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Latest PR News – Roundup From Top Sources Around the Web
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Celebrity Millennials Flex Social Media Muscle For Money, Power
17 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Larissa Faw and originally appeared on Forbes.com.
May 17, 2012 - These days it doesn’t take years of experience and a few grey hairs to be the most powerful person in the room. Sure, Jennifer Lopez, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise, and Steven Spielberg all rank among the top 10 most powerful celebrities on Forbes Celebrity 100 List, but many of today’s power players weren’t even born when Spielberg’s E.T. or Cruise’s Top Gundebuted in movie theaters.
This year’s Forbes Top 100 Celebrity List illustrates a shift of power among celebrities. The dynamics of what it means to have power and influence — based on media visibility in print, television, and social media, as well as financial earnings — benefits a younger generation. “Young artists are fueling their rampant fans bases with always-on access via digital and social media channels. As a result, their popularity and scale is growing globally at an unprecedented rate,” says Matt Britton of Mr Youth marketing agency. “Their empires [are] quickly eclipsing older generations of celebrities whom have been at it much longer.”
Six of this year’s top 10 —Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears,Kim Kardashian, and Katy Perry — all hail from the Millennial generation or younger. In 2011, only four Millennials — Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, andLeBron James— made the top 10.
Continue reading at Forbes.com…
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Pinterest joins the billion dollar club with $100m funding from Rakuten
17 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Patricio Robles and originally appeared at Econsultancy.com.
A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.
The words made famous by the movie that dramatized Facebook’s beginnings may soon be passé in Silicon Valley, as investors clamouring to get in on funding rounds for the hottest tech startups seem increasingly willing to put their cash in at billion-dollar valuations.
Crazy? Perhaps, but Facebook’s $1bn Instagram acquisition shows that big valuations don’t exclude companies from the startup lottery, at least for the time being.
The latest entrant to the billion dollar club will be Pinterest, thanks to a $100m funding round led by Rakuten. The funding round puts a $1.5bn valuation on Pinterest.
Rakuten Ichiba is the largest e-commerce site in Japan and among the world’s largest by sales. The compaby has recently acquired Buy.com in the US, Priceminister in France, as well as Play.com.
Continue reading at Econsultancy.com…
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Thirst App Will Change The Way You View Twitter
16 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Emily Price and originally appeared at Mashable.com.
A new iPad application called Thirst might reinvent how you look at your Twitter stream. Using its own natural language processor, Thirst filters, organizes, and presents your Twitter stream in an engaging way, helping you find the tweets you want to read quickly and in context.
“I wanted to make an app that no matter how often you check Twitter, these are the things you need to see, ” Thirst Co-Founder and CEO Anuj Verma told Mashable. The app is designed so it can be useful for people who check Twitter constantly throughout the day, as well as those who might only check Twitter a few times a week.
The News tab in Thirst displays topics you’ve told Thirst you’re interested in. You can follow companies like Apple or Google, sports teams, people, or literally anything else you can think of that gets discussed on your Twitter stream.
As tweets come in, Thirst will sort them based on topic. So, if your friend Bob is talking about Facebook then his avatar will show up under your Facebook topic. If your buddy Dave is chatting about beer, then his avatar would show up under a beer section. The more people who are talking about a topic, the higher up it will appear on the screen and the larger its icon will be.
Continue reading at Mashable.com…
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‘The Dictator’: Great PR or Annoying?
16 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Rachel Dodes and originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal…
May 16, 2012 – An unusual welcome banner hung outside the entrance to New York’s Waldorf-Astoria early this week: the green-and-orange flag of Wadiya, the fictitious North African republic featured in the coming Sacha Baron Cohen comedy “The Dictator.” Mr. Baron Cohen, in character as Admiral General Shabazz Aladeen, later arrived with his security detail—several scantily clad women equipped with machine guns—to address the “devils of the Zionist media.”
“The Dictator,” which hits theaters May 16, follows the exploits of Gen. Aladeen, who gets stranded in America, incognito, after losing his signature beard. Unlike his previous films “Borat” and “Brüno,” mockumentaries that relied on the ignorance of unsuspecting dupes for humor, “The Dictator” follows a more traditional scripted narrative and boasts a cast of well-respected actors like Ben Kingsley and John C. Reilly. One possible reason: Mr. Baron Cohen’s pranks are now too well-known for Average Joes to fall prey to them.
Continue reading at WSJ.com…
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Facebook launching app center
10 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Brett Molina and originally appeared at USAToday.com.
Facebook will launch an App Center to help the 900 million users of its social network find apps more easily.
According to a post on Facebook’s Developers blog, users can access the App Center through the web or mobile devices running iOS or Android operating systems.
Apps are searchable by various categories, such as games, lifestyle and sports. Facebook says featured apps will be based on user ratings and engagement. When a user finds an app they want, the App Center directs them to Apple’s App Store or Google Play to make a purchase.
Continue reading at USAToday.com…
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Google+ Hangouts On Air: broadcast your conversation to the world
07 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Chee Chew and originally appeared at Googleblog.blogspot.com.
Last year we introduced Hangouts On Air to a limited number of broadcasters, enabling them to go live with friends and fans, for all the world to see. Since then, this small community has grown the feature in lots of creative ways. And they’ve made one thing crystal clear: when groups of passionate individuals can broadcast live, together, the results are truly remarkable:
Today we’re excited to launch Hangouts On Air to Google+ users worldwide. So if you have something to say—as an aspiring artist, a global celebrity, or a concerned citizen—you can now go live in front of a global audience. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to:
- Broadcast publicly. By checking “Enable Hangouts On Air,” you can broadcast your live hangout—from the Google+ stream, your YouTube channel or your website—to the entire world.
- See how many viewers you’ve got. During your broadcast, you can look inside the hangout to see how many people are watching live.
- Record and re-share. Once you’re off the air, we’ll upload a public recording to your YouTube channel, and to your original Google+ post. This way it’s easy to share and discuss your broadcast after it’s over.
Continue reading at Googleblog.blogspot.com…
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Tumblr Adds ‘Ads’
03 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Sonia Paul and first appeared on Mashable.com.
Tumblr finally has its first ads — except they’re not “ads,” according to Tumblr.
This new feature on Tumblr allows the growing social network to use its Radar and Spotlight features on its Dashboard to draw attention to advertisers — or “sponsors,” as Tumblr calls them. Tumblr Radar gets more than 120 million daily impressions, which Tumblr says will offer sponsors “the opportunity to gain thousands of new followers, likes and reflags.” Meanwhile, sponsors also have the opportunity to be featured “front-and-center” on Tumblr Spotlight. The Spotlight feature, curated by a team of editors, is a sample of some of the more especially creative blogs on Tumblr and is a driver of “tens of millions of follows each week for new and existing users.”
Tumblr CEO David Karp announced that sponsored posts would be coming to Tumblr at the Ad Age Digital Conference, which took place in New York earlier this month. Though Karp had vehemently been against advertising in the past — he told the Los Angeles Times in 2010, “We’re pretty against advertising. It really turns our stomachs” — he later called himself an “idiot” for making that comment.
Continue reading at Mashable.com…
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Facebook Is Urging Members to Add Organ Donor Status
01 May 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This article is courtesy of Matt Richtel and Kevin Sack, and originally appeared at NYTimes.com.
May 1, 2012 - Nearly 7,000 people in the United States die each year while waiting for an organ transplant. It is a number that Facebook hopes to lower with its vast network of 161 million members in this country.
The company announced a plan on Tuesday morning to encourage everyone on Facebook to start advertising their donor status on their pages, along with their birth dates and schools — a move that it hopes will create peer pressure to nudge more people to add their names to the rolls of registered organ donors.
It is a rare foray by Facebook into social engineering from social networking, and one with a potentially profound effect, according to experts in the field of organ donation.
They say people declaring on Facebook that they are organ donors could spur others to sign up at motor vehicle departments or online registries. But these experts say Facebook could create an informal alternative to such registries that could, even though it carries less legal weight, lead to more organ donations.
Continue reading at NYTimes.com…
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Social Media is Latest Front of Cola Wars
30 Apr 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Mike Snider and originally appeared at USAToday.com.
The cola wars are escalating on the social-media front.
With its launch today of Pepsi Pulse, a pop culture destination on Pepsi.com, the snack-food giant aims to be a major player in conversations on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites such as Pinterest.
Rival Coca-Cola is partnering with social-music site Spotify to add fizz to its own online presence. Spotify’s music-streaming player will be integrated into Coke’s 41-million strong Facebook page. Also in the works: a Coke app on Spotify’s service.
Pepsi and Coke are among a multitude of companies buying into social media’s ability to strengthen their brands. Consumers are 55% more likely to recall ads that include social-media components than non-social ads, according to a 2011 Nielsen survey. “Consumers are incredibly empowered, and what used to work to get their attention now needs a bit more thoughtfulness,” says Brian Solis, principal analyst at the Altimeter Group and author of The End of Business as Usual.
Ads in TV and print remain part of their plans, but both are looking for more interactive engagement with consumers. “The future of branding now comes down to experiences more than ever,” Solis says.
Pepsi Pulse will host a real-time top 10 pop culture ranking, and regular chances for consumers to connect with celebrities. Singer Nicki Minaj, for example, might urge fans to share pictures of their alter egos to create an online photo album, says Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages.
Continue reading at USAToday.com…
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LinkedIn Launches iPad App, Takes New Direction
26 Apr 2012 by panmedia / No Comments
This post is courtesy of Chris Taylor and originally appeared at Mashable.com.
The world’s largest professional social network just got a wider reach — and it wants to be in front of your face for more of the day.
LinkedIn launched its long-awaited iPad app late Wednesday, along with revamped versions of its iPhone andAndroid apps. Redesigned from the ground up, the tablet version looks nothing like the LinkedIn website; it’s more akin to a social news aggregator.
“This was a chance to go back to the drawing board,” says Mario Sundar, LinkedIn’s social media manager. “To design it for how people use the iPad: morning and night infotainment.”
The app’s main screen is a clean, simple interface with just three options: updates, profile and inbox. The latter two are self-explanatory, although it’s worth mentioning that the list of people who’ve looked at your profile — a voyeuristic option hidden deep on the website — is front and center here.
Continue reading at Mashable.com…
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