mediabuzz

Man Claims to Own 84% of Facebook

Shane McGlaun — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:13:00 -0700

Facebook is no stranger to controversy. Typically, the controversy surrounds
new changes to the social network's privacy standards. As the largest
social network online, Facebook boasts many millions of users across
the world.

The last legal proceeding having to do with the
social network was identified when Germany
sued Facebook for violating the privacy of its users. The
accusation in the suit was that Facebook illegally accessed and saved
personal data of those without a profile on the site.

A new
suit has now been filed against Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg by a
New York man claiming
to own 84% of the social networking giant. A judge presiding over
the case has ordered Facebook assets frozen as the trial
proceeds.

The man suing Facebook is Paul Ceglia. Ceglia claims
to have a signed contract with Zuckerberg from 2003 to develop and
design a website that later became thefacebook.com, which eventually
turned into the giant Facebook we know today. The contract terms show
that Ceglia was to get a $1,000 fee and a 50% stake in the final
product.

Reuters reports
that the contract also stated Ceglia would, "acquire an
additional 1 percent interest in the business, per day, until the
website was completed." At the completion of the project Ceglia
claims that his stake in Facebook was 84%. Facebook claims that the
suit if frivolous.

The social network is seeking to have the
asset freeze struck down. Facebook's Gary Schmidt states that the
asset freeze will not prevent the social networking firm from
operating. Reuters
reports
that Zuckerberg was supposedly working on other projects in 2003 at
the time Ceglia contends he had the signed contract for work
resulting in Facebook. The domain name TheFacebook.com was registered
in 2004.

Are We Starting to Care Less About Money?

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:06:00 -0700

A new survey by the advertising and marketing firm Ogilvy & Mather suggests we might be:

Among the study’s key findings is that “having it all” is an unrealistic goal with 75% of those surveyed saying they would rather get out of the rat race than climb the corporate ladder – and instead, 76% said they would rather spend more time with family than make more money.

Moreover, Americans are showing disenchantment with the pursuit of money with 75% again saying they would trade job security over a job that offered an opportunity for raises.

This probably due in part to the bad economy. A lot of people who pinned their happiness to money got burned—and realized they could find meaningful gratification in other ways. I just hope some of this wisdom sticks if, and when, the economy picks back up.

It's nice not having the bulk of our Ivy League grads going straight into investment banking.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

Steve Jobs Promises World "Freedom From Porn" in Email Flame War

Jason Mick — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:53:00 -0700

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Gawker Media aren't exactly on the warmest terms.
After all, Gawker's blog Gizmodo bought
a lost iPhone prototype tore it apart, damaging
it in the process, and spilled its secrets to competitors
and the general public alike. And at Jobs' request police
raided
the house of Gizmodo blogger
Jason Chen, who is suspect of buying the lost/stolen prototype.

On
Saturday night, Gawker blogger Ryan Tate sent an angry email to Jobs
about his company's dictatorial turn on topics like flash and
porn.

Tate wrote:

If
Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?
Would he
think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with
"revolution"?
Revolutions are about freedom.

Jobs
responded, and the pair kicked off a long
flame war, full of juicy opinion. His first response
states:

Yep,
freedom from programs that steal
your private data. Freedom from programs that trash
your battery. Freedom
from porn.

Apparently,
Jobs wasn't kidding when he called Android a "porn
phone" -- Jobs apparently has a real issue with adult
entertainment. Tate had no such issues, though, responding:

And
you know what? I don't want "freedom from porn."
Porn is just fine! And I think my wife would agree.

The
pair's heated debate also focuses on the merits of locking developers
to the iPhone's Objective C/Cocoa app platform versus allowing them
to use that or Adobe Flash. Tate contended
that forcing devs to write Cocoa apps yields half-baked applications,
Jobs argued that it guaranteed a sufficient level of quality and
stability.

Jobs writes:

There
are almost 200,000 apps in the App store, so something must be going
alright...Gosh, why are you so bitter about a technical issue such as
this? Its not about freedom, its about Apple trying to
do the right thing for its users. Users developers and
publishers can do whatever they like -- they don't have to buy or
develop or publish on iPads if they don't want to. This seems
like its your issue not theirs.

After
another exchange in which Tate calls Jobs out for the Gizmodo police
raid, Jobs writes a final reply, stating:

You
are so misinformed. No one kicked in any doors. You're
believing a lot of erroneous blogger reports.
...
As for us,
we're just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user
experience we envision. You
can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.

By
the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create
anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their
motivations?

Report: One in Three Regret Posting Personal Information on Social Networking Sites

Michael Barkoviak — Tue, 18 May 2010 11:24:00 -0700

Shopping site Retrevo learned that around 32 percent of people who post on a
social networking site regret they shared information so openly.
Users who post criticism about workplaces, co-workers, friends,
political views, and other controversial topics often don’t
consider the possible severity of these posts.

The
report focuses
on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social networking sites
popular among internet users. Specifically, smartphone users
are the most likely to suffer from the so-called "poster's
regret," as 54 percent of those polled noted they posted
something they later regretted.

Age also plays an important
factor into overall poster regret, with 54% of people under the age
of 25 saying something they wish they didn't post - including news
updates, photos, videos, and other information. Just 27% of
people over the age of 25 years old are likely to post information
they should keep to themselves.

Although many people under the
age of 25 may regret posting something, the actual real world impact
of these posts remains unclear. About 40% of those people who
posted something were able to remove it without any long standing
damage, along with 31% noting that their posts "didn't cause any
problems."

This new report from Retrevo isn't too
surprising, especially considering how easily
it is for people to spy on friends, co-workers, dates, and
others. Middle schools, high schools, and universities across
the country are now warning students against posting too much
personal information – reminding them that colleges, employers, and
others are patrolling social networking sites.

In
a recent case, a worker at a North Carolina restaurant was fired
after complaining on Facbook about a $5 tip that a couple left
after a three-hour stay.

Fox News Claims Wikipedia is in "Chaos" After Porn Purge

Jason Mick — Tue, 18 May 2010 11:24:00 -0700

Who's in charge of Wikipedia these days? According
to a Fox
News source,
"No one. It’s chaos.”

If their recent report is to
believed, Wikimedia Foundation President and Wikipedia
co-founderJimmy
Wales has seen his control of the site dramatically slashed
and his rights reduced to the "same capabilities of a low-level
administrator."

That shocking claim comes in the wake of
a pornography
purge that began last week on Wikipedia. The purge
appears to have began when Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger
(editor-in-chief of Wikipedia's predecessor Nupedia) warned the FBI
that there were explicit images of children on the popular
encyclopedia site. Sanger left the Wikipedia project in 2002
and has since been very critical of the site's credibility and
practices.

Following Sanger's claims, Fox
News reportedly
contacted the sites donors asking them if they knew about the
explicit files it was hosting. It was unclear whether it was
Sanger's complaint or the message to donor that triggered Wikipedia's
porn purge, but early last week Wikipedia informed users that policy
changes were coming.

Fox
News claims
responsibility for the purge, commenting, "Those images have
been the subject of heated discussion within the community since
their existence was revealed exclusively by FoxNews.com on April
27."

Some administrators, including Jimmy Wales himself
reportedly conducted a wild purge of prurient content. Others,
according to Fox
News rebelled
against these edits. According to the site, many of the images
Wales tried to delete have since been restored.

An email from
a Wikipedia admin reads, "In essence, right now Jimbo is
deleting things based on his singular judgment about what should be
allowed…. This is a large change and lack of a clear policy creates
a very confusing and frustrating environment for editors. (Multiple
Commons admins have already stated their intention to resign and/or
retire over this.)"

Wales, however, disputes Fox
News'
story, calling it a load of tripe. He said the Fox reporter
failed to even contact him and that the site is doing just fine, not
in "chaos."

Fox News Claims Responsibility for Wikipedia Porn Purge

Jason Mick — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:37:00 -0700

In the war over internet censorship and online morality, it was not the
government, but rather Fox News that struck the latest blow.
The news agency has triggered a purging of pornographic
content from the world's most popular online
encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

The
parent company of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, silently conducted
the removal
of thousands of images. It is reportedly also is preparing
a new policy concerning sexually explicit content.

Fox
News claims
responsibility, writing:

The
move came as FoxNews.com was in the process of asking dozens of
companies that have donated to Wikimedia Foundation -- the umbrella
group behind Wikimedia Commons and its Wiki projects, including
Wikipedia -- if they were aware of the extent of graphic and sexually
explicit content on the sites.

Wikimedia's
donors which were contacted include Google, Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo!,
Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation, Best Buy, USA Networks and
Craigslist Foundation. Some of these companies -- such as
Google, Yahoo, and Bing -- are no
strangers to explicit content, but others like Best Buy likely
were concerned about being associated with the
less-than-family-friendly content.

In its reports, Fox
News points
out that "nude children" reveals pictures of naked children
on Wikipedia -- essentially child pornography. The news agency
also took issue with the numerous explicit images of adults on the
site engaging in sex acts like masturbation or intercourse.
Writes Fox
News,
"A child doing homework research on the educational website
could easily stumble upon pornographic photos — including close-ups
of genitalia and people having sex and masturbating."

Jimmy
Wales, President of the Wikimedia Foundation and co-founder of
Wikipedia, apologized for the mess in a post, writing, "We have
had a problem with images being placed into inappropriate categories,
so that viewers were exposed in unexpected ways to sexual content.
Image categorization should be done in such a way that readers are
not exposed unexpectedly to content that may be offensive."

He
adds, "I expect the board to issue a statement within a few days
offering a general philosophical support for the serious enforcement
of policy on this issue. The Board normally does not get
involved with detailed content decisions; I don't expect that to
change."

In a later
note he adds:

Wikimedia
Commons admins [administrators allowed to edit the site, including
Wales himself] who wish to remove from the project all images that
are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to
prurient interests have my full support. This includes immediate
deletion of all pornographic images. We should keep educational
images about sexuality -- mere nudity is not pornography -- but as
with all our projects, editorial quality judgments must be made and
will be made -- appropriately and in good taste....

I think
our existing policies here on commons are sufficient to deal with the
problem - with the minor exception that many things should just be
speedy deleted and argued about later. If you want to be technical
about it, please consider this a policy change in that regard. Try to
relax. Anything which is deleted can be resorted if there's a good
reason.

Following that note, Wikipedia admins began a wild purging, deleting pictures
of nude children, bestiality, and a variety of traditional sex acts
from the site. Among the content cleaned was "Images of
Stan Spanker" a collection from one user of women using
children's toys in sex acts. Wales himself personally flagged
hundreds of images for deletion.

Fox
News reports that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger contacted the FBI about the nude pictures of children on the site,
accusing the site of mass distribution of child pornography.
According to the news organization, the FBI has declined comment
about whether they will investigate the mess.

The Wikimedia
board states,
"The Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in
nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has
no educational or informational value. In saying this, we don't
intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support
policy that already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to
scrutinize potentially offensive materials with the goal of assessing
their educational or informational value, and to remove them from the
projects if there is no such value."

FCC Steps Up Internet Regulatory Efforts; Republicans, Telecoms Fight Back

Jason Mick — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:37:00 -0700

National broadband was one of the key
campaign promises that President Barack Obama made in 2008.
His Federal Communication Commission chief, Chairman Julius
Genachowski, has tried to deliver on that promise, but has a
difficult path ahead.

The FCC's plan to is to take
spectrum from television, re-auction it to wireless companies,
and use part of the proceeds to finance new lines for the broadband
project. The bid is complicated by the FCC's regulatory war
with the same telecoms it hopes to sell spectrum too.

Last
month, the FCC lost the
first round in its battle with Comcast over internet throttling.
The FCC is trying to stop Comcast from blindly throttling certain
kinds of traffic like peer-to-peer connections, commonly used for
sharing music and other media. A U.S. Federal Court ruled that
the FCC did not have the power to stop Comcast from doing so.

Now
the FCC has reclassified
broadband internet from an information service to a
telecommunications service, a move that should grant it greater
regulatory authority. The FCC promises it will not abuse the
greater regulatory authority its seizing. The FCC's top
attorney, Austin Schlick, comments, "We have never gone back on
forbearance. We have a very strong track record."

Chairman
Genachowski, who promised to apply regulation with a "light-touch",
added that the approach was only an "interim" step and that
he would prefer Congress to officially clarify the regulatory
situation.

Verizon Communications Inc executive vice president
Tom Tauke says that the plan to step up regulation will hurt
the national broadband project; He writes, "The regulatory
and judicial proceedings that will ensue can only bring confusion and
delay."

Republican FCC members Robert McDowell and
Meredith Attwell Baker were also critical of the effort. They
write in a joint statement, "This proposal is disappointing and
deeply concerns us. It is neither a light-touch approach,
nor a third way."

Bernstein Research analyst Craig
Moffett, concurs, opining that the regulatory bump may not survive
legal scrutiny. He states, "It is extremely unclear
whether reclassification will survive judicial review."

Meanwhile,
the FCC is left trying to figure out to push both its regulatory and
national broadband efforts, a dangerous dance that ultimately brings
the future of both efforts into question.

Facebook Instant Personalization Feature Protested by Privacy Advocates

Shane McGlaun — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:19:00 -0700

Facebook has found itself in hot water over the last few months with very
public changes to its privacy policy that would result in more of a
user's personal information being shared with third-party websites.
The backtracking on privacy for users of the site has raised the ire
of more than one consumer watchdog group and some Senators as
well.

Senator Schumer sent
a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg raising concerns
about the new security settings the site is adopting that allows
access to personal information about users by third parties. Schumer
is now being joined by the EFF and MoveOn.org in protesting
the instant personalization feature that Facebook
launched.

MoveOn.org has posted a Facebook Group page titled
"Facebook Respect my Privacy." The petition page seeks to
get users to sign in protest to the new privacy settings. This sort
of petition in the past has had success in getting Facebook to back
track on proposed changes to privacy settings. The MoveOn petition
before was against the Facebook "Beacon" social advertising
program. Facebook opted to cancel the service before it was
implemented in the face of more than 50,000 signatures to the
petition.

The uproar over the new privacy settings has to do
with the instant personalization tool Facebook has launched. Instant
personalization is a tool that allows third-party websites to pull
public information from Facebook and display it on their website to
personalize the page. This information can include things like
profile pictures and much more.

The EFF is also coming down
against the instant personalization service with senior attorney Kurt
Opsahl stating, "When it [Facebook] started, it was a private
space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it
transformed into a platform where much of your information is public
by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice
but to make certain information public, and this public information
may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to
target ads."

The instant personalization program is still
in beta status.

Gulf Oil Spill Likely to be Worst in U.S. History

Jason Mick — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:18:00 -0700

The recent tragic loss of life at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia highlighted the dangerous cost of our nation's reliance on fossil fuels, and offered cause to consider emerging energy sources like clean nuclear power. Now yet another fossil fuel disaster has rocked the U.S., and it's unlikely to settle down any time soon.

On April 20 Deepwater Horizon, a massive oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was rocked by a series of explosions that literally blew workers out of their beds. Two days later the rig sank and the broken well began pouring 1,000 to 5,000 barrels of oil out into the ocean daily.

Attempts to perform controlled burns on the spill have been largely unsuccessful and the oil has spread out across close to 4,000 miles as of Friday. It is currently on the shores of Louisiana.

In terms of ecological damage the spill is a nightmare. As the spill bears down on Louisiana, hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast are considered at high risk. Louisiana is home to some of the richest coastal wildlife in the U.S., including four species of endangered sea turtle, dolphins, porpoises and whales. That life is able to survive in the face of mighty hurricanes, but it's uncertain whether it will be able to fully recover from the folly of man.

Even if you care little about the environmental impact, the spill is an economic disaster as well. The fishing industry, so vital to the Gulf Coast economy, is reeling from the spill, which threatens its stocks. And the tourism business is also suffering.

Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, the company that leased the rig and used its oil blames the rig owners, "The responsibility for safety on the drilling rig is Transocean. It is their rig, their equipment, their people, their systems, their safety processes. We will deal with these issues in the fullness of time. today we’re focusing on the response. But as I’ve said, the systems’ processes on a drilling rig are the accountability of the drilling rig company."

The question of responsibility may become a serious one as over 11 workers from the rig are missing, and likely dead. The family members who suffered this tragic loss and the rig survivors, many of whom were injured, are reportedly preparing suits against both BP and Transocean.

BP is already paying $6M USD a day to try to contain the spill and will have to spend $100M USD to drill a relief well to stop the flow of oil. Estimates are that it will cost $700M USD to replace the rig.

The spill is the worst oil disaster in the gulf since the blowout and oil spill of the Ixtoc I in 1979. It is estimated that within 50 days it will pass the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989. And the relief valve may not be finished for as long 90 days -- roughly three months.

Earlier this month President Obama called for new oil exploration and drilling in the Gulf Coast. The enormous cost in life, money, and ecological damage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster begs the question -- is it really wise for our nation to continue to pursue the dangerous strategy of oil expansion, when nuclear could give us an affordable, clean, safe, and environmentally friendly solution to all our nation's energy problems?

Palm Suffers Another Setback as Executive, Retail Partner Quit

Michael Barkoviak — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:08:00 -0700

The financial and structural problems for Palm continue to pile up with
no apparent viable outcome other than selling the company.

Palm
started the week already under constant pressure, but it got worse
when it was disclosed Michael Abbott, Palm Vice President of Software
and Services, abandoned the company as Palm admitted it may be more
difficult to find a new buyer than previously expected.

"We
are concerned
by the departure of Mr. Abbott, as he had principal
responsibility for Palm's WebOS software, one of the company's few
remaining assets," noted Lawrence Harris, CL King &
Associates analyst, when speaking with Reuters.

Abbott
is expected to officially leave the company by the end of the week,
though it's unsure if he'll be replaced.

The double whammy
caused Palm's stock to slide a further 13 percent, as Abbott was the
person responsible for helping lead development of Palm's
webOS.

Palm has released the Pre and Pixi over the past year,
but still hasn't been able to compete with Apple, Research In Motion,
HTC, and other competitors. The appeal for webOS is a driving
force behind rumors of HTC and one or two other companies possibly
buying the company.

If that wasn't enough, Palm also said
RadioShack -- which is suffering its own financial issues -- also
will leave behind the Pre and Pixi phones. Sprint will instead
offer a new RIM BlackBerry as the No. 3 wireless provider continues
to battle against AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Palm's
financial
woes have been well discussed in the past, and there
are piles
of unsold Pre and Pixi smartphones even though no more
phones are being produced.

Upcoming iPhone Leaked, Gizmodo Gadget Blog Gets Hands On

Jason Mick — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:08:00 -0700

"Is you is or is you ain't my baby?" Over the weekend, Engadget
posted pictures of what
it claimed to be the next generation iPhone 4G. The pictures
sparked quite a debate over their authenticity and many flatly
rejected the design saying that it was too ugly to be an iPhone.

Detractors
noted the blocky shape and seams along the edge of the devices as
reasons why this design couldn't have possibly come from the likes of
Jonathan Ive. Mac
Rumors
seemed
to confirm that the pictures were indeed fakes with a posting
yesterday which claimed that this wasn't the iPhone 4G, but instead a
Japanese knock-off.

Engadget
fought back citing
more evidence that this was indeed the iPhone 4G. And to further
confirm the pictures, Daring
Fireball's
John Gruber - Steve
Jobs' biggest fan - has posted his own comments verifying the
authenticity of the pictures. Gruber cites a 2006
patent for a "radio transparent" ceramic smartphone
enclosure which would seem to match up with the photos posted over
the weekend.

"I
think it’s a testbed frame — thicker, with visible
(un-Apple-like) seams, meant to fit in 3GS cases so as to disguise
units out in the wild," said
Gruber. "It’s hard to tell from the photos. But I think it
is the real deal in terms of the internals and display being next-gen
iPhone hardware, and the new glass back."

According
to tipsters that provided the original pics and commentary from
Gruber, here are just some of the features thought to be on the
iPhone 4G:

Apple
A4 processor
640x960
display
High
resolution rear camera with flash
Front-facing
camera for video conferencing
MicroSIM
support

We'll
know for sure if this is the next generation iPhone at Apple's
event scheduled for late June.

In
other news, Apple has announced that the iPad 3G will ship
for U.S. customers by May 7. The iPad 3G is priced at $629, $729,
and $829 respectively for 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models.

Updated 4/19/2010 @ 10:55 am

Gizmodo has gotten its grubby hands on the "lost" iPhone 4G that was first pictured by Engadget. They have completely torn the phone down and given design analysis which you can read here.

Windows Phone 7 Architecture Leaks

Jason Mick — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:08:00 -0700

This week, details about both the Windows Phone 7 architecture and low-end
phone hardware for developing nations was aired.

Microsoft
faces much the same position as Palm does in the smartphone market -
it's losing
marketshare to a charging Google and is falling farther away
from entrenched market leaders Apple and Research in
Motion.

Microsoft's answer is a complete reboot of its smartphone franchise, however, some are skeptical. The initial
implementation of Microsoft's new operating system - Windows Phone 7
- reportedly
will lack many features that competitors have, such as
support for multi-tasking and copy/paste. Still, many are
intrigued to see what the new design will
bring.

Tweakers.net received leaked
slides showing the architecture of the new smartphone OS. The
OS is a 32-bit operating system. Under the memory model,
application processes get up to 2 GB of memory, 1 GB of which is
virtual memory. The kernel, likewise, gets its own 2 GB of
memory space.

The mandated processor will be an ARMv7 design.
Multi-touch, FM Tuner, Wi-Fi, GPS, and camera are also mandated.
The default screen resolution is 800x480 pixels, but developers
can go as low as 480x320 (the resolution of the current
iPhone).

Microsoft is providing OEMs with 2D
graphics and DirectX 10-based Direct3D 11 runtimes, while they
will be responsible for providing drivers for their graphics
hardware.

Bluetooth 3.0 and 4.0 support is
noticeably absent, though the phone will support the widespread
Bluetooth 2.1 standard. Microsoft hopefully plans an update at
some point to add support for later versions of the wireless
communication standard, but there's no specific details at this
point.

Interestingly the OS utilizes two different file
systems - TexFAT for user files or IMGFS for system files.
There's talk about putting the phone in a mostly disabled state if
key system files are deleted.

More interestingly the slides
indicate that Microsoft is planning memory card support.
Previously, at developers events, several sources were told by
Microsoft executives that memory cards were confusing to users and
that it was omitting
them to "simplify" the design. At this point
its unclear whether memory card support is in, out, or coming
soon.

Microsoft has strict rules with OEMs when it comes to
software. Bing is the default search engine for the phone -
that cannot be changed. OEMs can change the default search
engine within Internet Explorer, though. Likewise, the home
screen tiles are non-negotiable. However, OEMs can add their
own extra tiles to the home screen. Finally, trial apps are
disallowed and OEMs are only allowed to add 6 apps and not use more
than 60 MB of storage space.

In separate Windows Phone 7
news, Sudeep
Bharati, who works on Microsoft India’s Visual Studio team,
says that a special fourth chassis will be added for phone sold in
developing nations. He describes, "The low-cost version of
the phone will have a different chassis than version 1 to be launched
by 2010 end."

While he mentioned that it would be
"low-cost" - perfect for developing countries like India
or China - he did not mentioning anything about cutting the minimum
hardware requirements, raising questions about how Microsoft will be
cutting costs on the developing nations-targeting handset.

Three
chassis designs were previously
announced for the U.S. models, including the wide design
(similar to the Zune), a slide out keyboard version, and a third,
unannounced, chassis. The third chassis has been speculated by
some to be a candy bar or slider design.

Advertising Industry Employment On the Rise?

Bradley Johnson / AdAge — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:59:00 -0700

Ad-industry employment has increased for the first time in a year, a hopeful sign of recovery following a deep recession. But there is reason to be cautious as there could be more job cuts ahead.

First, the good news: The U.S. ad industry -- advertising, marketing services, media - added 800 jobs in September, the first gain since October 2008, according to Ad Age DataCenter's analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The ad industry's media sectors added 3,000 jobs, the first increase in media employment since February 2008 (shortly after the recession's December 2007 start).

The embattled newspaper sector in September saw its first monthly increase (900 jobs) since November 2007. Cable TV, a bright spot for media during this recession, had its biggest monthly employment increase (1,800 jobs) since 2006. Advertising and marketing-services sectors -- agencies, marketing consulting and other disciplines -- cut 2,200 jobs in September, giving the ad industry a net gain of 800 positions. (See detailed figures on ad-industry employment at AdAge.com/adjobs.)

Economists generally believe the recession ended in third-quarter 2009, when gross domestic product grew -- at an annualized rate of 3.5% -- for the first time since second-quarter 2008.

Job Market Still Contracting
Now the bad news. The economy is growing, but the overall U.S. job market continues to contract, with employers reluctant to staff up until they see more proof of sustainable recovery. The pace of job cuts is shrinking, but each month more people get fired than hired. The U.S. unemployment rate reached 10.2% in October, the highest since 1983.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect unemployment to remain above 10% for the first two quarters of next year and to average 9.9% for 2010 (up from an annualized 9.3% in 2009). That would be the highest annual unemployment rate since 1941, according to BLS data.

And ad-industry employment remains far below pre-recession levels. The industry has cut 188,700 jobs -- 11.4% of positions -- since the start of the recession. Media employment, including TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and internet media, has dropped by 112,700 (12.8% of jobs) since December 2007. The industry has eliminated 76,000 jobs (9.8% of positions) in advertising/marketing services since the recession began. Industry employment is above pre-recession levels in only one category: internet media companies/web-search portals, where staffing has increased by 5,700 jobs (7.4% of positions) since the recession began.

What to make of the slight uptick in September ad jobs? First, the increase is based on the government's preliminary job data, subject to revision. Second, there is a good chance ad employment has not yet hit bottom.

Slow Recovery Ahead

The overall economy continues to shed jobs; it's hard to see why advertising and media would be immune. That's especially true for sectors in the midst of wrenching change. Newspapers, for example, have cut 69,000 jobs -- 20% of employees -- since the start of recession, but newspapers' economic challenges would suggest that more cutbacks are possible.

The record of recent recessions suggests that ad employment will be slow to recover. Employment in advertising and related services didn't bottom out until 11 months after the end of the 1990-91 recession. The last recession ended in November 2001, but ad employment didn't hit bottom until January 2004 -- 26 months later.

While the recent recession likely ended in third-quarter 2009, history suggests that ad employment won't reach its nadir until 2010 or even 2011.

It's encouraging to see the ad business score job gains in September. But it seems premature to say ad employment has hit bottom.

Apple's App Police Ban Pulitzer Prize Winning Cartoonist for Being Satirical

Jason Mick — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:54:00 -0700

There's no denying that Apple's iTunes and App Store revolutionized the
fields of online media sales and smartphone application delivery,
respectively. However, for all the company's success, of late
it has a baffling track record of trying to police
the morality of the apps that go into its app
store.

Initially Apple rejected any apps that overlapped with
its functionality, any mature apps, and any other controversial app.
Occasionally a strange one (like
"Baby Shaker") would slip through, but generally all
these kinds of apps were prohibited.

Recently, Apple promised
to improve the process facing complaints from frustrated
developers. And there are signs of that improvement -- Opera
Mini, a rival browser, was just
approved for the iPhone and numerous adult apps of violent
cartoonish nature have been approved. On the other hand, Apple
still is banning
mature apps of a sexual nature.

Particularly
baffling, though, was the recent
rejection of Mark Fiore's iPhone app. Fiore this year
received the distinction of becoming the first online-only journalist
to win the Pulitzer prize. Fiore used to make cartoons for
print newspapers, but today runs his own syndication business dealing
exclusively with flash cartoons. He does about 8 cartoons a
month, selling for around $300 per site, syndicated to multiple
sites, including his main outlet, the SFGate,
the website for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Looking to use
the latest smartphone technology to grab more fans Fiore crafted a
humorous iPhone app with highlights of his award winning,
ground-breaking work. He describes, "I think the iPads and
anything iPod to iPhone — to maybe a product not made by Apple —
will be good or could be good for distributing this kind of
thing."

But there was one tiny problem. Apple's
developer agreement forbids content that "ridicules public
figures". Apple elaborates in its iPhone
Developer Program License Agreement, "Apple’s reasonable
judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may
be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory."

On
December 21, 2009 Mr. Fiore received the following email from Apple:

Dear
Mr. Fiore,

Thank
you for submitting NewsToons to the App Store. We’ve reviewed
NewsToons and determined that we cannot post this version of your
iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that
ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from
the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:

“Applications
may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind
(text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s
reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example,
materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or
defamatory.” Examples of such content have been attached for your
reference.

If
you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that NewsToons
does not violate the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, we
encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

Regards,

iPhone
Developer Program

Apparently
Apple found the cartoon of the White
House gate crashers interrupting an Obama speech (among the
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoons) to be offensive. It attached
that screen grab and several others, including a reference to
torture, Balloon
Boy, and various political issues.

Fiore remains hopeful
that his app will eventually get let in. Fellow cartoonists Tom
Richmondand Daryl Cagle ,
were initially rejected [2] by
Apple, only before eventually being allowed
in [2].
Those turnarounds took months.

Fiore remains hopeful that
Apple will eventually let him in. He states, "They seem so
much more innovative and smarter than that."

It's a Wonderful Time to Be in the B-to-B News Business

Bob Tippee/Ad Age — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:30:00 -0700

The following is excerpted from a speech given by Bob Tippee after he'd been presented the Crain Award at the Neal Awards ceremony.

Not long after I joined the staff of Oil & Gas Journal, I encountered a woman who worked at the newspaper I had just left.

"How does it feel to be out of the news business?" she asked. She thought that since I now worked for a trade magazine I had abandoned news.

I didn't feel then, and I don't feel now, that I ever left the news business. My colleagues and I do what all news people do: Hustle facts, write stories, and try to create linear intelligence out of the splendid mayhem of human activity -- in our case a specific realm of human activity.

We do so within the same parameters of fairness, accuracy, and speed that apply to news reported for mass audiences. But we also apply the elevated standards of precision, authority and selectivity demanded by specialist professionals.

This is a wonderful time to be in the B-to-B news business.

I know what you're thinking: The poor old fool; he's commenced to babbling. Where's he been? Magazines and newspapers are folding, editors are losing their jobs, nobody's hiring. Print advertising doesn't make the money it once did, and the web, in most cases, hasn't compensated.

I'll grant that the landscape has changed. The web has turned information into a commodity.

We now compete in and contribute to a dimensionless yet expanding mass of information nobody wants to pay for.

And let's face facts: a lot of that information is duplicative, unfocused, and superficial. Why should anybody pay for it?

As the geophysicists who make up part of Oil & Gas Journal's audience would describe the modern torrent of information, the signal-to-noise ratio is too low.

Part of the problem is that too much of what websites present as news just aggravates clutter with which readers are long past weary.

Too many news operations are assembly lines of barely edited and wholly undeveloped press releases.

So while demand for professionally useful information rises, the average quality of a burgeoning supply of information falls.

In this paradox I see a glittering opportunity for enterprises that know how:
# to report stories before the press releases appear ... and stories about which no press releases will appear
# to anticipate the questions professional readers ask and uncover and report the answers
# to provide the background and context that make stories whole
# to omit gloss and unnecessary decoration
# to be prompt and brief
# to present real news, in other words

New electronic tools enable us to create value with timeliness. They push us toward news. But news has to mean more than flipping press releases and cherry-picking the Reuters file.

A news operation has to do more than mass-produce content; it must create intelligence.

Success lies ahead for the magazines, websites and editors that understand the difference between content and intelligence and who respond with talent and energy.

News done the right way has to be a major part -- if not the major part -- of the future of business media.

And I know, from having never left the news business, that it's remarkably good fun and getting more so all the time.

Bob Tippee is the editor of Oil & Gas Journal.

Why Consumers Are Tired of Hearing About the Recession

Graceann Bennett and Manila Austin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:09:00 -0700

The recession, while not officially declared over, is over in the minds of many consumers. For marketers, this means it's time to pay more attention to what the consumer is saying and not what the media is reporting.

For while the media feeds the country a steady diet of anxiety-inducing news of record job losses, mortgage defaults, out-of-control credit-card debt, the collapse and corruptions of financial institutions, and a host of other economic doom-and-gloom scenarios, consumers surprisingly are moving forward.

Rather than continue to beat a drumbeat of saving, sacrifice and survival, marketers must tap into the newfound self-reliance and positivity today's post-recession consumer is expressing. What we're hearing from the nearly 2,000 Americans we talked to is that they are rising to the occasion, changing their values and spending habits, and feeling pretty good about their newfound mindfulness.

Americans are fully aware of our new, not so great, economic reality. They get it. Now, can we just move on and stop using the economy as the lens through which we evaluate and frame everything?

Based on what we've learned about this new post-recession consumer consciousness, marketers must employ new strategies and tap into some age-old strategies to connect. Below are a few things for marketers to keep in mind:

1. TAP INTO AMERICAN'S STRENGTH; DON'T EXPLOIT THEIR FEARS

The biggest thing for marketers to keep in mind is the sense of optimism and positive self-reliance that this economic crisis has awakened in consumers on a personal level. While many Americans think our society, government and financial institutions are pretty messed up, they are feeling optimistic about themselves and are being resourceful and mindful in how they re-imagine their lives, values and spending habits. Tapping into the personal and the positive is a powerful place for marketers to spend their time and effort.

2. BEWARE OF THE PRICE TRAP -- IT'S A SHORT-TERM FIX

Marketers all seem to be scrambling for ways to talk about price and value. We have Wendy's "Economics" deal, McDonald's with their Appetite Stimulus Plan and almost every car manufacturer having some sort of price/value message. One danger of marketers presenting their brands as perfectly positioned for these recessionary times is that this strategy could backfire when consumers feel the economic pressure lifting. They may want to ditch some of the brands that got them through these tough times as a way to distance themselves from the feelings of deprivation that brand has come to represent.

3. TELL ALL. THE BRAND WITH THE BETTER INFORMATION WINS

Hungry for details and generally distrustful of everyone, today's consumer is spending 47% more time researching items before buying. They want transparent information that tells it like it is -- nothing sugar-coated or overly spun. Consumers are now trying to open their eyes to reality and make better decisions. They want marketers to give them the straight information so they can make sound decisions and will reward brands that are truly candid.

4. SURRENDER TO THE COMPLEXITY; FOCUS ON RELATIONSHIP INSTEAD

Today's consumers are making conscious tradeoffs to support those aspects of their lives that are personally meaningful or make them feel good about themselves. So even though more than 90% say they are using coupons or shopping at discount stores, a full 73% indicate they are opting to purchase fewer but higher quality items. Americans today are complex, in charge and distrustful; yet they are investing in product and experiences they truly value (bringing bag lunches to work in order to splurge on Starbucks or dinner out, for example). Today, it is more important than ever for brands to be authentic and true to their values rather than spending time trying to crack the code on consumers' complex behavior. If consumers can feel a brand's relevance then they will gravitate toward it (and be more receptive to relationship-and-loyalty marketing efforts).

5. BROADEN YOUR COMPETITIVE SET. TODAY EVERYTHING IS GAME

One blind spot marketers may face is the macro, big-picture way consumers are evaluating purchase decisions. Gone are the days when a brand's competition could be defined by a narrow product category, for today's consumers are looking across categories holistically to cut spending and to create a sustainable lifestyle. In some cases this may mean getting a few more years out of a 10-year-old car to afford cable and high-speed Internet. For others it may mean putting off big vacations to keep bi-weekly pedicure appointments. The point is that consumer choices cross categories in unique and personal ways. Marketers need to match consumers' mind-sets to understand who they are actually competing with, messaging should reflect the kinds of cross-category tradeoffs people are making, and brands need to make sense within the broad framework of consumers' lives.

Why Does Everyone Want to Work at AOL All of a Sudden?

Michael Learmonth — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:35:00 -0700

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- AOL is the most-troubled big internet company, a turn-around job with a speculative future. So why, then, does it seem everyone wants to work there?

The company is snagging talent from all sectors: Wall Street, publishing, consulting, Google, Yahoo, social-news aggregator Digg, Time Warner and even its own huge diaspora of former employees, some of whom have chosen to come back. It's luring executives from start-up land both through hires and through acquisitions who seem to be more into the job than simply fulfilling an earn-out.

Two weeks ago, AOL picked up Mike Maser, chief strategy officer at Digg, who joined AOL as head of marketing for consumer applications; McKinsey executive Jennifer Wong started as global head of business operations last week; as did highly regarded Wall Street internet analyst Jeff Lindsay, who joined as VP-strategy in AOL's content division. That's in addition to former New York Times tech reporter Saul Hansell, who heads AOL's content-production platform SEED; and former Google executives David Eun, who heads AOL's content arm; sales chief Jeff Levick; and agency-relations head Erin Clift. Former Yahoo-er Brad Garlinghouse joined last fall as head of AOL's consumer-applications group.

Some say the AOL opportunity is appealing because it is so challenged. If Yahoo is about single-digit gains and Google spreadsheets and optimization, AOL is an opportunity to take a brand that has been dark for years and make a mark on the industry. In other words, it's easier to make a difference at AOL and grow off a small base than it is to do the same at a competitor. And, frankly, AOL doesn't need to win big for the individuals who've come there to win.

"Great people want to see their individual contributions matter, rather than a collective result that might just move the needle," said Todd Teresi, chief revenue officer at Quantcast and a 10-year Yahoo veteran.

Sluggish sector

Aside from, say, Facebook and maybe Twitter, the era of big-growth internet companies is over. Yahoo is stuck in neutral. Google, once entrepreneurial, is run like a machine, one struggling to enter new markets while fending off challenges to its core business. In contrast, AOL is being run a bit like a start-up, albeit a start-up with serious cash flow and an HR department.

"The company is currently small and undervalued, but has huge potential upside," said Mr. Lindsay, who covered AOL as a Wall Street analyst. "I think AOL could be a global brand a few years from now -- that was the aspiration in the late '90s, but it didn't work out in the Time Warner environment."

Of course, as outsiders flock in, AOL has also lost its share of senior execs -- either because they've been replaced with newcomers, taken an attractive buyout package or been part of several rounds of layoffs. Such shake-ups mark the 25-year-old company, which has gone through several cycles of morale boom and bust.

As a company that once employed more than 20,000 people before it acquired Time Warner, AOL trained thousands of internet executives at the dawn of the boom. Before the merger with Time Warner, AOL was a place for internet cowboys and frontiersmen; it was a time of charismatic leaders such as Bob Pittman and Steve Case. After the merger, some ran for the exits. Former CEO Jon Miller and Media Networks Chief Michael Kelly brought some turnaround hope in the mid-naughts, and bought a successful business in Ad.com, but then Chairman-CEO Randy Falco and Chief Operating Officer Ron Grant again made AOL the place not to work.

Enter former Google exec Tim Armstrong. While Mr. Armstrong brought hope to AOL after he joined as chairman-CEO in March 2009, he fired nearly a quarter of the company and much of the company's talent got other jobs and took the buyout. "There was a question of whether he did anything to retain talent that was already there," said one former employee.

Content

Mr. Armstrong also brought an influx of Google management (11 people in all) -- perhaps too much, as some privately say. Still, the firmly articulated mission and focus on content has ex-Googlers beating down AOL's door for the chance to work with content, not just platforms and machines. "I didn't realize how much I liked working with content until I worked at [Google] -- you could see it and analyze it but you couldn't touch it," said Mike Church, a former YouTube exec who joined AOL six weeks ago. "Our team touched a lot of revenue but it was another hobby to Google besides search."

Ad sales execs have been elevated as part of a client-focused culture, led by salesman-in-chief Armstrong. Thanks to that, and with both curiosity and buckets of goodwill going for them, as one former AOL-er put it, "they can get any agency meeting."

AOL has big dreams -- a goal that may or may not be achievable -- and a lot of its own money to play with. Unlike The New York Times or Time Warner, it is no longer even trying to protect its eroding core business, which is liberating.

"AOL's initial business -- dial-up internet access -- is so far gone no one spends any time worrying about trying to keep that sinking ship afloat," said Mr. Hansell, who is now running SEED, AOL's content-production factory. "Yet unlike most content start-ups, we have a huge audience, well-known brands, thousands of top-quality journalists and one of the biggest ad networks in the world to pay for everything."
WHO'S JOINED AOL?

These people have signed on within the past year:

Does Marketing Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry?

Jonathan Salem Baskin/Ad Age — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:56:00 -0700

How is it that every campaign that comes out of your department is a success?

Granted, there's always that college-application admission of a shortcoming, as in "my greatest weakness is that I work too hard and stay focused on reaching my goals," but almost everything, from a little social-media experiment to a big new-product launch, succeeds in one way or another. Think of a true failure (Bud's "Drinkability" campaign comes to mind) and the client marketers, agencies and consultants responsible don't come close to admitting it before blaming one another, losing budget, or getting consumer reaction that's so overwhelmingly negative that silver-lining analyses will no longer cover it up. We usually don't stop driving until someone peels our fingers off the steering wheel.

I'm not so sure this is good for your brand or your career.

Our culture is partly to blame. Anybody with a kid in grade school knows that every child is gifted these days; no student fails but rather "succeeds differently," as some vague preservation of their mental well-being overrides concerns about their actually learning anything. Ditto goes for most art and especially user-generated content, for which distinctions of "good" or "bad" fall before the criteria of "personal" and "unique." I know I risk sounding like some old guy with a pocket-protector complaining that the Beatles play their music too loud, but there's change afoot, and we'd be fools not to see how it influences our behavior.

However, there are at least three reasons unique to the CMO world that encourage finding successes instead of failures:

Political necessity. There's the fear that finding fault in programs you've approved or sponsored will somehow come back to haunt you, either in reduced budget or the suggestion that you find greener pastures.

Personal need. Nobody likes screwing up, and I don't care if you're a corporate big cheese or trying to build a ship model out of balsa wood in your basement. We Americans are a hopeful bunch, too, and we hate risking appearing negative.

Philosophical cover. If you're a true believer in branding there's no such thing as a failure. Everything achieves awareness of some sort or another. We talk digital but our ideas about brands are still very analog.

Think about it: When was the last time you attended a conference that explored the year's most stunning failures? How many articles in this magazine dare note, let alone deconstruct, campaigns that stink? It doesn't help that there are no standardized metrics for telling one outcome from another, and that's after how many conferences and articles about measurement? No, we don't talk about failure because we choose not to see it. Here are three reasons why I think that's a mistake:

Reality matters. Preservation of branding absolutes often conflicts with the messy variability of business reality, where the continuous improvement of operations is based on finding and fixing faults. This means our reports and rationales often fall on deaf, if not on unbelieving, ears. Would our credibility go up if our successes went down?

[page]

Strategic opportunities. Let's face it: Much of what happens in marketing is no better than "me too" envy, especially when it comes to social media or other presumably new ideas. Perhaps if you took responsibility for finding more flaws you'd get out of the business of trying to copy campaigns that qualify as successes only because someone heard about them (or an agency pitch tells you so)?

Inspiring people. There's something just a little odd about never being wrong, and even the most junior staffer knows it, if only instinctively. Are we training a generation of marketers who think anything goes and everything has value? Maybe they'd appreciate it if we helped them make some critical distinctions that supported their careers and helped our brands (see curmudgeon disclosure above).

Ultimately, CMOs are no different than the consumers to whom you sell in at least one respect: You see what you want to see, or at least what you hope others will see. According to the conferences and articles I've read so far this year, every CMO is doing a bang-up job and every campaign is firing on one or more cylinders.

Funny how everyone is so smart and successful. It just seems to me like the surest path to failure.

Jonathan Salem Baskin is a global brand strategist, author, and speaker. Read his blog at dimbulb.net and follow him on Twitter: @jonathansalem.

IPad Day 1: 300K Sold; 360K Tweets; 1M Apps and 250K iBooks Downloaded

Simon Dumenco/Ad Age — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:56:00 -0700

Yeah, I got an iPad -- at the SoHo Apple Store in Manhattan Saturday morning. (I ran into Gawker Media founder/chief Nick Denton on my way out; he was heading in to get one himself. We grabbed coffee and he gave me a sneak peak of the elegant new iPad-friendly version of Gawker, a major user-interface rethink that all Gawker Media properties will be rolling out.)

I have to say that I'm surprised by how much I love the damn thing. Over the past few months, I refrained from publicly join the chorus of naysayers who pre-emptively dismissed Apple's God tablet as just an iPod Touch on steroids; I secretly harbored the same suspicion, but decided to wait and see. (Besides, betting against Apple is a fool's game.) Two days later I've been converted: It is, truly, a game changer, as Steve Jobs & Co. keep saying ad nauseam. More thoughts on that to come, but for now, a few notes and observations related to this week's Trendrr chart (which has been to moved to today from its usual Wednesday spot because of the iPad):
Apple

* On Saturday, there were 360,576 tweets name-checking the iPad. This morning Apple revealed that it sold over 300,000 iPads on Saturday ("sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores").

* Apple itself scored 121,135 tweets on Saturday; in its peak hour, it was name-checked 7,999 times. (The iPad's peak: 26,668 tweets in one hour.)

* iPad users downloaded more than 1 million apps from the App Store and more than 250,000 e-books (or should we call them iBooks now?) on Saturday, according to Apple.

* Amazon's Kindle -- remember that thing? -- was tweeted 9,803 times on Saturday. (Apple's own mature mobile devices did way better than that: the iPhone was name-checked 110,459 times, and the iPod 45,072 times, on Saturday.) And tweets about Kindle were generally not encouraging for Amazon. Here's a sample tweet from Tony Fratto (per his Twitter bio: "Managing Director Hamilton Place Strategies, founder RooseveltRoom.net, CNBC Contributor, frmr US Treasury & WH official"): "Tried out #iPad The doubters are nuts - it's sick. Makes my Kindle look like cave drawings. I don't care if it doesn't replace my laptop." For the record, I'm with Tony.

The latest Ad Age Insights white paper is titled "Dumenco's State of the Media Report," and subtitled "From social media to search, print, broadcast and beyond, where ad-supported media stands now and where it's going." It's available right here.

Pepsi Starts "I Count" Hispanic Initiative

Laurel Wentz /AdAge — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:47:00 -0700

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- PepsiCo is taking advantage of the 2010 Census with an initiative called "Yo Sumo" (Spanish for "I count") that encourages Hispanics to go beyond just being counted numerically and to share their experiences that have helped shape the American landscape. Working with Pepsi, actress Eva Longoria Parker will make a documentary based on the stories posted to the pepsiyosumo.com website set up by Pepsi.

Like the last Census a decade ago, the 2010 poll is expected to give a big boost to Hispanic advertising, as marketers are expected to be impressed by the sheer number of Hispanic consumers and how fast that market is growing.

"We felt the Hispanic consumer needs to go beyond simply being counted, and count," said Martha Bermudez, Pepsi's senior marketing manager, multicultural marketing. "Pepsi partnered with Eva Longoria Parker, who will direct and produce [the documentary]. We want to bring the stories to life in a creative and compelling film."

Ms. Longoria Parker has worked with Pepsi before, appearing in a Hispanic spot for brand Pepsi a few years ago, Ms. Bermudez said.

The "Yo Sumo" effort is being announced today, but a soft launch using social media is already drawing about 100 fans a day to its Facebook page, said Melisa Quiñoy, CEO of Dieste, Pepsi's Hispanic agency. Many of the fans have started posting their stories on the pepsiyosumo.com site, in a mix of Spanish, English and Spanglish, about growing up Hispanic in America, or arriving as young immigrants.

Pepsi and Dieste are working with Telemundo, the No. 2 Spanish-language TV network owned by NBC Universal, and Telemundo's youth-oriented cable channel Mun2 and Telemundo.com site. Dieste has done a commercial for "Yo Sumo" featuring quick cuts of young Hispanics talking about being counted, with both English and Spanish-language voiceovers.

Ms. Bermudez said Telemundo will also be broadcasting integrations to drive awareness of Pepsi "Yo Sumo" and the stories that are being collected. For instance, Patricia de Leon, an actress in Telemundo telenovela "Perro Amor," will do a two-minute segment on Telemundo's daily entertainment show "Aceso Total" telling her story and talking about why she supports the "Yo Sumo" effort.

Another partner is Edoardo Chavarin, who started trendy Mexican T-shirt business NaCo and designed the Pepsi "Yo Sumo" T-shirt that is turning up in a growing number of Facebook pictures.