Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Global Youth: What Youth Think | 2010 Youth Trends Report

Partnering with youth marketers, culture and trend experts from around the world, Graham Brown (the force behind mobileYouth) have crowd-sourced an impressive amount of research on global youth trends and shared his findings in a series of three presentations.

What Youth Think: 2010 Youth Trends Report presentations are a must see for youth marketers, media planners, educators, youth pastors and anyone else who works in the youth space.

So sit back, take notes and enjoy. Then let's all meet up at the Carrot Mob!

2010 Youth Trends Report Part 1

View more presentations from Graham Brown.

2010 Youth Trends Report Part 2

View more presentations from Graham Brown.

2010 Youth Trends Report Part 3

View more presentations from Graham Brown.

The Inspiration Found Project

Inspiration Found is a project, started by the founding director of the social media agency MediaSnackers, that asks 100 people from 1-to-100 years old: "What single thing inspires you and why?"

The resulting images, words and insights will be collated into a FREE ebook available to view online or download PLUS will be presented at TEDxCDF in April 2010.

You can learn more about the project and how you can get involved over on the Inspiration Found website.

Weekly Wrap: Twitter Revolution, How TV Can Save the World, Ford's Twitter Cars, Future of Content, Understanding Social Networks, Twitter Spam & More!

The Twitter Revolution: While the use of social media in the Iranian protests quickly garnered the label “Twitter Revolution,” the real revolution was the use of mobile phones, which allowed the original protesters to broadcast their actions to other citizens and to the wider world with remarkable speed and immediacy. This characteristic, of a rapidly assembling and self-documenting public, is more than just a new slogan. Related: Iranian Gen Y on Revolution 2.0 [Prospect Magazine] [Collaborative Creativity]  [Barking Robot]

Understanding Users of Social Networks: People just love to look at pictures. That's the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles. [Harvard Business School]

Revolution in a Box: It's not Twitter or Facebook that's reinventing the planet. Eighty years after the first commercial broadcast crackled to life, television still rules our world. And let's hear it for the growing legions of couch potatoes: All those soap operas might be the ticket to a better future after all. [Foreign Policy]

Ford Adding Tweets: Ford Motor Co. is adding Twitter messages and Internet radio to its in-car entertainment and communication service, known as Sync, and suggests that the voice-activated system is safer for drivers than trying to manipulate applications on their cell phones. [Yahoo!]

Irish Software Helps Prevent Cyberbullying: The Bully Stop technology allows parents to monitor callers and access abusive text messages before their offspring read them. The Irish-designed product is the first off-the-shelf application to specifically tackle mobile phone bullying and can be downloaded by computer before being transferred to a child's handset. [Breaking News Ireland]

The Rise of the Post Digital World: The world is going increasingly digital but the majority of media and marketing is analog and the majority of people are analog. [India Times]

U.S. Virtual Economy is Booming: When a lot of people think of gamers, they automatically think of mostly male teens who sit around a game console or computer screen all day playing alone. The reality is that the average gamers today are in their 30’s and have a significant disposable income to support the expensive hobby. [InsideTech]

Detecting Spam in a Twitter Network: Spam becomes a problem as soon as an online communication medium becomes popular. Twitter’s behavioral and structural properties make it a fertile breeding ground for spammers to proliferate. [FirstMonday]

The Future of Content Without Walls: From their in-home television and entertainment networks, consumers have grown accustomed to an on-demand culture. The combination of always-on devices and networks is helping extend that culture outside the home.

For the transition to be successful, devices must provide a good user experience, and content delivery needs to be immediate and seamless. [eMarketer] 

Ooh la la! Lady GaGa is Polaroid’s New Brand Ambassador: Yesterday in Vegas, the Lady herself appeared at the Consumer Electronic Show to discuss her new role as creative director for a line of new Polaroid products. Related: 10 Things Brands Can Learn From Lady GaGa [Mediaite] [Barking Robot]

Music Downloads Up as Album Sales Drop: Album sales in the UK fell by 3.5% in 2009 to 128.9 million despite a growth in digital downloads. [BBC]

Global Youth: UK Teens Get Unplugged, Raw & Real

The Teens’ Speech was an open invitation to British teenagers to address the nation. It gave young people the chance to speak out on a range of profoundly important issues and provide the rest of us with an extraordinary opportunity to see the future through their eyes.

The Teens' Speech project culminated with this powerful film highlighting the thoughts and opinions of teenagers in the UK. Teenage Britain face many issues and here we see a snapshot of what its like for young people today.

This is a fantastic film that provides a rare glimpse at what teens really think about their lives, school, teen stereotypes, youth culture as well as their relationships with their parents, peers, teachers and government.

A big thanks to Three Billion for sharing this 17 minutes of golden research.

Weekly Wrap: BBC Digital Revolution, Creating Word of Mouth Buzz, 2010 Online Community Predictions, Perpetual Beta, Robots Attack & More!

5 Triggers for Creating Online Word of Mouth: Word of Mouth is clearly one of the fastest growing sectors in marketing. PQ Media’s recent study has it growing 14.2% in 2008 to $1.54B and expects it to reach $3B by 2013.

Powering that growth are social technologies that have made it increasingly easier for individuals to grow their sphere of influence and quickly spread content to their expanded social networks online. [WOMMA]

BBC Digital Revolution: Digital Revolution (working title) is an open source documentary, due for transmission on BBC Two in 2010, that will take stock of 20 years of change brought about by the World Wide Web. Sorta Related: Oprah's Film Club. [BBC] [Barking Robot]

13 Year Old Runs Up 22K Cell Phone Bill: A father is hoping his cell-phone service provider will cut him a break after receiving a bill for nearly $22,000 in charges made by his teenage son. [KTLA]

Streaming Will Never Stop Downloading: Far from being a cure for the industry's woes, substituting streams for downloads wastes bandwidth, reduces privacy and slows innovation. [Guardian UK]

Listen Without Prejudice: Dan Coates from Ypluse.com shares how to use the power of music to connect youth with the emotions that they feel as they discover themselves and the world around them. Also Related: For Gen Y, Music is Oxygen. [MediaPost: Engage Gen Y] [Barking Robot]

2010 Community Management Predictions: What will online communities look like in 2010? What will community managers be talking about? What legal changes are bubbling away? We asked some fantastic community managers for their 2010 predictions, and if their thinking comes true, 2010 is going to be a very exciting year. [Fresh Networks]

Beware the Youth--They May Think Your Marketing is 'Evil': The youth today is savvy; intelligent; and importantly, powerful. Powerful? Yes. Looking at demographics; purchasing power; and the extent of influence to set trends, this is a group to be admired; respected (yes, they ain’t no fools); and targeted intelligently. [MediaUpdate]

Facebook is Here to Stay: Facebook is not only the overwhelming favorite social networking site (SNS) among college students; it may rapidly become the only SNS that matters, according to research by Anderson Analytics. [Yahoo! News]

Perpetual Beta | The Communications Pro of the Future: The Communications pro of the future must be a master of three important disciplines: Radical Listening, Social Influence, and Perpetual Beta. Within each are new practical skills that will define the true PR master – the next generation trusted advisor. [Digital Influence Project]

Unknown Filmmaker Gets $30m for Robot Movie: Fede Alvarez, an unknown filmmaker from Uruguay, has been given $30m by Hollywood studio bosses - to turn his $500 YouTube video of a giant robot invasion into a movie. [NewsLite]

Augmented Reality Makes Money: Augmented reality start-up AcrossAir, which makes apps that help you find nearby subway stops and restaurants, turned profitable last month and is launching a bar finder this week. Also Related: Augmented reality glasses have been developed, projecting real-time language translation directly into people's eyes, Terminator style. [Venture Beat] [Brand Republic]

Study: Children Who Blog Or Use Facebook Have Higher Literacy Levels

Research conducted by The National Literacy Trust on 3,001 children from England and Scotland showed that schoolchildren who blog or own social networking profiles on Facebook have higher literacy levels and greater confidence in writing.

Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, said: “The digital age often gets a bad press but the findings of this report demonstrate that social networking sites and blogs are linked to young people’s more positive attitudes to writing."

The key objectives of this survey was to explore how much young people enjoy writing, what type of writing they engage in, how good at writing they think they are, what they think about writing and what the role of technology is in young people's writing.

Among the key findings:

• 56% of youth reported maintaining an active profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or Bebo, while 24% said they maintained their own blog;

• The study also found that 49% of young people believe writing is “boring.” However, 57 per cent of those who used text-based web applications such as blogs, said they enjoyed writing compared to 40 per cent who did not;

• 56% of youth who had a blog or profile on a social networking site (SNS) reported to be confident in their writing ability: 61% of bloggers and 56% of social networkers claimed to be good or very good at writing, compared to 47% of those who had neither.

• A total of 13% of children surveyed had their own website, 24% kept their own blog and 56 % had a profile on a social networking site like Facebook or Bebo;

• Social web activity was also credited with encouraging children to engage with more traditional forms of writing. Those who were active online were "significantly more likely" to write short stories, letters, song lyrics and diaries than those who had no online presence;

• The National Trust urges that kids should be encouraged to write blogs and use social networking sites like Facebook to improve literacy levels and encourage them to engage in writing.

Download the full report (pdf): Young people and writing: Attitudes, behaviour and the role of technology

View the executive summary (pdf): Young people and writing: Executive summary

Weekly Wrap: BBC's Project Canvas, Gen Y Travel, Comcast Woos NBC, Clicker TV, ABC Goes Social, Disney Parks Go Mobile, Facebook Marketing, Mobile Social Networking & More!

Mobile + Social = Opportunity: Social networking is one of the fastest-growing activities among mobile users around the world. And as one of the primary ways mobile users communicate with one another, it is proving a significant driver of Internet usage on mobile devices. [eMarketer]

Three Things YouTube Has Learned From Pre-Roll Advertising: Once upon a time, YouTube was a site that didn't believe in pre-roll. My how times have changed. [AdWeek]

Why 70% of Facebook 'Fans' Don't Want Marketing: Among our findings was that 70% of consumers who visit Facebook at least once a month and are a "fan" of at least one company or brand don't believe they have given those companies permission to market to them. [MarketingProfs]

ABC Adding Social Commentary to Online Episodes: Fans can then log in through Facebook Connect and add their own comments. Although there are already many fan message boards for most television series, this is the first one in which fans will be interacting with people that are part of the show. [Examiner]

First Disney Parks Mobile App Now Available: Mobile Magic is bringing FASTPASS return times, attraction wait times for the park you are in, extensive information on character locations and more for Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme parks to your Verizon Wireless phone. [Disney Parks Blog]

Clicker Launches with Premium TV Content: Positioning itself as a “TV Guide for television content online,” Clicker has indexed over 400,000 episodes from 7000 television shows, making it a veritable one stop shop for finding legally-available TV shows online. [Mashable] 

Current Media Shifts to Outsourced Content: Current TV will shift away from short-form and daily in-house production to "proven 30-60 minute formats from a multitude of sources, including acquisitions, co-productions, outside studios, as well as Current developed and produced content. [Digital Media Wire]

How Experiences Are Becoming the New Advertising: Conventional wisdom holds that traditional media's grip on consumers continues to slip as they increasingly turn to the internet and their peers for entertainment and purchasing recommendations. [AdWeek]

Gen Y's Main Reason for Traveling? Bragging Rights: Generation Y and baby boomer travelers looking for a holiday "brag factor" are influencing a new shift towards weird and wonderful tourism experiences, a conference has heard. [The Age]

Five Reasons to Develop Computer Game Based Learning: There is a lot of debate particularly in the media about the pros and cons about computer use with children.  I believe that there are some fantastic potential benefits in developing computer games to teach children. [Dr. Jonathan Reed]

Why Comcast is Acquiring NBC-Universal: It's not just about those trendy cable network assets: Comcast's plan to acquire 51% of NBC Universal also is about seemingly boring things, including Video On Demand (VOD) and changing business models. [The Live Feed]

BBC Shows Off Project Canvas: BBC Future Media & Technology director Erik Huggers gave a sneak preview of the work-in-progress user interface that could power the Project Canvas open IPTV standard in all its interactive, cross-platform, content-sharing. [paidContent:UK]

Oprah's 'Say You're One of Them' Webcast: Earlier this week Oprah Winfrey partnered with Anderson Cooper and CNN for her first world-wide Book Club Webcast to discuss Uwem Akpan's collection of short stories "Say You're One of Them." I can honestly say, without equivocation, that this was one of the most inspiring and uplifting presentations I've seen in a very long time.

Even if you haven't read the book, this was a really phenomenal event and I urge you to take some time and experience it for yourself. [Barking Robot]

Weekly Wrap: Privacy is Dead, Guide to Social Media and Kids, Yahoo Music Video Search, Millennial TV Stereotypes & More!

Privacy is Dead: Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Twitter, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity. The last method, the SenseCam, can be worn around your neck, and takes a photo of your life every 30 seconds. This post gives an in depth explanation as to how the high price of not capturing and sharing every moment of our lives will soon dwarf the cost to our privacy. [CNN]

Pocket Guide to Social Media & Kids: When is a phone not a phone? In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call. Parents are getting dialed in to the social media phenomenon and beginning to understand—and limit—how children use new media. [Nielsen Wire]

Times Publisher Compares Print Media to Iceberg: NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. responds to the question of what advice he has for people going into journalism. His response, comparing to the Titanic, is not what you think. He reminds people that the airplane was actually invented 12 years before the Titanic set sail. See how he compares that to journalism and the future of newspapers. [NY Magazine]

Suicidal Teen Saved by Facebook: A teen who posted a Facebook suicide note was saved after a frantic international race-against-time rescue. [Star]

New Blackberry Bold Targeting Gen Y: The flagship BlackBerry Bold 9700 was today launched in Sydney, with the manufacturer, Research in Motion, targeting the nascent Y Generation as a key new demographic. (Thanks to YPulse for the heads up!) [Current]

Yahoo! Adds Music Video Search: Starting today, you can easily dive into albums and songs by your favorite music artist in Yahoo! Video Search. We have hooked into the “Web of Things” to intelligently extract the most popular albums and songs for artist or band queries. This feature lets you explore music artists intuitively and easily. [Yahoo! Search Blog]

Defying Labels Millennials Are Leaving Their Mark on TV: That simplistic kind of presentation of youth on TV has shown its limits over the decades; easy-to-read stereotypes no longer seem credible. It’s archaic to define young TV characters at a glance, to merely stamp them with shorthand labels such as “popular kid’’ or “jock.’’ [Boston Globe]

Electronic Arts Introduces Flip e-books for DS: Electronic Arts is confident that its new Flips range of e-books for kids can not only be a sales success – but actually widen the audience of Nintendo’s DS. (Thanks Matthew!) [MCV]

Forests Cleared to Make Children's Books: New report reveals that a significant amount of deforestation in Asia's tropical forests is caused by the production of kid's books. (Hat Tip @Michael Pinto) [Mother Nature Network]

Queen Rania|Stop Ignoring the Girls!: Global leaders are overlooking one of their most valuable weapons in the fight against everything from climate change to economic turmoil. [Daily Beast]

Social Web Tips for Teens: Today part of parenting is learning about all the technology our kids are using.  This is not an easy task and for many of us that didn't grow up in "cyberspace" it can be daunting. Related: Amy James on technology and your kids. [Examiner] [Knowledge Essentials]

Weekly Wrap: Social Telly, UK Mashup Legalization, Moms on Facebook, Content Curation, Zombies + Gen Y, eBooks on OLPC & More!

How Moms Use Their iPhones: According to a new survey by mobile advertising network Greystripe, mothers with iPhones regularly let their children use their phones, download games specifically for their children and often use their phones at grocery stores to compare prices and check their grocery lists. [ReadWriteWeb]

UK Will Urge Legalization of Mashups: Lord Mandelson’s three-strikes proposal may have gobbled all the headlines. But a parallel package published Wednesday, aimed at liberalising copyright, may prove just as important for some creators. [paidContentUK]

What Do Teens Want? Their Moms Off Facebook: The problem with Facebook? Moms. "My mom uses it to plan dinner" was the sound bite complaint. One #w2s hashtag user remarked that he would pay his mom money to get OFF Facebook. [SF Chronicle]

Social Telly--A Round Up of Social Viewing: Television has always been a social thing. Whether it’s because you’re watching it with family and friends at home, watching football in the pub, chatting at school or work with friends about that programme that you all love the night before, television is about much more than a broadcast. [Roo Reynolds | What's Next?]

Industry panel warns media companies Must Embrace Social Media: As social networking becomes more prevalent among consumers of all ages, media companies will have to learn how to navigate the various social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to reach out and market to their customers, according to a panel of media executives speaking at a CTAM Summit ’09 panel session Monday. [MultiChannelNews]

Internet Archive Opens 1.6 Million E-Books on OLPC Laptops: The Internet Archive operates 20 scanning centers in five countries, where hundreds of workers are manually scanning books from public and university libraries, mostly public-domain works for which the copyright term has expired. It collects these books at its Open Access Text Archive. [Xconomy]

Curation| The End of Content Aggregation: In an age where anyone can be a publisher, it is now up to the editor to curate the best of the massive amounts of content now available in a way that is easily digestible. The role of the journalist is much like a museum curator whittling down, say, 19th century Neo-Classicism, into a single, walkable hallway. [eMedia]

OMG, Senators Target Texting: The senate, the Department of Transportation and the FCC want you to stop texting while driving, and on Wednesday, they all but declared a war on texting, promising education campaigns and laws to convince you to put your phone down — at least while you are piloting a two-ton SUV going 70 mph. [Wired]

Tweet O' The Week: "Customers are people first and they do not care about your ROI." via @kyleplacy / Kyle Lacy

Mobile Augmented Reality: There’s some momentum building in the mobile-based augmented reality space in Oz. Related: Second Use for Google Wave Discovered: Role Playing Games. [TechNation Australia] [Gizmodo]

Zombie Walk & Gen Y: The political classes are also acutely aware of some realities of demographics, and this has lead them to target Gen Y more heavily. Generation Y are going to inherit the working world, and remain in charge of it for many years to come. [Crazy Epic]

Weekly Wrap: Bing Rocket Contest, School Bake Sale Ban, iPhone & Teens, Brands, Content & Youth, Mobile Augmented Reality, Tween Summit Wrap Up, South African Youth Trends & More!

Interest in iPhone High as iPod & iTunes Dominate Teen Market: The of the 18th bi-annual Piper Jaffray teen survey shows that Apple's share among teen consumers continues to grow. Apple's smallest market among teens -- the iPhone -- is poised to greatly expand. While 15 percent of those surveyed currently own an iPhone, 22 percent intend to purchase one in the next six months. [Apple Insider]

Brands Must Accept Young People Expect Control Over Online Content: A lot of marketers are really just wrapping up the old-fashioned method of control and broadcast and making it look young. What teens want is to be given something and allowed to do anything with it, which is particularly hard for corporate marketers to grasp. [New Media Age]

Mobile Augmented Reality Booming in Australia: There’s some momentum building in the mobile-based augmented reality space in Oz. [TechNation Australia]

2009 Tween National Summit Wrap Up: Amy Jussel and Debra Moffitt (aka @pinklockermom) have put together a great round up of the first ever National Tween Summit to see what’s on the minds of preteen girls. Lot's of great info and insight here folks! [ShapingYouth]

Do Good!: Nominate Mr. Youth for Best Social Media Agency in Mashable's 2009 Open Web Awards!

Pepsi, Stay The Hell Away From My Daughter (and my niece too!): Any sweet-talking kid who thinks he will outsmart this girl with a stupid iPhone app could find himself on the mean end of a double-sided axe. [Mobile Insider]

Social Media as Content Gateway: In a nutshell, there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool — roughly 18 percent of users see it as core to finding new information. While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure. [Nielsen Wire]

Laptop for Every Student in Uruguay: This is not simply the handing out of laptops or an education programme. It is a programme which seeks to reduce the gap between the digital world and the world of knowledge. Hat tip @SarahNewton [BBC] [Gen Y Guide]

Schools 'Ban' Bake Sales: Say What?!: The New York City Board of Education has implemented a new policy banning bake sales in all of their schools. Well, mostly. [MomLogic]

Bing Launches 10,000 Rockets: Bing is asking 10,000 students to submit the rocket design of the future. They’re assembling a pretty cool panel of scientists from across the nation to help them judge which of these designs best exemplifies how space travel might evolve. [Bing]

Twitter Adds 100 Million Potential New Users: Twitter, in an extensive announcement detailing its vision for making a global impact, announced that it had secured an SMS deal with India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel. This opens the service to 110 million new people can tweet via SMS, all from the second-most populous nation in the world. [Mashable]

Speed Round: Vodafone has a parents' guide to help you protect your family on mobile phones, Instant Grass has a new report on South African youth trends, Josh Shipp kicked off a new contest to win 1 of 5 FREE COPIES of "Josh in a box" and a $500 scholarship, UK-based Indie Screenings partners with film creators to allow anyone to buy a license to screen their films, several cult shows get a boost from recorded viewing and finally......Yo Television, Meet Twitter! [Vodafone] [Instant Grass] [Josh Shipp] [Indie Screenings] [The Wrap]

Weekly Wrap: MySpace vs Facebook, Mobile Social Networking, Habbo on Teen Tribes, JSYK, Miley & Twitter, Microsoft FUSE & More!

MySpace is Crowded & Trashy; Facebook is Clean & Trustworthy: According to S. Craig Watkins recently published book The Young and The Digital, college students tend to describe MySpace with the following words: crowded, trashy, creepy, uneducated, immature, predators and crazy.

On the other hand, they love Facebook so much that it  was described as selective, clean, trustworthy, educated and authentic. [TechXav]

Mobile Social Networking Explodes: The dominant mobile social networking platform used by students is Facebook Mobile. Among the 58% of student mobile social network users, nearly all of them (96%) say they use Facebook Mobile most often.

Not surprisingly, the most commonly performed mobile social networking activity was status updates followed by picture uploads/sharing, and page search. [GenDigital]

Habbo Research on Teen Tribes: Apparently now teens pledge allegiance to a number of different groups simultaneously and 61% don’t feel bound to the same tribes online as they do in real-life while half of teens believe that you can belong to more than one tribe online and offline. [MarketingWeek]

Gamers Use Word of Mouth for Purchases: Word of mouth among friends is the most significant factor in video game buying decisions. According to a study by NPD, 41% of gamers in the United States claimed they made purchases based on word of mouth, and 31% said they chose their games based on hands-on experiences with games owned by friends and family. [GamaSutra]

Hulu For Publishers: Hulu Labs, the product incubation department at Hulu, has introduced a Hulu Publisher Tools designed to help bloggers, publishers and website editors to quickly find embeddable videos hosted on Hulu or more than 100 third party sites. [Cynopsis Digital]

Microsoft FUSE: Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie has decided that "social" is the way of Microsoft’s software future, announcing the creation of Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs, which will focus on the creation of social applications and services. By the way, you know who else tried the FUSE strategy? Yep, Yahoo! [eWeek]

Virtual Olympics: For the first time in the history of Olympic Congresses, the general public was given the opportunity to have their say on the topics that were discussed at the XIII Olympic Congress in Copenhagen from 3 to 5 October.

This is a good start, but if the IOC wants the "youth of the world" to be engaged in the games, they need to embrace digital and social media. [IOC] [Barking Robot]

Speed Round: AOL launches JSYK.com (Just So You Know) its new tween/teen 9-15 targeted culture centric blog, interactive books are getting more boys to start reading, Rolling Stone Magazine rolls out their Twitter team, Miley Cyrus gives Twitter the boot, Ignore the Cougars & other tips for monetizing social gaming sites, Facebook and Twitter head to the Xbox 360 and finally Google Wave Is Easier To Understand Than…

Weekly Wrap: Social Media Revolution, iPhone Apps for Students, TV's Growing Pains, Family Friendly Horror, McDonald's Social Media Strategy, 3D TV, Kindle vs. Vook, Mobile Coupons & More

Social Media & Blogs Capture More Internet Time & Advertising: Americans have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend at social networking and blog sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace from a year ago, according to a new report from The Nielsen Company. Among those taking note of this trend: advertisers.  Estimated online advertising spending on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119%. [Nielsen Wire] [Computer World]

P&G, Timberland, Target Invest In College Market: Building an early relationship with consumers is a smart long-term strategy. As Forbes reports, Procter & Gamble has given students control of their brand in order to create brand ambassadors on college campuses. [Brand Channel]

Panasonic Enlists Hollywood to Promote 3D TV: In recent years, TV manufacturers have tried to entice buyers with thinner screens and crisper images. Now Panasonic is trying to portray itself as a force in the tech industry by taking the lead in spreading high-definition TVs that can handle both 2D and 3D images. Also related: A complete guide to 3D TV. [Business Week] [techRadar]

Pulling the Plug on Landlines at Iowa State: The Ames, Iowa-based university is in the process of pulling all such phones out of the dorms in favor of the cell phones that students have been carrying around with them for several years now. A campus survey revealed that 90% of students had cell phones and were using them in lieu of traditional telephones. [Campus Tech]

Move Over Kindle, Here Comes the Vook: A vook is a new innovation in reading that blends a well-written book, high-quality video and the power of the Internet into a single, complete story. Also, the NYT reports that publishing powerhouse Simon and Schuster are jumping on the vook bandwagon. [Vook.com] [NYT]

Growing pains: TV's Hold on Digital Media: Digital media has become a mantra in the venture-capital community. The term is on everyone's lips: from broadcasters looking to tap into new advertising revenues to technology gurus seeking to catch the new industrial wave. [Financial Post]

Michigan Public Schools Partner with Sprint to turn Cellphones from Classroom Nuisance to Valuable Learning Tool: For years, schools have mandated policies barring cellphones from the classroom in hopes of avoiding disruptions to a student's learning environment. Today, one school district in Michigan believes cellphones deserve a spot in the classroom. [TMCnet]

How McDonald's is Using Social Media: Here are a few great ideas from Heather Oldani, senior director of communications and Steve Wilson, senior director of global web communications on how McDonald’s is using social media at all levels of the organization. [SmartBlog]

Speed Round: Disney toons help it fly high overseas, Sam Raimi launches a family friendly horror label, check out this video: 'Social Media Revolution' (tip: kill the horrible music), American Girl's "Homeless" Doll sparks outrage, what college millennials watch on TV, Apple shares its own list of Apps for Students, Japanese mobile phone coupon usage, toys get the augmented reality treatment, and finally..."Jackass" star Steve-O has a new gig: spokesman for PETA. "Cut class, not frogs," says Steve-O to schoolkids! [Variety] [MTV] [YouTube] [KTLA] [Millennial Marketing] [Apple] [What Japan Thinks] [Crunch Gear] [ABC 7 LA]

Weekly Wrap: Augmented Reality 101, Social Gaming Monetization, Gossip Girl vs. NYU, Facebook Bullies, Media Literacy Resources, DARE the Movie & More!

Explaining the Hype Around Augmented Reality: Tech circles are abuzz about augmented reality and the future of mobile utility and marketing. AR, as it's called, marries real-time video and digital information. On phones, it uses GPS coordinates and the mobile camera to activate additional text, photos or hyperlinks relevant to a location. [Ad Age]

Gossip Girl Makes NYU Look Like a State School: All in all, NYU officially owns Gossip Girl, and the show will now only drive up the rate of bratty midwestern teens lusting after an NYU degree because they think it means glitz and glamour instead of $200,000 of debt. [NYU Local]

How age impacts social-gaming monetization: New data released by Gambit, a micro-transaction platform provider, illustrates the complexity of both customer targeting and analyzing micro-transaction buying patterns. The major takeaway: older players seem like a good target market until you dig in to find out that they don't spend a whole lot. [CNET]

Social Sites & Video Games Can Raise IQ: After two months in the program, a group of "slow-learning" students aged 11-14 in the Durham area "saw 10 point improvements in IQ, literacy, and numeracy tests," and some who were at the bottom of their class at the beginning finished the program near the top, according to The Telegraph. [NetFamilyNews]

A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges: Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive. [Washington Post]

Tweet O' The Week: "Zombie community leader angrily denies Twitter reports of zombie attacks during the #SydneyDustStorm". via @darrylmason

Americans Serious About Casual Game Play: Solitaire may be as sticky as World of Warcraft. While users of casual electronic games (card games, puzzles, etc.) spend less time per session playing them than those playing non-casual games (role playing games, shooter games, etc.) they are just as likely to return to them months later. Read the Executive Summary. [Nielsen Wire]

Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum: With a new school year in full swing, Ars takes a look at the RIAA’s newly updated copyright curriculum. Your kids could be learning from it—so what does it say? (This is a total #FAIL) [ArsTechnia]

E-Reader Wars Heating Up: We believe that Apple will be in an excellent position to capture these younger customers due to its overwhelming success in capturing this market with their IPod and other products. Not only is Apple a Generation Y (and to some extent Gen. X) brand of choice, but many of these younger potential e-readers will be disdainful of Amazon’s proprietary, or “closed,” format (thanks Ypulse!). Also related: A Kindle in Every Backpack. [Seeking Alpha] [Barking Robot]

MySpace Beats Facebook with Twitter Sync: MySpace began rolling out new functionality today that allows users to sync their MySpace status updates with a Twitter feed. [HypeBot]

Speed Round: The DARE movie trailer debuts on Access Hollywood, BullyingUK offers tips for teens being bullied on Facebook, stats on mobile phone coupon usage in Japan, there's a new version of the Journalists Guide to to Multimedia Proficiency, media literacy tips for parents from Knowledge Essentials, parents & school leaders who are uneasy about youth and online spaces really need to listen to danah boyd (mp3) and finally....which augmented reality start-ups are most ready for market?

Weekly Wrap: Coca-Cola's Teen Mobile Marketing Strategy, Social Media Statute of Limitations, Facebook Privacy, Youth in Revolt & More!!

Coca-Cola Targeting Teens with Mobile Marketing Strategy: Millennial's are using their handsets to communicate, consume media and befriend brands more than at any point in the past and as a result Coca-Cola is increasingly turning towards mobile marketing to reach the teenage and young-adult generations. [mViews]

At-Risk Students Make Multimedia: A team of college professors and K-12 teachers discovers how building video games can elevate student performance. [Edutopia]

Games lessons: Since the beginning of mass education, schools have relied on what is known in educational circles as “chalk and talk”. Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. It sounds like a cop-out, but the future of schooling may lie with video games. [Economist]

Blog, poke, twitter and be damned: We need a 'statute of limitations on stupidity' for our youthful online indiscretions – otherwise only the drones will thrive. (AMEN!) [Guardian]

(List) What the Internet is Killing: The article is hardly surprising given the massive shifts the Internet brings to society, but it does raise a debate about what will be missed from a bygone era and what will be rightly forgotten. [PSFK]

U.S. Universities Plan Course to Navigate the Mobile Learning Curve: It is imperative that colleges and universities around the country include mobile as part of their marketing communications strategy if they want to continue to attract, retain and satisfy students and school supporters.

Platogo: user-generated content comes to browser gaming: It's a fascinating endeavour, and there seems to be a real emphasis on quality rather than quantity - the UGC stuff is also nicely implemented in the games I've played. [Guardian]

Tweet O' the Week: "I really have become addicted to Klondike bars for breakfast... they're like square frozen bowls of cereal --- they're practically vitamins." (via @DougCoupland)

Youth in Revolt: The plot of this teen film feels episodic, but not in a bad way, with Arteta squeezing an impressive number of set pieces into 90 minutes. Well-placed animated sequences -- a mix of stop-motion and CGI -- keep things moving along at a perky clip. [Variety]

10 Tips to Safeguard Your Privacy on Facebook: Facebook statistics show that it has 250 million active users each with an average 120 friends. More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every month by its users, over 70% of whom use applications like games and quizzes in Facebook. This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy. [MakeUseOf.com]

Speed Round: Ypulse posted this hillarious list of 'Random Thoughts of People Our Age', TechFlash wonders if New Google is the Old Microsoft, Mike Schmid--one of the talented musician's who backs up  Miley Cyrus on her tour has a List of Rules for all you tweens and finally....in the UK Boy Scouts have been forbidden to Carry Pen Knives! [BangItOut.com] [TechFlash] [It's All True] [Free Range Kids]

Music 2.0: Open Music Format, 10 Years After Napster, Death of the Music Industry, Mobile Music & More

British Music Label to Release Songs as Open Format: As the music industry lost billions of dollars and music fans have turned away from CDs to easy-to-use and portable songs in the MP3 file format, PlayApp, a Dallas, Texas-based business has released a new multimedia, open format that is even easier to use, and collectible, unlike MP3s. [Business of Cinema]

Filesharing crackdown divides UK music industry:The row has pitted big names such as Billy Bragg and Annie Lennox against record labels and the Musicians' Union ahead of an approaching government deadline for comments in its illegal file-sharing consultation. [Guardian]

The State of Music Online: Ten Years After Napster: In the decade since Napster’s launch, selling recorded music has become as much of an art as making the music itself. [Pew Internet]

Death of the music industry or…death of the recording industry?: This NY Times article uses a graphical representation of sales data, which to be fair, is compelling and shocking if you sell recorded music. [Sound Alliance]

YouTube and PRS Make Peace as Musicians Protest Plans to Punish File Swappers: Thousands of music videos pulled from YouTube in a royalties dispute will go back online after peace broke out today between the website and the music industry. [Guardian UK]

Consumers Don’t Listen to Music on Mobile Phone: 9 out of 10 people in the U.S. never listen to music on their cell phones. That’s the key finding in a new Forester Research study The Future Of Music On Cell Phones. [HypeBot]

Microsoft Discontinues All Current Zunes: Looks like the Zune didn’t pass Microsoft’s ‘Death Panel.” [Wired]

CMX: Yet Another New Digital Album Format: All four major label groups are working together to create a new format for the digital album tentatively titled CMX. [HypeBot]

Rolling Stone (re)Discovers the Web: In an overdue move, Rolling Stone is taking back control of its flagship web site from RealNetworks, and will be relaunching it in January with new community and customization features. [Hypebot]

Terry McBride of Nettwerk: Is Ownership of Music Simply Irrelevant? [Paste Magazine]

A third of young people would not pay for music online, or videos: While the statistic appears to confirm the worst fears of TV, film, music and newspaper companies that it may be impossible to get the younger generation to pay online, the EC report did offer a glimmer of hope. [Guardian UK]

And just for fun...

20 Pre-Punk Gems: For this playlist I wanted to explore some of my favorite tracks from the pre-punk era. [Yahoo! Music]