ATLANTIC CITIES - CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE AT CCTV HQ

• SAMUEL MEDINA
• 11:03 AM ET

OMA announced today that construction has been completed on the Central China Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing, concluding an eight-year building period that saw numerous setbacks, delays, and even a fire. The project, the firm’s largest to date, was overseen by Rem Koolhaas and former OMA partner Ole Sheeren and designed to represent a “reinvention of the skyscraper”, where the historical clamor for height is altogether ignored in favor of a ‘loop’ model of interconnected activities.

The 473,000 square-meter complex, which will open later in the year, will house offices, studios, and broadcasting and production rooms that, according to OMA, “combines the entire process of TV-making” into one central, iconic form. The tell legs of the tower lean progressively inwards as they rise in the air, before being connected by a 75-meter wide cantilever.

Commenting on the day’s event, Koolhaas stated that he was “very happy, after years of intense collaboration, that the CCTV building will soon begin to perform its role in the way it is intended.” When the competition was opened for the tower design contemporaneously with that of the World Trade Center, the architect famously directed his team to work to focus on China, citing in his so-called “Bejing Manifesto” the country’s rise as global power and the opportunity to realize an innovative that would “lead the world into a digital future.”

VIA AGENCYSPY - HAGGAR’S NEW LIFE KHAKI LINE CAMPAIGN

Part of the new-traditional masculinity trend in action. Comments and critiques of the ads have compared them to the Old Spice campaign.

BY SHARON TERLEP, SUZANNE VRANICA AND SHAYNDI RAICE

General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising with Facebook Inc. after deciding that paid ads on the site have little impact on consumers’ car purchases, according to a GM official.

The move by GM, one of the largest advertisers in the U.S., puts a spotlight on an issue that many marketers have been raising: whether ads on Facebook help them sell more products. On Friday, Facebook is expected to sell shares in an initial public offering that could put a market value on the company of as much as $104 billion.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012, by Dave Hogarty

A new iOS app (compatible with most Apple iPhone and iPad devices ) connects users to Craigslist apartment listings through their mobile device. It’s called HuntSmartly and was designed by Dushan Perera to give apartment seekers on the go a way to keep abreast of Craigslist apartment listings while dashing from one open house to the next.

CURBED - WORST REAL ESTATE LISTING IN NEW YORK

By Allie Walker on May 9, 2012

This year, more than 1 million girls in India will disappear, victims of infanticide, sex slavery, and child labor.

Last year, the same thing happened. And next year, it will happen again.

In the strongly patriarchal society of India, girls are often discriminated against and treated like 2nd class citizens, abused and neglected, or worse, forced into child labor or sold into slavery.  But, if a girl is given the opportunity to receive an education, she has a chance to become viewed as a valuable member of society–however, all too often, girls never get this chance.

One ad agency has chosen to highlight this troubling issue in a dramatic, attention-grabbing campaign, ‘The Girl Epidemic‘- comparing the issue to an ‘epidemic,’ relating young Indian girls to an infectious disease, taken from their homes so they don’t contaminate the rest of society.

The agency, StrawberryFrog, in collaboration with award-winning director and photographer, Indrani, created a PSA for the campaign, with the results so chillingly realistic in their presentation that a viewer could easily be tricked into thinking that they were ’witnessing firsthand the violent acts taken against innocent girls in India.’

The PSA, does however, end with a hopeful message–there is a cure for the epidemic.  The cure is education: educate a female child, help save her life.

Scott Goodson, Chairman of StrawberryFrog, talks about the importance of ‘The Girl Epidemic’:

Our goal with this work is to generate more money to educate young girls. Period. And we wanted to do this with the greatest weapon we have at our disposal: creativity and innovation.

The campaign was created for Project Nanhi Kali, an NGO that aims to provide underprivileged girls in India with10 years of quality education. Donate to helping an Indian girl receive an education here and watch ‘The Girl Epidemic’ PSA below:

INFOGRAPHIC CONFIRMS IT: ADVERTISING PEOPLE ARE NOT NORMAL

BY: CHRISTINE CHAMPAGNE

Data source: NYTimes.com, Amitabh Chandra, Harvard University

from The Daily Viz, via Gawker

HALF OF AMERICANS ALSO SAY THE SOCIAL NETWORK’S EXPECTED ASKING PRICE IS TOO HIGH

While Facebook has been able to decrease its reliance on sponsored content (down from 98 percent of sales in 2009), the hopes of expanding the company’s e-commerce footprint also faces public resistance, the poll showed. A majority of participants (54 percent) said they wouldn’t feel safe using the platform for financial transactions such as purchasing goods or services; only 8 percent said they would feel extremely or very safe in doing so.

The public also remains wary of Facebook’s valuation, widely bandied about as $100 billion, with just 3 percent of respondents saying they thought the company would be undervalued at such a number — half said they thought it would be overvalued (that view rises to 62 percent among active investors). Views are also split on whether or not shares of Facebook stock would make a good investment — with progressively less positive opinions for older age groups.

The youngest respondents (age 35 and under) were most likely to say Facebook would be a good investment (59 percent said yes), followed by baby boomers and Generation X-ers (55 percent and roughly 50 percent, respectively), followed by seniors (only 39 percent).

Facebook users have consistently cast a wary and suspicious eye on the platform: 59 percent of respondents said that they had little to no trust in Facebook to keep their information private. Yet despite those ongoing concerns, the number of users (and their engagement) continues to increase. Facebook has grown to 901 million monthly active users worldwide, with personal computer users spending six to seven hours per month on the site (compared to just 3 minutes for Google+ users), according to recent data from ComScore.

full articles:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47413410/

http://ap-gfkpoll.com/uncategorized/our-latest-poll-findings-2

May 14th, 2012

by Sarah Kessler

In a move that brings online dating full-circle, Match.com is launching a new service that will use its matching algorithms to fill offline events with compatible singles.

Within the next year, the company plans to host 2,000 to 3,000 events across 40 markets. The service will be named “The Stir.”

“We expect to send half a million people to events this year,” Match.com President Mandy Ginsberg tells Mashable. “I think we’ll be the biggest global events company in the world, with the exception of maybe the Olympics.”

Match will host two types of events: casual happy hours that paid subscribers can attend for free and more-involved excursions such as cooking classes or bowling nights that cost extra. The catch is that not everyone gets invited to every event. Rather, Match targets invitations based on age, gender balance and who — based on its algorithms — it thinks will hit it off.

While startup dating sites such as HowAboutWe and Grouper have carved niches within online dating by instigating interesting offline experiences, Match has until now focused more heavily on its matching algorithms, which are based on data collected throughout its 17 years of business.

A study published in February, however, questioned the effectiveness of such matchmaking algorithms, suggesting they were no more effective at predicting successful couples than meeting in person.

“Our review of the literature reveals that aspects of relationships that emerge only after two people meet and get to know each other things like communication patterns, problem-solving tendencies and sexual compatibility€” are crucial for predicting the success or failure of relationships,” wrote two of the study’s authors, Eli Finkel and Benjamin Karney, in the New York Times.

Match.com VP of Strategy and Analytics Amarnath Thombre says Match.com has never promised compatibility, but rather sets up people who are likely to hit it off based on what has worked on the past. Assessing chemistry is up to them. The Stir is set up the same way, but Match provides a venue in which singles can take the step of meeting in person.

“It’€™s not this weird pressure of going to a coffee date and sitting across from somebody,” Ginsberg says.

With 1.8 million subscribers as of February, Match can scale an offline singles event service in a way that most companies cannot. The company, which is owned by IAC, brought in $108.9 million of revenue during Q12′s first financial quarter.

The move could also help expand Match.com’s mobile presence. At The Stir’s 60 pilot events, for instance, subscribers checked-in at a bar to receive a promotion.

“We’re really going to build on top of that,” Ginsberg says. “There’s in-event interactions and post-event interactions. There’s just a lot of opportunity.”

_______________________________________________________

I’M CALLING THIS OUT AS A SCAM!

Step One: put large numbers of single people into a room.

Step Two: make the environment congenial enough, “natural” in other words, and watch the comfortable single people start talking to each other.

Remind me again why Americans stopped going to singles bars? No way around it, dating can be rough for the majority of the population and technology doesn’t seem to be making it any easier. HowAboutWe decide as a cultural movement to log off forever and just start talking to people we think are hot?

PSFK - MACY’S ADDS ONLINE JEANS SIZING FOR MEN

By Emma Hutchings on May 11, 2012

Macy’s is now letting men use its True Fit online sizing service to help find their perfect pair of jeans. Women have been able to use the fit personalization software since last fall, which uses a quick three-step process to create your profile and match you to jeans that fit your unique shape and lifestyle.

Consumers are asked questions about which brands and sizes fit them best, the shape of their lower body, their height and their weight. The recommendation engine then works out what styles and sizes are best for you, providing a five-point rating under products to show how suitable they are.

________________________________________________

Clever. This solution is not only practical for the consumer, but also sidesteps the problem of nonstandard sizing. What it can’t do, however, is overcome a customer’s misperception of fit. If the system relies on self-reporting for the product ratings, then having a large number of customers reporting badly-fitted clothing as “good” would ruin the whole system. Tricky.

from a Techcrunch article on recent developments at Foursquare, interviewing CEO Dennis Crowley:

INGRID LUNDEN

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Foursquare has tripled its numbers in the last year, going from “around five million” to more than 15 million, Crowley said.

That’s something that is impressing investors, too — with news that Spark Capital is reportedly buying up employee stock. But perhaps more interesting, he says, is that the company is starting to notice a marked change in behavior:

“People are using the app, but they’re not checking in,” he told me. “I asked myself: did we break something? But in fact, it’s because people are using Foursquare to look for where their friends are, to find things, and as a recommendation service. It’s almost like it doesn’t occur to them to check in.”

…

Foursquare seems to be more interested in behavior than the scale: “We want to change experiences,” he said. The best way to do that, Crowley added, is to use maps, access to GPS and the other sensors you have on smartphones. “We want people to use the stuff we build, and to do that you have to focus on the great things,” he said. “These are not toys; they are big defining features that are changing the tune on location services.”

That has so far taken the company to making apps for most major mobile platforms, and while some of those are seeing especially strong usage in particular markets — BlackBerry usage, he says, is highest in southeast Asia and Brazil — by far the most popular platform is iOS.

Today the New York Times reported on Amazon’s push into higher-end clothing retail. I’ll never understand how people can confidently buy clothing and shoes online. There’s so much variance in fit that it makes such purchases too risky. Even with free returns, the whole process is a huge hassle. The only way that I could currently conceive of buying this way is having made repeat purchases from a particular brand and knowing their sizing and fit very well. 

The Times even reported last year on the sizing problem and attempts to truly standardize sizing by companies such as MyBestFit and Fitlogic. Today’s article reports that Amazon is relying on extensive photography and video, along with detailed commentary about items, to advise customers. They also are going to upgrade their packaging to improve the tactile experience of receiving new goodies in the mail.

For now, generous shipping and return policies, backed by their enormous financial resources, should help to win new customers. In the future, though, a more accurate system of taking customer’s measurements, perhaps from full body scans taken at remote locations and linked to individual accounts, would facilitate clothing selection.

Such information could be used to create avatars in gaming situations, and virtual purchases of clothing items to match real-life wardrobes.

Original article here.

This is a wonderful idea. As great as a well-designed furniture showroom is, allowing customers to live with the product is a huge demonstration of confidence that the pieces hold up to extended scrutiny and hard use in a contract setting.

It’s reminiscent of the East Village Standard Hotel, formerly the Cooper Square, which was furnished by B&B Italia. That usage wasn’t a specific branding exercise for B&B, whose reputation was also a selling point for the hotel. However, it was still a clever, tasteful way for the brand to engage the customers away from potentially stressful retail environments.

PSFK reports:

By Eveliina Nieminen on May 4, 2012

Shopping for furniture can be a challenging process as items cannot be tried out in the home ahead of time. Droog, a Belgian furniture brand, has teamed up with Gallery Sofie Lachaert to offer a solution to this common challenge. They created two branded apartments in Ghent, Belgium, for people to try out the furniture for one night or more before making purchase decisions.

The flat for two includes a restaurant-like dining area, a lobby, a gym and a library fully fitted with Droog furniture and design objects. The studio treats visitors to the company’s unique design as well but with slightly fewer pieces. Apartments display both brand new furniture and Droog’s iconic pieces of the 21^st Century.

While renting a flat customers can visit the Droog Webshop, through an iPad placed in the apartments, and learn more about the furniture around them. If visitors feel like taking some of the designs or furniture home with them they can order a product with just one click. The order arrives the next day – visitors need not to wait for their new favorites for long.

Droog apartments