Sofia Vergara and David Lawenda dance onstage at the Univision upfront.
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Univision Communications kicked off a lively, aggressive upfront presentation with Sofia Vergara dancing onstage with David Lawenda, president-advertising sales and marketing, and ended with a song from Shakira. In between, Univision hammered its "Latinos Live Here" message.
Ms. Vergara, who is Colombian and began her career at Univision before landing her role on ABC's "Modern Family," said: "I might work somewhere else, but this is where I live. Univision."
Mr. Lawenda emphasized that Univision has a 73% share of Spanish-language TV viewing and that 94% of its programming is viewed live and is therefore DVR-proof. Nearly one-third of Hispanics are millennials, he added. "Our audience is an entire generation younger," he said, in one of the frequent digs at English-language networks and their aging, declining viewership.
That didn't stop Univision from taking the major step of partnering recently with ABC News to create an English-language news channel to reach increasingly bilingual and English-speaking Hispanics.
At its presentation at the New Amsterdam Theater, Univision launched UVideos, a digital network aggregating programming from Univision's 12 networks.
Univision is also adding three web novelas, and the usual slate of future-blockbuster telenovelas, including one about a veterinarian who falls for a man on the run, and a macho guy who can win back the woman he tricked in a business deal only by disguising himself as a woman named Eva.
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When you put technology in the hands of children, amazing things can happen. We're making technology accessible for youth in underserved communities around the world, so students everywhere can become confident, self-motivated learners. The Intel Computer Clubhouse Network brings technology literacy through imaginative and creative projects in a unique educational setting. For students ages 8-18, the Intel® Learn Program goes beyond the classroom with a focus on 21st century skills, including digital literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration.
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Today's long-awaited introduction of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors was really only half an introduction; we met the quad-core chips, but not the promised dual-core versions. Still, it is important because it marks the first time that chips produced using 22nm process technology and using Intel's "tri-gate" 3D transistors are available to the public.
The process technology matters in two main ways. The 3D or "tri-gate" transistors are important because they are the first significant move away from the planar transistors that have been used in the semiconductor industry for decades. With this technology, the gate wraps up and around a vertical channel through which current flows when the transistors are switched on. This should enable better performance at lower power than standard chips. Much of the industry has looked at this general concept—something often called FinFETs because of the way the design sticks up from the plane of the chip—but Intel seems to be years ahead in commercial production. (Similarly, the company introduced high-k/metal gate materials at the 45nm node for its Penryn design in 2007; GlobalFoundries didn't use the materials until last year with AMD's Llano design.)
Mark Bohr, Intel senior fellow and director of process architecture and integration, said the company started working on 3D transistors back in 2001 and made the decision to go with the tri-gate design back in 2008, producing the first test Ivy Bridge wafers in November 2010.
In addition, by moving to 22nm, Intel can demonstrate that Moore's Law—the concept that transistor density can double every two years as projected by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore—is alive and well, even if, in recent years, the way of doing that has moved from simple scaling to new techniques, ranging from "strained silicon" to high-k/metal gate to 3D transistors. (Here's my overview of the technology.)
The new quad-core chip is said to incorporate 1.4 billion transistors on a die size of 160 mm2. Of course, this isn't the end of scaling; Intel has already started building factories for 14nm production, slated to start at the end of 2013. Indeed, at today's announcement, Bohr said that although the company would love to have extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, it would be able to produce 14nm and even 10nm processors using current immersion lithography.
In today's announcement, Kirk Skaugen, Intel vice president and the new general manager of the company's PC Client Group, officially announced the quad-core versions of what is to be known as Intel's third-generation Core processors. These include five Core i5 branded processors for desktops, four Core i7 processors for desktops, four Core i7s for notebooks, and one Core i7 extreme edition aimed at very high-end notebooks. The top end desktop Core i5 and i7 chips are unlocked (aimed at overclocking), as is the mobile extreme edition.
Skaugen said the company has planned two more announcements in the next couple of months aimed at Ultrabooks and vPro, Intel's name for processors aimed at the enterprise market. I expect that means the dual-core variants, which I would assume will be manufactured in greater numbers as that's what makes up the bulk of mobile computers, will be formally announced in early June, at the annual Computex show.
Details about this generation of chip have been slowly appearing since the announcement of the 22nm process almost a year ago.
But there were some surprises. Skaugen said the new chip will have more than twice the average graphics and media performance of the existing Sandy Bridge processors. The chip will be available with two graphic variants, known as HD2500 and HD4000, and as part of the new design, not only have the graphics engines been redesigned, the number of engines in the high-end version has been increased from 12 to 16. It will have support for DirectX 11, Open CL 1.1, and Open GL 3.1.
Later, Brad Heaney, program manager, IA Development Group, explained that the new chips have twice the number of graphics transistors and well as twice the performance of the previous version. Intel to describe this as a "tick +," as the chip includes both a shrink and architectural improvements. (Next year's chip, known as "Haswell" is supposed to be a traditional "tock," or architectural change.)
Above: Skaugen, Heaney, Bohr
Overall, Skaugen said the new processors will offer up to 20 percent more performance on multi-threaded applications while consuming 20 percent less power than Sandy Bridge. Bohr said that on a transistor level, each could produce up to 37 percent higher performance, while using 50 percent less power at the same performance.
Other new features in the chips include support for USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, for faster external connections; PCI Express 3.0, particularly useful for discrete graphics; Secure Key, an internal random-number generator for security applications; OS Guard, used to prevent some kinds of malware in Windows 8 and various Linux flavors; improved Anti-Theft Technology with remote lock and unlock features; faster Quick Sync Video; and improved Rapid Start, Smart Connect, and Smart Response technology for letting you quickly turn on your computer from a sleep state while nearly instantly refreshing your connections. It also includes a power control unit on board to control things like Intel's Turbo Boost that is itself equivalent to a 486 processor.
Intel said its customers are working on more than 300 mobile products in development using the new chips and more than 270 desktop and all-in-one products. Of these, more than 65 are all-in-one designs and Skaugen went out of his way to highlight this as a new trend in the market.
These chips are coming out a few months later than originally anticipated—the Sandy Bridge chips these will replace were announced in January 2011. Skaugen said this is "Intel's fastest ramp ever" and said the company has ramped production enough so there will be 50 percent more Ivy Bridge chips available in the market than there were Sandy Bridges in its first two months of production. However, he said, "demand is still outstripping supply."
While saying that "yields are fine," Skaugen mentioned challenges in integrating the lower-voltage dual-core variants into the sub-18mm Ultrabooks Intel has been pushing.
What this points to is a somewhat faster changeover in the top end models from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge. This could be important, as the company will be starting a huge push for what it terms "Ultrabooks"—very thin, lightweight machines based on these chips. Meanwhile, though, AMD will be pushing its upcoming Trinity line of Fusion chips for mainstream laptops and "ultrathins" and the forthcoming release of Windows on ARM (or Windows RT, as it will be known) should allow for thin Windows notebooks running on ARM-based designs from Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.
Intel-based Ultrabooks are likely to sell for $699 and up, while generally you would expect ultrathins based on AMD processors to sell for $50 to $100 less than their Intel competitors and offer somewhat lower CPU performance but better integrated graphics. ARM-based Windows machines will be different in that they won't run the traditional "desktop" apps (except for Microsoft Office), and may not be as fast, but should offer notably better battery life.
Here are the first reviews of the Ivy Bridge chips from PCMag, AnandTech, ExtremeTech, and Tech Report.
All show better performance by the newer chip, as you would expect, if not really the 2X graphics performance quoted (more like 20 to 50 percent, depending on the game). In general, it looks like a good step forward for Intel integrated graphics, but Ivy Bridge still looks notably behind AMD's integrated Fusion A-series (Llano). The highest-end games still really want discrete graphics and I doubt that will change anytime soon but for casual gaming, it looks like a remarkable improvement.
Of course, what I'm really waiting to see is how well this works on heavily-multithreaded business apps (which I hope to test shortly) and how well the dual-core version does in improving battery life.
Today's long-awaited introduction of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors was really only half an introduction; we met the quad-core chips, but not the promised dual-core versions. Still, it is important because it marks the first time that chips produced using 22nm process technology and using Intel's "tri-gate" 3D transistors are available to the public.
The process technology matters in two main ways. The 3D or "tri-gate" transistors are important because they are the first significant move away from the planar transistors that have been used in the semiconductor industry for decades. With this technology, the gate wraps up and around a vertical channel through which current flows when the transistors are switched on. This should enable better performance at lower power than standard chips. Much of the industry has looked at this general concept—something often called FinFETs because of the way the design sticks up from the plane of the chip—but Intel seems to be years ahead in commercial production. (Similarly, the company introduced high-k/metal gate materials at the 45nm node for its Penryn design in 2007; GlobalFoundries didn't use the materials until last year with AMD's Llano design.)
Mark Bohr, Intel senior fellow and director of process architecture and integration, said the company started working on 3D transistors back in 2001 and made the decision to go with the tri-gate design back in 2008, producing the first test Ivy Bridge wafers in November 2010.
In addition, by moving to 22nm, Intel can demonstrate that Moore's Law—the concept that transistor density can double every two years as projected by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore—is alive and well, even if, in recent years, the way of doing that has moved from simple scaling to new techniques, ranging from "strained silicon" to high-k/metal gate to 3D transistors. (Here's my overview of the technology.)
The new quad-core chip is said to incorporate 1.4 billion transistors on a die size of 160 mm2. Of course, this isn't the end of scaling; Intel has already started building factories for 14nm production, slated to start at the end of 2013. Indeed, at today's announcement, Bohr said that although the company would love to have extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, it would be able to produce 14nm and even 10nm processors using current immersion lithography.
In today's announcement, Kirk Skaugen, Intel vice president and the new general manager of the company's PC Client Group, officially announced the quad-core versions of what is to be known as Intel's third-generation Core processors. These include five Core i5 branded processors for desktops, four Core i7 processors for desktops, four Core i7s for notebooks, and one Core i7 extreme edition aimed at very high-end notebooks. The top end desktop Core i5 and i7 chips are unlocked (aimed at overclocking), as is the mobile extreme edition.
Skaugen said the company has planned two more announcements in the next couple of months aimed at Ultrabooks and vPro, Intel's name for processors aimed at the enterprise market. I expect that means the dual-core variants, which I would assume will be manufactured in greater numbers as that's what makes up the bulk of mobile computers, will be formally announced in early June, at the annual Computex show.
Details about this generation of chip have been slowly appearing since the announcement of the 22nm process almost a year ago.
But there were some surprises. Skaugen said the new chip will have more than twice the average graphics and media performance of the existing Sandy Bridge processors. The chip will be available with two graphic variants, known as HD2500 and HD4000, and as part of the new design, not only have the graphics engines been redesigned, the number of engines in the high-end version has been increased from 12 to 16. It will have support for DirectX 11, Open CL 1.1, and Open GL 3.1.
Later, Brad Heaney, program manager, IA Development Group, explained that the new chips have twice the number of graphics transistors and well as twice the performance of the previous version. Intel to describe this as a "tick +," as the chip includes both a shrink and architectural improvements. (Next year's chip, known as "Haswell" is supposed to be a traditional "tock," or architectural change.)
Above: Skaugen, Heaney, Bohr
Overall, Skaugen said the new processors will offer up to 20 percent more performance on multi-threaded applications while consuming 20 percent less power than Sandy Bridge. Bohr said that on a transistor level, each could produce up to 37 percent higher performance, while using 50 percent less power at the same performance.
Other new features in the chips include support for USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, for faster external connections; PCI Express 3.0, particularly useful for discrete graphics; Secure Key, an internal random-number generator for security applications; OS Guard, used to prevent some kinds of malware in Windows 8 and various Linux flavors; improved Anti-Theft Technology with remote lock and unlock features; faster Quick Sync Video; and improved Rapid Start, Smart Connect, and Smart Response technology for letting you quickly turn on your computer from a sleep state while nearly instantly refreshing your connections. It also includes a power control unit on board to control things like Intel's Turbo Boost that is itself equivalent to a 486 processor.
Intel said its customers are working on more than 300 mobile products in development using the new chips and more than 270 desktop and all-in-one products. Of these, more than 65 are all-in-one designs and Skaugen went out of his way to highlight this as a new trend in the market.
These chips are coming out a few months later than originally anticipated—the Sandy Bridge chips these will replace were announced in January 2011. Skaugen said this is "Intel's fastest ramp ever" and said the company has ramped production enough so there will be 50 percent more Ivy Bridge chips available in the market than there were Sandy Bridges in its first two months of production. However, he said, "demand is still outstripping supply."
While saying that "yields are fine," Skaugen mentioned challenges in integrating the lower-voltage dual-core variants into the sub-18mm Ultrabooks Intel has been pushing.
What this points to is a somewhat faster changeover in the top end models from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge. This could be important, as the company will be starting a huge push for what it terms "Ultrabooks"—very thin, lightweight machines based on these chips. Meanwhile, though, AMD will be pushing its upcoming Trinity line of Fusion chips for mainstream laptops and "ultrathins" and the forthcoming release of Windows on ARM (or Windows RT, as it will be known) should allow for thin Windows notebooks running on ARM-based designs from Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.
Intel-based Ultrabooks are likely to sell for $699 and up, while generally you would expect ultrathins based on AMD processors to sell for $50 to $100 less than their Intel competitors and offer somewhat lower CPU performance but better integrated graphics. ARM-based Windows machines will be different in that they won't run the traditional "desktop" apps (except for Microsoft Office), and may not be as fast, but should offer notably better battery life.
Here are the first reviews of the Ivy Bridge chips from PCMag, AnandTech, ExtremeTech, and Tech Report.
All show better performance by the newer chip, as you would expect, if not really the 2X graphics performance quoted (more like 20 to 50 percent, depending on the game). In general, it looks like a good step forward for Intel integrated graphics, but Ivy Bridge still looks notably behind AMD's integrated Fusion A-series (Llano). The highest-end games still really want discrete graphics and I doubt that will change anytime soon but for casual gaming, it looks like a remarkable improvement.
Of course, what I'm really waiting to see is how well this works on heavily-multithreaded business apps (which I hope to test shortly) and how well the dual-core version does in improving battery life.
It looks like Flipboard; aggregates and posts content like Reddit; and presents news visually, like Newsmap. And it's from Intel. Launching today, Intel iQ is a social-publishing platform and the tech giant's latest content-marketing experiment.
Intel iQ is a new social-publishing platform and the latest content-marketing experiment from the technology giant.
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IQ resembles a digital magazine but is curated by Intel employees. A story gets to the iQ front page when a certain number of people recommend it. The goal is to "connect with a younger audience and tell them the bigger story of who we are as a brand," said Editor-in-Chief Bryan Rhoads. "Many of them don't know, so we need to tell them the story of Intel that is beyond PCs and beyond processors."
Mr. Rhoads will sometimes place staff-written or important stories on the page, but most articles will appear democratically and make it on their own merits. On page, each story box appears with a photo and a tag: "IQ Original" for staff-written and freelance-commissioned articles, "iQ Network" for content written by partner companies such as Discovery or Vice, or "Via" for pieces from an outside source. The last tag is followed by the name of the publication, for instance, "via Mashable."
Bryan Rhoads, editor in chief of Intel iQ
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Each story box grows visually as social media -- clicks, shares, freshness, relevancy and other data from around the web -- is added.
Stories range in topic from the latest in biometric shirts and the newest Angry Birds game to gamification in the classroom and social's influence on the rock band Counting Crows. But technology is the stories' common denominator. The beta site is organized into three main topics: media, life and planet.
"We have Facebook, Twitter and blogs and all of that, but they're really not tailored to a younger audience," Mr. Rhoads said, adding that iQ is intended as outreach to that demographic.
Nicknamed "The Blogfather" by his marketing colleagues, Mr. Rhoads is an Intel veteran who has worked on social media since 2006 and is now chief strategist for the Intel Social Media Center of Excellence. He helped launch the company's brand blogs six years ago and sees Intel iQ as the next logical step. Intel is already a traditional social-media publisher, with 10 million Facebook fans and almost 250,000 Twitter followers.
"This is a new type of social property that is meant to feed social media and content needs," Mr. Rhoads said. "IQ is not necessarily a destination, but more of an engine and platform to get out into Facebook and Twitter. You don't have to come to iQ, but you'll be getting iQ stories in your news feeds and streams."
Intel has garnered kudos for its social-media policies. It published its employee guidelines online in 2008 and was praised for the progressive edge, high level of trust and minimal restrictions. Currently, there are 160 social-media practitioners at Intel globally who contribute to iQ, and Mr. Rhoads said he expects that number to grow to the "thousands."
According to the current quarterly study by Janrain Engage, across 365,000 websites analyzing social login and social sharing preferences, Facebook is the most popular option at 45%, while a
majority would rather use a different social identity, such as Google, Yahoo! or Twitter. Because the social media landscape is fragmented, notes the report, the study helps to determine which
identities people prefer both for sign-in and content sharing that can be used to speed up registration on sites across the web. People use Facebook to interact with friends and family,
Twitter to follow influencers and share opinions, LinkedIn for their professional network, and Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail to communicate directly with contacts. Combined, these networks boast over
1.5 billion accounts. Facebook’s share of social logins has increased steadily over the past two years. While Google’s share declined moderately during the first three
quarters of 2011, though overall preference for Google has increased 2% since Q4 2011, with Google+ rapidly scaling users and adoption, says the report. | Social Login Trends | | | Q1 - 2011 | Q1 - 2012 | | Facebook | 35% | 45% | | Google | 31%
| 31% | | Yahoo | 13% | 9% | | Twitter | 7% | 9% |
| Windows Live | 6% | 3% | | Other
| 8% | 3% | | Source: Janrain, May 2012
| The report says that, as with prior reports, that they have taken a sampling of sites in four industry verticals to measure trends in consumer login
preferences. While the overall story arc is similar, says the report, there are disparate preferences within each vertical. Shown here is a selection of the more complete data available from
Janrain. | Media Sites Social Login Trends | | | Q1 - 2011 | Q1 - 2012
| | Facebook | 39% | 46% | |
Google | 21% | 21% | | Yahoo | 24% | 13% | | Twitter | 5% | 8% | | AOL | 5% | 2% |
| Other | 10% | 6% | |
Source: Janrain, May 2012 | |
Retail Sites Social Login Trends | | | Q1 - 2011 | Q1 - 2012 | | Facebook | 50% | 43% |
| Google | 22% | 29% | | Yahoo! | 16% | 11% | | Windows Live | 4% | 4%
| | AOL | 5% | 3% | | Twitter | 3% | 4% | | Other | - | 6% |
| Source: Janrain, May 2012 |
| Entertainment & Gaming Sites Social Login Trends | |
| Q1 - 2011 | Q1 - 2012 | | Facebook
| 42% | 50% | | Google | 20% | 21% | | Windows Live | 11% | 4% | | Yahoo! | 13% | 11%
| | Twitter | 5% | 9% | |
Other | 9% | 5% | | Source: Janrain, May
2012 | | Music Sites Social Login
Trends | | | Q1 - 2011 |
Q1 - 2012 | | Facebook | 47% | 63% | | Google | 17% | 13% |
| Twitter | 13% | 12% | | Windows Live
| 13% | 2% | | Yahoo! | 6% | 6% | | Other | 4% | 4% | | Source: Janrain, May 2012 | Facebook’s popularity
for social login on eCommerce websites has declined moderately from 49% to 43% during the past two quarters. Increasingly, retailers are offering social shopping experiences on their eCommerce sites
that leverage a consumer’s Facebook social graph. Yahoo!’s share of social logins on retail sites has plummeted since 2009, mostly due to Google and Facebook. On media websites,
Yahoo! and Google are running strong as the second and third most popular providers. Despite a modest decline during the past several quarters, Yahoo! continues to perform best in this
vertical. Twitter’s share within this segment has yet to accelerate. Windows Live (Hotmail/MSN), historically a strong performer on entertainment and gaming sites, has experienced
a notable decline in share of social logins during the past year. On mobile applications, Facebook and Google lead in popularity, followed by Twitter and Yahoo!. Twitter’s improvement in
popularity on mobile devices could be a result of its OAuth integration with Apple iOS 5 for social login, which has further socialized mobile users to rely on Twitter as an authentication mechanism
on portable devices, opines the report. | Mobile Social Login Trends |
| | Q3 - 2011 | Q1 -
2012 | | Facebook | 37% | 49% |
| Google | 37% | 25% | | Yahoo!
| 12% | 9% | | Twitter | 10% | 14% | | Other | 4% | 4% | | Source: Janrain, May 2012 | More than ever, people are
sharing comments, purchases, reviews and other content from the web to their social networks. Facebook and Twitter are far and away the most popular sharing destinations, but Yahoo!, LinkedIn and
MySpace maintain preference on niche sites that are catered to their audience (B2B sites for LinkedIn and music sites for MySpace). During the past two quarters, Twitter’s popularity as a
sharing destination has increased at a more prominent rate than other social networks. |
Social Sharing Trends | | | Q3 - 2011
| Q1 - 2012 | | Facebook | 54% | 54% | | Twitter | 35% | 39%
| | LinkedIn | 2% | 3% | |
Yahoo! | 7% | 3% | | Myspace | 2% | 1% | | Source: Janrain, May 2012 |
In concluding, the report offers a summary of suggestions for marketers in the use of the data. The author notes that social login shortens the registration process to a single
click and provides instant access to rich demographic, psychographic and social graph data on users. This social profile data can be leveraged for content personalization or product recommendations
and more tailored segmentation and targeting. Social sharing lets users broadcast content and activities from the marketers site to their social networks, increasing brand advocacy and creating an
effective source of qualified referral traffic.
 Does this cover go too far? (Photo: Time.com)The headline reads, "Are You Mom enough?" But if that wasn't enough to fan the flames of the Mommy Wars, there's the photo that goes with it: A pretty young woman wearing skinny jeans and a tank top, nursing her nearly 4-year-old son. It's meant to illustrate a story about Dr. William Sears and attachment parenting but, given that there's more to that movement than extended breastfeeding, it seems as if Time magazine was going for sensationalism and shock value.
It's working.
Related: Child Star Mayim Bialik still nurses her 3-year-old son. Here's why…
"Breast feeding is a natural thing to do, but standing on a chair and having mom stand there like she is a water fountain isn't the way to portray this," Yahoo! reader, San2, wrote.
"As a pediatrician, I believe that every mother should breastfeed her child for at least six months, preferably a year (even longer if they like)," KP.MD commented. "This, however, is extreme. And the photograph -- everything about its composition - sends a message that I find tasteless and more than a little disturbing."
"That is not the look of a loving and caring Mother, but the look of a defiant woman, daring you to tell her to cover up and/or wean her child," Yahoo! reader Can't Deny Truth added.
"We used an image that represents the attachment of a mother and child," Time's managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC. "The cover is meant to get your attention. It gets your attention. I think this is a legitimate debate. It's a debate lots and lots of women are having." (On "Morning Joe," MSNBC showed the cover but blurred the breast; ABC's "The View" covered it -- and part of the child's mouth -- with a large black dot.)
The mom on the provocative May 21st cover is 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet of Los Angeles, a lactation consultant, breastfeeding advocate, and mother of two who blogs at I Am Not the Babysitter. The child at her breast is her son, Aram, who turns 4 in June. "I don't consider breast feeding immodest at all," she told Time magazine. "I'm not shy about doing it in public."
"There are people who tell me there's going to call social services on me or that it's child molestation," Grumet tells Time, adding that her mother breast-fed her until she was 6. "But people have to realize this is biologically normal. It's not socially normal. The more people see it, the more it'll become normal in our culture. That's what I'm hoping. I want people to see it."
"There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting, and that's what I want to avoid," she added. "I want everyone to be encouraging. We're not on opposing teams. We all need to be encouraging to each other, and I don't think we're doing a very good job at that."
Photographer Martin Schoeller says that the photo, as well as the portraits he shot of other attachment parenting moms nursing their kids, was inspired by the iconic religious image of the Madonna and Child. The boy on the cover is standing on a chair, which makes him look both taller and older -- a technique that Schoeller says he used to underscore how unusual extended breastfeeding can seem.
"When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids," he told Time. "I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation."
But as Shawna Cohen points out at Mommyish, attachment parenting isn't all that uncommon. "It certainly got my attention, but it also angers me because it portrays AP moms as being totally extreme," she wrote. "And in most cases, that couldn't be further from the truth."
"I practiced a lot of what Dr. Sears recommended and will never regret it," a Yahoo! reader confided. "My pediatrician is very traditional and I just didn't discuss it with him. Unfortunately, this picture has done a great disservice for those of us who believe in attachment parenting and 'extended' breastfeeding."
Though plenty of people seem to think that Time has gone to far -- The Atlantic Wire called the cover "PG-13" and The Right Scoop describes it as "seriously NSFW" and "soft porn" -- to others, the photo wasn't the most offensive part.
"While this picture is gawk-tastic, I'm more disturbed by the title of the article. 'Are You Mom Enough?'" Yahoo! reader Chrissy from Conroe, Texas, commented. "I'm sorry...'Mom Enough?' So this woman is deemed more of a 'mom' simply because she chose to breastfeed her child until he was damn near as tall as she is?"
What do you think? Did Time go too far?
Copyright © 2012 Yahoo Inc.
Also on Shine:
8 basic principles of attachment parenting
Study confirms what moms have known for years: Breastfeeding isn't free
Selma Blair breastfeeds in public. Why you shouldn't be offended
Instalacion de la Artista Consuelo Castaneda
Acontecerá paralelamente a la 11na. Bienal de La Habana que cuenta con la presencia de más de mil norteamericanos.
La iniciativa denominada Primera Bienalita de Miami tendrá su primera versión este viernes en el restaurante The News Lounge, según informó Leticia del Monte, fundadora del Proyecto de Arte Cubano (The Cuban Art Project) con la exposición de la obra de varios artistas plásticos, entre ellas, la del sobrino-nieto del fallecido poeta Nicolás Guillén. El artista es hijo de Nicolás Guillén Landrián.
Aunque “no es una galería”, explicó Del Monte en comunicación telefónica con martinoticias.com, “usamos el espacio de la terraza del restaurante para exponer la obra y pasar un momento agradable”.
Además de Guillén, la Primera Bienalita contará con muestras de artistas contemporáneos como los plásticos Antonio Guerrero y Consuelo Castañeda.
El objetivo de esta muestra es “promocionar a los artistas cubanos usando los últimos adelantos en la tecnología”, explicó Del Monte quien anunció que la iniciativa debe efectuarse todos los meses.
Leticia del Monte, además de fundadora de la organización no lucrativa, Proyecto de Arte Cubano, es editora de la revista digital de arte Miami Art News.
Today, we’re announcing the App Center, a new place for people to find social apps. The App Center gives developers an additional way to grow their apps and creates opportunities for more types of apps to be successful.
In the coming weeks, people will be able to access the App Center on the web and in the iOS and Android Facebook apps. All canvas, mobile and web apps that follow the guidelines can be listed. All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch.
A place to find great apps
For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga.
Everything has an app detail page, which helps people see what makes an app unique and lets them install it before going to an app.
Growth for high-quality apps
Success through the App Center is tied to the quality of an app. We use a variety of signals, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed in the App Center. To help you monitor user feedback, we are also introducing a new app ratings metric in Insights to report how users rate your app over time.
Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor user ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won't be listed.
Driving mobile installs
The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook – whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web.
From the mobile App Center, users can browse apps that are compatible with their device, and if a mobile app requires installation, they will be sent to download the app from the App Store or Google Play.
To grow your mobile app through the App Center, your app needs to use Facebook Login.
Create your app detail page today
All developers should create an app detail page. The page is required for being listed in the App Center, and it will also become the new destination when non-users search for your app on Facebook.
You can create an app detail page in the App Center section of the Developer App. There you can upload images, provide additional details, and configure the permissions your app requires. Learn more about setting up your app.
Before creating your app detail page, read the guidelines to ensure your page does not get removed. App detail pages that are eligible for the App Center will be reviewed prior to being listed and priority will be given to those apps that submit before May 18.
Paid Apps
Many developers have been successful with in-app purchases, but to support more types of apps on Facebook.com, we will give developers the option to offer paid apps. This is a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com. If you are interested in the beta program, please sign up to receive more information.
We are excited to give developers a new way to grow their apps with the App Center. Get ready for the upcoming user launch by creating your app detail page today.
The Top Actress and Singer Signs Deal with Telemundo Studios, the #1 producer of Spanish-language primetime content in the US
Miami, FL – May 8, 2012 ( The Cuban Art Project) – Telemundo, the fastest growing broadcast network in primetime this season, announced it has signed a deal with internationally-acclaimed Mexican novela star Aracely Arámbula. With a successful career that spans over 15 years, Arámbula, who has starred in dozens of highly-rated novelas in Mexico and around the world, is regularly featured in the covers of top Spanish-language publications such as People En Español, Hola Mexico and H magazine, and is currently performing in the acclaimed “Perfume de Gardenia” play in Mexico City.
“Aracely’s arrival to Telemundo exemplifies our strong commitment to offering our viewers only the best quality original productions featuring top caliber talent,” said Joshua Mintz, Executive Vice President of Scripted Programming and General Manager of Telemundo Studios. “We are proud to welcome this superb star to the growing roster of talent at Telemundo Studios.”
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, Arámbula has an artistic career that spans more than 15 years as an actress, host and singer. “I am very happy to join Telemundo, a network that has proved to be a leader in original productions for U.S. Hispanics,” said Arámbula. “I can’t wait to get started and soon announce my first project with the network,” she affirmed.
Arámbula began her artistic career in 1995 with a role in the telenovela “Acapulco, Cuerpo y Alma” (Acapulco, Body and Soul). She then participated in successful projects such as “Cañaveral de Pasiones” (Sugarcane Field of Passions), “Pueblo Chico Infierno Grande” (Small Town, Big Hell), “El Alma no tiene Color” (The Soul Does Not have Color) and “Soñadoras” (Dreamers), among others. She had her first leading antagonist role on “Rencor Apasionado” (Passionate Resentment) in 1998 and two years later she played her first leading role in “Abrázame muy Fuerte” (Embrace Me Tightly). This project, where she also interpreted the novela’s theme song “Niña y mujer” (Girl and Woman), consolidated her as an actress and singer. Following this role, which led her to a TV y Novelas Award nomination, Arámbula launched her first album “Solo Tuya”(Only Yours) in 2002, ranking on the Billboard Latin Music Albums chart.
In 2005, after her participation in “Las Vías del Amor” (Love Paths), where she also interpreted one of the theme songs, Arámbula launched her second album “Sexy”, produced by Abraham Quintanilla III. Her most recent performance on television was a double leading role in the hit-novela “Corazón Salvaje” (Wild Heart) which garnered her two TV y Novelas Award nominations in the categories of Best Protagonist Leading Role, and Best Antagonist Leading Role.
Salesforce.com, best know for its sales, customer service and collaboration software for business, is now entering the government cloud business with a suite of new product offerings that could help the government adapt to today’s social era.
Alberto Rodriguez
©2012 SBS
MIAMI, FL (April 12th, 2012)— Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc. (SBS) (NASDAQ: SBSA), is announcing that our Chief Revenue Officer and EVP, Mr. Albert Rodriguez, was part of the“Digital Transformation of Traditional Hispanic Media: How TV, Radio, Print and Even Online are Changing in the Age of Social Media” panel at Hispanicize 2012, the annual Latino trends event scheduled in Miami, April 10th-13th at the JW Marriott Marquis Miami (www.HispanicizeEvent.com).
Rodriguez’s appearance was a bookmark to a four-day, 85-session program April 10th-13th that features inspiring Latinovator Award recipients Emilio Estefan (19-time GRAMMY-winning Music Producer), Cesar Millan (The Dog Whisperer), Maria Elena Salinas (Anchor) and Nely Galan(Entrepreneur, The Swan) as well as the top trends and trendsetters in Latino social media, advertising, media, blogging, public relations and filmmaking.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to Hispanic America, I’m thrilled to participate in one of the most prestigious panels with Hispanicize for the 2012 event and have the opportunity to further extend the reach of this growing community – across the board,” said Albert Rodriguez, Chief Revenue Officer of SBS’s Consolidated Operations, Executive Vice President and General Manager of MegaTV.
Armani/Casa Grand Opening Miami 4/11/2012
Leticia del Monte, Gloria Diliz,Romina Nabhen,Jennifer Diliz MIAMI FLORIDA, April 12, 2012-Miami Art News The eagerly anticipated Armani/Casa Miami grand opening on Wednesday, April 11th premiered to huge fanfare. Over 400 guests were in attendance.
Guests enjoyed hors d’oeurves by Chef Richard Henry and imbibed on Prosecco and Pinot Grigio throughout the evening. The elegant affair ended with guests receiving an assorted box of delicious Armani Dulci chocolates.
Roder Figueroa Univision Network Entertainment Anchor The underlying concept behind the Armani/Casa Miami store (340 square meters) is to create a distinctive atmosphere through a combination of products that range from furniture and furnishings to accessories, décor and fabrics – for both day and night zones – carefully selected for their compatibility in terms of shape, material and color, and all displayed within a bright but softly-lit environment. Around the entire perimeter and within the space itself, panels have been created in order to subdivide the displays. These comprise two slim, glossy, metal structures that feature two panels in bronze-colored honeycomb polycarbonate on each side. Other technical aspects of the display are as follows: the display system for accessories consists of clear glass shelves supported by poles of full length, finished in glossy black lacquer and vinyl tatami has been placed over the existing floor.
Contemporary Cuban Painter Antonio Guerrero, Aldo Saetta Project Architect Vero Design Inc and Antonio Cabrera Armani/Casa, the home furnishings collection by Giorgio Armani, was launched in the year 2000 at its first store at Armani/Via Manzoni in Milan. On the occasion of Salone del Mobile 2010 Armani/Casa opened its largest store in the world in Via Sant’Andrea 9 in Milan, and the brand now has 68 dedicated point of sales in 45 countries, comprising 30 single brand stores and 38 shops-in-shops. Giorgio Armani’s objective was to bring his philosophy of style to the world of home interiors, and in so doing create the complete concept of an Armani lifestyle.
Antonio de la Guardia, Ingrid Maspoch, Milu Vimo The Armani/Casa collection is multi-faceted and offers a complete environment. There are items of furniture, tableware, decorative accessories, fabrics, ornaments, lighting, as well as original ideas for the bathroom and the kitchen. In addition, Armani/Casa also offers an exclusive interior design service in each store providing “made to measure” solutions for private clients and property developers.
Livia Lage See Photo Gallery
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Home » Arts & Entertainment » Usher Dead? Twitter Hoax Killing Celebrities
Usher Dead? Twitter Hoax Killing Celebrities
Posted by Javier Strauser on Apr 10th, 2012 // 1 Comment
Usher is not dead. One retweet from Twitter and suddenly there are rumors flying that Usher is dead.
According to Global Associated News, Usher died in a car accident on April 10, 2012. It states, “Usher died in a single vehicle crash on Route 80 between Morristown and Roswell. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics responding to the vehicle accident and was identified by photo ID found on his body. Alcohol and drugs do not appear to have been a factor in this accident on April 10, 2012. Highway Safety Investigators have told reporters that Usher lost control while driving a friend’s vehicle on Interstate 80 and rolled the vehicle several times killing him instantly.”
The problem with that website, it’s fake. It’s a website where you can make up your own story about celebrities. They say on their home page to enter a celebrity name, browse a pre-formatted fake story, then prank your friends and spin a hoax.
They do allow celebrities to be removed from the list, “Believe it or not, we have never received a celebrity name removal request! If you are a celebrity or the business manager for celebrity and wish to have a name blocked from working on the site, please follow the instructions below.” Which has a person go through steps of removal. They do warn not to submit a fake removal because some celebrities enjoy the hoax of a death for press reasons.
While the website might be fake and starting rumors like Usher dead, Twitter catches wind of it and suddenly it’s believable.
Although, people on Twitter are starting to get the hang of the death hoax from this fake website.
“Everybody keep saying Usher is dead , I refuse to believe it!”
“If usher were dead I think it would be on every news channel, he’s a huge artist. I won’t believe it until I see it on tv.”
“i wont believe Usher is dead, until CNN says so”
“twitter keep killing ppl , usher is not dead lol…. I dnt think”
Rating: 2.9/5 (8 votes cast)
One Response
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[...] Global Associated News, which has been responsible for the false death reports of Reba McEntire, Jon Bon Jovi, and several [...]
Usher Dies In Car Crash
THIS STORY IS STILL DEVELOPING...
(Local Team News 9) Usher died in a single vehicle crash on Route 80 between Morristown and Roswell. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics responding to the vehicle accident and was identified by photo ID found on his body. Alcohol and drugs do not appear to have been a factor in this accident - April 10, 2012
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Highway Safety Investigators have told reporters that Usher lost control while driving a friend's vehicle on Interstate 80 and rolled the vehicle several times killing him instantly.
The vehicle was believed to have been traveling at approximately 95 miles per hour in a 55mph zone at the time of the accident.
Witnesses have stated that Usher's car crossed the double lines several times prior to the accident and hit the center lane divider causing the vehicle to flip and roll.
Toxicology tests will be performed to determine whether he was driving under the influence, however initial findings indicate that durgs or alcohol did not contribute in any way to this accident as it was more likely to been caused by road conditions.
Memorial services for Usher have not yet been announced. The service is expected to be a closed casket funeral due to the severe head trauma.
Additional details and information will be forthcoming as they become available.
Facebook has just finished a deal to acquire mobile photo sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock. Instagram will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook, but the services will increase their ties to each other. The transaction should go through this quarter pending some standard closing procedures
Red Innocence by Antonio Guerrero
Tittle: Red Innocence
Medium: Mixed media on Paper
Sizes: 20"x30"
©2012 Antonio Guerrero Artist Resume
Antonio Guerrero
Born: Matanzas, Cuba (1968)
Education: “A gift from GOD” Self-taught
Selected Exhibitions: (*Solo Shows)
2011 Cafeina Wynwood Lounge “Becks Emerging Artist” Miami FL, (USA)
2011 Leals Gallery, under the name “Cuban Master under 360″ Miami FL, (USA)
2011 Mano Fine Art Project Space, under the name “Made in the USA, Miami FL( USA)
2011 Leal’s Gallery, under the name “Cubanos de aqui y de alla”, Miami FL, (USA)
2011 SeaFair, Represented by Aldo Castillo Gallery, Curated by Aldo Castillo, Sarasota FL, (USA)
2011 Art Naples, Represented by Aldo Castillo Gallery, Curated by Aldo Castillo, Naples FL,(USA)
2011 Art Naples, Represented by Miami Wave, Curated by Sergio Garcia, Naples FL, (USA)
2011 Ava Art Gallery, under the name, “Close encounter II” Wynwood, Miami FL, (USA)
2010 Ivan Galindo Art Studio, Miami FL (USA)
2010* Condesa Gyn,Dance and theater of Miami, Miami FL (USA)
2010 US Century Bank, under the name “Two Artist Same Dream” Miami Beach FL,(USA)
2010* AbaHouse Art Gallery, under the name “Evolution” 20 years in the Making, Miami Fl
2010 Miami Dade West Campus Martin and Pat Fine Center for the Arts, (USA)
2010 AbaHouse Art Gallery, under the name “Close encounters”; Doral Miami Fl (USA)
2010* US Century Bank, under the name “Exile on Main Street” Miami Beach, Fl (USA)
2010* Touch Muah, under the name “I live in a Red Planet” Miami Beach, Fl (USA)
2010 ArtRouge Gallery Miami Florida (USA)
2010 Renee Gallery, under the name “The Future belongs to you”, Miami Florida (USA)
2010 The Art of Freedom, under the name “51 Años de todos”, Miami Florida (USA)
2010 International Art Fair Palm Beach, Convention Center, Presented By Aldo Castillo’s Gallery
2010 International Art Fair Miami, It’s Present by Aldo Castillo’s Gallery, Miami Beach Convention C.
2009 Leal Gallery, under the name! “Milla 45” Miami Florida (USA)
2009 MAC Building, under the name “Artistas por una America Verde” @ 5960 SW 57 Ave. Miami, Fl
2009* Undergrung Art Fair at the Santa Barbara Hotel Miami Beach Fl (USA)
2009 Glass Gallery, City Hall Pembroke Pines, Pines Boulevard Florida (USA)
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Online merchants are competing for customer attention and loyalty in an Internet landscape where people create their autobiographies across social networks and businesses have to discover a reason to be relevant in that narrative.
Blogging, which some suggest is a waning art for individuals, can be a publishing platform for savvy online stores that create content to better engage potential shoppers and build a relationship with them.
Ecommerce-related blogs can focus on product information, how-to demonstrations, or even social topics. Examples of good ecommerce blogs include REI and Toms.
For businesses that want to blog there are at least two challenges — what to write and how to present the content that is written. This article focuses on the latter. What you'll find here is my list of the ten best blogging platforms available in 2011.
WordPress is a free, open-source blogging platform that has grown into a full-fledged content management system. It enjoys enormous community support.
WordPress offers a hosted and a licensed version.
Google owns Blogger and has it integrated with Google Accounts. The platform has been around since blogging's beginnings, and is still an excellent choice.
Blogger is Google's free, hosted blogging platform.
Tumblr is one of the fastest growing blogging platforms in 2011. It has a love-hate relationship — it would seem — with the fashion industry, but is an excellent choice for any ecommerce merchant.
Tumblr is a rising star among blogging platforms.
Antonio Guerrero @ The Sincerity Project 2012
MIAMI BEACH, Florida―April 6, 2012―The Cuban Art Project® is pleased to announce that contemporary Cuban artist Antonio Guerrero, will be one of the artists participating in The Sincerity Project 2012.
The inaugural Sincerity Project in 2011 was inspired when a young woman from the special needs community visited Studio 18, and asked for an image of a painting she had seen. She wanted to paint her own version of the work.
“The first Sincerity Project featured the work of forty professional artists who made their work available for the special needs community to interpret. Seven special needs organizations participated, creating more than one hundred pieces of work. The exhibition was an overwhelming success.” Says Jill Slaughter Curator of Special Projects for the City of Pemprooke Pines.
"Mi Corazon"
20" x 30"
Gouache on handmade paper
©2009 Antonio Guerrero For The Sincerity Project 2012 devotion is the theme . Antonio Guerrero, Co-Founder of The Cuban Art Project will showcase three painting from the series “Agua sobre los Campos” and Ode to his homeland Cuba.
The Sincerity Project opens on June 1st at Studio 18.
STUDIO 18 IN THE PINES
1101 Poinciana Drive
Pembroke Pines, FL 33025
954-961-6067 ph. 954-961-6305 fax
Studio 18 in the Pines is an 11,000 square foot facility dedicated to showcasing contemporary art and serving the community. The studio offers affordable space for emerging and mid career juried artists. Studio 18 hosts exhibitions, workshops, lectures and classes. The main gallery and classrooms are available to rent for private functions. Art openings are held on the first Friday of every month from 7:00 – 9:00pm. Artist’s studios are open during First Friday events and receptions. First Friday events are free. For more information call 954.961.6067.
It is the brainchild of the Arts and Culture Advisory Board, whose mission is to promote the arts in Pembroke Pines.
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With 2,000 layoffs to make, it's a big week for human resources and security at Yahoo. As the dust settles, we're getting a clearer picture of who's leaving and who's staying at the company.
One department getting a huge makeover is communications, with CEO Scott Thompson cutting about half the current staff. Among those leaving is its chief, Eric Brown and a key deputy, Nina Blackwell.
Mr. Brown notified his staff in a meeting yesterday afternoon. It is not clear whether Mr. Brown's departure is part of the layoffs, or if he was forced out, as AllThingsD suggested in a report Thursday morning that said Mr. Thompson was bringing in PayPal communications exec Amanda Pires to Yahoo to lead communications.
Mr. Brown did not return an email requesting comment. Ms. Blackwell did not return a voicemail left on her cell phone. Yahoo declined to comment, other than giving the following statement:
"The communications and marketing team was impacted as was every part of the organization. We had some changes, but we're not going to comment on or confirm any specific departures," the spokesperson said.
Most departments in the company have been affected by yesterday's restructuring, which Yahoo said would result in the elimination of 2,000 jobs. Employees affected were informed in meetings throughout the day yesterday.
The ad-technology side of the business is also going through change. Hardeep Bindra, who managed partnership relations for Yahoo's ad exchange, Right Media, is leaving the company. He resigned and was not part of today's layoffs.
Gone, too, is Joel Jones, Carol Bartz's former chief of staff who managed a division that included the ad exchange and ad network businesses. Mr. Jones is headed to Facebook, a source told Ad Age. Mr. Jones could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Jones' exit could signal a consolidation of power under sales exec Peter Foster, who took on more of a leadership role after former sales exec Seth Dallaire departed for Amazon in January.
Mr. Foster is now running the part of the business that focuses on audience advertising. Before Yahoo, he was chief revenue officer at 5:1, an ad platform that Yahoo acquired last year. The CEO of 5:1, Jim Heckman, is now one of Yahoo's top strategy execs, and the right-hand man to Exec VP-Americas Ross Levinsohn. Mr. Heckman and Mr. Levinsohn are still with the company.
 Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images|AP Photo. He’s had one foot in Hollywood and the other in Silicon Valley for years now, so it makes sense that Ashton Kutcher has been tapped to play Steve Jobs in an upcoming bio-pic of the late Apple co-founder.
On Sunday, Variety reported that Kutcher will star in “Jobs,” which is expected to chronicle Jobs’s life from his decidedly un-corporate youth to his hand in creating Apple. Variety said the film, to be directed by Joshua Michael Stern (“Swing Vote”) is slated to start production in May while Kutcher is on a hiatus from “Two and a Half Men.”
Kutcher, who put on yet another hat at Sunday’s Country Music Awards, singing a stanza from George Strait’s ”I Cross My Heart,” has been involved in multiple Internet start ups, including Ooma and Katalyst Media. While much of his film work has been critically underwhelming — like 2011′s “No Strings Attached” and “New Year’s Eve” — he was praised for his work in 2005′s “Bobby,” about the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
10 Hispanic Fast Facts You Should Know
When it comes to understanding the complex Hispanic segment in the United States, knowing where to start may seem like a challenge. These 10 facts are the must-read keys to getting to know Hispanic America and why it is the biggest game-changer since the baby boom and the growth engine many businesses may be missing. For category- or demographic-specific research and insights, contact us to find out how Univision can assist with custom solutions.
1. Hispanics are the Largest U.S. Minority Group
- 50.5 million Hispanics in the U.S.
- 16.3% of the total U.S. population
Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2010 Decennial Census.
2. Hispanics are the Fastest-Growing U.S. population
- 43% growth from 2000-2010 (vs. +10% for Total U.S. and +1.2% for non-Hispanic White)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2010 Census. Vs. 2000 Decennial Census
- From 2010 to 2020 the Hispanic population will grow by 16.6 million people to a total of 66.3 million
- Hispanics driving over half of total U.S. population growth (Hispanics will account for 53% of growth from 2010-2020)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau Projected Population by Single Year, Age, Sex, and Hispanic Origin Release August 14, 2008. Based on 2010 and 2020 projections
3. Hispanics are fueling population growth across the country
- Percent change in population by Region 2011-2016
- Northeast: Hispanic +10%/non-Hispanic 0%
- Midwest: Hispanic +14%/non-Hispanic 0%
- South: Hispanic +18%/non-Hispanic +3%
- West: Hispanic +14%/non-Hispanic +3%
Source: Nielsen PrimeLocation/Pop-Facts: 2011 Estimates, 2016 Projections
DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER FOR SEVEN MORE FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Miami, March, 2012 – At a signing ceremony this week, Miami Dade College(MDC) formally welcomed the impressive art collection bequeathed to the college by the late journalist Norma Niurka.
Norma Niurka, a journalist, writer and theater critic who for years worked at El Nuevo Herald, was passionate about the arts. Her son, Luis Molina, said at the signing ceremony: “Whether she was viewing a play or reading poetry or admiring a painting, the arts were the gasoline that fueled her body.” It was her desire to leave her extensive art collection to MDC, which she long admired for its dedication to making the arts accessible to all.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Yahoo (YHOO) will begin layoffs of thousands of employees next week and will announce a plan to restructure the company the week after that, according to a media report. Yahoo declined to comment. The layoffs, which will not take place all at once, will mostly affect Yahoo's product, research and marketing groups, according to the report in the blog AllThingsD, which cited anonymous sources. Under a plan still being finalized, Yahoo would reorganize its business to create a global media division, while product development would move to decentralized
units. The company is figuring out the future of its advertising technology business, as well as its search business, according to the report. The layoffs and reorganization would mark the most significant moves by new Chief Executive Scott Thompson, the former PayPal president who took the top job at Yahoo in January. Yahoo, which ended 2011 with roughly 14,000 employees, has seen its revenue decline amid competition from Web rivals Google (GOOG) Inc and Facebook.
Google has recently launched Google Play, your one-stop shop for all your favorite entertainment. Now your favorite music, movies, books, apps, and games are all in one place that’s accessible from the Web and any Android device.
Why is this a big deal? Because Google Play is on over 300 million Android devices, growing by 850,000 a day. That’s over 250 million people carrying Google Play with them everywhere they go.
Normally you’d need to go through a label to get your music in a store like this, but you can go direct with the Google Play artist hub. Don’t miss your chance to get your music in front of these Google users for FREE this week.
Claim your store page
Upload your original music
Set your retail prices
Sell your own songs
There are no per-album or annual fees, and you keep 70% of what you take in.
If you’re unsigned or own original content, then the artist hub is perfect for you. Distribute full albums, live recordings, and demos in a snap, and help fans find you in the Google Play store. Get your music on Google Play before 4/3 to save.
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Just in case you were wondering, Facebook is not trying to build an ad agency, despite recent hiring of some of the industry's creatives.
"Is Facebook building an agency internally, hiring a handful of creative people, starting something that becomes competitive with us?" JWT North America CEO David Eastman asked Facebook VP-Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson on stage at the 4As Transformation Conference in Beverly Hills today.
"You're thinking of Mark D'Arcy, who is my chief creative partner at Facebook, who we hired a little less than a year ago," Ms. Everson said. "Mark has hired a handful of people around the world so we can have a conversation with the Jeff Benjamins of the world and chief creative officers." (Jeff Benjamin being the digital creative JWT recently hired away from CP&B to be chief creative officer of JWT North America and New York.)
"Creatives like talking to creatives," Ms. Everson said. "We need enough people at Facebook who can sit across the table from a creative leader and engage in a conversation about what the possibilities are."
She urged the audience to look at how Facebook deals with developers to get a sense of how it would like to deal with ad agencies.
"We've been very good at partnering with developers, we had our F8 conference," which helped developers understand how to create programs and businesses on Facebook's platform, she said. In an analog to that, "we just had our first FMC (Facebook Marketing Conference)."
Ms. Everson did acknowledge that clients often look to get involved and connect to tech companies directly, rather than rely on their ad agencies to have the relationship. When she was at Viacom's's MTV Networks she had very few direct client relationships, she said. But when she got to Microsoft, "I started to see the plethora of Silicon Valley client tours. ... [The thinking was that] if I am a client I better understand how technology is changing consumer consumption or information-sharing," she said. "That does not mean there's not a robust role for the agency. As a matter of fact, clients are clamoring for their agencies to be that leader, to take them on the tours."
Mr. Eastman also asked Ms. Everson about a recent quote (which ran in Ad Age), where an advertiser updated the IT maxim "nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM" to be "nobody will get fired for spending on Facebook."
Ms. Everson said that rather than looking at who's not getting fired, she sees marketers who are getting promoted for investing in social. She cited a client at American Express who had an extraordinary ascension because she "made a career decision to understand what was happening in the space … how social could transform the relationship a consumer can have with a financial institution."
Mr. Eastman also pressed Ms. Everson on social's ROI. "It's undeniable that a marketer wants to understand their best customers, their biggest fans who will become their brand advocates. … So the notion of what's the value of the fan, we have very specific metrics around that -- Nielsen and ComScore both studied this. Starbucks know fans spend 8% more when they go into Starbucks. Bing knows that fans do 60% more searches. American Express knows fans spend 28% more on small businesses."
She urged advertisers to be careful about how they look at fan ROI, so as to not repeat the mistakes the internet industry made in its early days. "The notion that you could know who your best customers are, have a one-to-one relationship and inspire them to become your best advocates -- that's the totality of how we want you to think of this," she said. "To think about fans as just a number or a click-through, you're missing the entire piece about what's the value of a fan. It's not about how many people necessarily commented, or clicked through. That's the mistake the digital industry made when it started. What we thought was the most measurable industry has been boiled down to a handful of metrics that really don't tell you if someone bought your product off the shelf or went to purchase your car."
THE GIST
- The planet, Venus, is visible in the daytime sky today.
- What makes today's Venus appearance special is that the crescent moon will be right next to Venus.
The planet Venus has been dominating the nighttime sky recently, but did you know it's possible to see the bright world in the daytime? Today (March 26), Venus can be spotted in the afternoon if you know where and when to look.
In fact, a daytime apparition of Venus in the sky was famously spotted by none other than President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
NEWS: Earthlings Dazzled by Venus-Jupiter Close Encounter
It was March 4, 1865, and the streets of Washington DC were packed with crowds watching the inauguration ofAbraham Lincoln for his second term as president. Suddenly someone in the crowd spotted something strange in the sky: a tiny brilliant point of light. Excitement swelled through the crowd as each person pointed it out to their neighbor. The commotion even reached as far as the Lincoln himself, and soon he too was pointing at the brilliant point in the sky.
One of Lincoln's bodyguards, Sergeant Smith Stimmellater, described it this way: "Soon after the President concluded his address, he entered his carriage, and the procession started up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, the escort from our Company following next to his carriage. Shortly after we turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, west of the Capitol, I noticed the crowd along the street looking intently, and some were pointing to something in the heavens toward the south.[Great Skywatcher Photos of Venus and Jupiter]
ANALYSIS: Why is the Moon Bigger at the Horizon?
"I glanced up in that direction, and there in plain view, shining out in all her star-like beauty, was the planet Venus. It was a little after midday at the time I saw it, possibly near one o'clock; the sun seemed to be a little west of the median, the star a little east. It was a strange sight. I never saw a star at that time in the day before or since. The superstitious had had many strange notions about it, but of course it was simply owing to the peculiarly clear condition of the atmosphere and the favorable position of the planet at that time. The President and those who were with him in the carriage noticed the star at the same time."
This week, nearly a century and a half later, you can duplicate this famous observation. The sky map of Venus in daylight for this story shows where Venus and the moon will appear at 4 p.m. relative to the sun.
Venus is quite easy to see in a clear blue daylight sky, if you know exactly where to look, and if you can focus your eyes on it. What makes today's Venus appearance special is that the waxing crescent moon will be right next to Venus in the sky, showing you exactly where to look, and giving your eyes something to focus on.
Here's how to see it:
Go out around 4 p.m. local time on Monday, and position yourself so that the sun is behind a chimney or rooftop to your right. Blocking the sun is always essential if you're looking anywhere close to the sun. WARNING:Never look directly at the sun with your unaided eye or through binoculars or telescopes without special light filters. Severe eye damage can result.
Then face due south, and look two-thirds of the way up the sky towards overhead. If the sky is clear, you should be able to clearly see the crescent moon. Look just above the moon, and you should be able to see Venus as a tiny brilliant pinpoint of light.
If you have difficulty, try using binoculars to focus on the moon. Before using binoculars, make doubly sure that the sun is still safely behind the chimney or rooftop. Always take extreme care when using binoculars in a daytime sky and never point them at the sun without using a solar filter.
Venus is not the only object currently shining bright in the evening and nighttime sky. Tonight, Venus will appear near the moon and Jupiter for the second night in a row in an event that astronomers call a conjunction.
At sunset tonight, Venus will appear in the west just to the right of the crescent moon with Jupiter shining below. In the eastern night sky, Mars is also currently visible at night and is unmistakeable due to its reddish hue.
If you snap an amazing photo of Venus and Jupiter, or any other skywatching target, and would like to share it for a possible story or image gallery, please contact SPACE.com managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.
This article was provided to SPACE.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions.
More From Space.com
Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tags: Astronomy, Planets, Solar System Planets, Venus
From the wreckage of the Trayvon Martin killing, the hoodie has emerged as an unlikely symbol, a silent way of expressing solidarity and anger over justice delayed as protests erupt nationwide over the death of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a Central Florida neighborhood watch captain who viewed the boy as suspicious. From a downtown outdoor mall in Iowa City to the expanse of Union Square in New York City, from a historic church in Atlanta to a plaza in Washington, D.C., thousands of demonstrators have been protesting the 17-year-old’s death by donning hoodies like the one Trayvon wore that Sunday night a month ago when he was killed in a gated townhouse community in Sanford. Thousands more have posted, shared and tweeted photos of themselves wearing the hooded jackets. Still others have used Trayvon’s haunting black-and-white image as their own profile pictures on the Internet, creating a boundless digital imprint in a case fueled by social media, the focus intensifying Friday with the release of a Miami Heat photo and a controversial remark by TV personality Geraldo Rivera. “Before the incident, there was a cultural understanding that the African-American male wore hoodies as a way to be under the radar, to be ambiguous, but not because of any malicious intent, not because he was up to no good,’’ says Jason Campbell, an assistant professor of conflict resolution and philosophy at Nova Southeastern University. “Now, it’s visual shorthand that has transcended, used as a way to say I am lending my voice to the cause. It’s not a black cause, or a male cause, it’s a national cause.’’
Trayvon was wearing a hoodie — and carrying a bag of Skittles and an Arizona iced tea purchased from a nearby convenience store — as he returned to the townhouse of his father’s girlfriend. He had been suspended from high school in Miami and was spending time in Sanford with his father. The shooter, George Zimmerman, 28, told police the boy was wearing a dark hoodie, looked “suspicious” and thought he was “up to no good.’’ He said Trayvon jumped him and he shot in self-defense. The boy died on the grass, 70 yards from the backdoor of the townhouse. Trayvon’s girlfriend, who was on a cellphone with him moments before, said it was not until he noticed he was being followed by a stranger that he cloaked himself with the hood. In the month since the boy’s Feb. 26 death, with no arrests made, a national social movement has grown, exposing the fault lines of race and exploring what it means to be young, black and wearing a hoodie. The hooded jacket or pullover — an ubiquitous uniform for the youth, hip-hop and sports worlds, a sideline favorite of New England Patriot Coach Bill Belichick and a casual outfit for Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — has become a powerful part of the Trayvon Martin narrative. Ordinary citizens, political personalities, athletes and big-name celebrities have joined the cause, posting hooded images of themselves, people as disparate as Oscar winner Jamie Foxx; Marian Wright Edelman, who heads the Children’s Defense Fund; and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Many of the images included simple text, asking “Do I Look Suspicious?” or stating, “I am Trayvon.” For the newly minted hoodie movement, the goal is both to protest Trayvon’s death and also to take back the clothing item, to remove the sting of its sometimes sinister image.
Coca-Cola is turning its beachfront concept store in Rio de Janeiro into a lab for the company's "Happiness Refill" project -- a dispenser that gives young cellphone users data credits to browse the internet rather than a soda.
Coke's 'Happiness Refill' in Brazil
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The effort targets Brazil's young, emerging middle-class consumers who love their mobile phones but can't afford a generous data plan. More than 80% of this target group uses a prepaid phone and lacks an affordable data option in a country with few free Wi-Fi hot spots.
"We're mixing mobile, the emerging middle class, and a positive brand experience in one application," said Daniel Tartaro, digital integration director at Ogilvy, which developed the project.
Mr. Tartaro explained how the "Happiness Refill," which starts March 22, will work:
At the Coke store, an open-air kiosk on Copacabana beach with bright red-and-white tables and and a bar, a cellphone user holds his phone up to the bright red dispenser, and data credits and a Coke browser are downloaded. To make it easy, the browser has just three buttons: Coke FM radio to hear music, social networks including Facebook and Twitter, and the weather forecast (because this is beachfront Rio de Janeiro).
Each data "refill" is 20 megabytes, which Coke is calling "20 liters of happiness," and will last about two weeks for a moderate user, and a week for a heavy user, Mr. Tartaro said. They can return for more more refills.
"Our briefing [to Ogilvy] was that I need you guys to think about something that connects Coke, mobile and the middle class consumer," said Adriana Knackfuss, senior consumer-connections manager at Coca-Cola. "Everyone has a mobile phone, but they lack money to buy data credits. It's an opportunity for Coke to deliver happiness in a relevant way."
For the first month, the "Happiness Refill" will only be open to 50 young Rio dwellers selected by their wireless provider Oi.
"They're the beta testers," Mr. Tartaro said. Ogilvy and Coke can monitor how the dispenser and the mobile browser function, make sure people find it easy to use, and see if any tweaks are needed. "After the first month, we'll have a snapshot of how users are interacting with the browser and the dispenser. We need to evaluate the results. Is Coke becoming part of their day-to-day?"
More users will be added after the first month, and later Mr. Tartaro hopes to expand beyond the Android platform and the single wireless provider Oi. The technology for "Happiness Refill" was developed by Ogilvy's office in Recife, a city in northeast Brazil that has become known as a digital center, while Ogilvy's Sao Paulo office added creative input and Rio is overseeing activation.
It was hard to develop the first dispenser but adding more will be cheap. "The beauty of this project is not the technology itself, but how to use it to transform the experience," he said. "Open the hood [of the dispenser] and it's just a Mac computer and a keyboard."
"It's a pilot for us to test consumer reaction, and understand what role Coke should play in the mobile space," Ms. Knackfuss said. "We'll be filming everything. We're interested in capturing consumers' spontaneous reaction."
If the "Happiness Refill" is successful, it could be used elsewhere in Brazil, and in other emerging markets with a fast-growing young population hungry to spend more time online.
"Part of the beauty of this project is it's happening at point-of-sale," Ms. Knackfuss said. "It's a reason for consumers to come back."
Brazil is an innovative market for Coke. In addition to the Rio concept store, the local company sells a line of Coca-Cola apparel throughout the country, and has participated in earlier initiatives under Coke's "Open Happiness" platform, including the "Happiness Truck" that toured Rio last year dispensing not just soft drinks but unexpected items like soccer balls and surf boards.
Twitter last month announced it would begin testing Promoted Tweets and Promoted
Accounts in the timelines, searches and suggested follows on its mobile apps. Now the company says it will expand that effort by allowing advertisers to target campaigns specifically to iOS and
Android users, as well as those on other mobile devices, PCs or laptops.
 The embedded LTE networking capability in the new iPad was catnip for gadget geeks. Oh, did the benchmarks pour in -- almost as thick a gusher as
the, well, gushing over Retina Display sharpness. 17GB per second and greater speeds were clocked as reviewers got out the old Speedtest app to prove just how world-changing, mind-blowing, and
paradigm-shifting high-speed wireless broadband can be.
Except when it’s irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of tablet users. According to the latest research and forecasting from Chetan Sharma, 90% of tablets use WiFi only. Sure, there are millions of tablets out there with cellular capability. But the majority of
those 3G and now 4G tablets generally aren’t even turning the cellular capability on. There is anecdotal evidence that some people are taking their tablets out of the home for work and
occasionally other shopping tasks. At industry conferences you will see a fair share of iPads in the crowd, most likely linked to the sponsored WiFi. One realty app maker says it knows that some of
its house-hunter users actually are taking their tablets with them in the car and looking up images of the interior of a for-sale property as they park outside. But overall, even those who
have the capability to connect via cellular networks seem to have bought their tablets in the hope that someday they will need or want to use it. Or, more likely, when they will be able to
afford to use it. For all but the infamous 1%. ponying up for another data plan on top of the smartphone plans and other media subscription on our monthly plate is unrealistic. Having the ability to
tap into tablet data on an ad hoc monthly basis is a good start, but my guess is most people don’t use it when a little effort will get them to a WiFi connection. In other words, the
business models haven’t really caught up with the technology. Chetan Sharma says that operators are essentially irrelevant to the sales of tablets, largely because they are not effectively tied
to a cellular model for most consumers. “Operators who start to bundle multiple devices by single data plans and data buckets are going to see a better yield in this category,” the report
states. “We expect family data plans to be introduced in the US market soon.” In fact, the blogosphere is abuzz today with a leaked document from Verizon Wireless suggesting that
family data plans are imminent. But it still isn’t clear whether Verizon will offer multi-device data buckets in this model. Being able to pull from the same pool of Gigabytes across gadgets is
really what we need in the post-PC era. And that is when we may begin seeing tablets move from portability to mobility. Now still contained mainly in the home or workplace, tablets get fresh
and interesting when shoppers start thinking of them as companions for store trips. I suspect the big screen combined with the camera on the iPad also makes them more compelling augmented reality
tools out-of-home. Combine the screen size and connectivity and we get that much closer to using tablets as AR windows onto the external world -- displays that we can fill with all manner of
reality enhancements.
Breakthrough Retina display. It’s even more than meets the eye.
The Retina display on the new, third-generation iPad makes everything look crisper and more lifelike. Text is razor sharp. Colors are more vibrant. Photos and videos are rich with detail. All thanks to 3.1 million pixels powered by the new A5X chip. It’s the best mobile display ever. Learn more
Breakthrough Retina display. It’s even more than meets the eye.
The Retina display on the new, third-generation iPad makes everything look crisper and more lifelike. Text is razor sharp. Colors are more vibrant. Photos and videos are rich with detail. All thanks to 3.1 million pixels powered by the new A5X chip. It’s the best mobile display ever. Learn more
Migdalia Figueroa has been named Vice President of News at WTVJ, The NBC O&O in Miami. She is the first hire of new station President and General Manager Manuel Martinez, who was appointed to the position in February.
Migdalia will start the new job on March 26. She joins WTVJ from Telemundo where she was Senior Vice President of Local Content for the Telemundo Station Group, overseeing all news and local content produced by network’s 14 owned stations.
Migdalia has been with Telemundo for 7 years. Prior to her current role in 2010, she was Vice President of News at WSCV-51, the Telemundo O&O in Miami. She previously spent 15 years at Univision, working in several news roles in New York and Miami. She was also General Producer of “El Show de Christina.”
Sony Mobile Communications announced the Android-based Xperia sola, which allows users to interact with the phone without touching the screen, on Tuesday. The phone's capacitive touchscreen lets the device register a user's finger up to 20 millimeters above the screen, opening up new ways of interaction, according to Sony. At first, the technology will be integrated with the phone's built-in Web browser. Users can move their fingers over browser links to highlight them. But to open them, users still have to click on the screen. "Floating touch," which is what Sony calls the technology, will evolve to include new user functionality and applications through software updates. Sony is also hoping developers will start using the technology in their applications and will have more details on how that will work in the future, according to a blog post. With the success of gesture recognition on gaming consoles it isn't a surprise that the technology is being added to smartphones, according to Francisco Jeronimo, research manager at IDC. Just like 3D screens, it may not add that much to the user experience, but vendors like Sony need something to differentiate their phones from the competition, he said. A 1GHz dual-core processor from ST-Ericsson powers the Xperia sola, which has a 3.7-inch screen with 854-by-480 pixel resolution. It also has NFC, a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for adding more storage capacity. The Xperia sola will ship in the second quarter with Android 2.3, but users will be able to upgrade to version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The upgrade is also expected to arrive in the second quarter, according to Sony. Pricing for the smartphone was not provided. Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com
(Reuters) - Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook and a former online strategist for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, has purchased a majority stake in The New Republic, the magazine said on Friday.
Hughes, 28, will become publisher and editor-in-chief of the nearly 100-year old magazine which covers American politics.
He is also expected to apply his expertise in digital technology in his new role.
The New Republic currently publishes a daily Web magazine. The New Republic did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction or the exact size of the stake.
Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004 at Harvard with his then- roommates Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz
.
Since working on the Obama campaign Hughes founded Jumo.com in 2010, a non-profit site that aimed to help people find ways to help each other. It was later combined with GOOD in 2011, an online content and social engagement platform.
As well as his new role Hughes will continue to invest independently and work with non-profits like the Knight Foundation.
(Reporting By Yinka Adegoke, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Way back in 2006, in the infant days of the social-media economy, Chevrolet launched an edgy marketing campaign for its Tahoe SUV. Tapping into the new collaborative power of crowdsourcing, Chevy asked online folks to create their own Tahoe ads. The reaction and the results were spectacular in a car-crash type of way as anti-SUV campaigners delivered a wake-up call to the marketing industry -- namely that the future of online advertising would be out of its control.
Fast-forward to January 2012 and McDonald's was hoisted by its own crowdsourced petard -- this time a Twitter promotion called McStories that was remarkable for the amount of vitriol anti-MickeyDers managed to pack into 140 characters. Then, just last week, Coca-Cola in Australia got nailed by yet another misguided crowdsourced Facebook campaign asking its "fans" to indulge in some off-the-cuff word association that quickly descended into the depths of frat-house humor.
Do none of these guys read marketing blogs?
The answer is of course they do. But time and time again, that traditional marketer and PR mentality -- dominated by the desire to create an impressive, big bang of a campaign without really thinking how it's going to play out in real time and in an online world where everyone talks back -- lets brands and agencies down.
The story of social-media lessons not learned is the overriding theme of the last eight years in social-media communications and the focus of a new book, #FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups that I've co-authored.
In it we catalog a litany of mistakes and faux pas committed by major companies since 2004, and our conclusion, it has to be said, isn't so much that shit happens but that it happens again and again and again.
In compiling the book we divided the social-media screw-ups into chapters such as Crap Customer Service, Plain Dumb Marketing and PR Asleep at the Wheel. We studied iconic #FAILs like the 2004 Kryptonite lock hack, the 2011 Chrysler Twitter F-bomb that saw a social-media agency lose its contract on the automaker's phoenix-like "Made in Detroit" campaign and Motrin's 2008 migraine brought on by incensed mommy bloggers and tweeters.
At the same time we tried to analyze the real reasons incidents like Maytag's Dooce encounter, Bank of America's fee fiasco and Unilever's Dove Onslaught touched such a social-media nerve. And throughout our research we looked for the lessons that could help advertisers, marketers and PR specialists avoid being the next social-media screw-up.
There are many lessons that can be gleaned from these 50 screw-ups but five broad points indicate why brands get tarred with the hashtag #FAIL:
- They fail to take social-media complaints seriously. By they time they wake up to the threat, the supercharged nature of social-media conversation has overwhelmed them.
- Year in, year out, brands dismiss the relevance and influence of new social-media technologies and platforms. It happened with newsgroups (Kryptonite), blogs (Target) and Facebook (HSBC). Who is to say Pinterest won't be next?
- A nascent social-media problem becomes a full-blown #FAIL because the brand hasn't allocated the necessary resources and experience to managing social-media comms, or that it has lost control of the chain of command. Habitat and Vodafone, you know what I'm talking about.
- Marketing, PR and corporate communications are used to working in silos. Social media creates challenges that means they have to learn to work together.
- Crowdsourcing means anything can happen. Just ask Chrysler, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Chevrolet.
Eight years on from the first major social-media screw-up, there's now a wealth of best/worst practice to help companies avoid messing up themselves. Just don't bet on it.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
Matthew Yeomans is the co-founder of SMI and co-author of #FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups. He tweets @mateoy and @socialinfluence.
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Big changes are coming to Twitter's "brand pages," the landing pages it offers to some marketers that also spend ad dollars on the network.
Launched in December, the pages show the brand's Twitter feed and images, but Twitter plans to add experiences, including e-commerce, contests and sweepstakes, according to three executives familiar with the matter.
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The product will allow app developers to build experiences on Twitter, much the way they do on Facebook. The features will be contained within the brand's tweet timeline, a departure from the 140-character limit of a tweet or images and videos that can now displayed. While no date has been set for the release of the product, Twitter has been telling clients to expect it this year.
When Twitter launched brand pages, the differentiators from a regular page were a large, customizable header and the ability to keep a particular tweet at the top of a timeline and have it auto-expand if it was a photo or video. At the time of the launch, Twitter Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain said features would eventually be added to brand pages.
Twitter declined to comment on the new features.
While 21 high-profile marketers like Nike , American Express and McDonald's were part of the launch group, and more brands that had committed $25,000 in advertising came onboard in January, many marketers have wondered about the usefulness of Twitter's brand pages in their present form. But the prospect of developing content that's native to the Twitter experience and using it to drive users to their own pages could make brand pages' function -- and value -- clearer to marketers.
Particularly interesting is the idea of e-commerce on Twitter. Twitter co-founder and Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey is also CEO of mobile-payments company Square. And American Express recently started a program in which it sends offers to Twitter users in exchange for certain actions, such as tweeting a hashtag. Dell , Best Buy, H&M and 1-800-Flowers are participating in the program.
Twitter has also shown signs of wanting Twitter.com to be a destination where users linger instead of a portal that dispatches them elsewhere through outbound links. In other words, a media company. Last month it launched an "Ad Scrimmage" page collecting Super Bowl spots and inviting users to vote on their favorites.
Brand pages are available only to Twitter advertisers and may have the potential to drive revenue by making organic and paid content more connected. If marketers can make their brand pages into interesting destinations, they have a greater incentive to invest in paid tweets to drive Twitter users there.
Twitter's revenue is expected to reach $259.9 million this year, up from $139.5 million in 2011, according to eMarketer.
The confederation of internet companies planning two weeks of "upfront" presentations for advertisers this spring are getting an unexpected new member: NBC Universal.
The group -- which includes Google, Yahoo, Hulu, Microsoft, AOL and the Publicis-owned agency Digitas -- is planning two weeks of TV-style "upfront" events called "The Digital Content Newfront," in hopes of presenting themselves as viable alternatives to broadcast and cable TV, which start their own upfront season later in May.
But if the digital "NewFront" is about positioning web video as an alternative to TV, at least one big owner of TV networks is hoping not to beat them, but join them. NBC Universal officially signed on to the consortium on Wednesday, and CBS is in talks to join, according to multiple people involved in the talks.
The founding partners see the series of events, which start April 19, as a coming-out party of sorts, perhaps the first year when enough original content and audience to legitimately make a play for TV ad dollars. NBC Universal has a different agenda: to be seen as a digital-media company, in addition to an owner of broadcast and cable TV networks.
As traditional TV splinters, there's a growing consensus among marketers that you have to combine TV with digital to maximize reach and impact. NBC Universal wants marketers to know they can do it all in one place.
"The consumer is watching multi-screen," said Linda Yaccarino, head of sales for cable and digital at NBC Universal. "They don't make the distinction between television and digital, but you need both to reach the consumer."
Typical cable and broadcast upfront are mostly about the shows and the celebrities; digital usually gets a bit role in the show, if any mention at all. NBC Universal thinks its digital businesses are big enough to stand on their own, and able to compete with the likes of Yahoo and Google, particularly in original content, the kind most in-demand by advertisers. Comcast NBC Universal digital properties had 77 million unique U.S. visitors in February, according to Comscore, compared with 78 million at CBS Interactive and 126 million for YouTube.
In practice, this means NBC Universal is throwing a total of nine upfronts this spring -- events for cable networks such as Syfy, Bravo, Oxygen, Style, E and USA Network, as well as NBC, Telemundo and now a digital upfront. Programming for the digital upfront hasn't been sorted, but will include content from iVillage, XFinity TV, Fandango and Daily Candy as well as TV-related content connected to the networks. "The fact that we are attached to a company that has TV assets uniquely differentiates us from the competition," Ms. Yaccarino said.
In addition to NBC and possibly CBS, the group has added smaller producers and distributors of web-based programming, including Vevo, the joint music-entertainment venture owned by UMG and Sony Music, and Digital Broadcast Group, and are in talks with numerous other distributors of web content.
Some, such as YouTube and Vevo, will stress competitive advantages to TV. "We have the audience, the original shows and commercials, and users can't skip through them," said David Kohl, EVP of sales at Vevo. As a distributor of network and cable TV online, that won't be Hulu's pitch; rather, they'll talk up a slate of original shows, such as "A Day In the Life," a series launched last year with filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.
Participating in the video upfront requires first having original content and second, that you've been distributing it widely, requirements that rule out some high-profile production companies, which will have to partner with a distributor to get in.
Digitas, which spearheaded the series of events, believes it will work for the same reason TV's upfronts have worked for advertisers over the years. "The broadcast upfront mechanism works based on the reality of scarcity," said Digitas EVP John McCarus. And while there's no end to video on the web, "quality content at scale is still scarce."
The confederation of internet companies planning two weeks of "upfront" presentations for advertisers this spring are getting an unexpected new member: NBC Universal.
The group -- which includes Google, Yahoo, Hulu, Microsoft, AOL and the Publicis-owned agency Digitas -- is planning two weeks of TV-style "upfront" events called "The Digital Content Newfront," in hopes of presenting themselves as viable alternatives to broadcast and cable TV, which start their own upfront season later in May.
But if the digital "NewFront" is about positioning web video as an alternative to TV, at least one big owner of TV networks is hoping not to beat them, but join them. NBC Universal officially signed on to the consortium on Wednesday, and CBS is in talks to join, according to multiple people involved in the talks.
The founding partners see the series of events, which start April 19, as a coming-out party of sorts, perhaps the first year when enough original content and audience to legitimately make a play for TV ad dollars. NBC Universal has a different agenda: to be seen as a digital-media company, in addition to an owner of broadcast and cable TV networks.
As traditional TV splinters, there's a growing consensus among marketers that you have to combine TV with digital to maximize reach and impact. NBC Universal wants marketers to know they can do it all in one place.
"The consumer is watching multi-screen," said Linda Yaccarino, head of sales for cable and digital at NBC Universal. "They don't make the distinction between television and digital, but you need both to reach the consumer."
Typical cable and broadcast upfront are mostly about the shows and the celebrities; digital usually gets a bit role in the show, if any mention at all. NBC Universal thinks its digital businesses are big enough to stand on their own, and able to compete with the likes of Yahoo and Google, particularly in original content, the kind most in-demand by advertisers. Comcast NBC Universal digital properties had 77 million unique U.S. visitors in February, according to Comscore, compared with 78 million at CBS Interactive and 126 million for YouTube.
In practice, this means NBC Universal is throwing a total of nine upfronts this spring -- events for cable networks such as Syfy, Bravo, Oxygen, Style, E and USA Network, as well as NBC, Telemundo and now a digital upfront. Programming for the digital upfront hasn't been sorted, but will include content from iVillage, XFinity TV, Fandango and Daily Candy as well as TV-related content connected to the networks. "The fact that we are attached to a company that has TV assets uniquely differentiates us from the competition," Ms. Yaccarino said.
In addition to NBC and possibly CBS, the group has added smaller producers and distributors of web-based programming, including Vevo, the joint music-entertainment venture owned by UMG and Sony Music, and Digital Broadcast Group, and are in talks with numerous other distributors of web content.
Some, such as YouTube and Vevo, will stress competitive advantages to TV. "We have the audience, the original shows and commercials, and users can't skip through them," said David Kohl, EVP of sales at Vevo. As a distributor of network and cable TV online, that won't be Hulu's pitch; rather, they'll talk up a slate of original shows, such as "A Day In the Life," a series launched last year with filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.
Participating in the video upfront requires first having original content and second, that you've been distributing it widely, requirements that rule out some high-profile production companies, which will have to partner with a distributor to get in.
Digitas, which spearheaded the series of events, believes it will work for the same reason TV's upfronts have worked for advertisers over the years. "The broadcast upfront mechanism works based on the reality of scarcity," said Digitas EVP John McCarus. And while there's no end to video on the web, "quality content at scale is still scarce."
Facebook's IPO will be the largest ever for a tech company, and it has every chief executive asking the CMO, "What's our Facebook strategy?" And with the buzz around the launch of a "brand timeline" at the Facebook Marketing Conference in New York this week, the stakes for lead marketers to deliver results in an increasingly complex environment will grow exponentially.
While the brand timeline will unlock opportunities and also expose risks for many CMOs, we envision a world of possibilities for heritage brands to build connections with millennials.
This generation is the largest, most diverse, educated, affluent, complicated and influential consumer base that CMOs have ever encountered. Even with more than 800 million users, Facebook remains a platform that was created by a millennial, for millennials. With this timeline feature, brands can now interact through a "virtual life story" that is inherently authentic to the brand and its history, on a medium that's second nature to a generation.
How can heritage brands take advantage of the new timeline? Take Western Union as an example. The company is the largest player in a huge flow of resources -– the transfer of billions of dollars every year involving one-sixth of the world's population. It has a history of innovation and an entrepreneurial culture. Yet its brand promise, as reflected by its Facebook page today, is lost among negative consumer posts.
The brand timeline will empower CMOs to turn this situation on its head. While negative posts will never disappear, marketers will have a digital canvas on which to create a visually rich, compelling story to engage audiences in a more meaningful way. As research proves, millennials view relationships with brands as a partnership and a form of expression. Once they have formed an opinion, a reverberation affects brand preferences. Facebook's brand timeline may well be Western Union's "digital bridge" –- connecting its 160 years of innovation with the previously untapped group of millennials who don't think much more than "wire transfers" when they consider the brand.
Facebook has been tight-lipped about how the brand timeline will function (first in a trial phase to select marketers), but there are a few key enhancements to the user experience that heritage brands can capitalize on:
Interactive content can be time-stamped from a brand's inception. Whether it's the virtual creation in 1973 of the first pair of Nikes or, better yet, the race footage of Prefontaine's record-setting performances as Nike's first sponsored athlete -- millennials will be able to experience a brand's entire digital history on one page.
Everyone is familiar with "likes" on Facebook, but a new brand vernacular is developing. As consumers begin to "read," "order" or "pin," they deepen their interactions with brands. The longer the heritage, the more creative marketers can be in developing ways for millennials to experience the brand. For example, imagine Coca-Cola's nearly 40 million "likes" redefined as "refreshed," or millennials "drinking" a Coke in 1892 after visiting that segment of the timeline.
What steps must CMOs take before plunging into timeline?
Craft the brand story. Make sure your core story is quick to understand, easy to remember, emotional and inviting of participation.
Be transparent. Every brand has a past, and given the ease with which millennials can discover skeletons in the closet through the internet, it's important to disclose painful history and how the brand dealt with it. Otherwise the backlash could be severe.
Tap millennials within your marketing organization. Smart CMOs are complimenting their traditional marketing acumen with adept millennials.
While it is too early to know exactly how the Facebook brand timeline will connect with the market, we believe the principles we've outlined will prepare heritage-brand CMOs to capitalize on the seismic shift about to occur on one of the world's largest marketing platforms.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS The authors lead the Technology Practice at Makovsky & Co., a public relations firm. Mr. Makovsky is assistant VP and Mr. Wolfrom is exec VP.
Facebook's hardware team is now building storage gear -- while decorating the walls at the company's new HQ in Menlo Park, California. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com  Facebook already built its own data center and its own servers. And now the social-networking giant is building its own storage hardware — hardware for housing all the digital stuff uploaded by its more than 845 million users.
“We store a few photos here and there,” says Frank Frankovsky, the ex-Dell man who oversees hardware design at Facebook. That would be an understatement. According to some estimates, the company stores over 140 billion digital photographs — and counting.
Like the web’s other leading players — including Google and Amazon — Facebook runs an online operation that’s well beyond the scope of the average business, and that translates to unprecedented hardware costs — and hardware complications. If you’re housing 140 billion digital photos, you need a new breed of hardware.
In building its own data center on the Oregon high desert, Facebook did away with electric chillers, uninterruptible power supplies, and other terribly inefficient gear. And in working with various hardware manufacturers to build its own servers, the company not only reduced power consumption, it stripped thee systems down to the bare essentials, making them easier to repair and less expensive. Frankovsky and his team call this “vanity free” engineering, and now, they’ve extended the philosophy to storage hardware.
“We’re taking the same approach we took with servers: Eliminate anything that’s not directly adding value. The really valuable part of storage is the disk drive itself and the software that controls how the data gets distributed to and recovered from those drives. We want to eliminate any ancillary components around the drive — and make it more serviceable,” Frankovsky says during a chat at the new Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, which also happens to be the former home of onetime hardware giant Sun Microsystems.
“Break fixes are an ongoing activity in the data center. Unfortunately, disk drives are still mechanical items, and they do fail. In fact, they’re one of the higher failure-rate items. So [we want to] be able to quickly identify which disk has failed and replace it, without going through a lot of mechanical hoops.”
As with its data center and server creations, Facebook intends to “open source” its storage designs, sharing them with anyone who wants them. The effort is part of the company’s Open Compute Project, which seeks to further reduce the cost and power consumption of data center hardware by facilitating collaboration across the industry. As more companies contribute to the project, the thinking goes, the designs will improve, and as more outfits actually use the designs for servers and other gear — which are manufactured by Facebook partners in Taiwan and China — prices will drop even more.
When Facebook first introduced the project last spring, many saw it as a mere PR stunt. But some big-name outfits — including some outside the web game — are already buying Open Compute servers. No less a name than Apple has taken interest in Facebook’s energy-conscious data-center design. And according to Frankovsky, fifty percent of the contributions to the project’s open source designs now come from outside Facebook.
For Peter Krey — who helped build a massive computing grid for one of Wall Street largest financial institutions and now advises the CIOs and CTOs of multiple Wall Street firms as they build “cloud” infrastructure inside their data centers — Facebook’s project is long overdue. While building that computing grid, Krey says, he and his colleagues would often ask certain “tier one” server sellers to strip proprietary hardware and unnecessary components from their machines in order to conserve power and cost. But the answer was always no. “And we weren’t buying just a few servers,” he says. “We were buying thousands of servers.”
Now, Facebook has provided a new option for these big name Wall Street outfits. But Krey also says that even among traditional companies who can probably benefit from this new breed of hardware, the project isn’t always met with open arms. “These guys have done things the same way for a long time,” he tells Wired.
Hardware by Committee
Facebook will release its new storage designs in early May at the next Open Compute Summit, a mini-conference where project members congregate to discuss this experiment in open source hardware. Such names as Intel, Dell, Netflix, Rackspace, Japanese tech giant NTT Data, and motherboard maker Asus are members, and this past fall, at the last summit, Facebook announced the creation of a not-for-profit foundation around the project, vowing to cede control to the community at large.
The project began with Facebook’s data center and server designs. But it has since expanded to various other sub-projects, and the contributors include more than just web companies. Rackspace contributes, but so does financial giant Goldman Sachs.
Rackspace is leading an effort to build a “virtual I/O” protocol, which would allow companies to physically separate various parts of today’s servers. You could have your CPUs in one enclosure, for instance, your memory in another, and your network cards in a third. This would let you, say, upgrade your CPUs without touching other parts of the traditional system. “DRAM doesn’t [change] as fast as CPUs,” Frankovsky says. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could actually disaggregate the CPUs from the DRAM complex?”
With a sister project, project members are also working to create a new rack design that can accommodate this sort of re-imagined server infrastructure. A traditional server rack houses several individual machines, each with its own chassis. But the Open Rack project seeks to do away with the server chassis entirely and turn the rack into the chassis.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is running an effort to build a common means for managing servers spread across your data center. Part of the appeal of the Open Compute Project, says Peter Krey, is that the project takes a “holistic approach” to the design of data center hardware. Members aren’t designing the data center separately from the servers, and the servers separately from the storage gear. They’re designing everything to work in tandem. “The traditional data center design…is Balkanized,” Krey says. “[But] the OCP guys have designed and created all the components to efficiently integrate and work together.”
This began with Facebook designing servers specifically for use with the revamped electrical system built for its data center in Prineville, Oregon. And soon, the effort will extend to the storage gear as well. Frankovsky provides few details about the new storage designs. But he says his team has rethought the “hot-plug drive carriers” that let you install and remove hard drives without powering a system down.
“I’ve never understood why hot-plug drive carriers have to come with these plastic handles on them,” he explains. “And if you’ve actually mounted a drive inside one of those drive carriers, there are these little bitty screws that you inevitably lose — and you’ll likely lose one onto a board that’s live and powered. That’s not a good thing.”
He says that the new design will eliminate not only the screws but the carriers themselves. “It’s a completely tool-less design,” Frankovsky says. “Our techs will be able to grab hold of a ‘slam latch,’ pull it up, and the act of pulling it up will pop the drive out.”
Frankovsky calls it “small stuff.” And that’s what it is. But if you’re running an operation that size of Facebook, that small stuff becomes very big indeed. In making one small change after another, Facebook is overhauling its infrastructure. And in sharing its designs with the rest of the world, it hopes to overhaul much more.
Twitter was on fire at Sunday's Grammys -- until Jennifer Hudson took the stage.
The velocity of tweets during the live broadcast peaked at 10,901 tweets per second, according to Twitter, just a few thousand below the Super Bowl's new record of 12,233 tweets per second during the big game. But the buzz was silenced during Ms. Hudson's tribute to Whitney Houston.
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"Once Jennifer hit the stage, all traffic came to a complete stop. People stopped talking and they listened," said Beverly Jackson, director of marketing and social media for the Recording Academy, at a Social Media Week panel Wednesday in New York. Talk around the tribute, she added, while diverse, was mostly positive, with 81% favorable sentiment. Social-marketing company Mass Relevance helped tally the numbers.
Following Ms. Hudson's performance, engagement ramped back up and capped at 3.9 million explicit #Grammy mentions. The broadcast probably got a viewer boost because of Ms. Houston's untimely death, but the night belonged to Adele, who dominated Grammy wins (six) and the conversation with 2.5 million mentions -- 500% more than any other artist, said Ms. Jackson. (Rihanna, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj and Ms. Houston round out the top five.)
A strong social-media presence leading up to the awards helped the Recording Academy pull off a success. Working with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Google and more, the Grammy team implemented a strategy that targeted viewers' favorite online destinations. "We wanted to be everywhere they were," said Ms. Jackson. This was the first year the Grammys worked with both Pandora and Shazam, which let viewers tag music from performances. Pandora noted that there have been 4 million Adele stations created since the singer's throat surgery last year to her return at the Grammys.
Grammy Live, an extension of Grammy.com, gave viewers videos of red-carpet and backstage footage and untelevised acceptance speeches. The Grammy iPad app became the top arts and entertainment app, proving viewers were more engaged with the show via their tablet this year, according to Ms. Jackson.
The Grammys doesn't pay for Facebook ads or promotional tweets; instead, several contests and promotional events help build excitement. Referring to the Grammys' online presence, Ms. Jackson likened it to "a brown egg in Whole Foods -- it's all organic."
Facebook will bring its Timeline profile pages to brands this month in the U.S., according to executives briefed on the company's plans.
At its F8 conference in September, Facebook introduced a dramatic transformation of profile pages for its more than 800 million users with the Timeline format, which generates picture-heavy, scrapbook-like collages spanning users' entire history on the social network. It has been rolled out slowly, and users still have the choice to opt in.
At the time of the announcement, the company said it would wait to roll out the new feature for brands. Facebook VP-Marketing and Business Partnerships David Fischer said Timeline for brands would be "consistent" with the Timeline look-and-feel, but not a carbon copy.
The new pages for brands will start in beta with a handful of partners and then be released to more marketers in stages, according to the sources. Facebook declined to comment on the product or the timing.
So what will Timeline for brands look like? For one, the tabs or apps marketers currently host on their Facebook pages to sell products or take polls may turn into boxes on the brand's Timeline, much like how apps for Spotify or Washington Post Social Reader live on users' Timelines.
The format change could put the onus on brands to develop their own apps using custom verbs other than "like," in the same vein as Pinterest, which has a Facebook app that tracks when its users have "pinned" something. Promoting the use and development of "Open Graph" apps, which can have their data tapped for ad targeting, is an area of increased focus for Facebook.
Timeline has significant implications for Facebook fan-page management. One top consideration is that a brand's Facebook presence no longer must date to when it joined the site but can be represented with content populating its Timeline from throughout its history. (Coca-Cola, for example, could hypothetically add an event for 1892, the year it was founded.)
Facebook is expected to go into detail about the new pages at its first-ever fMC event, a day-long conference in New York on Feb. 29 specifically for marketers.
Contributing: Cotton Delo
Facebook will bring its Timeline profile pages to brands this month in the U.S., according to executives briefed on the company's plans.
At its F8 conference in September, Facebook introduced a dramatic transformation of profile pages for its more than 800 million users with the Timeline format, which generates picture-heavy, scrapbook-like collages spanning users' entire history on the social network. It has been rolled out slowly, and users still have the choice to opt in.
At the time of the announcement, the company said it would wait to roll out the new feature for brands. Facebook VP-Marketing and Business Partnerships David Fischer said Timeline for brands would be "consistent" with the Timeline look-and-feel, but not a carbon copy.
The new pages for brands will start in beta with a handful of partners and then be released to more marketers in stages, according to the sources. Facebook declined to comment on the product or the timing.
So what will Timeline for brands look like? For one, the tabs or apps marketers currently host on their Facebook pages to sell products or take polls may turn into boxes on the brand's Timeline, much like how apps for Spotify or Washington Post Social Reader live on users' Timelines.
The format change could put the onus on brands to develop their own apps using custom verbs other than "like," in the same vein as Pinterest, which has a Facebook app that tracks when its users have "pinned" something. Promoting the use and development of "Open Graph" apps, which can have their data tapped for ad targeting, is an area of increased focus for Facebook.
Timeline has significant implications for Facebook fan-page management. One top consideration is that a brand's Facebook presence no longer must date to when it joined the site but can be represented with content populating its Timeline from throughout its history. (Coca-Cola, for example, could hypothetically add an event for 1892, the year it was founded.)
Facebook is expected to go into detail about the new pages at its first-ever fMC event, a day-long conference in New York on Feb. 29 specifically for marketers.
Contributing: Cotton Delo
Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Whitney Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48. Publicist Kristen Foster said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown. At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen. Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale." She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise. She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston. But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime. "The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side. It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone. She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin. Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform. "The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning impact," Davis told "Good Morning America." "To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added. Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with "Whitney Houston," which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. "Saving All My Love for You" brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. "How Will I Know," ''You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All" also became hit singles. Another multiplatinum album, "Whitney," came out in 1987 and included hits like "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." The New York Times wrote that Houston "possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity." Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the "Soul Train Awards" in 1989. "Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she told Katie Couric in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them." Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop's pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support. But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed. "When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place," she told Rolling Stone in 1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that's their image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy." It would take several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America's sweetheart. In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with "The Bodyguard." Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success. It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy's record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the "Bodyguard" soundtrack was named album of the year. She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with "Waiting to Exhale" and "The Preacher's Wife." Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, "My Love Is Your Love," in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut "It's Not Right But It's Okay." But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time "The Preacher's Wife" was released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. ... I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. ... I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself." In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007. Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns. She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show, "Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack," was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years. Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You." The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum. Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on "Good Morning America" went awry as Houston's voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice. A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Thomas Pardee
Sarah Ryan of Change.org hands over a box of signatures to an Apple Store manager in Grand Central.
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A group of activists delivered some 250,000 signatures to Apple stores in Grand Central Station and elsewhere Thursday morning, calling for better treatment for workers in Apple suppliers' factories in China.
The petitions -- one from Change.org with about 199,000 signatures on the web and one from SumOfUs with 57,000 signatures -- comprise perhaps the most tangible showing of consumer outrage over labor conditions in the iPhone and iPad maker's supply chain overseas. They also went to Apple stores in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London, Sydney and Bangalore.
In New York, the delivery saw about 10 activists and at least twice as many reporters climb the stone steps to the entrance to the recently opened Grand Central Apple Store, where stoic store managers accepted a large cardbox box of printed signatures.
The petitions call on Apple, which recently reported record earnings and an estimated $100 billion in assets, to develop a more stringent worker protection strategy to combat abuse and exploitation in Chinese supplier factories, including Foxconn.
"We're coming together as fans of Apple, who buy their products, to say, 'We want an ethical product,'" said Change.org's Shelby Knox, who helped deliver the petition wearing a giant iPhone sandwich board. "You are a leader in technology, and we want you to be a leader in bringing ethical products to the United States."
After a pair of New York Times articles on labor conditions in Apple supplier factories, Apple said last month that it is constantly inspecting its supply chain and improving conditions. "We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an email to company employees. "Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us."
Thomas Pardee
Monologist Mike Daisey, who visited consumer electronics factories in China in 2010
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The advocates in New York on Thursday also included Mike Daisey, a monologist who visited Foxconn's massive Shenzhen, China, factory in 2010, and spoke with workers and underground union leaders about their experiences on the assembly lines. His work was recently excerpted in public radio's "This American Life," helping to spark the petition.
Mr. Daisey called Apple "terribly arrogant" in its PR response to the growing concerns. "Its brand is in serious jeopardy now," Mr. Daisey said. "Apple's greatest asset is their brand, and it does not take very long for a brand to be tainted. When I think of Nike even today, the second or third thing I think of are sweatshops."
The U.S. Justice Department will probably give antitrust approval next week to Google Inc. (GOOG)’s bid for Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc (MMI)., said two people familiar with the matter.
If approved by regulators, the acquisition of Libertyville, Illinois-based Motorola Mobility will give Google more than 17,000 patents for mobile-phone technology.
Apple Inc. (AAPL), without much effort on its part, is making rapid headway in selling to corporations.
After years of being the also-ran to Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in the workplace, Apple has seen its iPad become a standard business tool. According to an IDG Connect survey, 51 percent of managers with iPads say they “always” use the device at work, and another 40 percent sometimes do. Seventy-nine percent of the respondents use the iPad for business when outside the office.
NBC
Madonna's halftime show generated major conversation in social media.
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Our editorial partner Bluefin Labs, the Cambridge, Mass.-based social-TV analytics company, spent last night monitoring social commentary about Super Bowl commercials. This morning the Bluefin data team is busy crunching the numbers. We'll post a top 10 list of the spots that blew up the biggest [UPDATE: here it is], but in the meantime, here's a quick big-picture look at social media and the Super Bowl:
1. Bluefin Labs has so far tracked more than 12.2 million social-media comments during and after Super Bowl XLVI, primarily on Twitter and Facebook. That's a 578% increase over the total Bluefin tracked last year (1.8 million).
2. Twitter, via its official @twitter account, said the final three minutes of the Super Bowl helped push total tweet volume up to an average of 10,000 tweets per second.
3. We have a new social-TV high-water mark. "Last night's Super Bowl is the biggest social-TV event we've ever recorded -- by a wide margin," Bluefin's Tom Thai tells me. "It surpassed the previous record of 3.1 million social-media comments, held by the MTV Video Music Awards last August."
4. Madonna's halftime show alone generated more than 862,000 social-media comments; by comparison, Bluefin recorded 966,000 social-media comments for the 2011 Academy Awards. "If the halftime show were its own standalone televised event," Thai said, "it would rank fourth in terms of all-time social-TV events for entertainment. It would trail only the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, the 2011 American Music Awards and the 2011 Academy Awards."
5. Bluefin Labs tracked more than 985,000 social-media comments specifically related to just Super Bowl commercials -- topping the total for the entire telecast of the 2011 Academy Awards.
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco. You can follow Bluefin Labs on Twitter @bluefinlabs.
The Wolfsonian Museum Shop and Lyon Frères & Compagnie – Café and Wine Bar share a space on the museum’s first floor and provide South Beach with a sophisticated venue that can complement your museum visit or serve as a stand-alone destination.
Lyon Frères & Compagnie – Café and Wine Bar @ The Wolfsonian
Visitors can enjoy a meal before, after, or between touring the galleries or relax with a glass of wine or a coffee and homemade pastry in the museum’s café. A true French café with a casual and welcoming ambience, the lunch and dinner menu, which changes frequently in the specific offerings but is constant in terms of its overall philosophy, features salads, sandwiches, and a selection of French cheeses and cured meats, along with a daily special soup and hot entrée. Miami Beach natives and long-time residents will remember the much-loved Lyon Frères market and café on Lincoln Road in the 1990s—its creator, Ken Lyon, partnered with The Wolfsonian in 2011 to bring it back to life, and back to the Beach. Lyon Frères uses only the best ingredients, working closely with trusted, high-quality vendors and emphasizing artisanal and heritage goods. The café produces everything from scratch—pastries, hors d’oeuvres, stocks, sauces, dressings, etc. Lyon Frères is open during regular museum hours. Groups touring the museum who wish to dine on site or arrange for boxed or plated lunches should contact the café at least two weeks in advance. For questions or further information about the café, please contact the Café or call 305.535.1457.
The Wolfsonian Museum Shop
Browse the shop’s thoughtful, provocative selection of design-oriented gifts, along with the museum’s exclusive line of merchandise relating to the themes and period of the collection. The shop carries innovative desktop, personal, and travel accessories, kitchenware and tabletop items, watches, jewelry, clocks, children’s gifts, and more, in a wide range of price points. The shelves are also stocked with an engaging selection of books on design and social history, banned literature, and design journals, along with exhibition catalogs and the museum’s award-winning Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. Can’t make it to Miami Beach right at this moment? Explore The Wolfsonian Museum Shop’s robust online presence. The shop is open during regular museum hours (the online shop is, of course, always open). For questions or further information about the shop, please contact the Museum Shop or 305.535.2680.
August 25 2011 - January 24 2012
Third Floor, Rare Book and Special Collections Library Vestibule
The word “statistics” generally conjures up an image of columns of numbers that hold interest only for the expert or enthusiast. In the early twentieth century, however, states and political movements recognized that if statistics were presented in a visually compelling way, they could become powerful tools of mass persuasion. This exhibition highlights eye-catching statistical graphics from the first half of the twentieth century in The Wolfsonian’s rare book and special collections library. The items on display were vehicles for the ambitions of Portuguese imperialists, Soviet propagandists, and American New Dealers. Each of these groups deployed graphic design as a means of making quantitative information vivid, understandable, and endowed with meaning beyond the numbers themselves.
FROM THE EXHIBITION
As we saw in its IPO filing, Facebook does very little consumer marketing in a traditional sense. But that may change: It's bringing on former Levi's and Apple exec Rebecca Van Dyck to head global marketing, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Ms. Van Dyck spent the last 10 months as Levi's Global CMO, where she oversaw the company's global "Go Forth" campaign. Levi's confirmed her departure.
Prior to joining Levi's, Ms. Van Dyck served as senior director-worldwide marketing and communications at Apple, where she worked on the launches of the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes.
She explained her approach and what it was like working with Steve Jobs at Ad Age's Digital Conference in San Francisco in September: "The iPhone] was something created from the outside in, by how it felt to the consumer and the user experience going through it," she said. "It was first and foremost about the user experience. And that's how I approach marketing, that theme of focusing on what's important to the customer."
Ms. Van Dyck could not be reached, and Facebook did not return calls for comment. Facebook reported spending $28 million on advertising in 2011, up from $8 million in 2010 and $5 million in 2009, in its IPO filing.
Ad Age named Ms. Van Dyck a Woman to Watch in 2011. Incidentally, so was Carolyn Everson, VP-global ad sales at Facebook. Both women attended Ad Age's Women to Watch luncheon in August.
Update: A Facebook spokeswoman has confirmed that Ms. Van Dyck is joining the company's marketing team.
Reuters' latest attempt to bring social media into its newsroom is a dashboard for journalists and readers called "Social Pulse."
The new tools, which launch today, connect readers directly with journalists, rank CEOs in social media based on their "influence," track online discussion of top public companies and pull together the outside content being shared with Reuters' staff.
"We really wanted to highlight the great work our journalists are doing on Twitter, so we built a directory that lets users find our reporters, bloggers and editors by category and location so you can drill down to business journalists in India or tech writers in the UK," said Alex Leo, director of new products at Reuters.
Certain elements of Social Pulse, such as buttons to share content or follow people on Twitter, are a prerequisite on nearly every news website, but Reuters is trying to using social data to power new editorial products.
The Hit List, for example, is a visual feed of trending news and stories pulled from outside sources based on what Reuters staff's followers are talking about on various social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. The technology behind it was built by social content startup Percolate, which also powers Reuters' financial news blog Counterparties.
The Social CEO, built on Klout's API, is a running look at the top 100 most-influential CEOs in social media. For the launch, Reuters has plugged 100 names into the list, including Virgin CEO Richard Branson, Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore and Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff. Reuters plans to open it up for other CEOs to submit their social credentials for consideration.
Lastly, the dashboard features a social stock index that maps out the top-10 most talked about publicly traded companies, overlaying sentiment analysis on top of stock performance. The sentiment analysis, driven by WiseWindow, could prove useful to analysts and investors by revealing people's perceptions of major brands and businesses and how they perform in the market.
The effort is part of a broader push at Reuters to build out a consumer news offering on the web. "Our audience is made up of sophisticated news users, who are not just interested in what's trending on Twitter but how social can inform their business lives. We set out with the goal of using social media in a way they would find both innovative and addictive," Ms. Leo said.
Facebook lifted the veil on its financials in its filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing $1 billion in 2011 profits and robust growing revenue streams that are becoming gradually less reliant on advertising as the company grows its "Payments" business.
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In its filing, Facebook reported 2011 revenue of $3.71 billion, an 88% increase from the $1.97 billion total reported for 2010, though falling short of eMarketer's 2011 projection of $4.27 billion. The increase was mostly attributed to the 69% growth of advertising revenue, which was buoyed by a 42% increase in the number of ads delivered and an 18% increase in their average price.
While advertising made up $3.15 billion of Facebook's revenues last year, the company earned $557 million from Facebook Payments -- the virtual currency it began requiring game developers on the platform to use as of July 1 -- and other fees. Payments are making up an increasingly hefty chunk of Facebook's revenue, and in the fourth quarter of 2011, advertising constituted just 83% of revenues, down from 90% the previous year. Facebook takes a cut of all money exchanged through the use of "Payments," and in the case of virtual goods purchased on Zynga, that cut is up to 30%.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the company in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, owns 28.1% of the company worth $28 billion, assuming a likely valuation of $100 million when the stock is issued. In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Zuckerberg mentions advertising just once, but spells out his users-first philosophy. "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services," he said. "These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits."
One recurring doubt that surfaces about Facebook's revenue prospects is that the service brands are most keen on dedicating resources to is free: the maintenance of their fan pages. But as Facebook fan pages become a more integral part of media strategies, the dollars to prop them up will flow more freely, according to Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i.
"As the integration between earned and paid media becomes tighter, brands are going to need to advertise more with Facebook to spark conversations and draw attention to the increasingly interesting experiences they're creating [within Facebook]," Mr. Wiener said.
Facebook by the numbers:
- Facebook's total ad revenue in 2011: $3.15 billion
- Share of revenue attributed to advertising: 83%
- Share of revenue that was advertising at the beginning of 2010: 99%
- Percentage of sales in the U.S.: 56%
- Amount of revenue sourced from Zynga: 12%
- Amount Netflix spent advertising on Facebook in 2011: $3.9 million
- Amount The Washington Post spent: $4.2 million
- Facebook 2011 profit: $1 billion
- Revenue generated from virtual goods: $557 million
- Global monthly active users: 845 million
- Daily likes and comments: 2.7 billion
- Amount Facebook spent on advertising in 2011: $28 million
- Age of oldest Facebook senior exec: 44
- Likely Facebook market valuation: $75 to $100 billion
- COO Sheryl Sandberg's 2011 compensation: $31 million
- Ms. Sandberg's ownership share in Facebook: 1%
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg's total 2011 compensation: $1.5 million
- Mr. Zuckerberg's ownership stake: 28.2%
- Mr. Zuckerberg's voting power: 56.9%
- Mr. Zuckerberg's annual salary starting in 2013: $1
 Sofia Vergara/ WireImage
Para los medios latinos el más reciente sondeo de AskMen.com no será una sorpresa, pero Sofía Vergara ha resultado ser la celebridad más codiciada. Los medios norteamericanos piensan que sorprendente que una mujer de 39 años le haya ganado a muchas jovencitas. Especialmente una con curvas reales y un hijo universitario. ¡Pero es que no se puede subestimar a Sofía!
Richard Montes de Oca, former assistant general counsel for Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCCL), has partnered with attorneys Sylvia Gonzalez Perez, Robert L. McGeorge, Marcia Narine and Kelley J. Peterson to form MDO Partners, a boutique firm specializing in corporate law, global compliance and business ethics. Montes de Oca also served as associate vice president and assistant general counsel at RCCL. He also was responsible for its global compliance and ethics program.
Sylvia Gonzalez Perez will serve as corporate counsel for the firm. She will focus her practice in domestic and international corporate and mergers and acquisitions. Before joining MDO Partners, she had her own firm and before that she was an associate in the Miami office of Holland & Knight.
Robert McGeorge will serve as compliance counsel for the firm in economic regulation of transportation, antitrust, international trade, customs and government contracts. Before joining MDO Partners, he was general counsel for International Air Transport Association (IATA). He also was in private practice for several years and also served as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division.
Marcia Narine will serve as compliance advisor for MDO Partners and is a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Before joining the firm and academia, she was vice president and deputy general counsel of Ryder System, Inc.
Kelley J. Peterson will serve as compliance counsel in broker-dealer and investment adviser regulations for the firm. She was vice president and chief compliance officer of a nationwide securities broker-dealer. Before that, she was compliance officer of two federally-registered investment advisory firms and also served as vice president of an administrative agent specializing in custodial plans. She also was senior counsel at Holland & Knight, LLP.
An entire course in one app.
The free iTunes U app gives students access to all the materials for your course in a single place. Right in the app, they can play video or audio lectures. Read books and view presentations. See a list of all the assignments for the course and check them off as they’re completed. And when you send a message or create a new assignment, students receive a push notification with the new information.1 Learn more about the new iTunes U app
One policy, one Google experience
We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.
This stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service now. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.
Easy to work across Google
Our new policy reflects our desire to create a simple product experience that does what you need, when you want it to. Whether reading an email that reminds you to schedule a family get-together or finding a favorite video that you want to share, we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls for with ease. 
Tailored for you
If you’re signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you’ve expressed in Google , Gmail, and YouTube. We’ll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you’re searching for and get you those results faster. 
Easy to share and collaborate
When you post or create a document online, you often want others to see and contribute. By remembering the contact information of the people you want to share with, we make it easy for you to share in any Google product or service with minimal clicks and errors.
Protecting your privacy hasn’t changed
Our goal is to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager alongside other tools. Our privacy principles remain unchanged. And we’ll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).
Understand how Google uses your data
If you want to learn more about your data on Google and across the web, including tips and advice for staying safe online, check out Good to Know.
Got questions? We got answers
Visit our FAQ to read more about the changes. (We figured our users might have a question or twenty-two.)
Notice of change
March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Google Terms of Service will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Weeks before the kickoff for Super Bowl XLVI even takes place on NBC, CBS said it has already sold a few spots in next year's Super Bowl.
The logo of the host committee for next year's Super Bowl
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"When you're the next guy up, the conversations start as early as possible with those you know are interested in the game and those you want to be interested in the game," said Tony Taranto, senior VP-NFL sales at CBS. "We've done that. We have concluded business already for next year's game with some advertisers."
When the Super Bowl comes 'round in the first quarter of every year, all eyes typically go to the game at hand. And yet, there's often a lot going on behind the scenes that has to do with events of the future. In the fall of 2010, seeing robust ad-sales activity from Fox for its telecast of Super Bowl XLV, NBC began working the phones for Super XLVI and quietly touted a record-setting price tag of $3.5 million for a Super Bowl ad package.
The strategy appears to have worked as sales continued throughout last year. NBC has said it secured an average $3.5 million from its sponsors for the 2012 Super Bowl, though some marketers no doubt paid less. In one instance, an advertiser in this year's game agreed to a $4 million price tag, according to Seth Winter, senior-VP, sales and marketing, NBC Sports Group.
"I'm still not quite sure that we have pushed the boundaries of what a Super Bowl ad is worth," Mr. Winter said in early January.
Indeed, CBS will seek a price increase over this year's sales, said Jo Ann Ross, president-network sales for the CBS Television Network. "We're not rolling back pricing in the Super Bowl," she said.
Lending some wind to the executives' outlook is an intense desire for the event by auto advertisers. NBC's Super Bowl telecast could include as many as 10 major car advertisers, who in aggregate have purchased at least 10 minutes of ad time -- nearly one-third of the 35 minutes of national commercial time in the game.
Automaker demand for the Super Bowl continues to be "strong and healthy" moving forward, said John Bogusz, exec-VP sports sales and marketing, CBS Television Network.
Considering that certain marketers, including Anheuser-Busch InBev and PepsiCo, appear in the Super Bowl annually, and that automakers may buy up as much as 25% to 30% of the available ad time, a network could notch significant inventory sales before serious pitching begins.
CBS is also anticipating the broadcast of Super Bowl L -- the 50th anniversary -- in 2016. Ms. Ross declined comment on what maneuvers may be in the offing for that occasion.
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NBC Universal has sold out of commercial time during the upcoming Super Bowl and expects to sell out its online inventory for the digital stream, a testament to the power of one of media's oldest pieces of content at a time when new technology is undermining other traditional TV offerings.
NBC Universal sold its last ad berth for Super Bowl XLVI, to be broadcast Feb. 5 from Indianapolis, around Thanksgiving, said Seth Winter, senior VP-sales and marketing at NBC Sports Group.
But the media company is still in the market. Two sponsors that he declined to name are trying to back out of their Super Bowl plans, according to Mr. Winter, and NBC is attempting to resell their time to other ad hopefuls.
The digital stream -- the first time the Super Bowl will be shown in such fashion in the U.S. -- will contain fewer ads than the TV broadcast, including just a portion of the game's overall TV ad roster. "There are going to be fewer advertisements with less messaging, something that would be more conducive to how you would expect the digital experience to be," Mr. Winter said.
The digital stream will be available via NBC's website and Verizon's NFL Mobile application.
Ad sales for the 2011 Super Bowl, broadcast on News Corp.'s Fox, were largely complete by late October of 2010, but NBC's effort may have been more complex. Every advertiser for this year's Super Bowl has purchased a "package" of inventory, Mr. Winter said. Though that happens at other networks as well, NBC Universal could include the spot not just in the traditional broadcast but on the soon-to-launch NBC Sports Network, the coming Olympics broadcast, the digital stream of the Super Bowl or other NBC Sports inventory.
"Every package has a nuance that is different than another," Mr. Winter said.
The average price for a Super Bowl package was about $3.5 million, though one sponsor paid about $4 million, Mr. Winter said. The prices represent a significant increase over those for recent telecasts, when networks' ability to enact hikes was curtailed by the recession.
Super Bowl ad prices typically vary, depending on when a commercial airs during the game and the type of package a sponsor buys. Ad berths in NBC Universal's digital stream range between the high six figures and low seven figures, Mr. Winter estimated.
The continued demand for the Super Bowl puts a spotlight on perhaps the last truly sure thing on TV. As the web and other competitors siphon traditional viewers from boob-tube standbys like morning news and prime-time dramas, the NFL championship game has managed to increase its audience for the last several years.
In 2010, Super Bowl XLIV on CBS became the most-watched event in TV history with an audience of 106.5 million, breaking the previous record of 105.9 million viewers for the network's telecast of the "M*A*S*H" series finale in 1983. Perhaps more surprising: Fox's telecast of the 2011 Super Bowl passed both of those marks, reaching about 111 million.
NBC's broadcast of the 2012 Super Bowl will contain about 35 minutes of national advertising, with other time reserved for network promos and ads sold by local NBC affiliates. National sponsors include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Audi of America, Best Buy, CareerBuilder, Cars.com, Century 21, Coca-Cola, Dannon Yogurt, General Motors, GoDaddy.com, Hyundai, Mars Inc.'s M&Ms, PepsiCo, Toyota and Volkswagen.
If the event again posts outsize ratings, TV networks will remain aggressive.
"I'm still not quite sure that we have pushed the boundaries of what a Super Bowl ad is worth," said Mr. Winter.
Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is use of social media services, techniques and technology to enable organisations to engage with their customers. As an emerging discipline, interpretations of Social CRM vary, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Paul Greenberg[1]:
Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It's the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation.
Social CRM is often used as a synonym for Social Media Monitoring, where organisations watch services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for relevant mentions of their product and brand and react accordingly. However, this is too narrow an interpretation, as Social CRM also includes customer communities managed by the organisation themselves.
[edit] Applications of Social CRM
Social CRM has applications in marketing, customer service and sales, including:
- peer-to-peer customer support
- idea management
- market research
- product launch
- brand reputation management
Altimeter Group[2] and Gartner[3] have published research identifying common use cases for Social CRM.
[edit] References
A new year on the calendar means new hope, new opportunities, new products, new trends and, most important of all, new budgets for many marketers. And while you'll get served your share of predictions for the year ahead, here are five things you can bank on happening in social media.
- The Face of Facebook Pages is Changing. Again.
The new Facebook Timeline began rolling out to individual user profiles last month and is designed to be the "journal of your life." Timeline is also coming to Pages, likely soon. While it's unclear exactly when it is coming or how similar it will be to what we've already seen, we should expect the rollout to begin early this year.
While brands' core strategy of creating content and messaging fans in their own newsfeed will not change, the content journey and user experience most certainly will. Facebook has already removed the restriction that prevents non-fans from interacting with Pages, and it would not be surprising to see them do away with "like gate" landing tabs as well. If that is the case, the approach to applications will change significantly and will be accessible only via paid media or engaging wall post messages.
In their place, expect to see the proliferation of open graph applications that aggregate on the Timeline. Spotify, Rdio, Yahoo! and The Wall Street Journal gave us a preview of how verbs and objects can take over a newsfeed meaning that the most important verb this year might just be "build" (as in "build an entirely new application to support our brand on Facebook").
Google+ Is Not Going Away
If Facebook accounts for 1 in every 7 minutes spent online (according to comScore), that means there are six other minutes still up for grabs! New platforms and technologies continue to pop up on a seemingly daily basis. Last year saw the emergence of Tumblr and Pinterest with millions of users, not to mention the long-awaited arrival of Google+. Despite the steadily growing importance of Facebook and Twitter, you cannot ignore the potential of Google+ to impact your SEO and media business. That is, if Google is something that is important to your target consumer (hint: It is). Google+ just passed the 65 million user mark, with a quarter of that coming in December.
Investing in building and maintaining a Google+ Profile for your business or brand won't require as much time to "do right" as, say, Twitter, but that doesn't mean it should be a carbon copy of your Facebook Page, either. With different features to try out, take advantage of the opportunity to reach new and existing consumers with unique content. We can also expect Google to roll out an enhanced, integrated Analytics offering that will help us better understand the user journey across and beyond their network. We've been saying all along that you cannot evaluate the impact of New Media tactics using Old Media metrics, and Google is poised to take a giant step forward in answering our ROI questions in 2012.
Paid and Earned Media Work Best Together
The days of building your Facebook fan count and Twitter following without paid media support are over, plain and simple. This isn't really news. However, if your media strategy is strictly focused on fan acquisition to "get X million fans by the end of the year," then you are still missing out on the potential of what brand-consumer relationships can do for your business. Sure, total fans and followers matter, but only in the context of having as many active fans as possible.
What if I told you that less than 5% of your fans, on average, actually see any of your content and engage with it in some way? Wouldn't a richer goal be to increase your number of active fans from 5% to 10%? Only a media strategy that combines fan acquisition and fan engagement tactics can make this happen. Thanks to Facebook's improved Insights tool, enhanced premium ad targeting and Sponsored Stories can drive fan growth AND participation in 2012.
Social is Mobile and Mobile is Finally Social
It feels like we've been waiting and waiting for the "mobile revolution" to hit social marketing, when in reality a mobile evolution has already reached a critical mass.
Twitter has become a go-to platform on the "second screen" while in the home as well as on the primary screen when outside the home. According to comScore, Twitter grew 59% last year and now reaches more than 10% of internet users worldwide. Location-based services like Foursquare, photo quick-hits like Instagr.am and many other mobile applications require either Facebook or Twitter for amplification and sharing. Android and iPhone sales are driving Google+ and Twitter sign-ups at an astonishing rate. No matter what trends emerge in mobile, from check-ins to search to money transfer and payments, social is already at the center. Good marketing these days means giving your consumers what they want -- information, customer service, coupons, access, coupons, a voice, personalized experiences or just to be heard -- wherever they are.
Move Fast, Or Move Out of the Way
Giving your consumers what they want no matter where they are is synonymous for giving it to them when they want it. Doing so will require a paradigm shift in how you plan, act and react. In the time that you've been reading this, anywhere between one and a thousand people mentioned your product or brand in a social context. And while you may have missed it, their friends and the people they influence certainly did not. That is the power of social.
The old media-planning model where budgets and allocations are set a year in advance just doesn't work anymore. Consumers don't care when your budgets are finalized or when you have to have creative locked down. Thanks to social media, we have access to insights and data almost instantaneously, meaning real-time marketing is the new imperative. We must be flexible, agile and responsive, able shift directions, change the message, move money around and operationalize it all not in months, but in minutes.
In 2012, the integration of linear and digital will continue to change the rules and blur the lines across your marketing department. Thinking about social media marketing is now the responsibility of every marketer at every level within every company. Separate groups, teams and agencies won't cut it anymore because if you expect to change how consumers think about or purchase your product, then you have to change the way you market that product.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Wurst
is director of digital communities at 360i, a unit if Dentsu.
Quick-response codes are everywhere these days, even the soccer field. This fall, a squad of London footballers shaved the back of their heads in the design as a promotional stunt. But consumers are not nearly as excited about QR codes as marketers are.
The codes are a great idea in theory. They let marketers make all sorts of media -- print, billboards, even packaging -- clickable and interactive. When scanned with a special app downloaded to a smartphone, QR codes can call up links, text messages or videos. They can spark e-commerce or generate a lead.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car has a QR code on its keyrings offering more information on the car.
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But in practice, while QR codes are affixed to everything from rental cars to Bratz dolls, only 5% of Americans who own mobile phones actually used the 2-D barcodes in the three months ending July 2011, according to Forrester Research. And those 14 million early adopters tended to be young, affluent and male.
Experts cite three reasons that QR codes haven't caught on. First, people are confused about how to scan them. Two, there's little uniformity among the apps required to read them. Last, some who have tried the technology were dissuaded by codes that offer little useful information or simply redirect the user to the company's website.
None of this deters marketers, who seem to be slapping the codes on products for all age groups and demographics.
"QR codes are definitely everywhere," said Kelli Robertson, director-strategy for digital agency AKQA.
The QR phenomenon is "another instance of shiny-object syndrome," said Melissa Parrish, Forrester's senior analyst-social and mobile marketing. "Something becomes trendy or sexy, and marketers feel they have to jump onboard to position themselves as innovative and make sure they don't fall behind."
Car-rental outfit Enterprise pasted QR codes on the driver-side windows of 1 million of its North American vehicles so passersby can get more information about the automaker.
JC Penney put the codes on holiday tags so that gift-givers could include a recorded greeting on the box -- one of many QR-code programs from the retailer.
Codes should be accessible, and users should be rewarded for scanning them.
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QRblaster.com, which generates codes, published a list of the worst campaigns of the year. It included marketers and publishers with unreadable or obscured codes. Some were offered in areas with no internet access, which means a scan cannot load anything to the phone. Red Bull put QR codes on the subway, and United Airlines had them on in-flight magazines read primarily far outside cell-service range.
In a well-meaning misstep, MillerCoors partnered with Seattle bars and restaurants over the holidays so that patrons who had imbibed a bit too much could snap a QR code to get a cab. The effort assumed that revelers still had enough dexterity to aim a phone and get a clear shot.
"Marketers fall in love with tools and forget the reality of how they're used," said Ms. Robertson at AKQA.
The appeal to marketers is clear. Implementing the codes is far less expensive than developing a proprietary app. They offer the ability to measure consumer activity and can provide shoppers with information, freeing up salespeople and increasing productivity.
But what's the risk of the many QR codes that are unhelpful, don't work or are so complicated that it would be easier to enter a URL?
"If you are not paying off [the QR scan] with content that's rewarding or valuable, then the experience falls flat and consumers won't use it again," Ms. Robertson said.
Despite low usage, marketers are staying loyal to QR codes.
Home Depot, for example, put QR codes on plants this spring so that customers could learn more about the items and which go best together.
A spokeswoman for the home-improvement retailer acknowledged that adoption has been slow, but the company continued to test the technology on artificial Christmas trees and lights.
"I haven't found any brands that have totally scrapped the codes," said Ms. Parrish at Forrester.
Education may also be an answer. Last spring, Macy's did national TV ads on its QR codes, and shoppers who scanned them got informational videos from clothing designers. The initiative exceeded expectations and got positive customer feedback, according to a spokeswoman. Use of the codes tripled after Macy's tweaked the content and offered shorter videos in the fall.
Product Description
Desde inicios del siglo pasado se comenta que una familia de la aristocracia italiana de la región de Liguria, donde se ubica Vinci, es poseedora de varios pliegos u hojas que formaban parte de la documentación que Leonardo da Vinci dejó en herencia a Francesco Melzi o bien a Salai, dos de sus alumnos favoritos. En las diferentes versiones de esta historia se menciona la existencia de un total de treinta y tres hojas, todas dobladas a la mitad y escritas por ambas caras con la particular caligrafía especular de Leonardo, lo que da un total de ciento treinta y dos páginas.
Si este nuevo Códice saliera al mercado su valor seria incalculable. Por el formato y tamaño de las hojas y como están dobladas, según atestiguan aquellos que dicen estar mejor informados, el Manuscrito parece formar parte inseparable del Leicester, también llamado Códice Hammer. Tal vez por ello algunos lo han bautizado Códice Hammer II, aunque la mayoría prefiere denominarlo Códice Cortigiani.
La leyenda afirma que tanto el Vaticano como las altas esferas del Gobierno de Italia conocían de su existencia y que este último en varias ocasiones trató de comprarlo a fin de exhibirlo en la Biblioteca Ambrosiana de Milán junto al Códice Atlántico.
Miami, FL. (December 21st, 2011)--- Spanish Broadcasting System Inc., (SBS) (Nasdaq: SBSA) President and CEO Mr. Raúl Alarcón has been recognized by PODER Magazine as a Business Leader in the publication’s annual “Top 100 Most Influential Hispanics” list. The list includes the most notable figures from the political, business, science, education and entertainment sectors.
The December/January 2011 issue of PODER declares that “Mr. Alarcón has become a key player for Latinos in the business arena.”Among the accomplishments mentioned in the report are Mr. Alarcón’s contributions to the Hispanic market in the United States. The charismatic President, CEO, and Chairman of Spanish Broadcasting System, Inc., which owns and operates 21 Spanish-Language radio stations in the top Latin markets in the United States, has continued to expand the company’s reach with the growth of SBS Entertainment and MegaTV. The publication highlights Mr. Alarcón’s strategic vision of integrating radio, television, entertainment and online properties to seek out growth opportunities with a clear eye on capturing the U.S. Hispanic consumer.
The PODER Top 100 Influential Hispanics represent examples of the tremendous world-class talent that has emerged from the Hispanic community to serve in top leadership roles across all parts of America. Those in this year’s list come from almost every sector of society, including business, government and politics, media, sports, entertainment, and non-profits. They reflect the breadth and depth of U.S. Hispanic diversity.
“To be recognized by PODER Magazine is an honor which I would like to share with the millions of Hispanic entrepreneurs in America who are transforming our economy,” says Mr. Alarcón. “I am grateful and proud to represent the interests of the growing Hispanic business community around the nation.”
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Luis Patino has been promoted to senior VP of the Univision Television Group. Mr. Patino joined Univision in 1997 and most recently served as VP and general manager for KWEX-TV and KNIC-TV in San Antonio and KAKW-TV and KTFO-TV in Austin, Texas. During his tenure, both stations became the No. 1 news stations at both 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., regardless of language. His new responsibilities include managing station operations, sales, news, marketing and promotions for Univision's owned and operated TV stations in San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, Phoenix, Tucson, San Antonio and Austin. Before moving to Texas, Mr. Patino worked for the Univision flagship stations in Los Angeles in various capacities including national sales manager and local sales manager.
Fernando Romero has been named VP-advertising sales of DailyCandy, part of NBCUniversal's Entertainment and Digital Networks and Integrated Media division. He will also work across the portfolio of E&DN/IM digital businesses including iVillage, Fandango and Television Without Pity, as well as the group's online TV platforms. Most recently, Mr. Romero was managing director of National Partnerships at Gilt City. Prior to Gilt City, he was national sales director for InStyle.com, where he built the in-market sales and planning teams and led the company to growth via programs with brand marketers such as P&G, Unilever, Target, H&M, Starbucks and Sony Pictures.
Jonathan Lum has joined Olson to head the agency's brand anthropology, connection planning and media, and analytics teams as chief strategy officer, a new position. He makes the move from Goodby, Silverstein and Partners in San Francisco, where he was senior brand strategy director. Prior to GS&P, Mr. Lum was group planning director at BBDO, New York, and director of strategy for Faith Popcorn's New York-based BrainReserve. He has 16 years of experience as a brand strategist and quantitative research specialist and has been recognized by the industry with a Cannes Lion, Effies and the ARF David Ogilvy Award. He began his advertising career at Young & Rubicam in Sydney, Australia.
Michelle Myers, VP-publisher of Brides, has hired a new executive sales team. Heddy Pearson, formerly ad director at Every Day with Rachael Ray, will split associate publisher duties with longtime Associate Publisher Lori Silver. Serving as executive director of operations is Elise Wood, who previously held the same position at Lucky. Katie McKenna, formerly executive director of marketing at Lucky, enters the new role of executive director of marketing and brand development, and Marnie Braverman, formerly acting marketing director at De Beers Diamond Jewelers and associate publisher of marketing at W, will serve as associate publisher of creative services.
Kim Brink has joined Nascar as managing director-brand and consumer marketing. She was most recently at General Motors, where as executive director of advertising and sales promotion for Cadillac, she led a team responsible for reinvigorating the brand and increasing its retail sales by nearly 40% in the U.S. From 2003 to 2010, Ms. Brink was general director of advertising and sales promotion for Chevrolet. She first joined GM in 1989 as a market research analyst.
PromoWorks, an insights-driven shopper-marketing solutions and strategic shopper-engagement firm, has named Julie Beck exec VP-sales and marketing. Ms. Beck brings to the role more than 20 years of sales and marketing experience with companies including Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and most recently KraftFoods, where she developed and led shopper-marketing strategies for Kraft's billion-dollar business at Supervalu. In the past year she led shopper marketing pilots for the Retail Commission on Shopper Marketing as part of her work with global strategic management consulting firm The Partnering Group.
Don Bartholomew has been tapped as senior VP-digital and social-media research for the Ketchum Global Research Network (KGRN). In his new role, he will manage operations in Ketchum South and Ketchum Midwest, and will work closely with the PR company's specialty groups and complementary businesses, including Ketchum Digital, word-of-mouth-marketing agency Zocalo Group, and consumer and high-tech PR agency Access Communications. Mr. Bartholomew joins from Fleishman-Hillard's Washington, D.C., office, where he was responsible for integrated digital research initiatives including social-media monitoring, measurement and return-on-investment analysis. In addition to his social-media analytics background, Mr. Bartholomew has a wide range of client experience that includes technology, B2B, consumer and health-care brands. He is also creator of PR measurement blog MetricsMan.
Miami, FL. (November 29th, 2011)—Spanish Broadcasting System Inc., (SBS) (Nasdaq: SBSA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Jackie Nosti-Cambó to Vice President of Business Analytics for SBS. Mrs. Nosti-Cambó will focus on the business practices of SBS in all of its markets. She will also develop new insights and understanding to improve business performance in order to grow revenue in all of the company’s markets.
Jackie Nosti-Cambó has been with SBS since 1992. Prior to her appointment, she was VP/General Manager for WXDJ- El Zol 95.7FM, WRMA-Romance 106.7FM, WCMQ-Clasica 92.3FM and WRAZ-Cima 106.3FM in Miami. During her tenure as VP/General Manager for WXDJ-El Zol 95.7FM, the station was ranked #1 in billing with the highest annual revenue ever achieved by any South Florida radio station. All of SBS’s Miami Spanish radio stations were rated among the top ranked FM stations in South Florida.
“With extensive practice in the media and financial businesses, and significant prior experience with SBS, Jackie brings a wealth of industry knowledge and operating experience to this position,” said Albert Rodriguez, Chief Revenue Officer of SBS’s Consolidated Operations, Executive Vice President and General Manager of MegaTV. “I am confident that her talent, creativity and leadership skills will help her further our success by promoting growth and profitability for all of our consolidated operations.”
With over 21 years of experience in the radio broadcasting industry, Mrs. Nosti-Cambó started her career at what was once the Miami classical radio station WTMI 91.3FM as an Account Executive, and later transferred to Hispanic radio at Viva America Media Group. In 1992 she joined WXDJ El Zol 95.7FM as a National Sales Manager. During her years at SBS, Mrs. Nosti-Cambó also oversaw the administration of all 11 radio stations in SBS Puerto Rico for four years.
Mrs.Nosti-Cambó has been on the advisory board of Florida International University (FIU) Center for Diversity in Engineering and Computing (CDEC) Gear Up Homestead program and has partnered with many non-profit organizations in the community, such as the March of Dimes and AdFed. In addition, she advocates for better and more responsible animal welfare.
“It is an honor to continue being part of the SBS family in this new capacity,” said Jackie Nosti-Cambó. “SBS is poised for incredible growth and I look forward to helping the company achieve its potential.”
Jackie is an avid outdoors woman, but her true passion is her love for animals.
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Facebook fue hackeado y publicaron imágenes pornográficas y con escenas de extrema violencia en el timeline de la página, según denunciaron miles de usuarios a través de Twitter.
El ataque comenzó hace 48 horas pero se intensificó en las últimas horas, por lo que miles de usuarios expresaron su queja a través de Twitter.
Los piratas introdujeron imágenes impactantes y tremendamente duras sobre actos de terror, automutilación y sexo. Si bien no se pudo determinar la autoría del ataque, se apunta al sitio 4Chan, un gran foro involucrado en caso de activismo enla Red.
Este es el ataque más grande que recibió la red social, y responde a un tipo de spam que se expandió a gran escala. Aunque no se determinó la magnitud del mismo, los atacantes aprovecharon algún tipo de vulnerabilidad en el código del servicio, para realizar su acción.
La mayoría de los usuarios explican que desde el muro de las noticias se muestran todo tipo de imágenes de brutalidad sin su consentimiento. Otros señalaron que cuando ponen "me gusta" a estas fotografías desde sus cuentas, son redireccionados a enlaces de vídeos, mensajes falsos de chat o fotos etiquetadas con sus nombres.
Además de 4Chan, se cree que este ataque puede estar relacionado con Anonymous, que ya amenazó en varias ocasiones con atacar la red social. Desde Facebook por ahora no hubo ningún tipo de declaración oficial.
Univision Reveals Dynamic Cast Of Stars For “El Talismán”
UNIVISION REVEALS DYNAMIC CAST OF STARS FOR “EL TALISMÁN”
Blanca Soto, Rafael Novoa, Aarón Díaz, Lola Ponce, Sergio Reynoso, Marcela Mar
and Julieta Rosen to Star in this Original Novela Production
Also Featuring Actress Karyme Lozano
in Her Highly Anticipated Return to the Small Screen
MIAMI, FL – NOVEMBER 16, 2011- Univision announced the cast to star in the highly anticipated new novela production, “El Talismán” (The Talisman). Produced by Venevision Productions in collaboration with Univision Studios, “El Talimán” is headlined by Blanca Soto (“Eva Luna”), Aarón Díaz (“Teresa”) and Rafael Novoa (“Pura Sangre”), along with first-class actors Lola Ponce, Sergio Reynoso (“Fuego en la Sangre”), Marcela Mar (“El Capo”) and Julieta Rosen (“Cuando Me Enamoro”). This new production also features Mexican actress and novela sweetheart Karyme Lozano (“Mujeres Asesinas 2) in her long-awaited return to television.
“We are excited to present our viewers with this passionate story interpreted by a cast of A-list stars,” said Luis Fernández, President of Univision Entertainment and Univision Studios. “After the unprecedented success of our first original novela ‘Eva Luna,’ it was only natural to once again join forces with Venevision Productions for this new mega production starring some of the most talented actors in Spanish-language television, resulting in a winning combination to create entertainment that is best-in-its-class.”
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
After captivating worldwide audiences with her lead role in Univision’s hit novela “Eva Luna,” Blanca Soto returns to the network in the mega production, “El Talismán.” Prior to her work with Univision, the actress, model and former Miss Mexico had starred in several movies, including the award-winning short film “La Vida Blanca” and the 2010 blockbuster “Dinner for Schmucks” with Steve Carell and Paul Rudd. Soto also starred with famed Mexican actor Jaime Camil in the romantic comedy “Regresa.”
Mexican actor Aarón Díaz also returns to the small screen after making his indelible mark on Univision’s highly popular novela “Teresa.” Starring as Mariano, one of Angelique Boyer’s (“Teresa’s”) main love interests, Díaz won the hearts of millions with his irresistible looks and charming personality. In addition to being a talented actor, Díaz is also a singer/songwriter, having composed several songs for the novela, including the single “Teresa.” Díaz made his acting debut in the popular teen drama “Clase 406,” followed by another teen drama titled “Corazones al Límite,” co-starring Sherlyn and Sara Maldonado. He also starred in the novela “Barrera de Amor” with Yahdira Carrillo and had a role in Mexico’s production of the theater and film hit “Grease.”
The charismatic Rafael Novoa is one of Colombia’s most renowned actors. As the main character of Colombia’s hit novela “Pura Sangre,” he broke international barriers becoming a household name in the entertainment industry. Novoa also made a guest appearance in Televisa’s “Mañana es Para Siempre,” along Mexican novela star Fernando Colunga. With more than 15 years of experience in Spanish-language television and an extensive career in novelas both in Colombia and Mexico, Novoa will play a strong role in this story of entangled love in “El Talismán.”
Lola Ponce, Argentinean actress and singer will make her U.S. debut as the bombshell temptress “Lucrecia” in “El Talismán.” Ponce began her acting career starring in teenybopper novelas in her native Argentina in the late 90s. Since relocating to Italy to begin her music career with a role in the modern opera “Notre Dame de Paris” more than 10 years ago, she has starred in six novelas between Argentina and Italy, has released several music albums and has participated in international music festivals around the world. Most recently, she was a contestant on Argentina’s version of the reality dance competition “Bailando Por Un Sueño” and launched her own T-shirt line “Girls Speak” with fellow model Clizia Incorvaia.
Sergio Reynoso is a 30-year veteran of Spanish-language television. Better known as el “Chakain,” Reynoso began his on-screen career in Mexican films, including Luis Alcoriza’s “Las Fuerzas Vivas,” “El Angel Negro,” and “Viajero,” among others. The legendary actor also starred in popular novelas such as “Mi Pecado,” “Fuego en la Sangre,” “Manantial,” and “Rosalinda,” among many others.
Marcela Mar is a well-known Colombian actress who began acting at an early age and attended Bogota’s prestigious National Theater. Since then, Mar has participated in theater productions, film and television, characterizing various genres with the innate talent and passion she is known for. In addition to winning audiences’ hearts with her role in some of Colombia’s most popular novelas and series, including TeleFutura’s hit novela “El Capo,” “Sin Límites,” and “Todos Quieren con Marilyn,” Mar has also made a name for herself in Spanish-language film. She made her cinematic debut with the movie “Satanás,” produced by the award-winning Rodrigo Guerrero, and most recently shared the screen with Oscar winner Javier Bardem in Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s timeless novel “El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera.”
Julieta Rosen is a Mexican actress with an extensive career in Spanish-language television. She began her career at the tender age of 16 in theater productions in her native Mexico, including the famous play “Don Juan Tenorio.” Since then, Rosen has acted in several novelas such as “Mi Vida Eres Tú,” “Madres Egoístas” and “Infierno en el Paraíso.” Most recently, she co-starred as “Regina Sotomayor” on the U.S. Spanish-language adaptation of “Desperate Housewives.” Rosen also played Diego de la Vega’s (El Zorro) wife in Steven Spielberg’s “The Mask of Zorro” with Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Novela sweetheart Karyme Lozano, known for her role in some of Spanish-language television’s leading novelas, including “Amar Sin Límites,” “El Manantial,” “Niña Amada Mía” and “Soñar No Cuesta Nada,” makes her much-anticipated return to the small screen in “El Talismán.” Most recently, Lozano participated in Mexico’s highly rated series “Mujeres Asesinas”; interpreting the program’s theme song, as well.
Exclusive cast and character profiles, videos and photos are available online and on mobile at www.NovelasySeries.com. Plus, users can submit their audition videos to the Talisman virtual casting for the chance to play a special role in the novela. The final winner will be determined by users’ vote. Once Talisman premieres, full episodes will be available online at www.NovelasySeries.com, and on mobile via the Univision Video App.
For a preview of “El Talismán” click here
If you're a startup, sorry, but PepsiCo is not your monetization strategy. Your partner? Sure. Your adviser? Absolutely.
Shiv Singh, the global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages, delivered that message loud and clear during Ad Age's Media Evolved conference in New York today. It's a message that Mr. Singh has been preaching of late, as he tries to inform the industry of PepsiCo's evolving approach. The company's strategy, he explained, is to get in on the ground level with companies that could become the next Twitter via its Digital Labs program. In the case of Foursquare, for example, PepsiCo first teamed up with the company when the service had just 400,000 users. Today, Foursquare has more than 10 million members worldwide.
Patrick Butler
Shiv Singh speaks at Ad Age's Media Evolved conference Nov. 15
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"The fact that we're there through the journey, young consumers appreciate that," Mr. Singh said. "It's authentic."
That Digital Labs program, which has been in existence for about a year, gives startups such as Foursquare or Bluefin, a social-TV measurement company, the ability to work with a large brand to develop and test products. In the case of Bluefin, PepsiCo began working with the startup before it even had a product out, integrating its technology into the Pepsi Music program.
Mr. Singh said that those startups participating in the Digital Labs initiative are often discovered through the company's relationships with venture capitalists or by speaking at industry conferences. It also supports the tech community, hosting and attending social-networking events. Ultimately, PepsiCo Beverages pours roughly 10% of its digital spend into startups, Mr. Singh said, though he was clear that's not an "experimentation" fund.
"We get great ROI off that," Mr. Singh said. "It's held to the same rigor as [other media spend]."
This new way of thinking is part of a move by PepsiCo to own and build its own platforms and experiences. For example, the company leveraged Gigya's social technology in creating Pepsi Sound Off. Modeled after Twitter, Pepsi Sound Off is a place for "X Factor" fans to connect during the show and incorporates a gaming mechanism. Viewers can post comments in a stream, as well as organize streams by popular hashtags. Mr. Singh said that Pepsi Sound Off could also be leveraged during the Super Bowl, Grammys or Video Music Awards.
"The more successful it gets, the more valuable it is to us, vs. the more successful it gets, the more expensive it gets for us," Mr. Singh said. "We want to create and own experiences that we can leverage again and again throughout the year."
In its 125 years, Coca-Cola has been one of the world's most dependably good marketers. But there have been rougher times, as Joe Tripodi isn't afraid to admit.
"We honestly believe that the company, probably 10 years ago, lost its way through arrogance, hubris," said the chief marketing and commercial officer at Coca-Cola.
In mid-2007, as Mr. Tripodi was leaving a successful run at Allstate for the beverage giant, his challenges as outlined by Ad Age at the time included: reverse Coke's perception as a sluggish, hidebound marketer; find some consistency with its advertising -- and agencies; and reduce its dependence on its flagship drink.
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Today, with a team of both relative newcomers and company veterans, including lieutenant Wendy Clark, senior VP-integrated marketing communications and capabilities, Coca-Cola is it again. It's a marketing model not just for mega multinationals looking to share best practices from around the world but also a case study for how upstart and mid-size brands, of which Coca-Cola has amassed many, can use creative stunts and strategic partnerships to get a lot done on a smaller budget.
And 2011 was a year for the record books.
Diet Coke bypassed Pepsi to become the country's No. 2 soda brand, under the leadership of Katie Bayne, president-general manager sparkling beverages, and Beatriz Perez, former CMO-Coca-Cola North America and the company's current chief sustainability officer. The company added not one, but two billion-dollar brands with Del Valle and Minute Maid Pulpy -- the latter, born in China, is the company's first billion-dollar brand to have launched in an emerging market. Coca-Cola topped Interbrand's most-valuable global brands list for the 12th year. And the company's flagship brand demonstrated that it only gets better with age: Coke is leading the company's growth, with volume up 3% worldwide year-to-date.
"Because of the scale and size of Coca-Cola, we have to have a culture that encourages us to share the learnings and failures, the good, the bad and the ugly," said Mr. Tripodi. "We've got a team of people around the world that is less concerned with getting credit and more concerned with getting behind a great idea."
There have been plenty of those this year. Fanta's volume is up 3% year-to-date on the heels of "Less Serious," a global campaign steered by Jonathan Mildenhall, VP-global advertising strategy and content, that runs in 190 countries. Minute Maid's quirky "Wake Up Your MMOJO" campaign from Doner took orange juice beyond the breakfast table, attracting men and young adults. Diet Coke teamed with StyleCaster, introduced a fashionable limited-edition can and launched new 15-second spots -- all part of a beefed-up marketing calendar, as Alison Lewis, senior-VP North America marketing, looks to keep the soda in its No. 2 slot.
And a new global teen-focused campaign, Coca-Cola Music, kicked off with "24hr Session," which saw Maroon 5 hole up in a London studio to create a new original song. Shay Drohan, senior-VP sparkling brands, has taken that campaign to more than 130 markets.
But that doesn't mean smaller brands have been forgotten. A tongue-in-cheek online video, from agency Zambezi, featured Jennifer Aniston promoting Smartwater and went viral, grabbing nearly 10 million views on YouTube. Fuze got a nod with its first TV campaign, handled by Amalgamated.
Coca-Cola's agencies include Wieden & Kennedy, which handles Coke and Diet Coke; Crispin Porter & Bogusky, which works on Coke Zero and Vitaminwater; and Ogilvy & Mather, which is working on the first ad push for Coca-Cola Freestyle and also handles Fanta.
Mr. Tripodi said the company has gotten sharper about how it thinks about its portfolio and portfolio management, a necessity given there's more than a dozen ready-to-drink non-alcoholic beverage categories it can play in. "We don't try to apply the same mass-marketing, big-brand model against [smaller brands]. Our whole thinking there is around doing things in an innovative and different way that takes a smaller budget and amplifies it," he said. "We're training our marketers and our community -- don't just say "I can't be successful with this small brand, because I don't have a big budget.' That's nonsense."
Coca-Cola is also innovating in food service, with the introduction of Coca-Cola Freestyle, which snagged its first major national accounts this year. Using micro-dosing technology, the next-generation soda fountain serves up 125 different flavors of soft drinks, flavored waters, sports drinks and lemonades and sends usage data, such as what flavors are most popular at what times of the day, to Coca-Cola headquarters.
The futuristic Freestyle is just one example of how Coca-Cola continues to set the agenda. The company attracted attention with its competitive review for a social-media listening agency. And it turned heads by taking a minority interest in Music Dealers to help it discover and license music from popular bands around the globe.
Most recently, the company teamed up with Leo Burnett to turn more than 1.4 billion Coke cans white to raise awareness and funding for the World Wildlife Fund's polar-bear conservation efforts. Pio Schunker, senior VP-integrated marketing platforms, is ensuring it's one of the company's most-integrated efforts ever.
All of these efforts are examples of the way the company is coalescing around management's 2020 Vision, which involves doubling system revenue and more than doubling servings to some 3 billion per day. It's a daunting goal, considering the company wants to do in just over 10 years what it took nearly 125 years to accomplish.
Mr. Tripodi says the company's ability to innovate the product, the packaging and consumer engagement are what will get Coca-Cola there. "It gives you some air cover, when you're doing well, to try things, be bold, be disruptive," he said. "It all ladders up to a thought process that says [our 2020 Vision] is very achievable, if we stay disciplined and focused."
When I started to work at General Electric, marketing had the cachet of social media. It was new; it was different; it was going to revolutionize business. Every advertising agency wanted to be its clients' "marketing partner."
Advertising people would talk about the future of marketing and how lucky we were that advertising had the inside track. For decades, Advertising Age called itself the "International newspaper of marketing."
What is marketing?
In those days, marketing was an omnibus concept that gathered all of a company's exterior activities under one umbrella. As General Electric's 1952 annual report put it, "The marketing department will establish for the engineer, the designer, and the manufacturing man what the consumer wants in a given product, what price he is willing to pay, and where and when it will be wanted. Marketing will have the authority in product planning, product scheduling, and inventory control, as well as sales, distribution and servicing the products."
Facing internal resistance, few companies actually put product planning, sales and distribution in the hands of the marketing department. Chief marketing officers might control massive marketing budgets, but lacked control over other corporate functions that deliver the financial results to justify those budgets. If the marketing department controls the "investment" but not the "return," how can a company holds its CMO responsible for ROI -- Return on Investment?
I'm not advocating corporate reorganizations to put more functions under control of chief marketing officers. It's too late for that. Furthermore, there has been a huge change in top management's attitude about the role and function of marketing.
I remember the head of the transformer department at General Electric telling a group of advertising people as he pulled out a pencil: "I can get more business with this pencil than you guys can get with all of your advertising."
That might have been true years ago. But today, marketing is the No.1 concern of most corporations. Unfortunately that doesn't necessarily include marketing people. As Georges Clemenceau once said, "War is too important to be left to the generals." Top management has taken over many of the strategic elements of marketing.
Among management types, the most admired chief executive today is not Bill Gates or Jack Welch, it's Steve Jobs. As Ad Age reported, "Mr. Jobs was involved in every aspect of the marketing, down to the copy on TV ads." Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told the BBC, "I would say marketing was his greatest strength."
We have entered a golden era of marketing, but it might not be the golden age of marketing people. According to the editors of Advertising Age, "Today's marketing shops want to be known as brand consultancies or idea companies."
Why is that? Because "marketing" is too broad a concept for a service business. Marketing is the essence of what a company is all about, the essence of what a company is trying to do. If you hire a marketing company to handle your marketing, then what is left for your company to do?
The better word.
Over the past few decades, it's become apparent that there's a better word to describe what today is called the "marketing" function -- "branding." I expect that in the future a CMO will become a CBO, chief branding officer.
Why not? Branding has become his or her most important role. In addition, there's a new approach many companies are using that dramatizes the importance of the brand. I call it: Branding first, sales and profits second. If you can build a brand, then you should be able to figure out a way to turn that brand into a profitable enterprise.
That ties in with one of the biggest problems in business today: Distribution. A lot of products could be successful if they could get on the shelves of supermarkets, drugstores, convenience stores and other outlets. But how do you get on the shelf?
"Put my wonderful new product on your shelves," says the entrepreneur, "and it will become famous."
"Make your product famous," says the distribution, "and we'll put it on our shelves." Distribution has a valid point.
Amazon.com is a good example.
Today on the stock market, Amazon.com, Inc. is worth $103.6 billion. Sales last year were $34.2 billion and net profits were $1.2 billion.
But that's not the way the company started. Founded in 1994, Amazon lost money for nine years in a row. On an overall basis, Amazon didn't break even until the company was in its 15th year.
Compare Barnes & Noble with Amazon. In the late 1990s, Barnes & Noble introduced an e-reader and in 2001, followed with an e-bookstore. But early sales were discouraging and the company discontinued its e-reader in 2003. Big mistake. Branding first, sales and profits second. It wasn't until November 2007 that Amazon launched the Kindle, which rapidly became the leading e-reader brand. Barnes & Noble was forced to play catch up with the Nook, launched two years later in November 2009.
That's not the way you build a brand. If there's an iron-clad rule in marketing, it is this: Brands are built by being first in a new category. Not just first in the marketplace, but first in the mind. That's why a new brand pioneering a new category has to stick around long enough to penetrate the minds of potential customers.
Groupon is another good example.
In its first three years, Groupon, Inc. had sales of $745 million and managed to lose $416 million. But the company built a brand and this year Groupon is planning an initial public offering valuing the company at something like $11 billion or so. Imagine that. A money-losing company that's less than four years old is going to be worth as much on the stock market as Omnicom ($11.1 billion) and a lot more than Pubicis ($6.1 billion) and Interpublic ($3.8 billion.)
That's the value of building a brand.
What's next for marketing?
Maybe nothing. It's time for the powers-that-be in the marketing community to shift gears and focus on the essence of what the current marketing function is all about. Not just an abstract name for a wide range of activities involving consumers in some fashion, but a simple, single concept that top management can instantly understand. A simple, single concept that is certain to get more important as the years roll by. Branding.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Ries is chairman of Ries & Ries, an Atlanta-based marketing strategy firm he runs with his daughter Laura.
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