Twitter Users' Diversity Becomes an Ad Selling Point

For most of its rather short life, Twitter Inc. rarely mentioned that its user base is more racially diverse than U.S. Internet users as a whole. Now, as a newly minted public company needing to generate revenue, it is moving to capitalize on its demographics.

As a newly minted public company, Twitter is constantly looking at new revenue streams. Its latest quest: Capitalize on demographics.

In November, Twitter hired marketing veteran Nuria Santamaria to a new position as multicultural strategist, leading its effort to target black, Hispanic and Asian-American users.

Together, those groups account for 41% of Twitter's 54 million U.S. users, compared with 34% of the users of rival Facebook and 33% of all U.S. Internet users, according to Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.

Ms. Santamaria says advertisers want to know more about racial and ethnic minorities on Twitter, from basic numbers to the languages in which they tweet. Last month, Twitter began showing ad agencies data from a coming report saying that Hispanics tweet more often than other users and activity among them rises when the conversation is about technology.


More from The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Auto Sales

From the Wall Street Journal.

The Connection Between Obesity and Poverty

By Phil Izzo, Wall Street Journal

A new report finds shows that Americans are getting fatter and notes worse rates among those with low incomes, but some states don’t exactly fit the pattern.

What Would You Do With an Extra Hour?

Americans Are Spending More Time Watching TV and Sleeping as Unemployment Rises, Survey Finds

The average American aged 15 or older spent three hours, 11 minutes a day working in 2009, according to the American Time Use Survey released by the Labor Department... That's 17 minutes less time a day engaged in work than in 2007, before the recession hit. While 17 minutes might not seem a lot, when it's averaged over the entire population, including employed people, those who have lost a job and retirees, it represents a significant amount.

What did people do with that extra time? Mainly they slept and watched TV. Time spent in front of the television rose by 12 minutes, to two hours, 49 minutes a day in the two years through 2009. Sleep was the next big gainer, increasing by six minutes to eight hours, 40 minutes a day.

The data also show what Americans aren't doing with their extra time: There was virtually no change between 2007 and 2009 in the time devoted to volunteering, religious activities, exercise or education. In sum, time people might have used productively is instead being squandered...

A Taste for Hotter, Mintier, Fruitier

The Increased Craving for Intense Flavors Suggests That the American Palate is Changing from WSJ, May 26, 2010

The buttery taste found in packaged foods isn't just butter flavor anymore. Increasingly, it is browned-butter flavor, formulated to taste deeper and more savory than plain butter, says International Flavors and Fragrances, one of the leading laboratories for developing flavors used by food companies.
...
Food companies describe some of their efforts as adding "umami," a Japanese word that, roughly translated, means "good flavor." What it describes, however, is the pleasant savory flavor found in protein-heavy foods and increasingly viewed as one of the five basic tastes (in addition to sweet, sour, salty and bitter). It isn't exactly a flavor, food executives say, but an experience—an explosion of flavor.
...
As people crave intensity in flavor, some traditionalists are wondering if diners will become desensitized to natural flavors. Regular mangoes may taste bland when eaten next to mango-flavored gum or a mango energy drink, they say.
...
New flavors used to originate in fine dining kitchens and work their way down, but now they come just as often from the Food Network or from ethnic or international sources.

Accounting for the Census Clause

Accounting for the Census Clause
By Myrna Pérez
Brennan Center for Justice Blog (August 11, 2009)

In the inaccurately titled opinion piece (Our Unconstitutional Census) published on August 9 in the Wall Street Journal, Messrs. Baker and Stonecipher, a constitutional law professor and pollster respectively, falsely claim that the current practice of counting undocumented persons in the census for the purpose of apportionment is unconstitutional...

The Constitution uses the word "numbers" or "persons"-not "citizens," or "legal residents," or "those lawfully present" as the authors suggest.

More here.

Job Cuts by Major Companies

FIRST-QUARTER LAYOFFS: Selection Of Job Cuts By Major Companies, Dow Jones News Service

Pink Slips Layoff Tracker from Forbes

What’s In A Name

I’ve mentioned the Wall Street Journal’s The Numbers Guy, who questions the conventional wisdom about statistical report before. Recently, he took on studies suggesting that major league baseball players with first or last initial K were more likely than average to strike out; and business graduate students with initials C or D had lower grades, on average, perhaps reflecting an unconscious affinity to the grades corresponding to their initials. Why IS that, and is that really what's going on?

Wall Street Journal online going free?

Murdoch takes on FT with free online WSJ By Alistair Osborne, November 14, 2007

BUT: for those who might be interested in Dow Jones and WSJ content (before Mr Murdoch decides to make it free), I've found an e-mail on the BUSLIB listserv where there are "several places you can find lots of WSJ snd DJ material for free, For example, stories about the media are made available, full text, free, via the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University."

See this article.

See Also:
New Blogs Available from Wall Street Journal Online; New Economy and Deals Pages Too

New/Enhanced Research Tools from the Wall Street Journal: From Mutual Fund Screening to Campaign 2008 Timelines

WSJ.com Adds Article Recommendations, Biz Tech Blog, Portfolio E-Mail Containing Charts Accessible in Excel, and More

The Numbers Guy

RECOMMENDED BLOG: The Numbers Guy. "Carl Bialik examines the way numbers are used, and abused." Free from the Wall Street Journal. Recent examples:

The Trouble With Ranking Life-Expectancy Numbers (August 27)
Calculating the Cost of Weddings (August 23): noting the difference between the mean and the median price of matrimony
Increasingly in Baseball, Stealing Pays (August 21): Go, METS! Literally.

Take the Money and Don't Run

Last Monday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting article in the Regional Economic Roundup (A Special Report): Take the Money and Don't Run; States continue to lure businesses with promises of tax breaks and grants; But now the deals come with a catch: You don't get the cash until we get the jobs. by Conor Dougherty. WSJ. (Eastern edition). June 11, 2007. pg. R.1

Here's the abstract:
Now governments are making sure that their incentive plans come with a catch. Many are using "clawback" provisions that let governments recover their money if companies leave town or go belly-up. In other cases, governments don't pay companies until they actually create jobs. One city is even proposing a "no poaching" agreement to get more leverage over businesses, where neighboring cities promise to limit the use of incentives to lure companies from each other.

"It's a 'united we stand' kind of approach," says Charles Bichara, director of economic development for Middleburg Heights.

"No one can predict or guarantee economic conditions, which will ultimately determine the long-term viability of any business venture," says Jay Biggins, executive managing director at Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co., which represents companies in negotiating incentive packages. If a project doesn't meet expectations, and a clawback becomes necessary, Mr. Biggins says, "that's the system working."

To get the full-text article, you can go to a database that contains the WSJ, such as ABI/Inform Global. That includes the New York State Library, if you have a P card. If you don't have access, let me know , and I'll see what I can do.
***
The WSJ's video about Naugatuck, CT's plan to use a new transit system to "breathe life into the city's economy." (3:11, after a 0:15 commercial.)