Mediavorous

Interesting tidbits from around the web for August 22nd through August 29th

Brad Berens — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:01:03 +0000

What I’m paying attention to for August 22nd through August 29th:

Impact of Digital Revolution on Ad Agencies – Interesting take on how to rejigger agencies by @saneel… pointed out to me by @thedurham on Facebook. A little self-promotional toward the end but the first 3/4 is well worth the click.
Could film ‘Social Network’ affect Facebook’s brand? – USATODAY.com – Nice piece on the new Facebook movie at USAToday… or perhaps I'm prejudiced because it quotes me.
Future of news: Insider Dave Morgan touts new media » Knoxville News Sentinel – Great interview with Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan (@davemorgannyc) about the future of journalism.
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

Interesting tidbits from around the web for August 18th through August 21st

Brad Berens — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:00:12 +0000

What I’m paying attention to for August 18th through August 21st:

Cultural Studies – The Littlest Redshirts – Postponing Kindergarten – NYTimes.com – "“Redshirting” of kindergartners — the term comes from the practice of postponing the participation of college athletes in competitive games — became increasingly widespread in the 1990s, and shows no signs of waning."
E-reading: Revolution in the making or fading fad? – "HSINCHU, Taiwan — The marriage of an American technology firm and a Taiwanese display panel manufacturer has helped make digital reading a prospective challenger to paper as the main medium for transmitting printed information."
BermanBraun and Starcom to Work Together – NYTimes.com – "BermanBraun was founded in 2007 by Gail Berman, formerly a top executive at Paramount Pictures and Fox Broadcasting, and Lloyd Braun, who previously led divisions of the Walt Disney Company and Yahoo.

"Ms. Berman said the company’s goal was to deliver 50 million unique users through various sites within a couple of years. “At that point you’re really talking about something — that’s a huge network,” Ms. Berman said.

"The deal gives Starcom clients a first look at BermanBraun’s new sites and their new ideas about the format of ads. But the deal is not exclusive, meaning that BermanBraun can continue to sell advertising to Starcom rivals."
Yahoo Eyes Women’s Social-Networking Site CafeMom for $100 Million | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD – "According to numerous sources, Yahoo is eager to close a deal to acquire CafeMom, a social-networking and community site aimed at mothers, in a move aimed at turbocharging its often-meandering strategy in the important women's space."
‘Scott Pilgrim’ Versus The Unfortunate Tendency To Review The Audience : Monkey See : NPR – Very smart meta-review of Scott Pilgrim by NPR.

Links for August 17th through August 18th

Brad Berens — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:01:30 +0000

Things I’m tracking for August 17th through August 18th:

Your Brain on Computers – The Unplugged Challenge – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com – More from the NYT's fascinating "Your Brain on Computers" series… a video series. Chilling but inspiring.
Beloit College Mindset List – Always a must-read about how the incoming freshman class has different references than years past.
Chris Anderson: What I Read | The Atlantic Wire –
Tax reform for the rich and ultra-rich : The New Yorker – "The explosion in wealth at the very top of the pyramid has given rise to what the commentator Matt Miller has called a “lower upper class”—doctors, lawyers, accountants, even some journalists, who make very good livings but enjoy nothing like the rewards that come to their peers in finance or in the executive suite. The lower upper class exerts a cultural influence out of proportion to its size, and so its anger toward the upper upper class—toward outrageous executive salaries and Wall Street shenanigans—could be a powerful force for reforming the way we deal with inequality. This is one case where simpler isn’t better. In a society that’s becoming more stratified, a sensible tax system should draw more distinctions, not fewer. The U.S. is now a place where the rich and the ultra-rich really inhabit different worlds… They should probably inhabit different tax brackets, too. "
What Online Content Will People Pay For? : MarketingProfs –
Your Brain on Computers – Studying the Brain Off the Grid, Professors Find Clarity – NYTimes.com – Fascinating article… anybody who enjoys Nicholas Carr's work should read this… part of a series.

Links for August 15th through August 16th

Brad Berens — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:00:01 +0000

Things I’m tracking for August 15th through August 16th:

Did ‘Star Wars’ become a toy story? Producer Gary Kurtz looks back [Updated] | Hero Complex | Los Angeles Times –
Boredom Is Extinct – Magazine – The Atlantic – "People used to talk about boredom as though it were a thing, not a mood—a sort of physical object. It “descended” on you. You “escaped” from it, you “fled” it. Or you “dispelled” it, as though it were a fog. This wasn’t always easy to do; sometimes the boredom was just too thick, too “heavy.” Trapped in the back of a car on a long road trip, stuck on a flight without a book or magazine, or seated beside a dull stranger at a formal social gathering, the best you could do to “lift” the boredom, to muster a bit of leverage against its mass, was to imagine that you were somewhere else (or perhaps even someone else), doing something else."
On Disliking Mad Men « Just TV – Long scholarly article about the show– a show about which I have mixed feelings. "As a scholar and fan of contemporary narratively complex television serials, one of my blindspots has been Mad Men, a show about which I’ve mentioned on this blog has little appeal to me. Thus it was a bit surprising months ago when I was invited to contribute to a forthcoming book of collected essays on the show – the editors knew that I didn’t like the show, and wanted me to write about why. I accepted the invitation as a kind of challenge, and the results are posted below."
Hulu Is Seen as Readying to Go Public – NYTimes.com – "Led by Jason Kilar, a former Amazon.com executive, Hulu has grown to become one of the biggest sources of online video on the Web. It features content from most major TV networks — CBS and CW are two exceptions — and several movie studios like MGM and Lions Gate.

But Hulu is still confronting big questions about its future prospects. The company has long been believed to be second only to YouTube in terms of online viewers. But a revision to comScore’s methodology sent Hulu’s viewership numbers plummeting, to 24 million in June from 43.5 million in May."
Technology Review: How HTML5 Will Shake Up the Web – Nice primer on why HTML5 is important: "Experts say that what HTML5 does behind the scenes–such as its network communications and browser storage features–could make pages load faster (particularly on sluggish mobile devices), make Web applications work more smoothly, and even enable browsers to read older Web pages more easily."

Links for August 12th through August 15th

Brad Berens — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 04:00:49 +0000

Things I’m tracking for August 12th through August 15th:

500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
Did Shopkick Just Change The Check-In Game? You Be The Judge [Video] – "The minute you enter a Best Buy location, your phone recognizes it and you get points and a message that there are deals available at this location. You can also use it to scan items and get more points and other potential deals.

"Unlike other location-based apps, this doesn’t use GPS (or even WiFi triangulation), instead this is a custom hardware plus app system shopkick created and installs in partner stores. This means no more fake check-ins and it allows the app to do some other potentially interesting things.

"…While shopkick isn’t a full-on rival to the popular Foursquare and others in the check-in space, it is interesting that they’re going after the type of experience that those guys are trying to establish between consumers and retailers. As Foursquare’s Tristan Walker said at our CrunchUp event last week, they’re attempting to “socialize loyalty.” He also noted that everyone was looking for a location-based coupon Holy Grail that doesn’t exist."
10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World | Max Gladwell – "Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for go."
TV in the 50s. – Fantastic photo by Evert F. Baumgardner, ca. 1958.
CBS Interactive’s TV.com enters social-TV race with Relay (exclusive) – "CBS Interactive is giving television the Foursquare treatment.

"The digital division is beta-testing TV.com Relay, a service that transplants Foursquare’s combination of user check-ins and badge rewards from brick-and-mortar venues to TV shows.

"With Relay, you can check in on a particular program and make new friends chatting about your favorite shows or check out what your old friends are watching and pick up a new TV habit."

Links for August 10th through August 12th

Brad Berens — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 22:00:09 +0000

Things I’m tracking for August 10th through August 12th:

500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
Google: The search party is over – Fortune Tech – "Google's core business, online search, is slowing. That is partly due to Google's own success; it's hard to keep posting record growth rates when you dominate a business so thoroughly — Google sites lead the U.S. market with 64% of all searches conducted. But more crucially, the web has changed significantly since Google became a verb. There is (at long last) fresh competition from Microsoft's Bing, and also a new wave of sites and services that offer alternatives for consumers' time and attention — and the advertisers that follow them."
Has Arianna Huffington Figured Out the Future? – Newsweek – "If you had to declare a winner among Internet media companies today, the victor easily would be Arianna Huffington. Her site, The Huffington Post, attracted 24.3 million unique visitors last month, five times as much traffic as many new-media rivals, more than The Washington Post and USA Today, and nearly as many as The New York Times. HuffPo’s revenue this year will be about $30 -million—peanuts compared with the old-media dinosaurs, but way better than most digital competitors. And HuffPo has finally started to eke out a profit.

"Those numbers, however, don’t fully convey the site’s place in this new-media world. What began five years ago as a spot for Huffington and her lefty celebrity friends to vent about the Bush administration has become one of the most important news sites on the Web, covering politics, sports, entertainment, business—along with plenty of tabloidy stuff to drive clicks….”
Google Agonizes on Privacy as Advertising World Vaults Ahead – WSJ.com – "A confidential, seven-page Google Inc. "vision statement" shows the information-age giant in a deep round of soul-searching over a basic question: How far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels—the vast trove of data it possesses about people's activities?"
Motor-Disabled Make Calls With Brainwave-Controlled Mobile App –

Links for August 5th through August 9th

Brad Berens — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:02:09 +0000

Things I’m tracking for August 5th through August 9th:

Texting generation doesn’t share boomers’ taste for talk – I cannot convey how important this trend is.
New York will always be a tech backwater, I don’t care what Chris Dixon or Ron Conway or Paul Graham say | AdGrok – Interesting take on how NY is different than Silicon Valley– might be BS: "Thinking the New York tech scene will ever equal Silicon Valley is as foolish as thinking San Francisco’s puny theater district will one day take on Broadway. Both Silicon Valley and Broadway are unique products of the cities that spawned them, and every attempt to create a Silicon Alley/Silicon Sentier/Skolkovo/whatever in various parts of the world have failed. So far, no one’s managed to do it, and New York sure as hell won’t either."
Are Marketers Really Spying On You Online? – Advertising Age – DigitalNext – Nice primer on what websites really can track… on point for folks engaging with the WSJ series.
MediaPost – news and directories for media, marketing and online advertising professionals – "Unless you are in the ad industry, you have no use for ads (except the ones that tell you about new products you might like, items on sales at local retailers, ideas for Christmas and Mother's Day, oh and for whatever you are in-market for at the moment.) Okay, okay, you'll sit still for ads (or better yet fast forward through them) if they mean you don't have to pay to see individual TV shows. Or pay $450 for a subscription to your favorite magazine. Or they are kind of fun like the recent Old Spice ads. And isn't it interesting that in spite of the nearly universal revulsion towards advertising, it has grown into about a $150 billion a year business (and most humorously, pays the salary of all the Journal reporters)."
New York Hotels Entice Customers With Lure of TV Life – NYTimes.com – "…For Kate Hughes and Toni Suppa, friends since high school, it was the guilty pleasures of TV’s “Gossip Girl” that helped lure them on a recent evening to the Lobby Bar of the Empire Hotel on West 63rd Street, a fixture in the series about hard-partying Upper East Side teenagers.

“We knew they had a ‘Gossip Girl’ drink list, and it’s fun,” Ms. Hughes said, laughing sheepishly as she savored a B, named for the character Blair: gin served straight up with blood orange bitters and a rock candy swizzle stick. (“Her bittersweet venom,” the bar menu elaborated, “is addictive but always leaves a sting.”)

"Ms. Suppa, who was having an Eau de Vanessa — a popular concoction of pear vodka, pear nectar and white grape juice — defined that fun as dipping a toe into the show’s racy milieu. “You kind of feel like you’re a part of it, whatever ‘Gossip Girl’ is putting out there,” she said, adding, “We’re also 30 years old —— ”
Net neutrality is foremost free speech issue of our time – CNN.com – Sen. Franken weighs in on Net Neutrality– read it.
Industries Find Surging Profits in Deeper Cuts– NYT – Why life is better on Wall Street than Main Street… "Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon.

"But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

"This seeming contradiction — falling sales and rising profits — is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and joblessness shows few signs of easing."

Links for August 2nd through August 5th

Brad Berens — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:03:10 +0000

Things I’m tracking for August 2nd through August 5th:

Net Neutrality – The New York Times – A nice summary of what the Network Neutrality debate is all about from the New York Times.
Google Ready to Abandon Net Neutrality for Verizon Deal | TheWrap.com – More on the Google/Verizon talks… this from an Entertainment industry POV.
Google and Verizon in Talks on Selling Internet Priority – NYTimes.com – "Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium levels of service."
Wray Herbert: Cognitive Dissonance: Why We Rationalize Our Life Circumstances – Intereting piece on Cognitive Dissonance, including this definition: "Cognitive dissonance is the theory that humans will rationalize even the most aversive conditions — if they are forced to live with them. These results go even further, suggesting that denial of one liberty can lead victims to rationalize another kind another rights violation altogether — even something as basic as equality under the law — and indeed an entire system. "
What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity | Nielsen Wire –
Social networking dominates the time Americans spend online | VentureBeat –
Why ‘Mad Men’ Has So Little to Do With Advertising – Advertising Age – MediaWorks –

Links for July 19th through July 21st

Brad Berens — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:00:52 +0000

Things I’m tracking for July 19th through July 21st:

The Web Means the End of Forgetting – NYTimes.com – Truly brilliant piece by Jeffrey Rosen.
How to Connect With the Digital Latino – Advertising Age – CMO Strategy –
Checking In… With Your Face? –
Free Consumer Insights | 2010 Social Media Report –
Social Media Draws a Crowd – WSJ.com – Fascinating stuff– eager to learn more about Heidi Browning's new gig.

Links for July 12th through July 19th

Brad Berens — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:00:37 +0000

Things I’m tracking for July 12th through July 19th:

Nielsen: This Isn’t Your Grandfather’s Baby Boomer – Advertising Age – MediaWorks –
Under twelve age group sends over 1000 texts per month – My old friend Erik Qualman summarizes the recent & shocking TXT numbers for youngsters from Nielsen– these correlate nicely with the Kaiser Family Foundation data fro. A few months back.
Foursquare vs. Gowalla vs. MyTown: Which Is Better for Business? – Terrific post linked by Steve Rubel.
Digital Special Issue: Gaming –
Advertising – Popular Science and Agency Create World of Tomorrow – NYTimes.com –