- 50 hours of SpongeBob (will air July 17-19 on Nickelodeon and VH1 to honor the cartoon's 10th anniversary. Plus Nick extends a licensing agreement with a… sponge company in Canada)

- Hong Kong Disneyland expands (hoping the magic touch of a makeover will boost lagging attendance. And BusinessWeek takes a look inside Disney's toy factory) (WSJ)

-'16 & Pregnant: Life After Labor' (a finale special hosted by Dr. Drew brings the new teen mothers back on-screen. Also MTV has picked up the show for a second season. Plus MTV Games hires industry vets to build on the success of "Rock Band") (THR)

- MySpace not liable for offline assaults (according to a ruling by a appeals court in California. Also another skeptical look at the value of Facebook activism.  And YouTube summer camp gives youth ages 12-18 a crash course in web videos) (CNET) (New TeeVee)

- The Atlantic considers on-campus recruiting (during the downturn and urges Career Services to expose students to less traditional professions. Plus the budget crisis forces more states to cut summer school. And does nice handwriting matter? According to this Op-Ed piece, yes) ( New York Times, reg. required) (Long Island Press)

- Rock stars in YA (and the publishers behind them. Publishing Trends recaps NYU Summer Publishing Institute's panel on children's publishing. Plus the latest Cover Story from Melissa Walker features Julie Kraut's camp tale Slept Away. And Twihards go to summer school in Forks, Washington. Also The New York Times Style section, reg. required, discovers the vampire trend) (People)

- Pew study finds generation gap widening (between older and younger Americans. And Gen Y workers in the U.K. lack mobile etiquette, according to a study. Also Ad Age, reg. required, reports Millennial consumers are evolving) (Huffington Post) (Computer Weekly)

- Air Force ads target techie Gen Y (playing up the branch's cutting edge, sci-fi like technology) (MediaPost, reg. required)

P.S. Just a reminder that Ypulse will not be publishing tomorrow, but will return on Monday! Happy 4th of July!

This means that the education happening around reputation management will need to emphasize what it means to share content with "everyone" (your friends and any other "minor" on Facebook under 18), just with all of your friends or just with specific friends. The key difference for adults 18 and up is everyone means everyone both inside and outside of Facebook. Facebook users under 18 are not indexed in Google but can be found on Facebook by anyone (not just minors) unless they change that default setting. In order to actively manage your online rep, you have to pay attention to the privacy icon (a little lock) that will now appear every time you post. danah boyd wrote a great post last year imploring Facebook to make their settings more contextual — it appears they've done this.

In some ways the settings on MySpace, while offering less flexibility, are still just easier to manage. You're either public to the world or private to your friends. MySpace default settings for users who are under 18 (or who aren't lying about their age) are private, but can be changed to public.

No matter how much time you spend talking about settings, the key message for teens and tweens is that sites can always be hacked creating loopholes, friends can become frienemies and anything you post digitally can ultimately be copied, pasted and forwarded.

I found this post really helpful for anyone on Facebook who is concerned about privacy but is at a loss for how to protect your profile.

I realize that Kevin Jonas will neither be the first boy band member in recent memory to get married (Taylor Hanson), nor the first pop star to replace his chastity ring with an engagement ring (Jessica Simpson), but given the trio's heavy Disney branding and the considerable franchise that's been built around the group (TV show, Disney movies, etc) it's hard not to wonder what questions are being raised by the brand behind the band.

Of course, concerns about the sustainability of the JoBros' on-screen popularity aren't exactly new. Back when the Monkees-style sitcom "JONAS" premiered in May  the Los Angeles Times reported it as "Disney Channel's lowest-rated live-action series premiere among kids 6-11 since 2005's "Life with Derek" and many of our commenters pointed out that the boys are more fun to "squeal about" than relate to as characters.  So, will a marriage announcement create further distance between fans, the band and the fantasy?  Stir up renewed interest in the boys' real lives as a brand new backstory? Not matter because Nick is the "dreamy" one anyway? And, more importantly, will any of this affect Disney's marketing strategy for the band? What do you predict, Ypulse Readers? Feel free to add thoughts in comments.

For more coverage of the tween space, check out the Ypulse Tweens Channel, sponsored by the Tween Tribune.

- 'Vibe' folds (after 16 years, the mainstream hip-hop/R&B magazine and site shutters, leaving a gap in the urban market and on newsstands) (MTV News)

- Turner sells ads for specific shows (versus networks, in order to target the young, male demo during guy faves like "Family Guy" and "The Office." Also a study on "dudes" ages 18 to 34 links recession-era optimism with bravado and a willingness to adapt, i.e. move back home. Meanwhile one Millennial male hopes the downturn will knock some sense into his generation) (Ad Age, reg. required) (MediaPost, reg. required)

- Camp CEO (WSJ's Market Watch spotlights a Girl Scout camp for career-driven teens. Plus A Curious Summer, a series of exploratory summer workshops for kids from the San Francisco based Studio for Urban Projects) (PSFK)

- Army games (critics protest the army's controversial high-tech efforts to reach new recruits after lawmakers voice official support ) (National Journal Online)

- The year of no drop-outs (marks a notable accomplishment for the experimental high school for at-risk teens in New Jersey. Also USA Today profiles the non-profit org behind the nationwide program) (CBS)

- Sasha Fierce for Dereon (Beyonce and her designer mom launch a junior apparel line for back-to-school. Plus HSM star Ashley Tisdale hopes to graduate from the tween market with her new album. Former Disney queen Hillary Duff will guest star on "Gossip Girl." And the rise of fellow Disney tween queen Demi Lovato) (WWD) (Reuters) (E!)

- Logging on to stop lighting up (The University of Illinois at Chicago leads a $2.9 million National Cancer Institute project to increase demand for internet-based treatment for young adults. Also a study shows that both good and bad characters in films who smoke are an influence on teens) (EurekAlert) (Science Daily)

- Walmart vs. Gen Y (as a Boomer-based brand, Seeking Alpha asks if the superstore has a chance to win over Millennials. And Nike launches "Back Your Block" a grant program to support schools and communities with inspirational youth sports programs) (AdRants)

- Are you an iBore? (more than half of young adults in the UK claim to know someone "obsessed" with their iPhone. Nick's Addicting Games to launch on the iPhone in July. Plus PULSE, "a software engine" that reads and delivers unedited teen content from IMs, blogs, social networks and chat rooms launches to track the latest trends. Um, feels a tad Big Brother, no?)

P.S. If you're in the action sports space or just curious, check out this cool conference from our friends at Group Y at the end of July.

In an effort to combat the rise of "sexting" and other digitally lascivious trends, AT&T, iKeepSafe, and the American School Counselor Association launched "Project Pro", a suite of interactive resources to help educate teens and parents about the potential consequences of sullying their online reputations. The resources, stressing the importance of privacy and online reputation, will be distributed to over 2,000 school counselors at the conference and will reach over 25,000 school counselors nationwide.

The wording "digitally lascivious trends" aside, having spoken to thousands of parents (and many teens as well) over the past couple of years about these issues as a part of promoting Totally Wired, I worry about how effective this type of effort will be. Many parents struggle to just understand what their teens/tweens are really doing online in order to have face-to-face conversations about these issues — I have a hard time believing that many would sit down with a "suite of interactive resources."

And as with anything teens and tweens are asked to do at school, well interactive resources does sound better than a lecture, but if it feels like a lesson in "don'ts" (don't post lascivious photos, don't bully with technology), I worry that the response will be an eye-rolling, sighing "whatever." Especially if the idea is to sentence students that have already been caught to a session using Project Pro in the counselor's office.

Granted, I haven't seen the resources, so I have no idea how they were designed, whether they incorporated teen/tween input, or if they will come across as "lessons" vs. empowering content and tools to manage teens' digital lives. I hope that "Project Pro" is awesome and effective and that I'm wrong (though the name isn't working for me already).

The reality is that online reputation management is not just an issue for teens but for EVERYONE. According to a study posted on ReadWriteWeb:

Seventy-eight percent of social networking users are concerned about privacy, but most fail to act on it. And 80% of the users surveyed allow all or part of their profiles to be indexed by public search engines like Google, while 66% of users don't restrict any profile information from being publicly searchable. Perhaps even more astonishing: a whopping 59% of the 1100 surveyed said they weren't sure who could see their profile.

I'm honestly kicking myself a little bit because one of the many ideas I never executed on was a follow up to Totally Wired that would have been an interactive guide/website for teens created in the spirit of gURL's classic "Deal With It," covering a lot of this stuff in a way that didn't feel like school or lessons or some sort of online training. Meredith even suggested getting imperfect role model Vanessa Hudgens involved in this type of effort.

I appreciate any efforts to empower teens and tweens to better manage their digital lives and be safe online — I just hope they are executed in ways that will actually have an impact instead of just another software solution or website that a company can put their name on to say "we care about this issue." Maybe these groups should work with a super dynamic speaker like Josh Shipp — have him speak on this topic at schools across the country — followed by an interactive suite of tools that's positive, empowering and, like the gURL books, playful, funny and fun. I just booked my first speaking engagement with teens on this issue in March (frankly, I'm terrified)….I will definitely be calling Josh for tips!

For those who aren't familiar with the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series: the first book The Lighting Thief begins with sixth grader Percy — who on top of said disabilities, also has a knack for landing on teachers' bad sides –discovering that the root of all these issues is actually his divine heritage. As the son of the sea god Poseidon, he, a with all "half-bloods," is marked by a difficulty with reading (their brains are hardwired for Ancient Greek), trouble focusing (this translates into battle-ready reflexes) and a host of mythological monsters that often disguise themselves as antagonistic administrators at school.

No doubt, it's a brilliant rhetorical device. Just one of the many instances I was impressed by how Riordan seamlessly merged the two realities of myth and modernity throughout the books, truly paying tribute to the genre by using the one to lend structure to the other. And when I read about Rick Riordan's personal reasons for incorporating the traits as a way of "honoring the potential of all the kids [he's] known who have these conditions," I was touched. Middle school was right around the time I was diagnosed with ADD, and even though I had plenty of support, I think hearing about the special (vs. "special") qualities of the disorder — the creativity, out-of-the-box thinking — would have definitely helped relieve some of the insecurities I felt at the time. I know I would have related to Annabeth, a.k.a. the daughter of Athena, and felt inspired by how she didn't let her disabilities get in the way of her bookworm habits.

That said, I still have one nagging issue with the setup — the lack of progress. As far as I can remember, we never see or hear about Percy and friends really making any clear strides towards being any more comfortable in the classroom setting. I know, I know. These kids have a lot more harrowing obstacles to face in their extraordinary lives, and the books do take place during the summer. Still, there was a part of me wondering — especially with the books spanning the course of four years, including the beginning of high school– how Percy was dealing and, hopefully overcoming, the more common challenges he faced for those three-fourths of the year he wasn't saving the world.

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by Pick a Poppy – the home of today's hottest fiction.

- Westwood College ads provide a lighthearted nudge (to go back-to-school, featuring grads who were stuck in dead-end jobs until college offered a way out. Also a breakdown from Westwood College of the average college student's budget) (MediaPost, reg. required) (Campus Buzz)

- Virgin Mobile rewards do-gooders (with "Free I.P." passes to the brand's sold-out FreeFest festival. Also Kia signs on again as sponsor for the Vans Warped Tour) (MediaPost, reg. required)

- Mobile phones gaining on PCs (as the tech device of choice among young women. Plus, Urban Outfitters heeds the call and goes mobile) (MarketingVox)

- 'Girls Are Not For Sale' (Beyonce and Halle Berry join the campaign against child sex trafficking inspired by the recent Showtime documentary on the subject. Also a look at the unsettling trend of eating disorders among tweens on "The Early Show")

- More on Nielsen's teen research (an interview with Nic Covey [who commented here] in MediaLife Magazine… Plus, emarketer charts Fuse's research on teens and advertising [Fuse is a Ypulse sponsor])

- Zwinky Cuties joins with SmartyCard (to offer virtual incentives for tweens to study up. And Disney promotes tween virtual world Club Penguin across Spil Games portals. While RuneScape allows researchers into its popular tween MMO) (Virtual World News) (MacArthur)

- Nick's 'AddictingGames Showdown' winners (were announced including Electric Man 2 for "Best Performance by a Stick Figure" and Magic Pen as "Mostest Edumacational Game")

- James Frey tries YA for size (shopping a sci-fi series  he's working on with another author to publishers in New York) (New York Times, reg. required)

- MTV launches celebrity lookalike game show in India (on Facebook. Also 9 youth marketing trends in South Africa) (Radio and Music) (Marketing Web)

Correction for Newsletter Readers: In yesterday's Essentials it should have read that the publicity stunt for Walkman was in honor of the brand's 30th birthday, not 13th. Oops!

P.S. We just launched a campus subgroup as part of the Ypulse LinkedIn group for folks trying to reach students. Check it out!

Ypulse Interview: Zia Zareem-Slade and Paul Dawson EMC Conchango

Late last year I attended the Drapers's Record conference in London, and one of the most interesting talks was from Zia Zareem-Slade, Head of Experience Planning at EMC Conchango. She talked about how brands can use social networking effectively with some very interesting case studies and success stories.

I managed to track her down in London, and she agreed to answer some of my questions about the work they do at EMC Conchango. Paul Dawson, Experience Director at EMC Conchango, made some interesting points as well.

Ypulse: Can you tell me how Conchango approaches social networking or online marketing strategies aimed at tweens, teens, and young adults?

Zia Zareem-Slade: I think this will be obvious to anyone who works in youth marketing, but it’s critical to look hard at what the audience already does in this space. This is the most connected generation ever and their attitudes and approach to technology are vastly different to the generation even only 5 years older than them.

If you already thought that it was important in youth marketing to stay on top of trends, then this digital world moves even faster still. While many companies were coming to grips with MySpace a few years ago, pretty much a whole generation of early teens in the UK migrated pretty much overnight to the social networking site Bebo, and the brand advertisers wondered where their audience had gone.

Ethnographic research is key here. Not simply getting the latest trends analysis, but participating in the communities they inhabit to get a real feel for how they work. This is the approach that we would take before determining what will be the best strategy for a given medium, or how best to reach particular groups.

The group we are most on top of at any time is the ‘Millennials’, the group that grew up with the internet and mobile telephone through their [formative] years, and we have to challenge ourselves often not to be assumptive that the behaviors and attitudes exhibited by this group are common in the generations below them.

Paul Dawson: Interestingly, we still talk in terms of Gen X and Gen Y, but we've really discovered that we now have to think much more in terms of "micro-generations" where we segment up into much tighter behavioral groups based on which point in their lives they began to be exposed to these technologies.

YP: Tell us about a successful campaign you have worked on recently, and what made it work?

PD: First, it's important to understand that we’re not a campaign driven agency. Everything we do is around consumer engagement, driving acquisition, brand and loyalty but we do this through creating things that are functional and fit into people's lives much more permanently than a campaign. The concept of "brand as utility" is one we hold dear. It's far more likely you'll generate emotional engagement with people when you do something that genuinely they find useful and enjoyable every day of their lives.

ZZ: A good example of this would be when we worked with River Island, the High Street fashion retailer, who are very much a part of [British] teen life these days.
For them we had an ongoing process of "Experience Planning" where we got out into their customer base and probed around not only their attitudes and behaviors with River Island, but more widely about the context in which these interactions happen. In other words, what tools, technologies and media are they using to support those interactions. You quickly discover not only the dozen or so "I love River Island" Facebook groups, but also how they are using tools like Windows Live Messenger, to swap ideas and recommendations, or to get peer input and approval on their fashion choices.

It's this contextual analysis that helps us formulate web and social media related strategies that ultimately resulted in a new eCommerce website that will be launched later this year, that we know will fit well with the behaviors and attitudes of their audience.

YP: Which social networking tools are the most effective in terms of marketing new products? What about generating brand awareness? Do you have any tips for brands who are new to using social networking?

PD: It's important to remember that you have to start giving and proving your worth before you can start taking. This generation is cynical about marketing. They simply don't believe the hype, and they expect to talk directly to brands; and they expect to be listened to. So spend time listening and observing, and then when you've worked out how you can add value, start participating in a contributory fashion. Only when you've got the trust and credibility in the community can you begin leveraging it for marketing and promotion.

What is clear is that brands or products that people don't like simply don't do well in social spaces. Social media in itself is not going to save your brand or product. Unless you can get people to love it or you first, you're doomed from the outset. It is very possible to overturn brand perceptions in social spaces, but you have to be working from a solid base of confidence in your product. If you're not confident in that product, then the best way to use the social space is to ask that community for help. Acknowledge quickly that you know that they don't like you, and ask how to make it better. But again, there has to be value in return. They won't do it just because you ask, you've got to give them something to believe that this is worth doing – and it's not 20% off their next purchase!

YP: Are there any new or upcoming social networking/online tools that brands should be looking out for?

ZZ: This is an environment where these tools and brands come and go very quickly. You do not have to be first in to make something work, so don't go diving into brand new initiatives with huge investments until you see how they pan out against others. What you absolutely have to do though, is take the time and effort to look at and play with all the tools that come about. But don't just do it once and think you've got the measure of it; the community can dramatically change what a particular social tool does.

PD: For example, take a look at how Twitter has been transformed by the way people use it. On Twitter in 2006, there was no concept of an "@ reply." What happened was that people began simply "directing’ their Tweets 'at' someone using the convention of '@username'." It was only when Twitter themselves and the people who develop Twitter clients cottoned on to this, and began using the @username to filter the public timeline that the "@reply" was transformed from a thing that a few people did, to a built-in part of the Twitter operating environment, leading Twitter to become much more conversational than the original broadcast medium that it was.

ZZ: Twitter may not be how you engage your own audience, but it's a hugely valuable source of buzz to help inform you about where you should be looking next. And by the way, @poleydee and @ziaz will help you too!

More on Alexandra Suhner
Alexandra Suhner is a London-based trend forecaster, marketing consultant, and creative director seeking new appointments within fashion or creative companies. She specializes in cultural, marketing and lifestyle trends, with a focus on youth culture and European geographies and also teaches 16 to 18 year old students at a fashion vocational school in London.  She writes a blog for Fashion Trendsetter.

For more coverage of youth marketing, go to the Ypulse Youth Marketing Channel sponsored by Youth Marketing Connection.

danah boyd breached the subject in her keynote, expanding on some observations she made in a controversial blog essay she wrote two years ago based on her ethnographic research with teens across the country: that the ongoing racial and socio-economic stratification within social networks, specifically the divide between MySpace and Facebook, are in boyd's words "a modern incarnation of White Flight."

Effectively waving a red flag, boyd quoted the language of condescension invoked by high school students from privileged backgrounds, who characterized MySpace as "ghetto" and "cheesy" and "less safe" than Facebook, a notable echo of the sentiment that we've heard expressed by the media with varying degrees of tactfulness.  While these divisions were not born on the net, they continue to live there, passively creating a new manifestation of  "second class" citizens. The message to politicians thus being twofold — that speaking only through Facebook or Twitter or any one social network limits the conversation to a certain segment of their constituents,  and that the opportunity to create a meeting point, while a formidable challenge, still exists.

The topic was picked up again later in the day at a panel on empowering the youth vote by Maria Teresa Peterson from the Latino voter activist group Voto Latino. Peterson pointed out the top two reasons Latino youths had historically refrained from participating in political activities were they didn’t feel smart enough, and no one was asking them.

In Voto Latino's effort to address these issues and engage the young Latino population during the election —  the fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. with 50,000 Latinos turning 18 every month, 92 percent of whom are eligible to vote — MySpace played a crucial role as a platform for public service announcements that spoofed telenovelas and featured celebs like Rosario Dawson and Wilmer Valderrama.

Offline these efforts continued with the help of "ShoBoy," a popular Bay Area DJ who hosts a bilingual show and partnered with the organization to host monthly registration drives at concerts, colleges and malls in the area and pre- and day-of-election text message blasts reminding people to go out and vote. Peterson also made the point that with many young Hispanics acting as the gatekeepers within their home, direct mail, done right, may also prove to be an effective strategy.

In the wake of November 2008, the emphasis for all of the youth-centric groups is on identifying best practices like these and maintaining the momentum that lead up to a phenomenal finish on election day.  Now that they've been activated and are ready to be engaged, what's the next step?

Author and youth vote activist Mike Connery observed, that despite ongoing efforts such as the redesign of whitehouse.gov and the recent launch of  the "craigslist for service site" All For Good, "No one has found silver bullet yet."  A symptom, fellow panelist Greg Miller of the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, identified as part of a larger issue of lack of structural support for civic engagement with high school students only having to take a course or less to get by. According to Miller, engaging the youth vote in a sustainable durable conversation requires a mechanism that starts with voter registration (which he proposes should be automatic for U.S. citizens from birth) and continues from there. Continues to where exactly? Well, hopefully that's the question on PDF attendees' minds.

For more coverage of urban/multicultural youth culture, check out the new Ypulse Urban Channel.

- Dying young (One in seven teens expect to die young — these are the same teens engaging in risky behavior. Plus a disturbing look at kids and teens under 18 having plastic surgery.) (Red Orbit) (USA Today)

- AdAge reviews 'NYC Prep' (and "Make It Or Break It." The N [soon to be "TeenNick"] will debut its new half hour series "The Assistants" July 10th. "Swimming With Sharks" for teens? And ABC Family will be one of the big sponsors of this year's Simon Mall Tour. Plus an interview with the writer for "Greek" and the controversial "10 Things I Hate About You" television series.) (All Headline News) (New York Times, reg. required)

- Disney is a 'heterosexual' Magic Kingdom (according to this academic study – does this surprise anyone? Plus Disney's "Princess Protection Program" drew 8.5 million viewers) (Multichannel News)

- YouTube makes NYC kids' choir famous (check out the vid if you aren't one of the 7 million people who have already. Plus YooStar wants to be the "Rockband" of YouTube) (AP) (Variety)

- Trojan buys product placement (in a music video selling safer sex after its "Evolve" campaign was rejected by broadcasters. And the Truth Campaign teams up with Imeem to reach youth through music/social media. Plus AdAge profiles a successful film camp that brings Canadian, Israeli and Palestinian youth together) (New York Post) (ClickZ)

- YA goes 'supernatural' (more on the trend inspired by the success "Twilight" and "Harry Potter") (Boston Globe)

- 13-year-old grapples with a Sony Walkman (in a publicity stunt to highlight the device's 1330th birthday) (PSFK)

P.S. Check out the comments on my Nielsen post last week including a response from Nielsen.