interesting things
With 31.9 million global users in May, 5-year-old startup Pinterest has become the object of marketer affection and now boasts a $1.5 billion valuation
via Advertising Age – Homepage http://adage.com/article/creativity-50/creativity-50-2012-ben-silbermann-evan-sharp/235758/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+adage%2Fhomepage+%28Advertising+Age+-+Homepage%29
Meet Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer, the Romney campaign’s main ad and messaging men.
via POLITICO Top Stories http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78214.html
The “Fifty Shades” erotic trilogy is expected to hit the 20 million-sales mark in the U.S. this week, making it one of the fastest-selling book series in recent memory.
via WSJ.com: Today's Most Popular http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303684004577510902680342704.html?mod=rss_Today’s_Most_Popular
Texas will not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange, two major tenets of the federal health reform that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month, Gov. Rick Perry said in an early morning announcement.
“I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab,” he said in a statement. “Neither a ‘state’ exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better ‘patient protection’ or in more ‘affordable care.’ They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care.”
Perry’s office said he’s sending a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius this morning asserting his opposition, both to accepting more than a hundred million federal dollars to put more poor Texas adults onto Medicaid, and to creating an Orbitz-style online insurance marketplace for consumers.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states — even Texas, which has the country’s highest rate of the uninsured — may not be punished for opting out of the Medicaid. The insurance exchange is not optional; if Texas doesn’t devise its own, the feds will establish a one-size-fits-all program for the state.  Â
“If anyone was in doubt, we in Texas have no intention to implement so-called state exchanges or to expand Medicaid under Obamacare,” Perry said in a statement. “I will not be party to socializing healthcare and bankrupting my state in direct contradiction to our Constitution and our founding principles of limited government.”
The governor will appear on Fox News at 10:30 a.m. to talk more about his decision.Â
via The Texas Tribune: Main Feed http://www.texastribune.org/texas-health-resources/medicaid/perry-tx-wont-implement-key-elements-health-reform/?utm_source=texastribune.org&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Tribune%20Feed:%20Main%20Feed
Mitt Romney’s campaign announced Monday that in addition to the stunning $106.1 million it raised with the Republican National Committee in June, it has approximately $160 million cash on hand.
About 537,000 donations were less than $250, according to the campaign, for a haul of $22.3 million from small donors.
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/romney-reports-160-million-cash-on-hand-20120709
To hear Pandora founder Tim Westergren tell it, the last fight he had in Washington was for his very survival.
In 2007, the Internet radio company faced new royalty rates that would have amounted to about 70 percent of the company’s revenue, putting the fledgling start up out of business, said Westergren, Pandora’s chief strategy officer.
“It was a disastrous outcome,” he said.
So Pandora reached out to its users – for whom they conveniently have gathered names, zip codes and email addresses – and asked them to push their lawmakers to intervene. And then Pandora hit Washington to lobby. Congress eventually stepped in and passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, which gave Pandora and the recording industry a different royalty framework and time to negotiate a rate that would replace the government-imposed one. Pandora now pays royalties that equal about 50 percent of its revenue.
Since then, the Internet radio company has become ubiquitous. They have 150 million registered users in the U.S., according to company statistics. And, as of March, it was the second-most downloaded free iPhone app, following only Facebook. Eighteen car companies sell vehicles equipped with Pandora.
And they’ve grown up Washington-style, too. Pandora’s royalty rate won’t expire until 2015. But rather than wait around for another rate set under rules Westergren says are unfair, the Internet radio company is ramping-up its lobbying efforts. And it looks like they’re preparing to take the fight to the Hill.
via Homepage http://influencealley.nationaljournal.com/2012/07/pandora-all-grown-up.php
Get ready for more political ads to appear on “SportsCenter” this fall.ESPN has come up with a way to sell a bigger portion of its ad time to political campaigns. The sports network has struck a deal with a middleman that will result in more political ads appearing on ESPN programs, including NFL and college football games, in October and November—the critical period before the general election.There is “great demand” for ad time from “political parties and the super-PACs,” said Ed Erhardt, ESPNs president of global customer marketing and sales.
@KathaPollitt: More on the 22-yr-old woman executed for “adultery” by the Taliban http://t.co/QwvGotmI
@stevesilberman: I’m tellin ya, just don’t miss @FranklinFoer’s story of a deadly “social Ponzi scheme” among the DC elite. http://t.co/D7KCDfx3
Mary Norris writes about the gradual inclusion of profanity in The New Yorker in this short piece, exploring questions on how one properly quotes Earl Sweatshirt, and whether or not the term “star fucker†is hyphenated.
via The Rumpus.net http://therumpus.net/2012/07/the-f-word-the-new-yorker/