Introducing Ypulse, Inc.

We’re announcing some exciting changes at Ypulse today (check out the press release), and I wanted to address them here for regular readers of this blog and the Ypulse Daily Update. The big news:

SurveyU, Inc. and Youth Pulse LLC announced today that the two organizations have joined forces to create Youth Pulse, Inc.

With an expanded and highly talented team of youth experts, Youth Pulse will now offer research and strategy in addition to daily news & commentary and events for youth oriented organizations, helping them listen to, learn about and leverage youth opportunities.

Modern Media Partners is no longer the minority owner or “publisher” of Ypulse.com.

This merger creates two unique business units within Youth Pulse, Inc. – Ypulse Media (the website, Ypulse Daily Update email newsletter and Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup events) and Ypulse Insights (syndicated products, custom research and research-based consulting). I will continue as the founder/editor-in-chief and Vice President of Ypulse Media,supported by Meredith Sires, Managing Editor, while youth marketing/research veteran Jacqueline Lane will be Vice President of Ypulse Insights. SurveyU founder Dan Coates will be President with SurveyU co-founder Tracy Tomasso serving as COO (you can read their bios on the About page).

To answer the next question I’m sure many of you have, while Youth Pulse, Inc. represents the combination of a media property and a research firm, each line of business will be operated independently. Do the staff at Ypulse Insights read the Daily Update? Of course! Do the staff at Ypulse Media get insider access to the research product of Ypulse Insights? Yes, we do. We have also posted the following ethics statement to explain how these two units will operate independently while still working together:

While Ypulse Media will occasionally highlight findings from the proprietary research of Ypulse Insights as well as promote our premium content and syndicated research products available for purchase, we will continue to cover youth culture/media/marketing independently, including highlighting relevant research from competitive research firms. The media platform will continue to solicit and run website advertising and event sponsorships from both media and research competitors as well. Ypulse founder and editor-in-chief Anastasia Goodstein will offer her insights as part of our premium offering to clients. Ypulse managing editor, Meredith Sires, will contribute editorial expertise (writing and editing) to our premium products.

Given the nature of the research business, we may not be able to disclose our clients or the data that we collect on their behalf, but we will make every effort to provide independent coverage of the youth media and marketing landscape, including linking to stories about brands who may be clients, even if those stories are not always positive. We will also continue to disclose when we are covering an advertiser/sponsor editorially as well as when there may be a personal conflict of interest.

We will be discontinuing the resale of outside research on Ypulse Research as of 9/3/09 and launching a new platform for Ypulse Insights syndicated reports.

Finally, I know many of you are wondering about the next Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup event. Considering the current economic downturn, Ypulse Media will reduce the number of physical conferences to a single, annual event. We plan to hold our 2010 event sometime in the late spring in San Francisco. Realizing that our readership needs to gather insights all-year long, we will also hold quarterly, virtual webinars that will keep you in the know in the space between our annual Mashup conferences.

Feel free to email me with any questions or feedback about these changes or just leave a comment!

Categorized under: Ypulse Research

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