February 2008: Teens

websites to watch - teens

Armor Games
Armor Games houses countless free Flash-based games, all playable on the Web. This site has everything from classic card and puzzle games to more complicated adventure and strategy games.

Pimp My Profile
Pimp-my-profile.com is a top 500 internet site that indexes over 6.1 million monthly visitors. The website has a large selection of HTML layouts, codes, generators, editors and graphics. Visitors can search through the large database of downloadable codes to customize their MySpace, Friendster and Blogger profiles.

Flip.com
Flip.com offer girls a forum to create "flip books:" multimedia scrapbooks of photographs, home-made music videos and other postings. CondeNet hopes to tap into the same creative flair that girls show when they decorate their school lockers or textbooks. The site is Conde Nast's answer to News Corp.'s MySpace, which – along with similar sites such as Facebook – is drawing millions of young users and has made it difficult for magazine publishers to keep teenagers' attention.

 
websites to watch - general

uLinkx
uLinkx is a video search engine/social network that allows users to bookmark and organize their favorite videos, as well as share them with friends. While users cannot host their own video on uLinkx, they can search through the wealth of videos indexed there, as well as on other video sharing sites. The service also serves the "discovery" angle of video search, by aggregating user data and serving up the most popular content alongside the most relevant results.

Amie Street
Amie Street applies the simple economic principle of supply and demand to music selling. In other words, new or not-as-popular tracks sell for less, and popular tracks sell for more. Tracks start at free and go up to $0.98 as they catch on with users. The pricing model gives new bands a way to get their music heard, and listeners get a free way to check out new bands, so it's a win/win!

 
blog trends

Jezebel
“To put it simply, Jezebel is a blog for women that will attempt to take all the essentially meaningless but sweet stuff directed our way and give it a little more meaning, while taking more the serious stuff and making it more fun, or more personal, or at the very least the subject of our highly sophisticated brand of sex joke.”

Fafarazzi
Fafarazzi.com is the best place to play entertainment based games with your friends. Compete in Fantasy Celebrity Leagues or TV Show based Fantasy Games. Also, you can read all your favorite gossip blogs in one place!

 
technology trends

Wii Fit
Nintendo announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco that the Wii Fit will be available on May 19, 2008. When used with the bundled "Wii Balance Board," which looks like a regular bathroom scale, Nintendo Wii owners can exercise, stretch and do yoga with on-screen avatars – all designed to help keep you fit and lose weight. Wii Fit will also include access to the "Wii Fit Channel," an interactive online channel that lets users check in daily to track fitness progress through weight and body mass index (BMI).

Sony Blu-Ray Disc Player
Sony Corp.'s first Blu-ray disc player that can download bonus materials like trailers and games from the Internet will debut this summer. The BDP-S350 player Sony plans to introduce this summer for ''about $400'' will be the company's first to feature an Ethernet port, allowing it to connect to a home broadband connection. It will also be the first Sony Blu-ray disc player to be able to show picture-in-picture content, apart from the PlayStation 3 game console, which gained this feature via software update last year.

 
marketing - teens focused

Ben 10 Turns 15 As Cartoon Network Fave Targets Tweens
Parents may think their kids grow up too quickly, but in the case of Ben 10, it’s true. Cartoon Network is aging Ben, the lead character in the animated Ben 10 series, by five years to open the door for more marketing opportunities. more info

ConAgra Egg Substitute Beats a Path to Gen Yers
ConAgra’s Egg Beaters created the “egg substitute” category in 1972 by eliminating the cholesterol found in yolks, but now for the first time it’s putting the yolk back, at least some of it. The idea is to lure younger consumers who are looking for a healthy substitute for eggs. more info

College Students Demand 'Organic' Fare
If a meal of heritage turkey breast, roasted root vegetables and organic milk sounds like dorm food, you must be a member of Generation Y. University grub has come a long way from sloppy Joes and french fries. more info

Study: Youths More at Ease with Online Shopping
Convenience and bargain-hunting tend to drive younger Americans to online shopping, while all adults share concerns about security and other drawbacks, a new study finds. more info

 
interesting articles - teens

Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up
Social networking was supposed to be the Next Big Thing on the Internet. MySpace, Facebook, and other sites have been attracting millions of new users, building sprawling sites that companies are banking on to trigger an online advertising boom. Trouble is, the boom isn't booming anymore. Like Heritage, many people are spending less time on social networking sites or signing off altogether. more info

Gen Y Unravels Global Branding Efforts, But Apple, Nike Triumph
While it would be easy to blame the world's increasingly negative view of America and its brands on politics, a new report from consumer research firm Iconoculture says that Gen Y is also part of the unraveling. more info

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain
Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls. more info

'Click Here to Save Darfur'
Facebook is one of many new Web tools that have wrought a sea change in how activism is carried out online, spurring millions of Internet users not only to pledge online support for causes, but to take action in the real world. The age when organizers can drum up support by sending an e-mail blast is giving way to a new era of online activism, where Web organizers employ social networking groups to mobilize protesters and use media-sharing sites to promote relevant articles, images, and ideas. more info

 
interesting articles - general

Report: Fast-Casual Chains Poised To Show Most Growth
What’s coming up for restaurant industry trends? Think more "organic" offerings, more social responsibility, more ethnically diverse offerings and a growth in fast-casual restaurant chains, according to new research from restaurant consultancy Technomic. more info

Ben 10 Turns 15 As Cartoon Network Fave Targets Tweens
Brandweek
February 4, 2008

Parents may think their kids grow up too quickly, but in the case of Ben 10, it’s true. Cartoon Network is aging Ben, the lead character in the animated Ben 10 series, by five years to open the door for more marketing opportunities.

When the new show, Ben 10: Alien Force, premiers this spring, Ben will be 15 years old. The 10 in his name refers to the number of new aliens Ben can transform into when using the “Omnitrix.”

With Ben now an adolescent, merchandising can now include remote control vehicles, electronics and other categories, which wouldn’t have made sense tying in with a tween character.

Colleen Sherfey, senior director-marketing at Bandai America, Cypress, Calif., welcomes the new themes that will involve the now teenage Ben: “When a theme changes, it allows for more product, especially those that are aspirational or create a feeling of empowerment, which is key for us as a toy company.” Bandai also has created more role-playing toys and play sets.

The Alien Force packaging, targeting kids 6 to 11, will be changed to reflect the look of the older Ben. It will hit retail shelves in August.

Bandai will support the Alien Force product launch with fourth quarter TV and print advertising. The TV spots will run during children’s programming on network and cable. Dentsu, Santa Monica, Calif., handles the advertising. Bandai spent $3.4 million advertising Ben 10 products between January and November 2007, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

This is one of the first times a show at the height of its popularity is aging its lead character. Nickelodeon aged Rugrats characters in a spin-off called All Grown Up, but the original show had already been on the air for more than 10 years.

Some observers applaud the aging up strategy. “On the surface, it sounds like a good idea. I will bet the consumer and TV audience will be happy,” said licensing expert Gary Caplan of Gary Caplan, Inc., Los Angeles. “The only negative that I can think of is that there might be licensees, other than Bandai, that will be stuck with old packaging and will have to invest and come up with all new packaging.” He added that the new character, packaging and product will likely increase sales.

Cartoon Network doesn’t see a risk, as aging Ben allows for more complex plot lines. “It’s less about aging the character and more about being proactive and moving the story forward,” said Beth Goss, vp, Cartoon Network ad sales, marketing and enterprises, New York. Making Ben a teenager “enables him to have more intelligence about his powers. Age 10 was limiting.”

Back to top


ConAgra Egg Substitute Beats a Path to Gen Yers
Brandweek
February 17, 2008

ConAgra’s Egg Beaters created the “egg substitute” category in 1972 by eliminating the cholesterol found in yolks, but now for the first time it’s putting the yolk back, at least some of it.

The company next month will launch Egg Beaters with Yolk, which is billed as having a “touch of real yolk” to enhance the taste.

The idea is to lure younger consumers who are looking for a healthy substitute for eggs. The line had previously skewed to older consumers, but Reggie Moore, ConAgra’s director of refrigerated marketing, said he sees an opportunity: “Consumer needs have evolved and consumers in their 20s through baby boomer years are looking for better-for-you alternatives.”

The product contains only 1.5 grams of fat, 50 mg of cholesterol and 40 calories. Prices range between $2.99 and $4.99.

As part of the push, ConAgra is rolling out its first TV ads for the brand in more than two years. The spots, via Nitro Group, New York, tout the message, “The real thing. Only better,” which addresses what Moore said is the brand’s biggest misconception – that it isn’t made with real eggs.

The spot, which begins airing Feb. 25, shows a stockboy placing Egg Beaters with Yolk on shelves and, when he turns away, the products disappear. He then sees a bunch of chickens rapidly pushing a shopping cart filled with the items out of the store. Voiceover: “These mother hens think new Egg Beaters with Yolk are real eggs, but just like all Egg Beaters, they are.”

Gary Stibel, founder and CEO, New England Consulting Group, Westport, Conn., said the product will likely be a hit: “ConAgra is offering an opportunity to those consumers who want to eat healthier but do not want to make a taste trade-off.”

ConAgra wouldn’t disclose its spend for the effort, but Moore said the company is making a “significant investment” in the brand. ConAgra spent $17.8 million in measured U.S. media between January and November 2007, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

For the 52 weeks ended Jan. 27, Egg Beaters recorded sales of $121.4 million, up 4.45% from the prior-year period, per IRI.

Back to top


College Students Demand 'Organic' Fare
Marketers Scramble to Deliver, but Many Coeds Misunderstand Phrase
Ad Age
February 18, 2008

If a meal of heritage turkey breast, roasted root vegetables and organic milk sounds like dorm food, you must be a member of Generation Y. University grub has come a long way from sloppy Joes and french fries.

College students, increasingly concerned about the source and quality of food they're eating, are demanding that schools purchase regional produce. That's forced major food-service companies to scramble for grass-roots alternatives – and allowed some nimble regional rivals with good local connections to elbow their way into the $5 billion on-campus-dining market.

"There are so many organizations and different groups that have a cause," said Christy Cook, sustainability coordinator-Southeast region at Sodexho, a $7.3 billion company that also services health-care, government and corporate institutions. "One of the biggest trends I've seen is people are looking for more locally sourced produce, supporting the community and the farmers."

The catch, though, is while students are demanding organic and local fare, they aren't always sure what that means – or how it tastes.

Different ideas
Some, Ms. Cook said, think local means within 10 miles or inside the city, while others think it means within 150 miles. Many of these students, she said, also like to have bananas and strawberries for breakfast – all year long.

"You have to balance idealism and reality," she said, adding that education is critical. Ms. Cook often brings local farmers to talk to the school and sometimes arranges trips to local farms.

Jamie Moore, director-sourcing and sustainability at Eat'n Park Hospitality Group, said his college business has grown about 30% to 43 schools in the past six years. Mr. Moore attributes that to the launch of FarmSource, a pledge to source produce from within 125 miles. He added that each of his new accounts was taken from a major supplier: Sodexho, Aramark or Bon Appetit.

This year Sodexho has rolled out a platform of its own, PlanIt. The first step was a comprehensive sustainability-education program for management and clients. The program will also include a database of sustainable, local and organic products.

Spoiled? No, it's organic
Milk has certainly been a problem for Sodexho and many other suppliers. When the company, responding to a student movement, found a local supplier for client Denison University in Ohio, the new product didn't meet expectations.

"The students noticed that the flavors were different," said Ronnie Hinz, director-administrative services at Denison. "Some of the students at first said, 'I don't like this milk.'" Eventually the students adjusted.

Ms. Cook said Sodexho experienced problems with organic milk at a Florida school. Onion grass was in season and apparently was giving the product a greenish color and the flavor of onions.

Free-range meats present their own difficulties. Sodexho client Menlo College served heritage turkeys to its students. Heritage turkeys are so called because they belong to breeds older than the broad-breasted white, which usually graces the Thanksgiving table. Heritage turkeys take twice as long to grow, cost upward of $60 per bird, and have a gamier flavor and more sinewy texture.

"Students came back and said, 'There's something wrong with this meat; it tastes like it's spoiled,'" Ms. Cook said. Chefs explained that it was a different kind of turkey, but students asked why it couldn't be prepared in a manner more familiar to them.

The response from their chefs, she said, was "'Why would we do that? "We're offering premium product at a great opportunity to try something a lot of people want to learn about. We don't want to turn it into a butterball.'"

Back to top


Study: Youths More at Ease with Online Shopping
USA Today
February 14, 2008

Convenience and bargain-hunting tend to drive younger Americans to online shopping, while all adults share concerns about security and other drawbacks, a new study finds.

According to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 62% of Web users under age 30 consider the Internet to best place to find good deals, while only 32% of users age 65 and older do.

Likewise, younger Internet users are far more likely to find online shopping convenient.

John Horrigan, the study's author, attributed the generational gap to the force of habits.

"Older Americans have for a long time been doing shopping the old-fashioned way," Horrigan said. "They've adopted subtle patterns of shopping that are sensible to them and therefore fairly convenient for them. Younger folks never had to learn those tricks like getting to the mall early to avoid crowds or knowing when the sales are."

The generational gap is less pronounced when it comes to giving credit and other personal information online. Seventy-one percent of younger users do not like doing so, almost as high as the 82% of older users.

And older users were only slightly more likely – 34% vs. 24% – to find online shopping complicated.

The telephone-based study of 1,684 Internet users, conducted Aug. 3 to Sept. 5, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Back to top


Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up
Annoyed with the Ad Deluge on Social Networks, Many Users Are Spending Less Time on the Sites
BusinessWeek
February 7, 2008

If you want to socialize with Chris Heritage, you won't find him on Facebook. The 27-year-old Port St. Lucie (Fla.) business analyst joined the social network last year after his buddies bugged him to get an account. But he soon became fed up with the avalanche of ads, especially those detailing what his friends were buying, and he quit the site in November. Now, Heritage expresses himself through a blog, happy to pay $6 a month to publish on a promo-free Web site. "It's worth it to not have to look at the ads," he says.

Uh-oh. Social networking was supposed to be the Next Big Thing on the Internet. MySpace, Facebook, and other sites have been attracting millions of new users, building sprawling sites that companies are banking on to trigger an online advertising boom. Trouble is, the boom isn't booming anymore. Like Heritage, many people are spending less time on social networking sites or signing off altogether.

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore. MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December, ComScore says. The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that's down sharply from past growth rates. "What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising," says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.

WISHFUL THINKING?
Advertising on social networking sites is growing fast. Last year global ad spending on these sites shot up 155%, to $1.2 billion, says researcher eMarketer. This year, eMarketer expects it to jump 75%, to $2.1 billion. During its Nov. 4 earnings call, News Corp. gave an upbeat forecast for Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace.

But the forecasts for torrid growth may prove unrealistic. Besides the slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be growing less responsive to ads, according to several advertisers and online placement firms. If advertisers can't figure out how to reverse these trends, social networking could end up as a niche market in the online ad world, smashing hopes and valuations across Silicon Valley.

The current strength in advertising on social networks may be exaggerated by guaranteed ad deals and hopeful experimentation. Google and Microsoft, in hot competition with each other, promised a number of sites a minimum amount of advertising revenue in exchange for the exclusive right to place ads on those sites.

But the early results from those deals are mixed. On Jan. 31, Google said it didn't generate as much revenue from social networking ads as expected. Google, which has a $900 million guaranteed deal with MySpace for placing ads alongside search results, says existing ad approaches aren't working well on social networks so far. "I don't think we have the killer, best way to advertise and monetize social networks yet," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

When News Corp. reported its earnings, it said revenues for Fox Interactive Media surged 87%, to $233 million. But $62 million of that came from Google's guaranteed deal with MySpace. It's unclear whether Google, which ad experts believe is losing money on the deal, will sign similar agreements in the future.

Another big slug of ad revenue is coming from companies experimenting with social networks because they are such a popular new medium. But for some, the results have not been encouraging. Many of the people who hang out on MySpace, Facebook, and other sites pay little to no attention to the ads because they're more interested in kibitzing with their friends.

Social networks have some of the lowest response rates on the Web, advertisers and ad placement firms say. Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them, compared with 20 in 10,000 across the Web. Mark Seremet, president of video game publisher Green Screen, stopped advertising on MySpace last spring because of a 13-in-10,000 response rate. "It's really hard to make money on that anemic click-through rate," says Seremet.

MySpace and Facebook recognize the issue but say increased targeting and other innovations will spur users to pay more attention. Last fall, both rolled out programs allowing marketers to pitch products to people in hundreds of categories of interest, such as fashion and sports. News Corp. President Peter Chernin said on Feb. 4 that response rates on MySpace improved as much as 300%. Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer at Facebook, says there will be more experimentation in the future. "There's so much innovation that needs to happen," he says.

But there's a catch-22: More aggressive ad programs can lead to more frustrated users. Ryan Lake, 34, just left MySpace because of the ads. "There are so many, and they are getting more and more obtrusive," he says.

Facebook, the second-largest social networking site, which continues to grow rapidly, introduced an ad program in November, called Beacon, that alerted users to the purchases of friends in hopes of spurring sales. More than 75,000 Facebook members signed an online petition against the effort. Carol Kruse, Coca-Cola's vice-president for global interactive marketing, says that while she thinks social networks present a big opportunity, Coke is avoiding Beacon for now.

MySpace has had complaints, too. Nina Pagani, a 20-year-old New York student, grew furious last year when MySpace began automatically posting on users' home pages notifications of friends' favorite products. "Your personal MySpace page became an advertisement," she says. Pagani, a five-year MySpace member, deleted her account in December. "It caused too much drama in my life," she says.

Back to top


Gen Y Unravels Global Branding Efforts, But Apple, Nike Triumph
February 12, 2008
Marketing Daily

While it would be easy to blame the world's increasingly negative view of America and its brands on politics, a new report from consumer research firm Iconoculture says that Gen Y is also part of the unraveling.

"It's true that 'Brand America' – brands seen around the world as primarily American – have been devalued and tarnished by world events," says Jeff Yang, vice president/global view consumer strategist of the Minneapolis-based firm. "But it's also true that the entire idea of nation brands is starting to fall apart." For one thing, he says, consumers around the world are less inclined to believe any 'Made in ____' label. "Chrysler might be an American brand, but it's got a German owner, and the car you buy may well have been built in Canada or Mexico."

But another big issue is that younger consumers – especially Gen Y, with its passion for cheap airfares to any place off the beaten path – "are increasingly cosmopolitan. These are consumers who embrace products because they are unfamiliar, not because they are familiar."

In its survey, based on cultural "fluents" in 17 world markets, Iconoculture identified a few brands that had become "nowhere" brands – so universal that most consumers don't perceive them as having a national identity. Coca-Cola, of course, falls in this category, Yang tells Marketing Daily. "But so does Visa International, and consumers really do believe 'It's everywhere you want to be'."

In addition, the report isolated five brands – Apple, Disney, Harley Davidson, Nike and Starbucks – that have bucked the trend, and are somehow seen as brands that exist on an entirely different global plain, appealing to core values that transcend national identity. "Apple has come to stand for self-expression, for example," Yang says. "Nike has come to mean the ultimate in status, in achievement, and in victory. Harley Davidson is about rebellion."

"People know these brands are American," he says, "but even in cultures that are extremely anti-American, these brands seem to be almost Teflon, vaccinating themselves against negative attitudes toward America."

Back to top


Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain
New York Times
February 21, 2008

The prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination – pasty, geeky, male – has failed to live up to his reputation.

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet Sodevious.net, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts – entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek, the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which are posted every Sunday on Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys...” Her voice trailed off to laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years – a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators – but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing software and a desire to invent new technology.

Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said.

Boys, she added, are generally taught “to engage in ways that aren’t confessional, that aren’t emotional.”

Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality.

“With young women it’s much more about expressing yourself to others in the way that wearing certain clothes to school does,” said John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center. “It ties into identity expression in the real world.”

That desire is never so evident as when girls criticize online copycats who essentially steal their Web page backgrounds and graphics by hotlinking (linking to someone else’s image so it appears on one’s own Web page). Aside from depleting bandwidth, it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl, Professor Palfrey said.

No wonder that girls post aggressive warnings on their sites such as “Do not jock, copy, steal, or redistribute any of my stuff!” or, more to the point: “hotlink and die.”

While creating content enables girls to experiment with how they want to present themselves to the world, they are obviously interested in maintaining and forging relationships.

When Lauren Renner, 16, was in fifth grade, she and a friend, Sarada Cleary, now 14, both of Oceanside, Calif., began writing about their lives on Agirlsworld.com, an interactive e-zine with articles written for and by girls.

“Girls from everywhere would read it and would ask questions about what they should do with a problem,” Lauren said. “I think girls like to help with other people’s problems or questions, kind of, like, motherly, to everybody.”

Today Lauren and Sarada are among more than 1,000 girls who regularly submit content to Agirlsworld. They make a few extra dollars writing online articles and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

“At school there’s just a certain type of people,” Sarada said. “They’re just local. Online you get to experience their culture through them.”

The one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture – skateboarders, snowboarders – to demonstrate their athleticism, he said.

Zach Saltzman, 17, of Memphis, said content creation among his circle of male friends includes having a Facebook profile and posting videos of lacrosse games and original short films on YouTube.

“I actually really never thought about doing my own Web site,” said Zach after returning from an SAT class.

He hasn’t posted a video himself and doesn’t have a blog because, as he put it, “it really never interested me and I don’t have time to keep up with it.”

Zach does, however, have a Facebook profile where he uploads digital photographs.

“It’s really the only way I keep my pictures organized because I don’t make photo albums and stuff like that,” he said.

Asked whether the findings of the Pew study seemed accurate to him, he said: “That’s what I see happening. The girls are much more into putting something up and getting responses.”

Back to top


'Click Here to Save Darfur'
Generation Facebook is using the Net not only to pledge online support for causes, but to take action in the real world
BusinessWeek
February 14, 2008

When student Brandon Sabbag first learned of the genocide in Sudan he did what many of his peers have done. He logged on to social network Facebook, decried the human rights catastrophe in a public blog, and bought a Save Darfur T-shirt. Well-intentioned as they were, the moves may not have counted for much on a World Wide Web where donning a virtual ribbon or joining a cause is as easy as posting last night's party pictures.

But Sabbag didn't stop there. The 21-year-old followed his online missive with an offline meeting at Gordon College, the Wenham (Mass.) Christian university he attends. Then he hosted another one. Within a year, Sabbag was helping organize benefit concerts and several thousand-person-strong protests urging divestment in companies thought to be indirectly funding Sudan's civil war. "It spawned from joining Facebook groups and posting things," says Sabbag of his activism. "Facebook is the platform that allows us to make social change and realistic things happen."

Facebook is but one of many new Web tools that have wrought a sea change in how activism is carried out online, spurring millions of Internet users not only to pledge online support for causes, but to take action in the real world. The age when organizers can drum up support by sending an e-mail blast is giving way to a new era of online activism, where Web organizers employ social networking groups to mobilize protesters and use media-sharing sites to promote relevant articles, images, and ideas. They are tapping into vast streams of small donor funds through "widgets," small shareable programs easily embedded in Web pages. And they are using new Internet telephone technologies and Web sites to help people contact a senator with a mouse click. "We go beyond signing up on an online petition," says Mark Hanis, executive director of the Genocide Intervention Network. "The Web is very much the gateway into taking substantive action."

From Small Widgets to Big Turnouts
Evidence of the success of online organizing graces headlines daily amid the neck-and-neck face for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) both are using social networks like News Corp.'s MySpace and media-sharing tools such as Google's YouTube to get out the vote.

But the impact of activism 2.0 is felt far beyond the 2008 Presidential election, raising awareness of far-flung causes, including conflict in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and an estimated 2.5 million people have been displaced since 2003, according to published reports. "Human rights has really become a huge political platform now," says David Ross, a 21-year-old Minnesota resident who helped raise more than $2,000 for antigenocide groups through "Causes," a Facebook widget created by Project Agape to enable nonprofits to easily promote their platforms, garner support, and collect donations on the social network. "There must be hundreds of groups dedicated to human rights on Facebook," says Ross.

On Feb. 4 an estimated 5 million people poured into streets in Colombia and more than 100 other major cities outside the country to protest the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, a Communist guerrilla group opposed to Colombia's government. The massive march stemmed from a Facebook group, "One million voices against the FARC," which grabbed headlines after hundreds of thousands signed up online to protest the FARC's alleged involvement in thousands of kidnappings, murders, and the drug trade.

PayPal Gave Online Donations a Boost
Another tool online activists are using is Google Maps. Groups have created programs using the popular service that show everything from the eventual impact of global warming on Britain to the numbers of military casualties in a given country.

The effectiveness of Web organizing can also be measured in dollars. In 2006, online giving surged 51%, to nearly $6.9 billion, from a year earlier, according to ePhilanthropy, a nonprofit foundation that helps other nonprofits raise money online. The organization expects another increase in 2007 but won't have figures until later this year.

In 2007, the year eBay's online payment service PayPal created its "donate now" feature, more than 42,000 people downloaded the button, which makes it easier to contribute money to charitable causes. The feature helped fuel a greater than 40% annual increase in payments to nonprofits, according to PayPal's data.

The increase in online fund-raising is, in part, fueled by new donors. Organizations can now reach smaller givers who previously would have been considered too expensive to court due to the high cost of mass mailings. Some are simply more inclined to give because of the convenience of the Web. "It is much easier and accessible to make a donation online," says Ajaz Ahmed, a 30-year-old media executive from London who donated more than $6,000 through Causes to aid Africa. His recent blitz of giving, which included $2,000 to help eradicate malaria on the continent, was the first time he had become involved. "I think the Internet will play a huge role in solving a lot of these issues," he says.

The Significance of Action Beyond the Web
There are also potential drawbacks to new Web forms of organizing. The tools help online organizers tap new sources of funding, but they increase the threshold for what is required to be taken seriously. Since anyone can advocate a cause on a Web page, sign an online petition, or forward a form e-mail to a senator with a mere click of a button, those actions have begun to carry less weight with those in political power, say advocates. As a result, organizers have to ensure that the large numbers they grab online do more than the minimum in order to truly count. Moreover, they have to make sure that those who take action send a clear, unified message to political officials, rather than a cacophony of discordant views. "It's easier to build the movement, it is a little harder to organize the movement," says Sarosh Syed, director of online communications for SaveDarfur.

Still, new social tools are making it much easier for the average person to go beyond adding a name to an e-mail list. More than 4,000 of SaveDarfur's 800,000 Facebook members, for example, wrote personal e-mails to local representatives in a matter of hours after the group sent an appeal to its group list on Causes. At least 11,000 people called their senators last year urging action against genocide thanks to a 1-800-Genocide Web site and accompanying hotline that uses Internet-calling technology to automatically place a call to a legislator, says Genocide Intervention's Hanis. More than 39 senators took additional action on genocide following the campaign, says Hanis.

And where an organizer can't use Web tools to rally constituents, a close friend can. The nature of social networks themselves lets activists harness peer pressure, says Joe Green, co-founder of Project Agape, the company behind the Causes application, which has 11 million users on Facebook alone. It's harder to turn a deaf ear when a big portion of a person's peer group is not only affiliated with a cause but showing up for an early morning rally or coughing up cash for it. "It allows you to apply social pressure," says Green. "There is this power locked into everyone's social network."

Back to top


Report: Fast-Casual Chains Poised To Show Most Growth
Marketing Daily
February 19, 2008

What’s coming up for restaurant industry trends? Think more "organic" offerings, more social responsibility, more ethnically diverse offerings and a growth in fast-casual restaurant chains, according to new research from restaurant consultancy Technomic. The company's report of the top 100 emerging chains – generally local or regional chains with annual sales between $2 million and $50 million – determined that the fast-casual segment looks to be the one poised for the most growth, Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic Information Services, tells Marketing Daily. (The fast-casual chains straddle the line between fast-food and a full-service sit-down meal.)

With their perception of higher-quality and fresher offerings, the fast-casual chains are appealing to consumers who believe they're getting at least a somewhat healthier offering, Tristano says. "There's quite a few fast-casual [chains] on the rise," he says. "They're experiencing three to four times the growth of the quick-service chains."

In the quick-service segment, regional coffee and frozen dessert chains are on the rise, with an ability to better cater to local tastes than the national chains, Tristano says. Also, there has been an influx of international "concepts" in regional markets, particularly those built around Asian, Latin American and Mexican menus, he says.

"There's a number of successful international [-themed] restaurant chains," Tristano says, adding that this trend will continue as people seek more authentic ethnic foods from more diverse cultures.

While many of these regional chains that are proving successful have a very strong brand loyalty, many have trouble expanding beyond their home regions, Tristano says. But that doesn't stop the bigger chains from adapting their concepts on a more national scale.

"We started to see the growth of smaller salad-oriented chains [a few years ago], and now look where McDonald's is," he says. "What happens is [the big chains] are not looking to acquire the fresh concept, but they are looking to adapt those concepts into their brands."

Back to top