The folks at innocent drinks, makers of tasty smoothies, have revamped their site to include a rating and review section. Hoping to foster a more robust brand culture and connection with their audience, innocent is trying out a consumer-centric website. The new feedback area provides simple ratings along with more detailed reviews. A built-in feature promises to randomly select comments to be highlighted on the homepage and further entices visitors by awarding funky prizes each month. The site layout was designed by Soup with a goal of pushing the playful nature of the company into the digital [...]

MySpace and Viacom’s MTV Networks announced a deal that will partner them with Auditude, a technology firm that has developed a means of identifying whether uploaded video clips belong to a particular TV Network by recognizing unique electronic signatures.  Auditude approached these two companies with this technology, marketing it as a means of incorporating advertising.  Essentially, any content appearing on MySpace belonging to MTV Networks will be tagged, allowing either business the option of inserting ads.
This represents a significant change in attitude for both companies.  In the past, MySpace TV, the second largest video site behind YouTube, might have blocked [...]

It has a broad reaching name and this year Advertising Age and Creativity brought together an equally wide range of speakers for a day of dialog about creativity and innovation. This year’s conference was held in New York City at Terminal 5, usually a concert and nightclub venue on October 30th. Once inside, attendees could congregate in the Inspiration Pavilion which was made up of booths and displays representing most of the days speakers. Notable was GM who had the Volt on display and Yahoo! who featured one of their Purple Pedals bikes. The following are some highlights of the [...]

As pop-culture and celebrity gossip blogs continue to see increased traffic, particularly with the youth demographic, advertisers’ views on what counts as acceptable have started to change.  Given the uneasy economic climate and tightening budgets, it’s become increasingly important for mainstream brands to be mindful of where their ad dollars are going.  As a result, following the crowds, even if that means entering non-traditional venues on the web with less respectable material, makes a good deal of sense.  Despite the inherent logic of this move, some in the media still question whether this issue has more to do with negligent [...]

Amazon.com has quietly released a beta version of a new web-browsing interface for its massive online shop.  The site is aptly named “WindowShop” as it allows visitors to survey popular items that might have been showcased if Amazon ever launched a physical storefront.  Users can either browse individual items and preview them or step back and view multiple items in a column display.  Not only is this an efficient way to find new products you may be interested in, but it’s also an effective way to get lost in a vast amount of material.
It is common knowledge on the internet [...]

The allure of the iPhone has unsurprisingly garnered the rapt attention of the advertising industry.  With 100 million App Store downloads since it launched and 90% of those downloads being free applications, ad support is a clear way for developers to balance profitability and popularity.  Currently, one of the iPhone’s most popular applications is Loopt, a location-based social networking program, but on different platforms and in early development it was sold to consumers for a few bucks.  Now, thanks to venture capital backing and further ad-revenue support, Loopt is hoping to be completely free.  A similar story can be told [...]

The PR industry as we once knew it is dead.  We’ve written about this topic before, but recently we came across some advice on creating the best PR through the social aggregator, FriendFeed.  SocialTNT explains the most efficient way to market yourself or your company in a well organized article.
The important lessons detailed involve staying current on the feed to maximize media research opportunities and taking advantage of the contacts you have.  In a new world that values usefulness over experience, staying current is critical.  Becoming involved is one of the central aims of FriendFeed and you can easily attain [...]

On his Long Tail blog, Chris Anderson brings our attention to an interesting subset from the recently released Forbes 400 list: the members of the Billionaires Club that have earned their spot through offering services and products that are “primarily free to consumers”. The list, Anderson point out, doesn’t include media moguls whose businesses largely (but not solely) include free web and broadcast content, like Barry Diller (IAC) and Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.). Since posting the list, Anderson received some commentator feedback that called into question some of the examples (particularly Omidyar of eBay and Peter Thiel of Facebook/ Paypal), [...]

In our final installment of the NYC Innovators Series, PSFK spoke with with Michael Galpert of Aviary about how his company is enabling amateur artists to start flexing their creative muscles.
Michael explains how the high barrier of entry for existing design suites, such as expensive software and complicated interfaces, deter potential artists and how Aviary capitalized on that by creating an easy to use, web-based platform.

Aviary
Also check out:
Michael Sharon of Socialight
Philip James of Snooth

Some of you may remember our Bay Area Innovators series from a couple months ago, where PSFK met with a handful of Bay Area-based young entrepreneurs about the innovative companies and applications they’re creating. We thought we’d pick it back up and introduce a few more innovators from the Big Apple.
Philip James is the founder of Snooth, a web-based marketplace for wine that is making it easier for people to research wines that suit their personal tastes. The services enables users to find the perfect wine for any occasion, price range, or location. Philip [...]

Glassdoor.com is a site that aims to give users an “inside look at companies from those who know them best” – through anonymous salary sharing, ratings, and reviews of some of the top companies across several industries. A sort of Yelp! meets “Wall Street”. While the salaries featured, ranging from Creative Directors (a CD at Avenue A goes for about $132,500) to tax managers (at Deloitte, around $60,000) are a fun, though at times painful, read, perhaps most useful are the first-hand accounts of the companies from their anonymous employers. CEOs are featured alongside their percentage approval rating, [...]

PenguinDating is a new site by Penguin UK that aims to – you guessed it – help bookworms find love. In partnership with Match.com, Penguin launched the site to introduce a little literary twist to the online dating scene. While sites like GoodReads provide a virtual community for avid book readers, PenguinDating focuses more primarily on dating. Members of the site can search through Match.com’s member profiles to find people who share their literary tastes, as well as find members on PenguinDating through members’ mini-book reports on the latest books they read.

Advertisements for the site will be placed in 2 [...]

Guerrilla marketing is now old news, it seems any corporate entity can hire a team of creative youngsters and plaster their image all over town. If you have an innovative approach for venues, you can find a marketing opportunity anywhere. Take the recipe directory called Recipe8, they found a free spot to publicize their URL in an unlikely place full of traffic, BugMeNot. The hugely popular resource for bypassing free login credentials has now become a soap box for free advertising. By putting their URL as a bogus login utilized for the New York Times, Recipe8 [...]

Google continues to challenge the old $1 billion suit with Viacom amongst privacy concerns and earlier attempts to allow advertising. Now, in another attempt to quell lawsuits and drive revenue, Google has introduced a system for copyright holders to claim and takeover popular videos featuring their content. In addition to taking the videos out of the hands of private users, the companies are allowed to embed advertising within the content.
The New York Times writes:
“We don’t want to condone people taking our intellectual property and using it without our permission,” said Curt Marvis, the president of digital [...]

You may remember the first time you saw Hampster Dance or Peanut Butter Jelly Time, but this site visually charts over a hundred internet memes into a timeline, list, flipbook or map. Each meme is given a short description and a link to the original site if it’s still around. It is a collaborative effort run through Dipity.