Derek E. Baird, M.Ed.

Weekly Wrap: NBC's Social TV, Blocking Bieber, Will.I.Am on the Music Industry, Google TV Roundup, Facebook's Influence on Girls, Age of Curation, Aussie Gen Z's & More!

NBC Turns Television into a Social Media Game: The endeavor is a network-wide initiative designed to leverage the presence of show fans on social networks and incentivize them with points for engaging with content — i.e. watching videos on NBC.com, Liking shows, chatting and recruiting friends.

Points can be redeemed for goodies like NBC merchandise, show previews, virtual goods, badges and sweepstakes entries. [Mashable] 

Creating a Content Driven Community: When you create a content-driven community, don't forget to set measurable goals, establish meaningful benchmarks, evaluate results, and document what moves the needle for the business. Every business already has an organic community: its employees, partners, and, depending on its degree of involvement, its customers. [Conversation Agent]

Will.I.Am: "The Music Industry is Gone": “The band of the future is not going to be a singer, a guitarist and a bass player. It will be a singer, a guitarist, a bass player and a code writer – the guy who does apps, computer animation. That is a group. It is going to be about self-contained content-providers.” [Harlem Loves]

Google TV Round Up

Guide to Google TV's Ecosystem [TechCrunch] | What We Know So Far About Google TV [Search Engine Land]| Google TV Has Arrived [Mashable] | Here's What Google TV Looks Like [BI] | Google TV Explained [Logitech]

Overwhelmed? Welcome the Age of Curation: Still don’t believe we live in the Age of Curation, of which the iPad is just a recent manifestation? Go save everything you run across to read later using Instapaper, even from your Twitter and newsreader feeds (themselves forms of curation), which you can then read on the functionality-curating iPad and Kindle devices. Related: Trend Watch | Content Computing [Video] [Wired] [Barking Robot]

Study: Facebook Is a Major Influence on Girls: A study of eight to 15-year-olds for National Family Week found 40% of girls identified Facebook as one of the most important things in their lives - compared with 6% of boys.

Parents were found to underestimate the significance of technology. Asked to name the three most important things in their lives, the most popular choices for girls were friends, family and then Facebook and MSN. [BBC]

Connecting with Generation Z: Meet Generation Z, otherwise known as The Naturals. Give them any label you like, but you better make sure your business understands this powerful new generation of consumers that has never known life without the internet. Related: Those Digital Natives? Not So Savvy. [nineMSN] [BarkingRobot]

Why Twitter Radically Reworked Its Trending Topics Algorithm: How to keep Twitter from seeming like "an inane playground for hormonally cracked-out tweens." Related: Blocking Justin Bieber > New Tweetdeck version allows you to block all Justin Bieber related Tweets. [AdAge] [Mashable]

Trend Watch: Google, Sony & Intel to Launch 'Google TV'

Google will make an ambitious bid to extend its reach into the living room when it debuts its Internet television software this week.

Through a joint initiative with Sony, Intel and other prominent technology and consumer electronics companies, the Web search giant is expected to showcase technology that TV viewers can use to flip seamlessly among familiar shows, YouTube videos and home videos on their sets.

The new software, called Smart TV Google TV, will allow TV viewers to flip seamlessly among television programming, YouTube videos and home videos. The new television platform is expected to be built into Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. (via LA Times)

Update: Google TV Roundup

Guide to Google TV's Ecosystem [TechCrunch] | What We Know So Far About Google TV [Search Engine Land]| Google TV Has Arrived [Mashable] | Here's What Google TV Looks Like [BI] | Google TV Explained [Logitech]

Pew Research Center | Cyberbullying 2010

This talk provides an updated look at the research and definitions around bullying and cyberbullying and  draws upon the work of Amanda Lenhart from the Pew Internet Project, UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center, the work of Internet Solutions for Kids as well as research by professors Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin.

Cyberbullying 2010: What the Research Tells Us

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Originally presented to the Youth Online Safety Working Group assembled by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), this talk unpacks both what current research can tell us about cyberbullying as well as where the gaps our understanding of this issue lie.

Related: Printable Handout: Digital Parenting Social Media & Internet Safety Resources

Report: Twitter Referrals to Videos Result in Longer Viewing Times

A curious bit of data emerged from yesterday's study of Q1 2010 video metrics from Brightcove and TubeMogul.

Twitter referrals to videos on every major category of destination resulted in longer viewing times than any other traffic source. A Twitter referral to a music video averaged a 2:33 viewing time compared to 2:01 of time spent by people coming from Google.

Tweets drove viewing sessions of 1:52 on broadcast locations, but traffic coming from Facebook, Bing and Google were all in the 1:37 to 1:38 range. The exception to this rule was Tweets landing on newspaper sites, where Yahoo! customers viewed one second longer than Twitter refers.

Still, it is an interesting exercise to ponder why a Twitter referral would tend to stay more engaged. Clearly the social affinity aspect is at play, because Facebook refers, while not quite as high, are also stronger in engagement than most other sources.

After all, a refer from a friend compels a viewer to watch longer, if only to "get" what the friend wanted you to see in the video or just because your social graph can target your tastes even more effectively than a straight search.

The full report is available at Brightcove [PDF].

via www.mediapost.com

Facebook and BBC iPlayer Lead U.K. Online Video Growth

While monthly video viewing in the U.S. may be showing signs of leveling off, the British market is in serious growth mode. As in the U.S. Google's YouTube has the lion's share of that market, with slightly less than half of all videos served. While the market fragments quickly from there, the TV networks are growing rapidly.

The BBC more than doubled its videos viewed last year to come in second place. Each visitor to the broadcaster's site consumes 15.7 videos a month. Before many U.S. networks and Hulu started pouring prime time onto the Web, the BBC was developing its robust iPlayer portal and player.

While the BBC’s video viewing audience tends to be male and spread between the ages of 25 and 54, Channel 4 skews heavily toward the 15-24 year old age group. The site was visited evenly by males and females but women watched five more videos then male viewers on the site during the month.

Facebook is the big up-and-comer in U.K. video, however and clearly the one to watch. The social network saw the number of videos viewed rise 205%, to 42.6 million in February.  

The importance of Facebook to all online businesses, including video, was underscored last week by no less a video maven than Mark Cuban, co-founder of HDNet.

In a post at his blog, Cuban mused that Facebook has become the new Internet, the place we now go to fill time in much the same way we channel surf TV. With its increasing knowledge of users and alternative means of discovering content via social sharing, he sees the network as a challenge to two of the biggest stakeholders in the digital universe.

via www.mediapost.com

Project Gaga 2010: Building a Monster Fan Base

Love her or hate her, there' no denying that Lady Gaga is a cultural force who resonates with many, many young people. Perhaps no other creative genius since the late (great) John Hughes has been able to effectively express the inner turmoil and feelings of disenfranchisement that are part of modern teenage life.

For many young people, Lady Gaga ("Mother Monster") has been able to tap into the global zeitgeist of a generation of "Little Monsters" and empowered them through her music to speak up share their voice.

Project Gaga 2010 is a user-generated fan project that collected over 268 pictures of mostly teenage fans from across the globe all "with the same message: thank you, mother monster, for giving us all a voice."

Teenage fan behavior patterns haven't changed that much in the last 50 years or so. What has changed are the ways in which they express their devotion as a fan to their favorite movie, music or TV star.

Today's teens, unlike previous generations, have many more digital tools that allow them to self-organize via social networking sites, coordinate the collection of this photos from around the world, use free web-based tools to produce a video and free distribution on YouTube. 

And oh, a tweet of approval from "Mother Monster" is a pretty good way to market your tribute.

Now for some of us who are a wee bit past those awkward crazy teenage years this "Mother Monster" tribute stuff may seem a little bizarre.

But before you dismiss it, consider the idea that if previous generations had the same bounty of free digital and self-publishing tools, the web would be full of similar tributes to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Frank Sinatra or Al Jolson.

Related: Lady Gaga Joins Forces with Virgin Mobile to Fight Teen Homelessness

Weekly Wrap: Facebook Social Plugins, How to Create Foursquare Events, Apple Shutters Lala, What is Facebook Saying About You, Social Metrics Tools & More!

Facebook’s New Social Plugins: 50,000+ Websites in One Week: Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook announced that more than 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative. [Mashable]

Apple To Shut Down Lala: In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in the cloud? [TechCrunch] 

What is Facebook Saying About You?: Yee’s tool shows you exactly what data a developer would get when it asks Facebook for info via the API, such as your name, birth date, location, etc. and also any public information such as your “likes”, your photos and so on. [GigaOm]

Summer Music Watch: Jennifer Lopez Does a Cover of Donna Summer's "On The Radio" [Ryan Seacrest]

The Future Of The Web is HTML 5: Did we mention that 2010 would be a big year for HTML5? Apple and Google are pushing it big time, and now so is Microsoft. When Internet Explorer 9 comes out, it will support HTML5 and help make it more common across the Web. [TechCrunch]

Millennials: This generation is diverse, educated and plugged-in: Gio Acosta says that on any given day there are only two hours in which he is not texting, doing something on his cell phone, or on Facebook, or playing games on his laptop or PS3. Acosta is exactly what Kaiser Family Foundation recently found in a study: That to say today's young people are wired is an understatement. It’s an integral part of their daily lives. [PennLive.com] [Barking Robot]

Edelman Digital Social Metrics Tools: Last week Suzanne shared a few tools to help you find new folks to follow on Twitter to kick-off a new focus on tools and resources for online engagement. I wanted to continue this trend by introducing you to a few blog analytics tools! [Edelman Digital]

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Teen Driver Program: NHTSA has developed a multi-tiered strategy to prevent motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries among teen drivers: increasing seat belt use, implementing graduated driver licensing, reducing teens' access to alcohol, and parental responsibility. Related: Get the 'No Phone Zone' Lesson Plan [NSTSA] [Barking Robot]

Guide to Creating Foursquare Events: There are some reasonable and relatively simple ways to incorporate Foursquare and encourage audience participation at your next event. [Tradeshow Insight]

Texting Poetry Inspires Kids: Once considered a disturbance in the classroom, cell phones, texting devices and other wireless technology are being embraced by some of the very same people who used to malign them: teachers. [Record Online]

End Bullying Now: Here's the link to the Josh Shipp & Brooks Gibbs 'End Bullying Now' Teleseminar! [Barking Robot]

2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award: After listening to feedback from our friends in the educator community, we've made some important changes to this year's Totally Wired Teacher Award provided by Dell. Please help us spread the word to any public school teachers you are in contact with. [Ypulse]

Nielsen: TV Viewer Loss Blamed On Video Games

Television's prime time is video games' prime time.

Television viewer erosion is the result of a fractionalized viewership -- which is due, in large part, to cable viewing and Internet usage. But a lot of video game usage is also contributing, especially in the evening hours between 7 and 11 p.m.

A new study by the Nielsen Games measuring division says Xbox 360 usage, for example, hits nearly 25% between 7 and 11 p.m, with men around 23% and women's usage at around 17%.

Xbox 360 users are comprised of 45% 18- to-34-year-olds, 31% 12- to-17-year-olds, 13% 2- to-11-year-olds, 7% 35- to-44-year-olds and 3% 45- to-54-year-olds.

via www.mediapost.com

(Sorta) Related: Google Adds TV Episode Search

Infographic: If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportion

via neatorama

Weekly Wrap: Foursquare Nabs MTV & VH1, Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter, Saving the Google Students, COPPA & Youth Marketing, Free iPad eBooks & More!

Six Reasons to be Skeptical of the 'Digital Natives' Discourse: Almost all of the claims of the net gen discourse are in popular media and if they are based on research, it is proprietary and full methodological details are not provided. All of the sound research that refutes the claims is published in scholarly journals and has been subject to peer review. [Net Gen Skeptic]

Saving the Google Students: For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read. [LA Times]

Weekly Wrap, Foursquare Edition: Meet Gatsby, Fresh off the heels of hooking up with Bravo TV and Harvard Foursquare signs a similar deal with MTV & VH1, Microsoft adds Foursquare data to Bing Maps & a really cool visualization of Foursquare check-ins at SXSW. [Iconoculture] [Mobile Entertainment News] [Mashable] [TechCrunch] [SimpleGeo]

10 Reasons Students Are Tuning Teachers Out: You’re teaching to a generation of students that can access more information more quickly than any other generation. Don’t tell students that you don’t want to figure out how to use the internet or that you don’t answer email. You’re putting yourself into a category you don’t want to be in. [GYJoe]

US Census Bureau Adds Mapping App to Facebook: In an effort to reach out to young people, the U.S. Census Bureau is launching a huge nationwide campaign incorporating social media, broadcast media and print to encourage people to fill out their census forms this year. [Inside Facebook]

Ypulse Interview| Jamie Tworkowski: Jamie is the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms, a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury and suicide. Related: MTV Poll: Generation Stress [Ypulse]

Preparing Your Content for iPad: Platform-specific considerations and UX Guidelines for web content in Safari on iPhone OS devices, with specific information for iPad. Also, iPad to Offer 30,000 free eBooks at launch. [Safari Technical Notes] [Apple Blog] [UX Magazine]

Marketing to Kids | A Time for Playing by the Rules:Whether it’s Quiksilver, Monster Energy Drinks or ESPN X Games, the look and feel of the typical action sports-related website is young, edgy, authentic. Action sports marketers need to be aware, however, of the panoply of laws that regulate marketing to kids, including the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [GroupY]

Quote O' The Week: “I hate being thought of as a product. I am not a doll, and people want to treat me that way. I’m older now. I have an opinion. I have my own taste.” - Miley Cyrus on why being a Disney pop princess is so difficult. [Gossip Girl] [Barking Robot]

Blogging, academia, and the new public intellectual: John Holbo admits he and his fellow pioneers have lost the “revolutionary fervor” of blogging’s early days. “I’m fortunate to be at the top of the food chain, to have these bully pulpits where I can stand up and know thousands of people will hear me,” he says. “But we all thought blogging was going to transform academic life, and that didn’t really happen.” [Cal Alumni Association]

Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter: Language is forever changing -- and forms such as tweets and text messages are no less valid than any textbook version, says the linguist David Crystal, whose latest book encourages children to engage with the possibilities of their lingua franca. [The Independent]

More People Are Watching TV While Surfing the Web: This is some decent news for the TV industry, since the fear is that Internet time is eating into boob tube viewing. Overall, TV viewing is up 1%, year over year, according to the report.  [Business Insider]

Why Apple’s iPad Can’t Succeed in Schools (Yet): You see, tablets-as-books is a great idea until the battery dies, and then the student has no textbook and no computer. She will have to plug-in to a power outlet if she wants either of those things back. Related: A Kindle in Every Backpack [The Apple Blog] [Barking Robot]

Weekly Wrap: Fisher-Price Facebook Apps, I Want My Android TV, Justin Bieber for Old People, UK Entertainment Convergence, SXSW Roundup & More!

Fisher-Price App Aims for Moms on Facebook: Targeting the many moms online, Mattel’s Fisher-Price is launching a Facebook app Thursday that allows mothers to be more selective in choosing which of their friends can see photos of their children. Mothers who go online, particularly the influential group of “mommy bloggers,” present an important market for toy makers. [WSJ]

Android TV! | Google, Intel & Sony Join Forces: This trend is potentially much more disruptive than the introduction of 3D displays. Now a secret joint effort by Google, Intel and Sony to enter this field in partnership has been revealed. It will bring Google’s Android operating system and Chrome browser to TVs and set top boxes.

The technology has the potential to be disruptive to traditional TV by making the full range of Internet content available on television. [Collaborative Creativity]

What's TV's Next Business Model: It's hard to find TV content today that does not contain Web site addresses, Twitter mentions, and text-based messages throughout. It's accepted that even with these "light" reference points, as it stands now TV's long-term prospects pale in comparison to those of the Internet, mostly because TV content still has no direct-response mechanism.

Blending Internet elements into TV content makes for a seamless experience - and, in my opinion, is tomorrow's preferred business model. Related: Business Exchange > "Social Television" [MediaPost] [Business Weekly]

US Children get Playboy, not Bugs Bunny in Cable Mix-up: Young viewers of children's television programs in North Carolina got a glimpse of something far more risque than their favorite cartoons, when a cable glitch broadcast two hours of the Playboy channel. (Oooops!) [Yahoo! News]

Entertainment Convergence in the UK Digital Home: The UK is still at a relatively early stage of convergence when it comes to digital entertainment such as TV shows, films, short-form video, games, music and social networking. But momentum is building. [eMarketer]

Vodafone gives $1 million grant to Web Foundation for Web-enabling entrepreneurs in Africa: While only 25 percent of the world population uses the Web today, more than 70 percent of the world’s population has access to mobile or fixed communication devices capable of displaying Web content.

In Africa, where the Internet penetration rate is approximately 6.8 percent, furthering Web access can create learning opportunities for local entrepreneurs and support the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to end poverty by 2015. [WWW Foundation]

SXSW Video Interview Roundup: SXSW 2010 was a gathering of innovative companies, forward thinking people, and interactive influencers. While I didn’t have a chance to talk to all 15,000 attendees, I was able to speak to a few choice companies that have progressive products in the social media and technology realm. [Edelman]

India's Rural Cell Movement: Just last month, nearly 20 million new mobile accounts were opened. That’s more than double the people than have high speed Internet in the entire country. Even in slums where people live on less than $2 a day, everyone has a phone. If “Slumdog Millionaire” was more accurate, Jamal wouldn’t have had to go on TV to find Latika. He could have just called her, or worst case, called a few friends until he found her number. [TechCrunch] [Yahoo! Movies]

Content Strategy is Much More than Web Copywriting: Where there should be content strategy and SEO strategy, we're often on projects where we're focused much more on target audience personas, design standards and project management charts, instead of content. The web writer is then brought in, given the creative brief, the wireframe and two weeks to "crank out the content." [Ignite Social Media]

The Justin Bieber Guide for Old People: Bad news, Old Person: No matter how much you try to avoid it, you will have to eventually interact with someone to whom Justin Bieber (BEE-BURR) is the sun around which their little life revolves. So we present this Justin Bieber Guide for Old People to help you avoid embarrassing yourself in front of your offspring, students, or patrons of your candy shop. [Gawker]

Flemish Digital Youthwork Practices: On the 8th and 9th of February 2010, Steunpunt Jeugd, Flemish knowledge and expertise center on youth, youthwork and youth policy, organized a big congress (JET) centered around youth, youth work and youth policy. One of these sessions is labeled "the 'e' in youthwork" that collected e-practices in Flemish youthwork. [Youth Work Online]

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with Digital Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

Conventional wisdom about young people’s use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today’s teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth’s social and recreational use of digital media.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings-at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces.

This project was one of many funded by the MacArthur Foundation to explore digital media and learning. New projects in this area are being aggregated through the Digital Media and Learning Hub.

Weekly Wrap: Democrats & Millennials, Disney's "Alice" Goth Party, Vancouver 2010 Social Media Experiment, John Lennon Education Bus, Google Buzz Lawsuit & More!

Democrats Edge Among Millennials Slipping: While the Republican Party picked up support from Millennials during 2009, this age group continues to favor the Democratic Party more than do other generations. And the underlying political values of this new generation continue to be significantly more liberal than those of other generations on many measures. [Pew Research]

Harvard Law Student Files Class Action Suit Against Google Over Buzz: One of her attorneys, Gary E. Mason of Washington, D.C.-based Mason Law Firm LLP, said, "It's not so much that we're expecting to get millions of people hundreds of dollars. What we'd like to see as result is a commitment from Google that they're not going to do this again the next time they launch a product." [ABC News]

Why Gen Y Isn't Buying Your Products: To put it bluntly, if you’re uncomfortable with marketing to Generation Y, or refuse to understand our unique demographic, your store will not see 2020. To understand Generation Y is to overcome many obstacles in the retail industry. [Retail Customer]

Twitter Users Do It In the Car: Twitter is checked more often while driving than other sites, such as Facebook, according to a recent survey by research firm Crowd Science. Sounds like it's time to take Oprah's No Phone Zone pledge! [NBC San Francisco] [Oprah.com]

John Lennon Educational Bus: Throughout TEDActive, TEDsters had a chance to participate in something truly magical: the making of a music video. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a nonprofit mobile recording studio, travels all around the country 10 months out of the year, providing free hands-on workshops to students of all ages, working with both audio and video projects. [TED Blog]

Tweet O' the Week: RT @henryjenkins: Whatever people are doing in World of Warcraft, it isn't "bowling alone." http://bit.ly/dhrSeI

High School Kid Uses YouTube to Land Prom Date with Maxim Model: In a move sure to inspire hundreds of copycats, 17-year-old Dakota Ridge High School senior Conner Cordova used a series of YouTube videos to get UFC Octagon Girl and Maxim model Arianny Celeste to go to the prom with him. [Asylum]

A Conversation About New Media & Education: It is about a world where students learn with a book in one hand and a mouse in the other, rather than one where they are taught that book culture is so fragile it needs to be protected from the computer. [Danielsaurus.com]

Disney Invites 'Goths' to the Party: Disney, the company that created "the happiest place on earth" and cornered the market on pink, is embracing a darker aesthetic as it reaches out to an unlikely audience for new merchandise: female "goths." [WSJ, Registration Required]

Welcome to Vancouver, the World's Largest Social Media Experiment: Social media was around for the Summer Games in Beijing, but this is the first time it will be deployed in a free and democratic regime.

There's good reason to expect that the Olympic experience will be transformed by the social media presence: it's already changed the Olympic planning process for both the Games organizers and the media that's now descending on the city. Related: Olympics Must Embrace Digital & Social Media Or Risk Losing Youth Audience [Harvard Business Review] [Barking Robot]

Yahoo's #Olympics Website Beats NBC's in Traffic: According to comScore, Yahoo's Olympics site and Yahoo Sports are the top websites for coverage of the first weekend of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. [The Wrap]

Study: On the Social Web, Age is a Factor

How old is the average Twitter or Facebook user? What about all the other social network sites out there, like MySpace, LinkedIn, and so on? How is age distributed across the millions and millions of social network users out there?

So who rules the social web? Boomers? Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z?

To find out, Royal Pingdom pulled together age statistics for 19 different social network sites, and crunched the numbers.

Weekly Wrap: Slacktivism, Open Source Social Innovation, Boomers & Social Media, Helping Google Get Social, Sundance 2010 Round-Up, Texting Party in the USA, Steve Jobs' Wardrobe & More!

A Time and Place for 'Slacktivism': Slacktivism; (v.) action 4 social change w/o much effort beyond a click/text. Known causes: social media, cellphones. [Ypulse]

Baby Boomers Get Connected with Social Media: Boomers are turning to social media, where they keep up their offline social connections and make new ones. Online marketing messages that help them build on their connections—and foster other online relationships—will get their interest. [eMarketer]

Lady GaGa's Lessons for the Music Business: Underneath Gaga's haystack wigs is a case study of what it takes to succeed in the music business today. Gaga, 23 years old, has made shrewd use of new digital platforms, while still leveraging the clout of a major label, an institution deemed obsolete by many proponents of DIY culture (Thanks Ypulse!). [WSJ]

Conan O'Brien's Fate a Sign of the Times: While the "Tonight Show" ratings fell under O'Brien's tenure as a whole, ratings amongst the younger demographics were better than those of Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." According to the New York Times, the median age of "Tonight Show" viewers fell by 10 years, from 55 to 45, in O'Brien's first month alone. [Colorado Daily]

Social Media Marketing, How Pepsi Got it Right: Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big. [Mashable]

Will Creating a SWAT Team Help Google Get Social?: As successful as Google has been with plenty of other things — including a little thing called search-related advertising — it has struck out big-time in virtually every attempt at the social side of the web. [GigaOM]

Reflections from the Sundance Film Festival: Lois Vossen, ITVS vice president and Independent Lens series producer, shares her reflections on this year’s festival, which wraps up this weekend. [Beyond the Box]

College Students Hate Email: In fact, the student joked that she only uses her email to “communicate with her boss and adults.” She uses Facebook as her preferred method of peer-to-peer communication – she has had a Facebook thread running between the three of them for three years now. [Off Campus Media]

Tweet O' the Week: Can someone please buy Steve Jobs a new outfit! The man has more money than God and Oprah! A simple button down will do!" (via Scott Nevins) [Twitter]

Americans Sending 4 Times as Many Texts as Brits:There was a turning point a couple of years ago when it was suddenly undeniable: It was either text message or be left behind. If you were paying for it by the message, you suddenly had to find a plan, because you started having more and more friends that wouldn't talk any other way. Well, we're wondering if it has finally reached that point in the U.K. - or if it's yet to come. [ReadWriteWeb]

Teen Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage: For teenagers, the effects of a drunken night out may linger long after the hangover wears off. A recent study led by neuroscientist Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego compared the brain scans of teens who drink heavily with the scans of teens who don't. [NPR]

Open Source Social Innovation: Last week Bill Gates entered the digital publishing world by establishing the Gates Notes - an online evolution of his now annual January letter sharing his thoughts on the progress of the issues central to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s interesting and symbolic that the next chapter of his life story would include an “open source” platform for sharing IP on social innovation. [Cheskin]