Happened to 'Small' Business? - The term "small business" doesn't mean what it used to. Small businesspeople today have to deal with the same issues big businesses do—global markets, complex supply chains, and fluctuating currencies—and they have to do it without an army of MBAs to support them - Keith McFarland @ BusinessWeek
• Marketing On Google: Not Just Text Anymore - Just as Madison Avenue once helped convince consumers that orange juice is “not just for breakfast anymore,” Google is turning to Madison Avenue to help convince marketers that Google is not just for text advertisements in tiny type that appear adjacent to the results of searches on google.com. - Stuart Elliot @ The New York Times
• Wikipedia Takes Fork In Road - With real-name logins and credential checks, Citizendium will place value on expertise - Jack Schofield @ Guardian Unlimited
• New Approach To Ads Let You Do The Work - Companies have seen how powerful it can be when consumers tell each other about a product they love by sending e-mails or posting endorsements. But let a marketer try to sneak in its own message that way and the backlash can be stinging. The Internet is just as effective in distributing the bad comments as the good. - Teresa F. Lindeman @ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Interview With Donny Deutsch - A maverick advertising executive turned into a talk show host, Donny Deutsch gained a reputation for taking creative risks when he started out in the ad game. He transformed his father's small company into a multibillion-dollar, full-service agency with bold commercials that caught the imagination of the general public and political strategists alike. He built his roster of clients to include IKEA, Chevrolet, Revlon, Snapple, MCI, Coors, Bank of America, Tylenol, and the 1992 Clinton/Gore election campaign. - Ask Men
• WebStore By Amazon Launched - Amazon's new small business service allows businesses to create their own branded e-commerce stores, selling Amazon.com inventory alongside their own products (for a 7 percent commission). -Shankar Gupta @ MediaPost
• Some Hot Recorders for Some Cool Podcasts - Broadcasters, musicians and serious audiophiles have long been consumers of high-end portable audio gear, but podcasting has created an expanded market for this equipment. - Larry Magid @ New York Times
• Role of Professional Blogging Consultants - via Digital Inspiration

media trend links

• Companies Wake Up to Blogs Barking - Mostly, the contents of such sites are anecdotal. But they can become a significant rallying point for a company's critics - Andrew Clark @ Guardian Unlimited
• In-Game Advertising - Advertisers earn extra lives for their clients inside video games, but keeping score remains elusive. - Lora Kolodny @ Hollywood Reporter
• Viral Ads: It's An Epidemic - Hit videos reach millions. But, can this ever be a real business? - Devin Leonard @ Fortune
• The E-Commerce Pendulum - Historically, online commerce experiences were modeled after physical shopping. Now there is evi-dence the pendulum is swinging the other way, and consumers are expecting online features and innovations in physical stores - BrandWeek
• Brands Participate in Virtual MTV Shows - MTV is planning to introduce Virtual Laguna Beach, an online service that promotes the show through three-dimensional characters fans can play, The New York Times reported. - Roger Park @ imedia connection
• Better Price & WOM Prompt Brand Jumping - College students are also multi-media multi-taskers. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they use a computer while watching television, and 60.2 percent say they typically use a computer when listening to the radio. - MediaBuyerPlanner
• Time To Get On Your Soapbox - MSN is jumping on the user-generated video bandwagon with the beta-launch of Soapbox on MSN Video, a new Web platform designed for users to upload personal video clips - Mike Shields @ MediaWeek
• Will Video Save the Agency Star? - But far from the too-easy conclusion that ad agencies will soon ride into the sunset (aided by the inevitable collapse of the :30 commercial), I predict they're about to experience a reincarnation, renewal, and renaissance. Online video, I submit, is the catalyst and redeemer. - Pete Blackshaw @ ClickZ
• The Social Bookmarking Faceoff - The current social web era started with del.icio.us and the advent of social bookmarking. The simple concept of a tag has turned our interactions with the web upside down. The idea of being able to store your bookmarks online, share them with everyone and see what others have bookmarked - triggered the sequence of events that resulted in today's rich and social web ecosystem. - Alex Iskold @ Read/Write Web
• Top 10 Tips For Designing A Small Business Logo - For small businesses, creating a logo is one of the most important stages of a company’s infancy. A professional image can take you a long way, distinguishing your company from the competition. - Russel Arsenault @ Logo Bee
• Crisis Containment Could Empower Brands - The "Secure the Trust of Your Brand: How Security and IT Integrity Influence Corporate Brands" report released by the CMO Council looks at how marketers address security issues and prepare for crisis containment. - Enid Burns @ ClickZ

media trend links

• 10 Breakaway Brands - From eBay to Geico - these ten companies cut down on hype and connected with customers - Ellen McGirt @ Fortune
• Social Network Marketing: Know What You're Getting Into - Commercial profiles in social networking sites have been getting a fair amount of press lately, and marketers have begun to jump on the bandwagon, creating MySpace pages for corporate mascots, TV characters, even companies themselves. And while it might seem a good idea to get your brand on one of the Net's hottest sites, the backlash is beginning. According to several reports MySpace users are starting to get a little ticked off about brands invading their online party. - Sean Carton @ ClickZ
• Sizing Up Google's Expansion - Most of Google's purchases have been so small as to barely attract notice, and the company has done little to highlight them. But taken as a whole, the company's record of acquisitions offers a few signposts toward its future - Alan Sipress @ Washington Post
• The Story Behind MySpace - A controversial new report into MySpace alleges that its founders came from companies involved with spam, spyware and adware. - Dan Mitchell @ The New York Times
• MySpace Rolls Out Black Carpet For Movies - MySpace is introducing a movie-marketing program that aims to harness word-of-mouth buzz for upcoming releases. - Brian Morrissey @ AdWeek
• User-Generated Content Is the New Black - User-generated content is this year's product placement - Todd Wasserman @ BrandWeek
• Wanna Be Wal-Mart's Ad Man? - the world's largest retailer wants a marketer that can spark "cross-shopping" between departments. Four agencies are finalists - Burt Helm @ Business Week
• Common Mistakes of Small Business Owners - Some of the most successful entrepreneurs failed several times before doing extremely well. These pit-falls can be avoided - William Creekbaum @ Nevada Appeal
• Yahoo's New Marketing Campaign Features Users' Ads - Yahoo's new multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, which takes a humorous look at life with -- and without -- the benefits of Yahoo services, will feature ads created by users - Reuters
• Networks Go On Web to Spur Buzz - The networks are making many of their primetime programs available for viewing any time via Net, iTunes and on-demand cable. Says iWant Media, NBC's "The Office" grew its TV audience by millions of viewers last year after episodes were made available on iTunes. - New York Post

media trend links

• Suddenly, Everyone's Coming Up Widgets - Breaking down the Web into small, portable pieces is the smart trend that everyone from Nokia to Google is betting on - Om Malik @ Business2.0
• Money Will Flow to Content Managers - The money made by managing content will grow faster than profits in any other part of the media value chain. Profits from content management, boosted by the “aggregation” of content and communities by popular internet portals and cable network brands, are rising about 12 per cent a year, according to our analysis. That is roughly twice the rate of growth in profits from distribution. - Graham Elton and Harris Morris @ The Financial Times
• Revver Tempts YouTube Users With Money - Compensating media generating users as marketing strategy - Brian Morrisey @ AdWeek
• Help With Your Business, Often Free On the Web - The product is an example of many small-business applications that fly under the radar, widely unknown to larger businesses. Limited budgets and other priorities mean that a large variety of products do not receive enough attention. Erica Taub @ The New York Times
• Get PR for Your Small Business - Follow these smart tips to get PR coverage for your new business. - Kim Gordon @ Entrepreneur.com
• Interview With B.L. Ochman - Advertising Age just put out this insipid study that only a small percentage of people really read blogs and follow social media news sites, so blogging is not really important. Yes, but we are the influencers, so you negate us at your peril. - BL Ochman @ PSFK
• Steve Jobs Steals from Microsoft's Marketing Playbook - Anticipating archrival Microsoft Corp.'s plan to unveil its own portable media player this week — a potential iPod challenger called Zune — Jobs again shifted the battlefield by showing off a device he called the missing piece that will fuse television and the Internet - Dawn C. Chmielewski @ Los Angeles Times
• User Content Sites Experience Fastest Growth - Many of the Web sites experiencing the fastest growth today are the ones that "understand their audience's need for expression," says Bob Invins, head of Internet tracking firm ComScore. Wikipedia is the U.K.'s largest user-generated content site, says a new ComScore report - NMA
• Old Media Increases Share of Online Ads - In one of the first detailed reports of the relative positions of traditional media companies and their online competitors, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, the private equity group, has shown that, contrary to many people’s expectations, media companies are holding their own in the digital space. - Aline van Duyn @ FT.com
• The Revolt You Didn't Hear About - Hundreds of thousands of students mobilized in an enormous, rip-roaring controversy that raised questions about privacy, the public's right to know and how we learn about the lives of others on the Internet. - C.W. Nevius @ SF Gate
• Bloggers Get Under the Tent - Fashion once dismissed them as snarky and small-time, but now they're getting respect - Rachel Dodes @ The Wall Street Journal
• The Evolution of the Web - Web 2.0: that's the catch-all phrase used to describe the growth in websites where the content is generated by end users rather than by the site owner. - Jon Leleu @ The Financial Times

media trend links

robb's topline media2 trends: social networking takes front and center stage this week with Facebook capturing the imagination of all competitors to Mr. Murdoch. Everyone wants some "space". Soon, it's clear, Facebook will be much more like MySpace in terms of an open community. Tearing away all the specific press release hype, all across the content media 2.0 analyzes in concern to media trends, it seems there are two repetitive trends: 1) online ad spend is going up; 2) online ad buyers are buying on social networks. So, the following question makes sense: "When will the social media bubble burst?" I know, I know, you're thinking it'll be another bubble. But, this time things may be different. Could it be? Given the immersive nature of social networks I think this time around we may not be seeing a bubble forming.

How's that, Robb? Adweek ran a insightful story this week about the stickiness of social networking sites. Social sites may not pose a huge bubble as far as online traffic goes (don't remind me of Friendster) mainly because they are getting good at hooking people in with useful widgets and services people need. (The web's no longer about reading content and information finding.) It's about engagement and utility. In fact, social networking sites are leading the entire web now in educating buyers and brands on just what's possible in terms of engagement. If a brand can capture and activate itself in enough appropriate touchpoints social media properties may possibly not "pop" or lose users going forward due to too many properties in the space (how many social sites does one person need to be a member of?). Instead, with an appropriate equation and mix of new media, brands may now truly see the beginning of the lifetime value of their customers increasing; thanks to social networking.

• When Will the Social Media Bubble Burst? - The growth in blogs, Web videos and podcasts will inevitably slow down. Some people will try to make a lot of money off of social media, and some may succeed. But the backbone of this movement will continue to be the millions of enthusiasts who see it as an opportunity to connect with others who share their passions. As the price of entry continues to decline, they will keep coming - B2B Magazine
• Social Networks: Execs Use Them Too - corporations and smaller businesses haven't embraced online business networks with nearly the same abandon as teens and college students who have flocked to social sites. Yet companies are steadily overcoming reservations and using the sites and related technology to craft potentially powerful business tools - Rachel King @ BusinessWeek Online
• 10 Tips for Selling Products On eBay - By being aware of the strategies that eBay sellers use, eBay buyers can benefit as well. For example, be wary of high-traffic auctions: Prices can get artificially inflated. Instead, try searching for items using common misspellings and check out products listed without pictures. These auctions generally receive fewer bids, and therefore usually end up with cheaper sale prices. - T&P Tech News
• Making Video Advertising Accountable to Consumers - Video, at least in terms of advertising, tends to disguise itself as a bridge between on- and offline. Though it can serve that role, don't be fooled. Simply repurposing TV spots is ultimately not the best way to leverage the medium's power - Jeremy Lockhorn @ ClickZ
• YouTube, Google Help Candidates Woo the Internet Savvy - It wasn’t long ago that running a hightech political campaign meant having a good Web site.
  That’s so yesterday. - Mark Niquette & Jim Siegel @ The Columbus Dispatch
• Why Broadcast TV Has No Need to Fear Video Sharing - The premise of this “new” viewing paradigm is that you will devote hours of your time to watching the worst of all possible junk in order to find one show you like, then you will create a “buzz” and tell your friends who will virally market the show until 20 million people a week are downloading it. Go to YouTube right now and find something you like so much you want to buzz all your friends. Hard isn’t it? - Phil Davis @ Seeking Alpha
• Analysts: YouTube Won't Take Ad Dollars From Old Media - Though advertisers are experimenting with YouTube, don't look for a shift in spending just yet, say analysts. - Jonathan Berr @ The Street.com
• The New Space Race - Redstone and Murdoch "want not only MySpace but something far more cosmic -- More Space - Peter Bart @ Variety
• Future Trends In Interactive Marketing - By understanding and appropriately testing developing trends and technologies in online communications, you can develop and optimize strategies that generate immediate behavioral response, shifts in brand perception, and positive financial impact. John Perlstein @ Chief Marketer Magazine
• Early Online Political Ads Not Just For Raising Cash - According to Nielsen/NetRatings AdRelevance, over 10 million banner ad impressions have been served gratis for the campaign since August 13, the bulk of which have been placed on IMDb.com. Others have been served on Comics.com, ProWrestling.com, AskMen.com and others. Kate Kaye @ ClickZ

media trend links

• TV Commands 90% of Ad Revenue But Online Sales Gaining Fast - Gen Y-ers adopting new mass media at dizzying rates - Michael Kuhlman @ San Diego Business Journal
• Apple to Introduce iTunes Movies - most observers bet that the company will introduce a new series of iPods and full-length movies that can be played on them. - Red Herring
• Research: Blogs A Powerful B2B Presence - Results of recent KnowledgeStorm/Universal McCann study prove podcast usage continues to gain momentum as a marketing content delivery vehicle - MediaBuyerPlanner
• Five Years after 9/11: Pop Culture of Denial - Sept. 11 didn't change the entertainment pursuits of Americans, writes Patrick Goldstein. "Bobble heads" like Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson continue to turn up on magazine covers. New technology "has made us so over-connected that we have trouble processing real tragedy." Patrick Goldstein @ LA Times
• Campaigns Meet Students Where They Network - Companies hoping to attract young customers are building whole marketing campaigns around social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace - BusinessWeek
• Linden Lab Mimicks AOL - Second Life, the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online, has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users. - Eric Auchard @ Reuters
• Mexico's Top Tequila Brand Hoping Local PR Firm Has Right Mix - San Diego-based public relations firm Formula is now representing the No. 1 tequila in Mexico. - San Diego Business Journal
• How A National Tragedy Can Be Used As A Marketing Tool - “9/11 is a very powerful marketing tool,” says branding expert Rob Frankel, author of “The Revenge of Brand X: How To Build a Big Time Brand on the Web or Anywhere Else.”“It’s a touchstone to get closer to the buying public – everyone connects to it on an emotional level. Mention 9/11, and I’m that much closer to making a sale.” - JoAnne Klimkiewicz @ Nashua Telegraph
• Cult Blog A Fake - The short video blog postings by lonelygirl15 on the YouTube website have attracted millions of viewers since they started appearing in May. But the postings' polished nature and the intriguing inconsistencies in the stories led many to suspect that lonelygirl15 was fake. - Dan Glaister @ Guardian Unlimited
• "New Marketing" Drives Marcom Growth - According to the forthcoming Veronis Suhler Stevenson Communications Industry Forecast, so-called "new marketing" - that is, areas such as experiential marketing, branded entertainment and event marketing - has emerged as another fast-growing segment within the marketing-based communications sector. - MediaBuyerPlanner

media trend links

• What Teens Are Doing On MySpace - Says the lovely Danah Boyd on a new book called "MySpace Unraveled" by CBS News technology analyst Larry Magid and NetFamilyNews.org editor Anne Collier: "MySpace is 'not the waste of time adults think it is. What's happening in it is what academics call informal learning.'" - CBS News
• Chatting "Off the Record" With Google Talk - if you're considering conducting an interview with the media over Google Talk, don't forget their "Off the Record" feature. Chats that have been taken off the record aren't stored in your Gmail chat history, or in the Gmail chat history of your contact. You and the person you're talking to can both see when a chat is taken off the record, and you'll be notified if off the record mode is disabled. Your off the record settings will apply whenever you chat with this person, until one of you makes a change. - Gmail
• Google/eBay vs. Microsoft/Yahoo? - Sure seems like Google and eBay are getting friendly lately. Valleyway says: "....Why can't Google buy eBay? That'd give them an instant user base for VoIP, online payments (Contextual ads + PayPal = major commissions), and net commerce. Both of those gains would shut up the critics who predict that Google's ad-based revenue stream will dry up with clickfraud. - Nick Douglas @ ValleyWag
• PR Stunts Harness Power of Net - Street stunts captured by citizens with camera phones and posted online to become viral campaigns are a new, engaging form of brand advertising, writes BusinessWeek, calling the tactic "the Golden Age of the street corner gimmick." - MediaPlannerBuyer
• Catch That Show on TiVo, Web.... - The big marketing rage seemed to be premiering shows anywhere other than television. - Holly Sanders @ New York Post
• PR Firm to Measure Online Chatter - Waggener Edstrom Worldwide will offer a PR and marketing measurement tool called Narrative Network to its clients and other users. - ClickZ
• eBay Sellers Go Back to School - Several recent academic studies have centered on the behavior of eBay buyers. See how the information gathered can help you sell for more - Business Week
• An Introduction to 'The (Digital) Culture Industry' - aspects of economics and the economics of culture are ever more entangled online - Geoff Cox, Joaisa Krysa & Anya Lewin
• Marketers Embrace Click-to-Call - So-called click-to-call technology allows consumers -- by clicking an icon on an email or a Web ad -- to either request a phone call from the marketer or else telephone the company directly using a microphone attached to the computer. Early indications are that the feature, embraced by a growing number of marketers, can significantly lift response rates for some ads. - Suzanne Vranica @ The Wall Street Journal
• Record Labels Fear MySpace May Soon Be Calling the Tunes - Much of the commentary on the MySpace announcement has centred on whether the new service will be a threat to iTunes, Apple's massively popular download service. But a better question might be how MySpace will affect the traditional recording industry, and the answer could potentially be unpleasant. - Matthew Ingram @ The Globe & Mail

media trend links

• PR Expert: If You Want to Stay in Business, You Must Use Craigslist - Conference Call University is holding a free teleseminar on Craigslist, with former Beverly Hills publicist Nancy Mills. "If you want to successfully stay in business today, you must use Craigslist," she claims. "Otherwise, you'll miss out on one of the most valuable free publicity tools." Says the ad:

  Write a newsletter? Promote it on Craigslist. Teach teleseminars, workshops, classes? Promote them. Sell products or consult others? Now is your chance! Are you a speaker, lecturer, author, event promoter? Craigslist is your dream come true. The list of businesses is endless. - Craigs List Secrets

• RedStone Seeks MySpace Revenge - Viacom's chairman talks about firing Tom Cruise and Tom Freston, and how the media company can get back in Wall Street's good graces - BusinessWeek
• Finding Your Online Audience - The subtle art of positioning your business on the Web and how to join the conversation once you've found your niche - Karen Klein @ BusinessWeek
• Taking Meaure: Following the Buzz to Market - Over time, even packaged goods firms are likely to combine buzz with direct marketing and public relations to create highly effective programs that don't rely on mass media. - John Nardone @ Media Post
• Facebook Faces Backlash - Facebook users have been revolting against the feed tools in forums and to blogs, calling them "creepy" and "too stalker-esque." - Thomas Brinkman @ Wired Blogs
• Star Blight: The Perils of Celebrity Endorsements - Research makes clear, for example, that stars can create halos around brands, giving consumers good feelings about a company, says Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed. What's less clear is whether, on average, endorsements lead to greater sales -- or at least big enough jumps to justify the hefty sums that companies cough up, Reed adds. Among stock-car racing fans, for example, they clearly do. - Knowledge@Wharton
• Second Life's Virtual Influence Can Spread Offline - The PR industry over the past few years has been faced with a host of new opportunities for reaching consumers. Add to that growing list Second Life, a virtual 3D community where users choose avatars to represent themselves as they go about everyday activities while trading in real money for virtual dollars. - Erica Iacono @ PR Week
• The Rise & Fall of Pop Culture - Circa Oct 2005, Don Aucoin explains how pop culture now grows so broad and so fast, it is no longer the great connector - Boston Globe
• Online Video Advertising Builds Momentum - marketers are increasingly interested in online video advertising opportunities. How do top interactive agencies leverage video for their online advertising campaigns? - Search Engine Watch
• Two Grey's Anatomy Characters Get Own Blog - Minor characters Nurse Debbie and Joe the Bartender will be blogging during this season of Grey's Anatomy. - TV Squad

media trend links

robb's topline media2 trends: it's clear we are experiencing a 60s-style consumer revolution online. It's all about Y-O-U. Psychedelic branding terms, pop music logos, democrats and christians networking online, brand authenticity, earned media, true engagement, consumer empowerment, social search, upward communications...it's all starting to read like a Joni Mitchell song. Sure seems customers, users, media generators and you are getting empowered Hendrix and utilitarian style. But, the question is, are you truly empowering your brand as much as your competitor is or as much as the marketing team in another industry is? Yes, another industry. Have you cross-pollinated? Done some competitive analysis and Googlegazing? The 2.0 shake-up (and shake out) is starting. The media industry's Viacom is doing it. But other industries (yours?) could be next. Soon.

• Online Game, Made In U.S., Seizes Globe - Less than two years after its introduction, World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., is on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year with almost seven million paying subscribers, who can log into the game and interact with other players. That makes it one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind. - Seth Scheisel @ New York Times
• How to Get Bloggers To Evangelize Your Products - Can business marketers use the blog world to get more site traffic from highly targeted prospects? Yes, it is possible. - MarketingSherpa
• Democrats Launch "Party Builder" Online Social Network - In this new era of using the Internet to empower people to take meaningful action, we're way ahead of the Republicans. We're bringing the Democratic Party online and asking you to take control by putting more power into your hands than they ever could. - DNC
• How to Market Your Brand In Games - steps to take toward true engagement with the male demographic online - imedia connection
• We Need A New Word For Brand - Today’s customers are sick of slick superficiality and desire truth in advertising. Michel Hogan shows you the way toward brand authenticity. - Michel Hogan @ Change This
• Social Search, Is It Real Yet? - With another wave of social search startups and VC hitting the trades, is it time to take social search seriously as a marketing platform? Our search editor sounds off. - Kevin Ryan @ imedia connection
• Small World Labs Brands the Social Networks - "This is the main difference between using SWL and MySpace, LinkedIn, or Yahoo Groups to connect together your constituents. With SWL you control the social or professional network, you control the look and feel, you control the structure of interactions, and most importantly, you get the credit for offering this important service to your constituents." - Jaime Gottlieb @ ClickZ
• When the Customer Is Confused, The Brand Is Refused - Herd instinct is not necessarily a good brand strategy to build your brand. While the same product segment may offer great opportunity, it would be prudent to approach it in a unique and distinct manner so that the brand personality stands tall amongst the rest. It may begin small initially but later on could become a mega brand. Therefore, remember: Don’t confuse the consumer or he will refuse your brand - Jagdeep Kapoor @ Cybernoon.com
• Using the MySpace Phenonenon For Christ - What does the phenomenon of MySpace.com, Xanga.com and other blog sites mean for Christians - Lillian Kwon @ Christian Post Reporter
• MySpace Lets Musicians Sell Music Directly to Consumers - The social networking service will use tools provided by Snocap, a company that sells digital licensing and copyright management services. Snocap was co-founded by Shawn Fanning, who launched Napster in 1999 - Antones Gonsalves @ Information Week
• YouTube Ushers In Net Soap Genre - But like the old soaps, reality TV participants are chosen by the big producers to participate. Today, the table is completely turned on top-down soap operas. - Bambi Francisco @ MarketWatch
• The Rise & Fall of the Hit - Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, chronicles the history of the blockbuster and explains why the traditional model of marketing and selling music no longer works. - Chris Anderson @ Change This

media trend links

• Is Web 2.0 Advertising Friendly? - New Web 2.0-type sites need to launch with advertising, even if they simply sign up with Commission Junction and place a bunch of eBay banners throughout the main pages. They need to establish, in the minds of the site's visitors, that advertising is part of the service and that's OK. - Gary Stein @ ClickZ
• Hidden Messages - Is new technology empowering consumers -- or marketers? - Joseph Turow @ Boston Globe
• Stopping The Outcry Before It Starts - Brand-sensitive retailers act fast to defuse ethical issues before they explode into costly boycotts - Jeffrey MacDonald @ The Christian Science Monitor
• Consumer Written Product Reviews More Important - More online shoppers demand them; analysts cite their growing marketing impact - Matthew Creamer @ AdAge
• Amateur Ads Gain Ground - The so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon, reflected in the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace.com and video- sharing services like YouTube.com, has created a new breed of amateur creators of advertising. And the ad industry, eagerly casting about for ideas to stave off its prophesied demise, is starting to embrace them - Eric Pfanner @ The New York Times
• The Accidental Ad Agency - Flavorpill is additional proof that you can build a Web media company from an e-mail. - Jon Fine @ BusinessWeek
• MTV Focuses On Digital Frontier at 25 - As a company that built its brand as a meeting place for young adults, pop culture and music, MTV will not meekly surrender that digital turf to MySpace and YouTube. - Reuters/MSN Money
• A Hub To Hatch Online Trends - In an e-mail, Murdoch called Fox Interactive ``vital to the long-term future of the company'' and proclaimed its first year ``a great start but, of course, I'm not content.'' - Frank Ahrens @ The Mercury News
• New Technology Delivers Wealth of Choices - Anderson's fascinating book is full of telling statistics not only about how the tail is being used (as in legal music downloads) but also how it could be used (there's 31 million hours of original TV programming a year, but most of it is never seen again). He also sees Long Tail economics at work in the past, as in the rise of the Sears and Roebuck catalog at the end of the 19th century. He also sees the Long Tail at work in the growth of "peer production" and "user-generated content," as exemplified by Wikipedia.com. - Michael Janairo @ Albany Times Union
• Snakes Are Just Plane Dull - "Snakes On A Plane is not so much a movie as an exercise in web marketing" - Christopher Tookey @ This Is London
• Brands Led Blindly Into SecondLife Forest - If a brand appears in Second Life and no-one is around, does it really exist? - PSFK