"Go home American Eagle you're drunk."

That's the most popular YouTube comment on a new "skinny jeans" ad from American Eagle Outfitters. Is it an early April Fool's spoof or a blatant attempt to go viral by spoofing a trend gone too far?Continue reading...

The originators of social media as we know it today—Facebook and Twitter—are dealing with a lack of interest from once-dedicated users: young smartphone-attached digital natives who grew up on mobile and social.

Facebook is busy revamping the social site's News Feed while Twitter is turning its focus towards the bevy of brands and advertisers that are trying to capitalize on the site's RTM capabilities. The trial and error of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter has in turn birthed the next generation of social media as younger digerati take to their devices and craft social platforms that are better-suited to their likes and habits.

Pheed, the social media platform that lets users share text, photos, videos and audio describes itself as “the evolution of social sharing,” combining elements of those platforms preceding it and adding capabilities of SoundCloud, Tumblr and Ustream, with no limits on content size, videos that can run as long as 4 hours and 20 minutes and photos in any resolution and shape. Notably, a copyright button lets users put a watermark on their content that is legally binding.

The website and mobile app are particularly popular with teenagers, who made it the App Store's number one social networking app in February, with a “user base [that] is 81percent between age 14 and 25.”Continue reading...

NYC judge just ruled on #sodaban, says it's arbitrary and capricious. This is a victory for small business and personal choice in #NYC.

— NYC Beverage Choices (@NYCBevChoices) March 12, 2013

It was doomed to fail, writes the Guardian. Even New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg acknowledged, "When we began this process, we knew we’d face lawsuits." He added, "When you adopt a groundbreaking policy, special interest will sue. That's America."

So the overturning by New York State judge Milton Tingling of Bloomberg's proposed ban on sugary beverages above 16 ounces, which was due to go into effect on Tuesday before being dismissed as "arbitrary" and "capricious" by Tingling, didn't come as a complete surprise.Continue reading...

Justin Bieber is in damage control mode as his personal brand reels following photos of the baby-faced Canadian teen idol smoking cannabis at a party (for which he duly apologized to his millions of Twitter followers with the "trying to be better" message posted on January 5th).

A lot is riding on the bankability of the singer, who's a bonafide mogul at the tender age of 18, with a higher Klout "influence" score than Barack Obama or The Dalai Lama. Having garnered more than 3 billion views on YouTube, 48 million Facebook fans and more than 30 million Twitter followers, Bieber’s appeal and reach are incomparable in the underage cohort.

So besides music, perfume, merchandise and concert tickets to sell, Team Bieber is also counting on a growing revenue stream: extending Bieber's name to other brands through endorsement deals.Continue reading...

Canada's upscale yogathletic brand lululemon has a younger sibling: ivivva athletica, a dance-inspired activewear label for girls and teens that has been dipping a pointed toe in the tween/teen market with a modest debut in Canada and a co-branded line with Disney.

The younger brand has been available in lululemon’s hometown of Vancouver and in Calgary, and this summer has been quietly slipping south of the border to the US via showrooms (not full-blown stores) to test the waters in Bellevue and Seattle, WA, plus Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

“A note to all of our amazing + loyal ivivva girls: an ivivva SHOWROOM is a little different from an ivivva STORE," a blog post explains. "A showroom is a small space that we open in new cities to show a few pieces of our product line. It is the perfect place to go to get decked out in all of your core essentials and try on all of our sizes so you know what size to order in all of the crazy colours online! And, if you want more, you can always purchase online using the iPads in our showrooms.”

Parent company lululemon athletica, of course, is the yoga-inspired athletic apparel lifestyle brand that, while a little overreaching to some observers, has certainly raised the barre in technical fabrics and functional designs, not to mention in convincing women to pay a premium for yoga pants. But will lululemon moms stretch their wallets as wide for their dance-, track- and gymnastics-obsessed daughters?Continue reading...

As the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation trial dominates the news, teen-centric social-networking virtual world Habbo Hotel has shut down the ability for its 250 million users to communicate with one another as a recent news broadcast has it that a reporter posing as a child was left open for sexual invitations, according to Brand Republic.

Of course, that’s something the site — "the world's largest social game and online community for teenagers," which we described two years ago as a "parent-free zone for kids to hang out and goof off" — is surely looking to fix quickly since what’s the point of a social-networking site if you can’t communicate with other users?

Not helping Habbo is that the explosive report by the UK’s Channel 4 — which found sexually explicit chat rooms and users as young as nine, despite the site's rule that it's for teens — prompted British retailers Tesco, WH Smith and GAME to stop selling Habbo gift cards and European venture-capital firm Balderton Capital (Habbo's main investor) to yank its stake in Finnish parent company Sulake, according to CNET.Continue reading...

Brand-backed campaigns against texting while driving are starting to resemble the endless campaign against obesity: Most Americans know what's best for their health and safety, but they can't seem to help doing what they shouldn't be doing. It amounts to two huge strikes against the national willpower, and a race of sorts to see which — distracted driving or eating junk food — regulators will be quicker to clamp down on more thoroughly.

In a new AT&T survey, for instance, 97 percent of teens knew texting while driving is dangerous, but 43 percent of them admitted to sending a text while driving — and 75 percent say the practice is common among their friends. Among the reasons, AT&T (which won a Cannes Lion award for its "Last Text" campaign) found, is that teens feel pressure to respond quickly to text messages. Also, adults are doing the same thing and they mimic their behavior. Partly as a result, according to data provided by Ford, the under-20 age group also has the highest proportion of distracted drivers involved in fatal crashes.Continue reading...

The tobacco industry spent $10 billion on marketing in 2008, according to the FTC, and a good part of the portion being spent in California was targeted at low-income and African-American youth, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

If you’re an African-American high schooler in the Golden State, you may have noticed the advertising for menthol cigarettes that aren’t far from the school. Researchers that are funded by the state of California found that such ads were more prominently displayed when they were in proximity to a school that served the African-American community, the Union-Tribune adds.Continue reading...