'iCarly' star to record (Miranda Cosgrove has signed a deal with Columbia Records. Plus Disney Radio launches a mobile site to reach tweens) (press release) (MediaPost, reg. required)

- 'Baby fight club' (Channel 4 doc about kids' ultimate fighting) (via MTV Sticky)

- 'Gossip Girl's' genius (New York Magazine on how "Gossip Girl" is a new kind of hit. Problem is the network needs it to still be an old kind of hit. We'll find out if not being able to watch online helps or hurts ratings)

- Remember Corey? (the Australian MySpace party boy? He landed a role on "Big Brother" Down Under) (Daily Telegraph)

- Edelman goes Hollywood (yes, the PR firm, launches a competition to identify young filmmaking talent) (USA Today)

- Reaching young Latinos (means understanding "bi-dentity" -- brands that do? McDonald's, Pepsi, Univision and Rocawear) (BrandWeek)

- The Fashion-Y Blog (run by teen blogger Kori Perten, who was profiled in the Boston Globe Plus new research says "teenage girls who dress in their culture's traditional clothing may fare better mentally and emotionally than their peers who try to assimilate.") (Reuters)

- Volunteer vacations (teens traveling the world to do "good") (Washington Post, reg. required)

- What young Catholics want... (from the Pope) (Newsweek)

- MTV investigates (the Emo attacks in Mexico - with video interviews)

P.S. Thanks to the media broadcasting the cheerleader beatdown everywhere, we now have the first "copycat" case. (Jezebel)

Posted by anastasia

'MTV's Baby Woodwards' (The New York Observer on the teens behind MTV's new reality series "The Paper," which I can't wait to watch. Plus MTV attempting to reclaim its music roots with an "I Want My Music On MTV" contest? And the competition heats up online - Pitchfork.tv joins Videoogum in the indie music online video space)

- 'HSM 4' will happen (most likely without the original "High School Musical" cast "in tact") (MediaPost, reg. required)

- Gossip blogger/music tastemaker Perez Hilton (will get his own twice daily radio show on 'C' Entertainment)

- Do they still have the 'right stuff' (New Kids [who are all pushing 40] release a new single) (Idolator)

- Surrge (an iTunes for populists, according to Iconoculture)

- GoFish adds FactMonster (popular homework destination to its tween/teen ad network)

- MySpace launches (MySpace Latino....do Latino youth need or want a bilingual version...or will it be more popular with their parents?)

- GrindTV (launches an action sports channel on Yahoo!) (MediaWeek)

- Emoodicons (kinda like emoticons meets the mood ring. The price seems too high for teens but you never know...)

P.S. Newsletter readers: Check out yesterday's Ypulse Guest Posts on Facebook chat and Dove's "Fresh Takes."

Posted by anastasia

Casual games galore (Nick launches over 600 new games. Wow. We are planning a pre-conference on casual gaming for tweens and teens at the Ypulse 2008 National Mashup. Feel free to pitch me speaker recommendations for this...Plus Marvel's Ironman and Wolverine to be adapted for tween boys on Nicktoons) (New York Times, reg. required) (USA Today)

- Radio Disney (to be measured by Arbitron. Plus Miley changes her name) (Associated Press)

- Just Kid (launches a kids marketing newsletter) (.pdf)

- YouTube Awards (online now. Plus Heavy.com launches an ad network for its trove of sites for young men) (MediaPost, reg. required)

- Facebook bans homeschooled teens (And you can now do math while you exercise) (FOX News) (Ocala.com)

- 'Miss Guided' (I'm excited for this new series...who's your favorite TV high school guidance counselor? I loved "Jeff Rosso" from "Freaks & Geeks" as well as Tami Taylor on "FNL") (Media Life Magazine)

- Party like it's 1999 (new teen flick "Remember the Daze")

- UrbanGirlz (for teen girls of color. Plus what's new at Today's Teen Online)

Posted by anastasia

KOL is back (with partners like the tween girl avatar site Girlsense and National Geographic Kids. Plus Disney launches Disney Online Studios to produce more games/virtual worlds. And Kidzui -- a new "walled garden" approach for kids) (Forbes)

- Kids can now workout with Wii (Nintendo formalizes the Wii as a workout tool with the new Wii Fit) (USA Today)

- Retouching kids' school photos (disconcerting trend) (Newsweek)

- YouIntern (kind of like a RateMyTeachers for internships or really more reminiscent of The Vault)

- 18in08 on CSPAN (Ypulse College Mashup speaker David Burstein interviewed on the youth vote. Plus Obamaeton - supporters create a Reggaeton Obama song/video)

- Bmore youth tabloid (a new daily launched by the Baltimore Sun called "b" will also have a website called bthesite....Sounds like they should read this article on what newspapers can learn from Skyrock) (San Antonio Business Journal)

- The ACLU (defending our right to free speech, even if it's speech some disagree with - they've taken on the case of a high school student who wanted to wear her anti-gay T) (The Bloomington Pantagraph)

- First project for the new Brooklyn high school (for advertising/marketing...have the kids redesign the website.)

- Teens will be teens (Valleywag on how teens are using Gaia's VJ feature to collectively watch porn)

- Risky wrestling (teens who watch wrestling take more health risks...kind of like teens who watch MTV's Jackass....) (Reuters)

- My So-Called 'quarterlife' (Marshall Herskovitz writes about how the series came about...and is interviewed by NewTeeVee - Sidenote: I just rewatched My So-Called Life after watching Freaks & Geeks, and have to say, way more into Freaks & Geeks. The parents on MSCL really bug me)

- More Smurfy goodness (NPR on the resurrection of the Smurfs)

P.S. Apologies for website weirdness with comments and search. We just upgraded to Movable Type 4.1 and it has been so not fun.

Posted by anastasia

MySpace Generation Fed Up? (Time on social networking sites is dropping and the ad clickthroughs are not good...) (BusinessWeek)

- The college filesharing legislation I mentioned yesterday (passed the House. For a very in-depth look at campus/illegal downloading issues, check out this article. And if you're a college radio fan, check out former Ypulse contributing editor Jennifer Waits' new blog Spinning Indie) (ArsTechnica) (Campus Technology)

- Speaking of radio (The New York Observer profiles Alison Stewart, host of NPR's youth oriented Bryant Park Project)

- The state of hip hop (Pop Matters finds some good in the current sales slump, i.e. the kids want smarter, better hip hop. Plus Jay-Z joins Steve Stout to form a multi-cultural ad agency called Translation) (New York Times, reg. required)

- SPIN launches on MySpace (and attempts to make the internet look like a print magazine)

- Norman no more (Christina Norman leaves MTV and MTV shifts its focus to games) (L.A.Times, reg. required) (BusinessWeek)

- Kids Choice nominees (think Jamie Lynn will win? Kids TV showing more Asian characters, plus the rest of this weeks Younger Viewers ratings.) (USA Today) (Media Life Magazine)

- The CW parts ways... (with wrestling) (Variety)

- 'Juno' (the game? um, ok. "American Idol" the Disney attraction? Sigh. Girls Gone Wild the magazine? Barf. Paris Hilton doll? Bigger barf.) (Joystiq) (Reuters) (AdAge.com, reg. required) (Digital Spy)

- The Vera Project (all ages music/art space. Being a former teen punk myself, it warms my heart to see all ages shows still happening) (via WireTap)

P.S. This doc looks pretty good.

P.P.S. Molly Ringwald turned 40 this week. Feel old yet?

P.P.P.S. Chicago Sun Times article on Sweet & Sassy I was quoted in.

Posted by anastasia

So I've been thinking a lot about how to expand Ypulse content beyond just text (which we are expanding - look for an announcement this week). I've toyed with the idea of some sort of video podcast like The Giga Om Show, but I have mixed feelings about both being on camera regularly and letting someone else host this sort of show. What I have realized doing publicity for Totally Wired, is that I LOVE call-in radio. I've always been an NPR junkie and a talk radio fan, but having been able to take people's calls on KQED's Forum, MPR's MidMorning and KPCC's Patt Morrison Show (yesterday), I am very interested in figuring out how to do a Ypulse call-in show expanding the conversation about teens, media and marketing. So if anyone out there works with Sirius or XM, get in touch!

P.S. This is the last thing I'll post about ME today, but since I still get consulting requests, I just wanted to let readers know that while I don't do consulting, I DO do paid speaking and can create a 90 minute preso for your company (I'm heading to Orlando tomorrow to present to a very large internet company at their meeting). If you're interested in having me speak, just email Ken Eisenstein at the American Program Bureau.

Posted by anastasia

Doritos 'Does Something' (AdAge.com, reg. required, on the cheesy chip maker's partnership with Do Something. In addition to funding, they are evidently providing consulting: Doritos, she said [Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something], counseled the group to instead aim for "authentic" instead of "cool...That was such a fabulous learning for us.")

- California youth stop Rockstar 21 (the energy/booze combo. Plus energy drinks for tots? Ick.) (press release) (PSFK)

- Beinggirl.com donates product (i.e. tampons/pads to girls in Africa. Full disclosure: Beinggirl.com sponsored my book tour) (press release)

- Radio silence (new survey of youth 12-24: "73 percent said they mostly listen to music through sources other than broadcast radio, including homemade CDs, iPods and online streaming.") (Washington Business Journal)

- Tide wants college students to stay dirty (pushes their new "Swash" product with pop-up store at Ohio State. This will probably do better than the Tide webisodes) (AdAge.com, reg. required)

- Teen hugging (as a metaphor for work life balance - thanks Andrea!) (Fast Company)

- Chess Queens (the next event from the Hip Hop Chess Federation is looking for sponsors - for anyone trying to reach urban girls, this is a great opp.)

- Thrasher Funds (Investing for Gen Y - this seems like it's trying very hard) (Gothamist)

- LGBT youth have come a long way... (since 1989. Interesting article in the Boston Globe about coming out as a high school student today)

Posted by anastasia

Double Dutch mag (an online publication for urban teen girls -- I love the "Double Dutch Bus" song, so I've hit the site a few times just for fun today already)

- More high schools using breathalyzers (as a way to crack down on teen drinking...at the same time some have dared to ask whether we should lower the drinking age a la the European model?) (USA Today) (ABC News)

- CNET discovers there is marketing... (in kids' virtual worlds. Check out my post for parents on this over at Totally Wired)

- YALSA interview (Shaping Youth has a nice interview with YALSA president Paula Brehm-Heeger about how YA librarians are leading the charge in reaching teens with technology to get them to read books)

- Machinima picks (from the BBC. Great roundup of sites to familiarize yourself with this hybrid game/video genre)

- 'Digital Korea' (Textually.org has a nice round up of stats on Korean cell phone use like "South Korean youth replace cell phones every 11 months")

- The Bryant Park Project (Ypulse advertiser Trend Central on NPR's latest effort to reach a younger demographic)

- Thirteen Reasons Why (check out the interactive map where you can listen to audio in each location on this innovative YA book site)

- MyEmmy (MySpace's student Emmy site -- submissions due November 1 - thanks Paul!)

P.S. Check out my takeaways for parents from the recent Pew data on stranger danger over at Totally Wired.

P.P.S. Could these guys have started the hugging trend?

Posted by anastasia

Stay gold... (S. E. Hinton. Nice essay about "The Outsiders" place in the history of YA fiction 40 years later) (New York Times, reg. required)

- Just in case you're living under a rock alert (the new Halo goes on sale tomorrow. And virtual worlds are big. Really, really big with teens) (News.com) (eMarketer)

- What 'we' can learn from the Jena 6 ('we' meaning marketers...amazing blog post from 2007 Mashup speaker Karl Carter) (AdAge.com, reg. required)

- Stayteen (can I just say, I love this campaign from the National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy?)

- New 'Above the Influence' ads (aimed at urban youth and making the link between being high and having it recorded on someone's camera phone. Plus new stats on Hispanic youth drug use)

- Teen idols (in the age of the internet. Plus Disney letting its characters do the Soulja Boy dance and "Give 1. Get 1" the new One Laptop Per Child campaign) (all from the New York Times, reg. required)

- Let's go to the movies (where there are no teenagers. Movie theaters attempting to cater to adults tired of having their seats kicked) (L.A. Times, reg. required)

- Radio is not dead (at least not in the car) (Media Post, reg. required)

P.S. For those of you curious about where I'm blogging from...I'm in lovely Vancouver, BC, today getting ready to speak at Vidfest this afternoon and party with folks here tonight before flying to NYC tomorrow.

P.P.S. Check out my new posts on how technology is being embraced by professors in higher ed and texting the vote on Totally Wired.

Posted by anastasia

Zwinky Bucks (you can now use real money to buy virtual stuff in Zwinktopia) (Webware)

- Radio discovers SMS (texting into win contests is a hit with the kids) (Reuters)

- What's Different about the Ys (@ work) (BusinessWeek)

- Real 'Gossip Girls' (say the new series hits close to home) (New York Times, reg. required)

- VICE TV (feels a lot like Current except more hipster [Spike Jonze is involved and Viacom is behind it]. And, congrats to my former colleagues at Current for their big Emmy win last night. You can sign up to be a Beta tester for the relaunch of the Current site here) (Reuters)

- Is Soulja Boy (the new blueprint for the music industry?) (Reuters)

- 'The Basement' ("It's a youth-oriented church service -- part concert, part pep rally -- led by 23-year-old Matt Pitt, a self-taught evangelist who's been preaching his message of clean living, racial conciliation, and sold-out-for-God Christianity since 2004.") (Christian Science Monitor)

- How does the The CW stay hip? (by reading Ypulse...see the shout out in this Broadcasting & Cable article)

- SophiaDolls ("are realistically proportioned to represent real women’s body shapes, ranging from a size 6 to a size 16"...coming to QVC in March) (Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly)

P.S. Not sure if any of you caught this, but my CBS Early Show appearance speaking about "virtual dolls" finally aired. Of course they interviewed me for about a half hour and chose two sound bites. Gotta love TV.

Posted by anastasia