The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones. And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours. Of course there is still the option of just saying no.  (more…)

Apple announced today 2 billion apps have been downloaded since the company launched the app store. Over the past few months, users have downloaded more than 6 million apps a day, according to Brainstormtech. Some very popular iPhone apps that have helped reach that number are Facebook, Google Earth, and Pandora Radio.– All of them are free to download. ree apps are most popular, but Advertising PlatformAdMob estimates that 1 in 4 iPhone apps are paid for.  (more…)

When Diet Coke says “just for the taste of it,” apparently they mean business. The new Diet Coke Kitchen is something to behold. Even as a hard core Diet Coke user, I thought it might be a bit of a stretch. Still, trying to elevate Diet Coke beyond a beverage to a life style is a an interesting strategy and one that feels in tune with consumers.  Guess I’ll go tool around in the kitchen.  (Diet Coke Kitchen)

While I consider myself above twittering and twits (whoops I mean tweets), I have to stop and admire Lance Armstrong and his mastery of this tool. Lance brought traffic to a standstill Tuesday after issuing a Twitter invitation for Scottish cyclists to join him on a casual bike ride. ”Hey Glasgow, Scotland! I’m coming your way,” Armstrong wrote. “Who wants to go for a bike ride?” More than 200 rode in pouring rain when the seven-time Tour de France winner turned up in the Paisley district of Glasgow. Whether it is a clever PR move, hanging with his posse of thousands of followers, telling his side of the story without answering follow-up reporter questions or spreading the Livestrong message, Lance rules.  (more..)

Weekday mornings have long been frenetic, disjointed affairs. Now families that used to fight over the shower or the newspaper tussle over access to the lone household computer — or about whether they should be using gadgets at all, instead of communicating with one another. Arbor Networks, a Boston company that analyzes Internet use, says that Web traffic in the United States gradually declines from midnight to around 6 a.m. on the East Coast and then gets a huge morning caffeine jolt. “It’s a rocket ship that takes off at 7 a.m,” said Craig Labovitz, Arbor’s chief scientist. Akamai, which helps sites like Facebook and Amazon keep up with visitor demand, says traffic takes off even earlier, at around 6 a.m. on the East Coast. Verizon Wireless reported the number of text messages sent between 7 and 10 a.m. jumped by 50 percent in July, compared with a year earlier.  (more…)

Target is no stranger to cause marketing. The retailer is unusual in that it dedicates 5 percent of its income to charity. It’s also no stranger to social marketing, having more than 260,000 fans on Facebook. Last week, it brought the two together by kicking off “Bullseye Gives,” a campaign that invites users to choose from a list of 10 charities to which Target will donate $3 million. The social twist: After voting for a charity, users are invited to broadcast their selection to their Facebook friends via their news feeds, the running summary of updates that is central to the Facebook experience. In less than a week, Target tallied 40,000 votes, which translated into tens of thousands of peer-to-peer impressions. ”What we’ve learned is it’s not the cause but it’s the idea of a brand truly doing good that has a significant impact through social media,” said Joe Marchese, CEO of SocialVibe, a Los Angeles-based startup that runs cause-related social campaigns for brands like Kraft, Sprint and PowerBar. “When you do something good, it used to be that you had to buy a bunch of media and tell people or do PR. Now, the potential is for people to tell each other that you do good.”  (more…)

Yeah, here’s a surprise. Data from Nielsen Online, which measures Internet traffic, found that more than 60 percent of Twitter users stopped using the free social networking site a month after joining. ”Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent,” David Martin, Nielsen Online’s vice president of primary research, said in a statement.  (more…)

“The iPhone/smartphone is the new tween-teen killer app,” says Rodney Mason, CMO of the digital-branding agency Moosylvania. “It’s the remote control for the next generation, because in one single device they play games and text, do Facebook and MySpace, tweet on Twitter, surf the web, watch movies and TV shows like ‘The Office,’ and, oh yeah, occasionally listen to music and actually talk on it, which is now at the bottom of their list.” We think of phones as a communication tool, but the truth is they may be just the opposite. “A year ago, 40% of 9- to 11-year-olds had their own cells,” says George Carey, president of the consulting company Just Kid Inc. “It’s got to be 50% by now. They roll out of bed and you can’t talk to them, or get them to focus when they come home. The kids are bleary.”  (more…)

Hulu is a new website that is giving Youtube some serious competition.  It offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox and many other networks and studios. The big lesson from Hulu’s success is that supporting streamed video with advertising, rather than charging for downloads, turns out to work very well. Hulu’s ads are few and short, with a subtle countdown timer that makes them even more bearable. In some cases viewers can even choose which ad to watch, so it is more likely to be relevant to their interests. And people tend to remember the advertisements they see on Hulu much better than they recall television ads so advertisers are pleased. Plus, any company that uses Alec Baldwin as an evil alien bent on taking over the world can’t possibly go wrong.  (more…)