A compendium of articles published this week on the topic of “postracial” America provide a range of suggestions, opinions and research data.

From CultureLab, posting after the Ypulse Urban/Multicultural Conference:

Yes, Multicultural and inclusion are now more relevant than ever, however ethnic targeting from a marketing perspective is not that relevant:

What is important is a genuinely inclusive outlook and deep understanding of youth identity. Young people want to see themselves represented AUTHENTICALLY. Stereotypical and clichéd images will not cut it in this day and age. For marketers what is important is to create welcoming spaces for people and their identities.

Identity from my vantage point has to do with who you connect to, how you view yourself, your background, your geography,your social class, experiences, interests and racial background.

Understanding identity, the role of class, and connection is what is really important. For instance, a kid may be Hispanic, living in LA and his or her interest lies in skateboarding. The community of skateboarders, the fashion associated with it, and the indigenous language used by skateboarders have the biggest impact on that person’s identity, more so than the fact that they are Hispanic. Ethnicity is just one minor part of the mix.

Pepper Miller qualifies her previous enthusiastic response via Ad Age:

I was excited to see the youth perspective that I have been hearing in focus groups about race for some time. And among Black youth, many often say they want to be recognized for their accomplishments first and “blackness” second.

However, John Parikhal, a global leader in media strategy, marketing, research and consumer trends, and Ken Smikle, publisher of Target Market News, checked me — and rightly so.

Smikle agrees and adds this about Hispanics: “He [Walker] makes the point about the two identities that all people of color have: Hispanic/Skateboarder, i.e., Background/Interests. What he doesn’t get is that being Hispanic comes first. And it’s the only part of the identity that doesn’t change — ever.“

Parikhal’s opinions are formed from the following research – a huge Black and African American segmentation study called The Black America Study, conducted by Radio One and Yankelovich. Click here to download overviews for free.

In my consumer research experience, I have seen both of these perspectives validated. I would humbly suggest that the idea and sentiment of Post-Race is not applied equally across all decisions or questions in a consumer’s life, no matter how they self-identify. The emotionally charged arena of picking a mate, for example, is one decision where Black woman behavior clearly demonstrates that they are not “beyond race” – yet. We’ll have to see what this younger generation does in years to come, as they make bigger decisions, and if their behaviors and attitudes start to sync up with those of their elders.

Scan through some of the comments section of this recent article on The Root for an earful, where the author encourages her female friends to date as if they were Michelle Obama when she met Barack.

And this sobering editorial piece “Even Now, There’s Risk in Driving While Black.”

Youth marketing website Ypulse hosts an article about using online games in place of journalism to engage young people. Anastasia argues that while teenagers may choose Halo over a serious game such as MTV’s ‘Darfur is Dying’, when presented with a classroom choice between listening to a teacher lecturing about Darfur or playing the game, pupils would undoubtedly pick the game.

Found via Ypulse, Dan Pankraz’s thoughts on tribal marketing for youth audiences spoke directly to what OneSeventeen Media knows motivates kids to engage.  These principles will be put into application in PlumbBrain’s launch.  To summarize at a high level, Pankraz calls on brands to understand the value of:

1. Agitating and disrupting the status quo
2. Connected collective
3. Power people
4. True believers
5. Lead them
6. Create culture
7. Tribal identification
8. Constant content creation and ongoing storytelling platform 

Be sure to read the full post to understand the power of Pankraz’s strategy.

(Image found here)

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By Amy Looper, OneSeventeen Media Co-Founder 

This year’s 2009 Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup conference was another winner and maybe even the strongest lineup yet. It was good to catch up with old friends and to make new ones. For those of you who may be new to OneSeventeen Media, this is one of our very favorite conferences because Anastsia Goodstein, Ypulse Founder, does such a fantastic job bringing in top brand, corporate and social marketers, media professionals, non-profits and educators together to share the latest best practices, research and the strategies on marketing to youth with technology. 

For OneSeventeen Media’s focus, the following were particularly relevant highlights:

• Social networks continue to be an important place for youth to accomplish social good and engage around current events. Interestingly enough, C&R research presented that environmental issues were no longer the number one issue among youth, their research shows it was youth oriented issues like education and child poverty as number one, cancer was number two, then followed the environment in the number 3 slot. 
• I think the big shocker was learning from Bill Carter’s presentation on Fuse Marketing’s latest research, that teens still read magazines! In fact, it was the second most effective rated medium to reach teens, and TV isn’t off their radar either! Several girls on the youth panels mentioned they like to read Seventeen Magazine, and they do pay attention to ads. However, when they see an ad of interest they will go to the web to do research and then make any purchases from there. 75% of teens believe it’s appropriate for brands to reach them via TV ads. The bottom line? It’s imperative to have go-to-market strategies that fully integrate all available platforms youth utilize. The underlying theme here was to have an authentic, value-providing story that your youth market can relate to. 
• Facebook’s faceoff with Twitter continues. While it’s been widely reported that youth have been slow to adopt Twitter, the youth panelist were somewhat divided on which was a better marketing tool. Of note, none of them mentioned MySpace. Facebook fans liked the ability to create a community around your brand ie: through a fan page and or group, while the other panelist opted for Twitter because it was the best way to monitor your brand as well as insert yourself into a relevant conversation with others about your brand. It’s important to remember these young panelists are still a bit older than our market, but trends with the older youth trickle down to younger kids over time — something for us to watch for. 
• Last, but definitely not least, Don Tapscott’s keynote presentation was brilliant, and Guy Kawasaki’s masterful moderation of the Youth Entrepreneurs panel was fantastic! These young entrepreneurs are fearless and had many valuable insights to share. You can read more about what others are saying about their conference experiences on the Ypulse site. 

Job well done Anastasia and team!

(Pictured above: Guy Kawasaki and the Youth Entrepreneurs panel in action)

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Up bright and early for a speaking gig at ypulse mashup conference.

I’ll be appearing on the panel, What’s Cool in 2009 and Beyond, along with:

Rebecca McQuigg, Trend Analyst, The Intelligence Group
Jody Turner, Lead Consultant, Culture of Future

Moderator: Edward Cotton, Strategy Director, BSSP

Pre-conference interview here.

If you’re in LA, you’re likely at #E3, Vegas, you’re likely at LicensingExpo (#LX9), NYC you’re likely at #InternetWeek and if you’re in SF/SV, you’re somewhere here:

Monday, June 1 – #Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason/O’Farrell

7:30, Breakfast

8:15, Know Your Target – 18-24 College Kids – media consuming, brands they love

8:30, Campus Media Group presents State Farm’s Guerrilla Media Campaign

8:50, ABC Greek VirtualRush.com, Vickie Collier, Disney-ABC Television Group

9:10, March Madness, GMU

9:30, Alloy Media + Marketing presents Pentel’s lifestyle marketing campaign

9:50, Snacks

10:15, Party like a Rockstar keeping a brand real at Spring Break

10:35, J Scavo, MySpace Records

10:55, mtvU deputies delivering MTV 360 messages on-air, online, on campus

11:15, Gauging Success

12-1, Go Eat

1, HeyJosh.com – what teens care about

2, Love and Levi’s – creating relevance with youth culture

3, Teens on wasted marketing efforts, reduce costs not impact

3:40, Immersive marketing, motivating the cynical teen, quiz me

4, Stretch

4:05, mass + logic looks at brand equity measurement, social media marketing

4:25, Stretch

4:30, Pitch campaign to a panel of 13-24 year olds, what flies and what falls flat

5:10, Wired Teacher Awards

5:20, nGenera Insights

6-7, Mixer

8, Screening of Sundance’s Dare with Screenwriter, David Brind & Director, Adam Salky

Tuesday, June 2 - #Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup, Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason/O’Farrell

7:30, Breakfast

8:30, Reaching the Gamers – Kate Connally, MTV AddictingGames

9:10, What’s Cool

9:50, Stretch

9:55, Geoff Cook, MyYearbook, fun in the cyberspace playground, attention matters more than reach, turbo charging brand engagement with virtual currency tie-ins
10:15, Snack

10:55, Mobile Marketing with Loopt, MocoSpace, Kajeet, Nokia

11:35, Stretch

11:40, Concerned, Connected & Plugged In

12, UGC campaigns from Disney.com, Walt Disney Records, Disney Online

1, Lunch – UPick Topic

2:20, Gen Y spending with MTV 360, Marketwatch, SmartyPig

3, Extending brand in virtual worlds, social, apps, widgets with Meebo, Stardoll

3:50, Snacks

4:15, Keynote with Donna Fenn, Inc.

4:45, Wired Youth Entrepreneurs, Guy Kawasaki

5:30, The End

Tuesday, June 2 – Connections:  Digital Living Room Showcase, Santa Clara Convention Center

8, Breakfast

8:30, Business models wrapped around iTV

9:30, Connected CE

10:45, Mobile 3G+

11:45, Lunch

12:45, Advertising in a Three Screen World

1:45, Remote Support for the Digital Home

2:45, Energy Management

4, New Connectivity

4:30 Wireless CE with ATT

5:15, Marriage of Online Video to CE
with Brent Hurley, YouTube, Jim Denney, TiVo, Ken Wirt, Cisco.., Theater

6, Mixer/Showcase, Exhibit Hall A2

Wednesday, June 3 - Connections:  Digital Living Room Showcase, Santa Clara Convention Center

7:30, DivX Breakfast, Exhibit Hall A2

8:15, CE Brand Affinity, Exhibit Hall A1

9, Connected TV with Russ Schafer, Y!…, Exhibit Hall A1

10, Verizon FiOS, Exhibit Hall A1

10:45, Snack, Exhibit Hall A2

11:15, Future of STB with Microsoft, Ballroom F
12:15, Lunch/Showcase, Exhibit Hall, A2

1:30,  WebTV with Avner Ronen, Boxee, Ajay Dugar, Paramount..Ballroom H

2:30, Ad Models that Work with AdMob, Bunchball, Ballroom H

3:30, Snack

4, CE Networking with Best Buy, D-Link, NETGEAR.., Exhibit Hall A1

5, DECE Entertainment 2.0 with Mitch Singer, Sony, Exhibit Hall A1

6, Mixer/Showcase, Wireless Networking Video Consumption, Exhibit Hall A2

Wednesday, June 3 – Cinematic Keynotes, Apple

5:30-7pm  Jerry Weissman, Author, Power Presenter

Thursday, June 4 - Connections:  Digital Living Room Showcase, Santa Clara Convention Center

7:45, Breakfast/IPR, Exhibit Hall A2

8:30, Smart Grid to the Home, Exhibit Hall A1
10:45, Snack, Exhibit Hall A2

11:15, Multimedia on Mobile with Jackson Gates, Pandora.., Ballroom H

12:15, Lunch/Showcase, Exhibit Hall A2

1:15, Support with Alcatel-Lucent, Exhibit Hall A1

2:15, VCs – Stephen Blum, Tellus Venture, Richard Irving, Pond Venture, Eric Zimits, Granite Ventures, Fred Wang, Trinity Ventures

Thursday, June 4 - NARIP, Pyramind, 832 Folsom/4th-5th

6:30 – 9:30pm Steffen Franz, President & Founder, Independent Distribution Collective, Kurt Kunselman, Director of Digital Distribution / Business Development, Independent Distribution Collective, Arne Lucas, Director of Mobile Marketing, INgrooves, Raj Singh, Mobile Consulting / Strategy / Product Planning / Definition Expert

With the many ways to distribute music today, those who succeed are the ones who manage their options best. How can you maximize distribution via the many avenues available, and integrate the three major ones (physical, digital and mobile)? NARIP invites four experts to share their knowledge on this vital and fast-developing area.

There is much to say about #TWTRCON.  For an event held on an early Sunday morning, it sold out at 300, trended to #3, and came together in just 8 weeks.  The producers were awesome, never let the tweeps go hungry, never let the panels go over.  The Nikko had great conference features like speaker red light/green light and hip music to hook off stage those going over.  @SteveRubel got us thinking:  Will we get bored with Twitter? @GuyKawasaki gave me an exclusive on the 16, er 10 ways to make money on Twitter.  Hung out with some cool tweeps from the SF Chronicle, Bare Essentials, Jamba Juice, TiVo, and Real Networks Games launching innovative lifestyle marketing campaigns.  Got into some wild @thumbfights.  Learned a lot about Twitter’s monetization plan from the new PM, a tweetup with @HappyStar and @KogiBBQ, that @ComcastCares and AskWF too, and gleened much from @KaraSwisher, @BrianSolis, @DaveMcClure.  I really enjoyed @MCHammer time and @adventuregirl, and came home with gorgeous tee shirts from @VirginAmerica and @PeopleBrowser, and a button from an Owl at @HootSuite.  There was so much more.  TWTRCON has been accumulating a comprehensive page of mentions at http://twtrcon.com/twtrcon-sf-09-links, my live stream can be found at twitter.com/contentnow, and I’ll fill in the blanks below.

@Guy Kawasaki
Kicking off the morning was Guy Kawasaki.  Right off the bat he was asked about Twitter not having a business model.  ”Well you can say GM doesn’t have a business model.” Then he went on to say there are 16 ways to make money on Twitter, at least that’s what I tweeted, but he only had a chance to list the first two.  (Later at the break, he gave me an exclusive on 8 more:  1.  Sell Apps, 2.  Tier price tweets, 3.  Advertising, 4.  Charge for a higher level of preferences, 5.  Sponsors, 6.  Donations, 7.  Pay to block spam, 8.  Merchandise (e.g. threadless.com), 9.  End User conferences, 10.  Developer conferences.  What a guy!)  On stage, he went on to compare FB with Twitter.  Doesn’t like Facebook because its an effort to draw ‘friends’ to page, prefers pushing on Twitter.  When asked if he was spamming, he joked Spam is a delicacy in Hawaii, and no he’s not spamming.  ”Twitter is fresh, unscripted, more real than Facebook.  Got 4 kids and a wife, not on Twitter to make friends, on Twitter to drive traffic to Alltop, and Twitter is a great marketing tool.”  Talked about ghosts:  @guykawasaki has ghost writers, ghosts sign with initials, when the tweet is from guy, no initials.  All replies from @guysreplies are Guy’s.  Chose to use @guykawasaki to promote Alltop instead of @alltop because @guykawasaki had twice the followers, hoping to leveraging personal brand.  Then he remarked that Twitter should have sold for the half a billion dollars.  Audience response:  You’re wrong! Would you sell your daughter to a sheik just to ruin her. And Guy responded –  I would have taken the $.5B.  Would be thrilled to sell$2mm in ads a year at Alltop and split with partner.   Talked about missing Webvan, everyone sighed.  Then described Alltop.  Alltop answers a different question than Google:  What’s happening in China, not what is China.  Shared thoughts on Yahoo creating a competitor to Twitter just like Buzz is now a competitor to Buzz.  Guy was thanked for being the first to commit to TWTRCON, and then he offered free Starbucks instant coffee packets at the booksigning desk.  

@VirginAmerica - Porter Gale, VP Marketing
Relationship in the sky does not have to end on ground.  WiFi allows them to listen to disgruntled tweets and respond, passenger tweeting about not getting meal was overheard by intern on stream who called the plane to get him food.  Tweeting puts a human face on a beloved brand, currently 17,000 folowers.  .  Tapping into the creative class of urban dwellers 18-45 who tweet, key influencers, leading tech innovators, PR and media industry people and SM bloggers.  As far as viral campaigns, on 6/24, VirginAmerica and GoogleApps are teaming up to present an online interactive scavenger hunt played in the air and on the ground. The prizes are one year of free flights with free wifi, an HP netbook and 1TB of storage for email and photos.  Sign up at www.dayinthecloud.com or just follow along at #dayinthecloud.  As for the organization, VirginAmerica is a small startup, flat organization, David CEO down the hall, 15 member Marketing Team, 2 tweeters Nick & Bowen, follow all followers to allow for DM. VirginAmerica believes in financial transparency to their team and thus restricts tweeting internally.  Block VoIP and Skype in the air but do not censor tweets.  Kevin Rose was already passionate for the product when he broadcasted from the sky.  Recognizing people want to engage in the brand, Virgin enlisted 7 of the Digerati @KevinRose, @XeniJardin, @CoryDoctorow, @DavidPescovitz, @MarkFrauenfelder, @PeterRojas, @AlexAlbrecht in a campaign to tout @VirginAmerica.  

@PhoenixSuns - Jeramie McPeek, VP Interactive Services
Suns PR team reads player tweets but they are not censored, merely coached.  @KathleenHessert is the sports marketing guru who got @The_Real_Shaq and @DanicaPatrick on Twitter.  The Suns social network is planetorange.net.

@PRNewswire – Victoria Harres Akers, Director, Audience Development
Carefully crafts tweets, only 10 per day, concerned about being misconstrued.  People prefer RT to DM.

TurboTax -  Seth Greenberg, Intuit
35% of TurboTax customers are on FB, average age is 25y.  Be entertaining or get flamed.  Came up with a great way to amplify tweets.  Launched viral campaign for a chance to win tickets to SNL, The Grammys:  In 140 characters or less describe if you were a rockstar, what you would deduct.” Customers uploaded videos, “I’m a rockstar, I’m deducting my liposuction.  Thanks TurboTax!” Autofollow followers for DM.  

@ComcastCares, @AskWF
During the CS panel, Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care, Comcast, began by saying that Comcast’s credo is creating the best customer experience, yes, this is Comcast.  Its ok to have tough chats online and resolved in a public way.  Twitter provides real-time market feedback.  In the audience, there was a testimonial that Frank gave his cell number and handheld them til the issue was resolved.  @DaveMcClure of Founders Fund challenged Frank saying you went above and beyond for her because she is a celebrity and has a big voice, you’re not doing it for the little guy, your “personalized approach” is not scalable.  Frank responded that they have a team of 10 and can scale with tools, training and hiring CS reps who are passionate about customers. “I’m passionate about our customers.”  (In response to this post, Frank put his business card on his blog for anyone who needs Comcast care.  As to whether SM is scalable for CS, it is when done right.  Customer privacy is primary and the tact Wells Fargo takes in responding privately to resolve issues is important to note.)  On stage with Frank was Ed Terpening, VP Social Media Marketing, Wells Fargo.  He went on to explain how WF is using SM for CS:  WF proactively seeks out customers ranting about them, DMs to resolve issues and turn detractors into promoters.  WF funnels customer conversations to secure channels to protect the customer’s privacy and prevent abuse, e.g. a hack into tinyurl.  WF has a 100 member CS team.  ”We know the ROI on resolving customer issues, we seek productive conversations, they tweet to be heard.” The audience then gave WF feedback that the legal language on the AskWF Twitter page was a major turn off. Ed’s response was sympathetic as he explained such disclosure is required when dealing with personal financial information.  (btw Cotweet was being raved about by many at TWTRCON as one of those key tools to scale CS, more discussion below).

@MCHammer
The highlight of TWTRCON came midday as @MCHammer was joined on stage with @AdventureGirl and Gina Smith (@ginasmith888) to discuss personal branding on Twitter.  His family-oriented reality TV show, Hammertime, debuts on A&E Sunday, June 14, 10pm.  (At the risk of being anachronistic, check out this viral gold of a flash mob in HammerPants doing the HammerDance, 1mm+ views as of 6/13). He had many keen insights to share:  On getting to 1mm – started with a question which went viral, “In 1962-1970 every male leader was assassinated, where were you?” The fans took this and ran with the brand.  On scaling from 1mm to 10mm followers – ghosts are ok if you are transparent to your fans, I’m traveling this week and Jody will be tweeting my schedule.  On ghosts:  I’m afraid of ghosts, defeats the point of Twitter which makes you accessible to your fans.  Broadcasting only is not the culture of Twitter. Twitter allows you to remove the velvet rope perception and you are who you are, drops the veil of celebrity.  I want to engage the everyday person, get their feedback, be real. As a content creator, I want to eliminate the filter.I have a voice.  Perception is more valuable than reality.   On drunk tweeting – not sure why anyone would do that. its a bad idea.  What you say, you can’t take back.  On TwitterSquatters – it helps to know the founders to wrangle the name.  (Now Twitter has a seal next to the real celebrity IDs).  On the future  - its exciting. The apex is linking to rich media content, tweeting out links to photos, videos, film, saves marketing dollars.  Great branding for movies and actors, Twitter allows brand extension.  Imagine a day when we tweet links to Comcast PPV, take a rev share, eliminate manager fees.  

@HappyStar, @KogiBBQ, @DellOutlet
Carl’s Jr. and Kogi BBQ were up right after lunch.  Along with DellOutlet, they were asked what’s the best time to tweet.  Carl’s Jr. piped in “I start tweeting at 10am PST to my 18-34 young, hungry guys, late at night to the bacon group.  Tweet about 5x day.  Need to know your audience.  Late at night active RTs.  Make it funny and delicious.” Carl’s has a strategic plan but sometimes shakes it up, e.g. win a date with a diva.  Created @HappyStar iconic logo now a cool character in the Twitterverse who smokes cigars, goes clubbing, got edge.  KogiBBQ no set menus, groupies, personality, connect passionately with fans, use Twitter to identify popular spots, followers invite the truck to hot spots, best time to tweet is in the afternoon.  Dell Outlet took 2 years to get to half a million followers, slow build, integrated online, sm and email, strategy was to be responsive. Best time to tweet promotions is in the late afternoon to miss international crowd.  To identify best time to tweet, track RTs.  Kogi made a point of saying some followers are more powerful than others, BrianSolis caused viral RT that helped launch Kogi into the spotlight.  When asked if making money from tweets – Dell and Carl’s – yeah, KogiBBQ – hell yeah!  Dell uses bit.y, HootSuite for CTR data, can track coupon redemption. Advice to Twitter – Carl’s – keep it open, Kogi – more data.   Later Carl’s and Kogi announced they were going to plan a tweetup with HappyStar at the truck. 

Pitch Pit
Moderated by David Berlind of Information Week, the Pitch Pit introduced the audience to some very cools tools.  My favorite was @Thumbfight, like Googlefight but measures Twitter sentiment, addictive fun, monitor your popularity online.  But @Hootsuite, with URL shortening built in, search DMs, links, followers, geography, and @PeopleBrowser had tremendous support as well. The panelists said they were using:  @Radian6, pinpoints all conversations happening about your brand across the social web but doesn’t measure sentiment.  @CoTweet. @Tweetdeck. @Wordclouds.  Bitly.  PopRL.   And of course, TwitterSearch to see what people are saying about your brand and competitors.  

Twitterville by @ShelIsrael 
Twitter is like a small town where people say hello, comment on the weather, share interests, lunch and sometimes real business happens.  Twitterville is a snapshot of ordinary citizens caught in extraordinary circumstances and  rescued by Twitter.  Shel talked about @jkrums twitpic-ing USAir 1549 and getting MSN on the scene within 20 minutes, or @ecasper and @scobleizer breaking the news about the China quake.  And UCB student @jamesbuck using Twitter to save his life.  He tweeted “Arrested” when taken on vacation in Egypt which his 92 followers RTand got the attention of the US State Dept gto get him freed. He also talked about a formula to raise money quickly with Twitter:  must have a specific case, a sense of urgency and updates.

@BrianSolis, @CiscoSystems, @eBayinkblog
It was really great hearing Brian Solis, author of PR 2.0, Putting the Public Back in PR. Its a time of experimentation and either there will be epic failing or succeeding.  1989 Tim Berners-Lee, 1995 the advent of eCommerce, 2004 FB, 2005 iPod.   eBay was the first social network connecting buyers and sellers back in 1995.   Now 65% of executive staff is brand new. To gain visibility, leveraging eBay influencers, DM to grow fan base.  Key policy issues regarding eBay tweeting earnings, came up with quarterly hashtag #Q109 to allay concern for RT of old info.  At Cisco, each employee is a brand champion, discussed how to lose a job with one bad tweet, a new hire bragging about her ‘fattie’ paycheck led to her dismissal.  John Chambers used polldaddy to take the pulse of 15,000 employees at ciscolive.  Cisco now has 66,000 employees.  During orientation train employees to embrace the brand and not tweet about customers.  At Intel Social Media Center for Excellence there is a course that must be completed before employees can tweet.

Twitter - Anamitra Banerji, Project Management
Next up was the man who is designing the product to make Twitter its fortune.  He was asked – right now Twitter is a platform but is Twitter about to develop their own apps that will cannibalize the 3P market.  The investors want to know.  Shrug.  Anamitra then asked the audience, what features do you want, the audience replied  - analytics for reach and engagement – what’s working, what’s not, CTRs, page views, who are your followers, what are their favorites, when is your audience on, optimal timing to tweet, sentiment aggregator to quantity positive and negative chatter, spam filter, hypergeotargeting, no more failwells.  He said most Twitter resources are going to engineering for user experience, stability, out of the box experience.  Discussed not much slander yet, but lots of spam. He requested use studies like the cafe who lets patrons DM waitress their order.  Anamitra talked about American Apparel using Twitter for idea generation, a follower sent in his pregnant wife dressed in American Apparel up until the baby was born, that follower is the gold standard, the crown jewel of the customer base, fans like that don’t get bored.  Then @SteveRubel stood up and asked, “What if we get bored with Twitter.  What will Twitter do about churn?” (twitterquitters).  

@SteveRubel
Now it was Steve’s turn onstage.  His comment still bothering me about us getting bored with Twitter.  Hey, I love Twitter, but what if he’s right.  He made the point of us getting bored with blogging and email.  Don’t you remember those conferences about blogging and email.  Later @KaraSwisher said it was true, she remembers the conferences on blogging and before that email, hauntingly similar, with passionate fervor, and now no more, just utility and ubiquity.  Damn @SteveRubel, he’s too powerful a thought leader.  Then he mindmapped us with a great discussion on ways in which Twitter can sustain.  He put it up on Flickr .  You can read it in its original size.  Here is the essence of what was discussed:  

The Future of Twitter
Social OS 
- Twitter inside  making every site social with OAuth, aggregation tools (vertical aggregation), FB Connect or Open ID feature, filtering, reputational score for interestingness, hyperlocal, voting/rating systems.
- Twitter inside Apps – mobile, productivity – Evernote, MS Office email/IM replacement, GoogleWave, Social apps like Seesmic, Tweetdeck
Marketing OS 
- insights engine – protools, A/B testing, link tracking, sentiment, twitter analytics, platform – contextual search ads, display, PR, pro tools, Twitter TV, CRM – pro tools
M&A
Who Buys Twitter? IT – Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, Media – Disney, Google, Comcast, Y!, Amazon, Social – FB, Mobile – ?
Who Does Twitter Buy?  Friendfeed, Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Hotsuite/CoTweet, 37 Signals, payment solution, Bit.ly,  Twittercounter
Partnerships 
Corporations, Media – Disney, MTV, CNN, Newspapers, Social Nets – FriendFeed, FB, NGOs – UN, WEF, Govt – US, etc.
Threats 
Federated IDs – FriendFeed, FB, Churn, Boredom

@karaswisher, @davemcclure, @jowyang, @psaffo
They saved the best for last – the power panel of pundits.  @KaraSwisherof WSJ AllThingsD, just back from D7 and her kids ballgame.  On the stage with her was Dave McClure of Founders Fund, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Resarch and Paul Saffo of the Institute of the Future.  There was food and cocktails just outside the door and the dialogue got very punchy.  It went something like this:
- Twitter’s motto is “We don’t know”
- Like Seinfeld, its about nothing
- Swisher tells McClure to stop tweeting on stage
- Owyang says Twitter will go away like email and blogging.
- Swisher calls Owyang Jeremy
- McClure says its Jeremiah
- Owyang says Kara can call me anything she wants
- Then there was some profanity
- Swisher comments that she can handle anyone after Carol Bartz 
- Saffo starts talking about tablets, smartphones
- Swisher says her mom is funny, boy scored a homerun
- Someone said Highlander was the best movie ever
- McClure called out: What’s the story from the heartland Jeremy (Boingo)
- Swisher asked can microblogging get any shorter
- News no longer breaks it tweets
- Saffo said geodata is the dark horse
- SMS is at 2T, tweets run rate is 2B
- Is it possible to realtime index 1TB of tweets a day
- I asked the Twitterverse, are DMs indexed, searchable, answer: no
- Saffo thought about the kids getting textbooks on Kindle, they should be stuck in the libraries at midnight like the rest of us mortals were
- Panel recalled once upon a time when emails couldn’t talk to each other
- Owyang commented social web is global, mobile, realtime
- Saffo then said Twitter is not the next Google
- MySpace is dead except for entertainment
- GoogleWave should have been done years ago, FB eating Google’s lunch
- Big 3 ecommerce sites no social networking – Amazon, eBay, iTunes
- Owyang – brands follow fish where they go
- Twitter great to meet new tweeps, tell stories, collect stuff, be useful
- Can Twitter fuel own growth and scale to 100mm
- and with that it was time to party where I caught up with @TiVoShanan
- it was an art party, so I took one finally twitpic
- then I realized the upright iPhone was turning my twitpics on its side
- but I’d be back in the morning for #Ypulse, youth marketing mashup, same great producers (Modern Media Partners), same great location.

Just bought my plane ticket to SF for the YPulse Youth Mashup.  I will get there Monday, but there are a bunch of people gathering on Sunday evening to meetup and talk shop.  Be sure to email Carole at Privo - caltarescu [at] privo.com if you are interested in connecting with everyone.

Look forward to seeing everyone!

Our friends at Ypulse have partnered with Dell to offer an awesome award for a Totally Wired Teacher.  

“The Ypulse 2009 Totally Wired Teacher Award (sponsored by Dell) will honor a public school teacher from grades 3 to12 who is successfully using technology (the internet/social media, mobile technology, gaming) in the classroom.”

The submission deadline is May 15, 2009, so get your nominations in now!  This is a fantastic way to honor a teacher you see doing outstanding work to with kids and technology.  

“We will select three finalists and choose this year’s Totally Wired Teacher to be honored in person at the Ypulse Mashup. All three finalists will receive an IT solution from Dell to use in their respective schools. “

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Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashups are conferences hosted by our friend Anastasia Goodstein, the editor of Ypulse.com, a favorite source of daily coverage of the social and digital trends that define today’s totally wired young people and marketing in the youth space. This year’s national conference, June 1-2 in San Francisco, brings together a diverse mix of brand, corporate and social marketers, media pros, educators and youth advocates. The event is about marketing to tweens, teens and young adults with technology and about understanding and communicating with youth ethically—and in ways that add value to their lives.

We’ll be there, and hope many of you are able to join us! Visit www.mashup.ypulse.com for the details, full speaker lineup, and to register. Anastasia has given us a special 10 % discount code for the OneSeventeen Media community: 117MEDIA.

This year, an (Un)Conference: Tweens Online: Balancing Safety and Fun will precede the main event on Sunday afternoon and Mashup itself will kick off Monday morning with three pre-conference sessions:

• Youth Marketing Boot Camp for fresh insights about teens and the new relationship between young consumers and their technology.
• Urban/Multicultural Mashup features some of the real stars of this space, trend presentations, sessions on mobile and pro-social partnerships and more.
• Ypulse Campus Case Study Slam for insights from lots of pros in the trenches of college campuses, including one dean of admissions in addition to marketers from MySpace Records and Levi Strauss!

Here are just a few of the speakers who will be offering insights into the Digital Generation at the main conference, which starts after lunch (on our own), and continues through Tuesday (when lunch is actually part of lively, user-generated roundtable discussions):

• Don Tapscott, the author of Grown Up Digital, on how this generation is changing the world and its institutions.
• Josh Shipp, a renowned speaker on youth issues who channels his talent for empowering young people into Hey Josh.com, on what teens care about.
• Donna Fenn, who has been interviewing young entrepreneurs over the past two years for her book Upstarts! How the Entrepreneurial Generation is Rocking the World of Business.
• David Brind and Adam Salky, the screenwriter and director of “DARE,” on site for a Q&A after an exclusive screening of this 2009 Sundance Film Festival hit!
• Greg Clayman, Executive Vice President of Digital Distribution and Business Development, MTV Networks.
• Executives from Disney, covering best practices for user-generated campaigns.
• Kit Yarrow, co-author of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and 20-Somethings are Revolutionizing Retail.
• A Youth Panel, ages 13 to 24, rating brand campaigns—and offering feedback on our own youth initiatives!
• Guy Kawasaki, interacting with a another panel of Youth Entrepreneurs.
• Adam Aberman, director of digital strategy at Ashoka’s Youth Venture, and Best Buy’s Tim Showalter-Loch, talking about a very successful pro-social campaign.
• Daryl Butler, who directs retail brand marketing at Nike, on keeping youth marketing simple.
• Bill Carter of Fuse, on cutting spending without losing marketing impact.

We hope to meet some of you in San Francisco!  ( Check out the impressive list of 2007-2008 Mashup attendees!)

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THG Musical Guest: Rob Giles

Warner Music Targeting More than YouTube: Fred VonLohmann writes about Warner Music’s (mis)use of YouTube’s Content ID (i.e., audio fingerprinting) tools to remove lots of videos that are clearly fair uses. (EFF)

Music Marketing Lessons From Groove Armada And Neko Case: In an interesting study in contrasts, this past week we’ve come across two artists who are taking slightly different approaches to arrive at the same goal: to get you to listen to their latest album and share it with your friends. (YPulse) (Thanks Derek!)

For Gen Y, Music is Oxygen: What do younger music consumers think about music piracy, digital music and other issues related to music?

These were just some of the questions that a new survey conducted by British Music Rights sought to answer. When it comes to music: What does the MySpace generation want? (Barking Robot Media)

Twt.fm: An easy way to share your music on Twitter! twt.fm will generate a track page for you using your twitter page design and you’ll be able to tweet it to your followers.

Warner Music Pitches Music Tax To Universities: You Pay, We Stop Suing: The idea would be to get various ISPs to simply add an additional fee to everyone’s internet access, have that money go into a pool that the recording industry would be responsible for paying out — and then let people have free reign for file sharing.

We hadn’t heard much about this music tax lately, but apparently attention is now being focused on getting universities to buy into the plan.(TechDirt)

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danah boyd posted an insightful tweet earlier this week that is spot-on with the feedback we’ve received in our case studies and through our Youth Advisory Board:

She’s absolutely correct.  Kids aren’t pursuing Facebook and other same-box-new-wrapping social networks with the same zest they did several years ago.  Anastasia Goodstein at Ypulse dug a bit deeper into the dwindling flame of passion between kids and social networks saying, 

“A bunch of folks (including me) began to comment and speculate about where the love has gone as well as where teens might go (short answer: they haven’t gone to any one new site or space just yet). I feel like we’ve been talking about youth social networking fatigue on and off for awhile, and really, given that they were the early adopters of these sites, it makes sense.”

I concur with Anastasia’s elaborations, and I have seen the same phenomenon among my peer group of twenty-somethings.  Specific to Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook’s founder), was just a year behind me in college when he first opened Facebook up to college campuses outside of Harvard.  My college classmates and I began our Facebook love affairs five years ago and the relationship just isn’t as steamy as it once was.  I think for the twenty-something and younger crowd, there’s been a shift of perspective when it comes to Facebook.  When Facebook first hit the scene, it was an incredibly enticing way to be a voyeur into the lives of our friends, friends of friends and the cute guy two rows in front of me in biology.  As the service as developed and become more widely used, instead of being a novelty, it has become a basic tool that is useful, but not the thrill it once was (in the last month I personally know five friends who “quit” Facebook because they didn’t find it particularly useful and the novelty had dried up).  

There’s a logical comparison to be made with email.  When people first started using email it was really cool.  I remember getting my first account in the seventh grade through AOL and getting such a kick out of sending one line emails to my friends asking tantalizing questions like, “Did you watch Friends last night?” and then eagerly awaiting a response.  Now, email is a standard form of communication, and I don’t know anyone who looks at their inbox and squeals in delight.  For Facebook’s early adopters, Facebook is the “new email,” meaning that it’s becoming a standard, efficient communication tool, but it is no longer exciting (I do not think Facebook will ever replace standard email).  While Facebook is always open in my browser, I’d estimate I easily spend half the amount of time interacting with the site that I did two years ago.  

What kids are waiting for is the next-generation of social networking to emerge where they can engage with fresh content and new-opportunities in a social context.  PlumbBrain is the next generation of social networking that kids are asking for!

(Image adapted from danah boyd’s twitter)

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Posted by Amy Looper 

As the South By South West (SXSW) 2009 Film Conference and Festival winds down, the Young Minds Digital Times (YMDT) First Annual Film Competition concludes as well. This year’s inaugural winners, Rainer Herrera from Miami, Florida and Justin Rightmer from Austin, Texas were our grand prize winners who received trips to the internationally acclaimed SXSW Film Conference and Festival. 

[Pictured above: Justin Rightmer, YMDT Young Filmmakers Doing Good grand prize winner from Manor, Texas with his chaperone, Les Simpson, Manor New Tech High School Digital Media Literacy Instructor and Apple Distinguished Educator.  Rainer Herrera YMDT Freeform grand prize winner from Miami, Florida with his chaperone Sandor Sanchez and Amy Looper, OneSeventeen Media and Young Minds Digital Times Co-founder. ]

While our ace Director of Community Content, Amy Strecker, wearing her YMDT Director’s hat and Michael Castro, technology guru extraordinaire of Sybilmedia, did all of the heavy lifting to make this competition a huge success, Beth Carls and I had the honor and pleasure of accompany these young filmmakers to SXSW. I must say the biggest thrill I personally had at SXSW this year was receiving a brief, but excited text message from Rainer after he attended one of the film panel sessions. It simply exclaimed, “I just met my hero!” Justin, as well, waited patiently for two hours to get a front row seat that same day to meet one of his filmmaking heroes. 

You’ll see a post or two over the next few weeks as Rainer and Justin have one last assignment for YMDT – to post a short compilation of their thoughts and impressions from their SXSW experience. I can’t wait! 

We’re most grateful to our sponsors and to the professional judges who so generously donated their time to not only vote in the competition, but also give all of the YMDT finalist valuable feedback. Ultimately they selected our grand prize winner for a life changing experience at SXSW. In fact, you might think that the only reason students entered this competition was for a prize, but the number one request from our participants was for professional feedback. This completely supports the growing trend we hear and see in young people – they want more interactivity and feedback from all of their endeavors, including film competitions, school and social networks. They want to compete with their peers on a national level in a variety of platform while collecting real world experiences by working with professionals in the fields that interest them.  [Pictured above: Rainer Herrera and his chaperone and film co-creator, Sandor Sanchez, smile for the camera with YMDT judge and sponsor Anastasia Goodstein, Ypulse founder.]

If I had my way, SXSW would have a dedicated portion of their conference specifically tailored for young people interested in the film, interactive and music industries. Today’s technology and the wide spread availability for youth to create user generated content is quite possibly laying the groundswell for just such a thing. Rainer and Justin both expressed desire for a SXSWY conference! There’s an incredible opportunity here! 

My thanks to the many teachers, parents and friends who not only supported their students’ participation in our competition, but who are there day in and day out to encourage and support the dreams of these young filmmakers.  I encourage you to check out our sponsor page and support the sponsors’ and judges’ companies who donated time, talent and expertise especially during these tough economic times. These folks didn’t let our students down when they easily could have bailed due to the economy. 

Finally for me, the true delight of SXSW this year was watching Justin and Rainer light up, wide eyed and full of unbridled excitement. It underscores the many reasons why it’s so important for any of us who can, to reach out in any way to encourage a young person’s dreams and aspirations. Even the smallest comment has the potential to positively influence them. If you’re moved to help us create as many real world experiences as possible through the Young Minds Digital Times Film, Music and (coming soon!) Creative Writing Competitions let me know. There are plenty of ways to help us make next year’s SXSW grand prize winner’s trip a dream come true! 

I encourage you to take just a minute and think about the pivotal moments in your life when you met that someone or had that one experience that changed your life. This is what I saw at SXSW this week in Justin and Rainer — an experience of a young lifetime that will continue to inspire them for years to come. 

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 American Teen arrived from Netflix last week, and I had the chance to watch the documentary I first heard about via Ypulse last summer.  The film was a 2008 Sundance Film Festival favorite, and it depicts the senior year experience of five high school students living in Warsaw, Indiana.  The students are articulate, open and come across well on camera.  I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated and I thought it was well done and nicely edited.  (It felt very much like a movie with an engaging story line, particularly compared to other attempts to document the high school experience like WE’s High School Confidential that I followed last year).  The audience gets a really authentic look at Hannah Bailey’s (the main character of sorts) senior year experience; of all the students featured, she’s the one I’d want to be friends with.  Without spoiling anything, I even found myself commiserating the woes of her love life.   You can check out the trailer here.

My biggest critique of the documentary is that it’s a very insular look at teen life through the filter of a specific demographic: white, middle-class.  The middle class range is broad; one student borders on upper class, another probably on lower, but demographically speaking, it’s a pretty homogenous group.  I’m sure this is also a byproduct of the filming location.  Warsaw, Indiana is very white, middle class, so American Teen is probably a strong representation of the teen experience in Warsaw, but not necessarily representative of high school life everywhere.  Having grown up in then worked in communities with significant Hispanic and African-American populations, I do think there are meaningful regional and cultural variations on the high school experience. 

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The two Young Minds Digital Times Film Competition Grand Prize Winners arrived at South by Southwest (SXSW) last Friday.  As part of their Grand Prize they received badges to the SXSW Film Conference & Festival and attended specific sessions of the SXSW Interactive Festival. (Look for more about their experiences at SXSW later this week!)  A big thanks to the SXSW team for helping us make this happen!  

We were also glad to help out our yPulse friend Anastasia Goodstein with her Saturday panel What Tweens & Teens Want in a Web Site/Application by connecting her with Austin youth to join the conversation.  (Updated 3:25pm EST: Anastasia’s recap now up on yPulse.)

Amy Looper and Beth Carls got to catch up with many of our friends in social media, and as SXSWi veterans, we all found Rob Cottingham’s above cartoon hilarious!  

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Book publishers–and agents–are scarce at SXSW’s Interactive Festival, and when they do show up, they’re not always treated with love and respect (see Booksquare’s “New Think? Not So Much”), but at worst it’s a love-hate relationship between the digital crowd and the page turners. At best–and there is a bright side–it’s because this crowd (about 9,000 of them) loves books and wants publishers to do with them what digital creatives have been able to do to movies, music, comics, art, games, and many other aspects of life–enhance it in ways that makes it smarter, more intuitive, faster, more responsive.

The few publishers at SXSW include several from Penguin, which hosted an inadvertently raucous panel that pitted a group of publishers against an angry crowd of bloggers, authors, and digerati. The panel included Clay Shirky and Bloomsbury’s Peter Miller as well as the two Penguins, Ivan Held and John Fagan, who–to give them credit–chose to come to Austin because they knew they should engage with this group. In the audience were a few others, including Taunton’s Don Linn. Several more are also at SXSW, but given the amount of book talk here, it’s amazing what a disconnect there is between the book talk and the book publishers present. Nate Silver, in his interview with Stephen Baker (The Numerati), mentioned Irrational Exuberance and Nixonland. Silver is also writing (okay, he admitted, still outlining) a book for, ironically, Penguin Press. A panel of teenagers assembled by Anastasia of Ypulse revealed that, despite being obsessed with iPhones, Xboxes, and MySpace/Facebook, they are readers too–Stephen King, J. D. Salinger, Watchmen, Joe Haldeman–all read as p- or e-books, depending on where they can get them fast and free.

There are also dozens of author signings, right in the middle of the trade show, where B&N has set up a ministore. Oh, and lots of authors, including Jeff Howe, Chris Rettstatt, Guy Kawasaki, Sloane Crosley–in a range of categories, from fantasy, business, marketing, to futurist, and humor books–have long lines of fans.

But the point is not just that there are books are readers here in Austin; the point is that there are creative people who are blogging, tweeting, composing, developing, and conceptualizing in a remarkable variety of areas that could both inform publishing and out of which brilliant and marketable books could emerge. Why isn’t the book world in this glorious playpen?

If you are a book publisher who’s at SXSW this year, let us know in the comments.

Ypulse Youth Advisory Board member, Libby, has some insightful reflections on what Gen Y can learn from the recent scandal caused when a photo of Michael Phelps smoking from a bong was released to the media.

Libby’s reflections are a great example of what I also consider the most important takeaways from Phelps’s experience:  

A) be aware of the activities you choose to engage in and their ramifications (it goes without saying that illegal drug use is never a good idea and not condoned by OneSeventeen Media)  

B) exert caution in the content you post online and the content others collect and post online about you.  Savvier tweens and teens grasp the point about not posting their own lewd content, but extending the criteria to the content  others collect is key.  

Libby provides an articulate example of the deep understanding of social media sharing today’s youth must sort out to be savvy 21st Century citizens. OneSeventeen Media looks forward to providing a forum and resources to help tweens and teens grow their understanding of digital citizenship.  

(Ypulse’s YouTube channel found here)

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so, for my first real post, i give to you the full, unedited, unfiltered version of my zune article for ypulse. This is the first draft of the article, before i drop the second draft that takes out the swears and other elements of it that I don’t like. comments welcome, etc.

On my college campus, there are only two mp3 players seen in the ears and hands of my peers: Apple’s ipod family, and Microsoft’s Zune. There are no in-betweens, it’s either ipod or zune. I personally have a zune, since I received one for Christmas in 2006. Almost all of my friends own ipods or iphones, and until recently I took no side in the debate. But now I have to write a blog about it for ypulse, so I have to take the side of zune in this debate! To be honest, I would have taken zune’s side anyways, since I own one.
My first argument for the zune is that it is purely better than the ipod. Sure, this might be my most subjective argument, but I can back this one up. The zune is very well thought out by it’s third iteration, compared to the ipod, which took five generations just to get video playback. The zune came with picture and video support straight out of the box. Not only that, the zune came preloaded with content to try out those features, like music, pictures, music videos, etc.
The interface is excellent, instead of the tree of selections you have to go through on an ipod, which is annoying when you have to go through 5-6 subcategories to get to the main menu, then several more to get to whatever you want. On the zune, I have to go through a bare minimum of one button sub-section before I can dig into the sweet sugary cereal of my music collection. The zune isn’t nearly as bland, color-wise, as the ipod is. The interface is translucent, so you aren’t always staring pure white in the face.
I like the zune software, they listen to their fans for the most part, and even though it takes quite a while to get problems fixed, they do. For instance, adding videos used to be pain in my assholes, but now it is way easier, except you may have to change all your viewing material that I am certain you have legally purchased to wmv files. Not too big of a deal, but some people will complain. Changing the metadata (the stuff that says what song is what and such,) used to be a hazardous process that involved use of several other outside programs, but now you can do all of that in program. So don’t ever let anyone tell you the zune team doesn’t listen to complaints.
I’m not entirely sure why my friends chose zune, though. Only a handful of my friends have zunes, but! I did push one of them to get one based on my recommendation. Zune’s popularity among young people my age has increased, and “15 percent of teens… said they expected to buy a Zune, up from 13 percent a year ago” [1]. I hypothesize that his is due to the cool factor that comes with all popular items. What was once cool is now run-of-the-mill, and zune is throwing some monkey wrenches into the cogs of  Apple’s said slick n’ shiny ipod manufactory, making it hip. You wouldn’t know that if you looked on tech blogs however.
A lot of people on the internet hate the zune, and with a passion. They’ve hated it since it came out in 2006, and after two-and-a-half major revisions, they still hate it. I, on the other hand, love my zune, also with a passion not at all unfamiliar to those same zune “hataz”, but I digress.
Now Anastasia wants me to put in something about marketing to young people, since this is a blog about that sort of thing. I have no complaints, I like the marketing campaign they have going on with Afrikaa Bambataa and Common, and it really gives you a nice representation of the mixview feature which shows each artist‘s influences and recommends music based on them. I wish I could try more of the new features out, but alas, I don’t have any zune points to spend on zune passes (hint hint, Microsoft!). I think the campaign could use more funny hats, cause I love Bambataa’s Egyptian headdress. Maybe a similar spot with Kanye West and Nas, who I found out influenced him via zune’s mixview feature.

[1] http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/150904.asp?from=blog_last3

Just posted on Shiny Red:

As part of activity to celebrate all the ways you can organise a party on Yell.com, I had a good day asking members of the public about the last party they went to. Below is the result, unsurprisingly a few juicy anecdotes were shared and it was obvious that we do like to party!

The video was also posted on one of my favourite blogs, Londonist, who were celebrating their 4th brithday that week, and we were really pleased to see posts go up on YPulse and Female First for the wider Party Pieces report into the British partyscape.

Now never miss another digital media event be it social, mobile, gaming, film, tv or music. With Content NOW’s comprehensive industry events calendar, quickly find dates and locations of all the places you need to be to get your business done. Whether its NATPE, NAB, SXSW or CES, it’s all here with reviews, links to videos, quotes and an ever-current analysis of the ecosystem and the production, distribution and monetization of content across all connected devices.

Martine Paris
Editor, Content NOW

TV
NATPE Market Guide, I, II, III, IV
Digital Living Room Guide, PlayStation/The Next HBO
HRTS Hitmakers Guide
SD Forum Business of New Media Guide
Streaming Media West, II, Guide, Roku
NewTeeVee Live
Digital Media Conference West
Digital Hollywood, The Guide
Easy to Assemble Premiere
Battle of the Network Stars
NYTVF, IFP, ADWK, Guide
Westdoc
HRTS Digital Chiefs
NATPE LATV Fest
PGA Produced By
Connections
CES I, II, III, IV, V
Boxee Dev
AO Hollywood
NAB Show
Mediaweek’s Upfronts
Future Of Television West
Digital Media Summit, Pathway To Fame
Cable Show, SXSW/MIPTV, Media Summit
DMLF/YouTube-Veoh, YouTube Live
OTTcon

FILM
Future of Film Guide, Summary
AFM Thinking Outside The Box Office, Guide
Animation of Disney Pixar’s Up
Epix Debuts
IFP Filmmaker Conference
New Video: When Do We Eat
BAWIFM Women of Pixar
San Francisco Film Society
RiP Remix Manifesto
Wondercon, II
Oscar.com, Sundance

GAMING
#AGDC/PlaySpan Monetization Forum, Guide
Engage! Expo, Virtual Goods
Social Gaming Summit
Virtual Goods Summit
LA Games Conference, II
SDForum Games Conference
DMLF GamesLaw
GDC, DICE

MUSIC
Bandwidth, II
SanFranMusicTech, Fall 09 Guide, Press Panel
DMLF Rock Star
Industry Noise, Midem, NAMM
MIDEM Guide

MOBILE
DiscoveryBeat Guide
Mobilize
MobileBeat
Mobile Monday
Art Institute Mobile Marketing
Commonwealth Club Mobile World
VLAB Mobile Ecosystem
iPhoneDevCamp
Verizon Developers Conference
PayPal Platform Preview
EconSM, Crunchies
WWDC

SOCIAL
Ypulse
TWTRCON
140 Characters
TeenTechTitans
CrunchUp
WOMMA
UGCX

FUNDING
Sheppard Mullin VC Outlook:  Draper, Chang, Lasky, Hornik
AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford, II
AlwaysOn Venture Summit Guide

TECH
Supernova, Summary
SD Forum Business of New Media
Apple/Rock n Roll/Steve Jobs is Back in Black
Macworld, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII
Churchill Club/Browsers
Maker Faire
TiECON, TED, CES, D7
SF Auto Show

On November 6 & 7, the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East will be “where today’s top brand, corporate and social marketers, media professionals, educators and others gather to share successful strategies on marketing to youth with technology.”  The conference is put on by my friend Anastasia Goodstein and should be a great event that I highly recommend.  Hard Knox Life readers can use the special code KNOX to save 10% on registration.

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• Virgin Mobile Fest, Green Teens & Girl Culture @ The Ypulse Mashup East
• Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East Site Is Live

Thanks for your patience as we continue to improve the site and enable it to handle the high traffic it’s been receiving. We appreciate your comments and notifications of problems and are working to fix them as quickly as we can.

Check out our recent press:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education announced Unigo’s launch on its Wired Campus blog.
• Mashable gave Unigo a favorable review in The Startup Review:
  

  …both in design and in features, [Unigo] proves itself able to deliver on things today’s Web users would find themselves interested in. Reviews are essential, after all. Networking is also nearly as important. And the ability to browse and share media in the form of photos, videos and documents brings it full-circle.

• YPulse predicted that Unigo “could change the way this year’s seniors decide on a college.”
]]> http://universoulproductions.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/ypulse-guest-post-reaching-youth-in-the-action-sports-worlds-i-wrote/ Sat, 13 Sep 2008 19:26:32 +0000 universoulproductions http://universoulproductions.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/ypulse-guest-post-reaching-youth-in-the-action-sports-worlds-i-wrote/

 

Some of you may have read a longer, slightly less focused version of this, but Ypulse asked me to do a guest post on their site and here it is – Ypulse guest post – Reaching Youth In The Action Sports Worlds
Here is the short version of what Ypulse is:
Ypulse is a media platform for youth media and marketing professionals. Ypulse publishesa blog, Ypulse.com; a newsletter, the Ypulse Daily Update; and produces several conferenceseach year, the Ypulse Mashup events.  
The rest is in this link.
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