Ypulse Essentials: Coca-Cola In WeeWorld, What College Students Want In A Website, Deathwatch On 'Dumbphones'

Coca-Cola in WeeWorld (with branded games, virtual goods and scavenger hunts. The latest effort to reach plugged in teens after last month’s Black Friday promotion) (Mashable)

- What college students want in a website (less flash, more interactivity with a purpose and the option to explore in depth. Minimalists take note: shallow websites may be met with skepticism. Just a few of the insights from Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group’s new usability study on the way students are reading and misreading the web. I’m totally adding Google Gullibility - a phrase referring to a lack of critical search skills - to my vocabulary. See what all this means to marketers in today’s Engage: Gen Y column) (MediaPost, reg. required)

- Deathwatch on dumbphones (continues with findings out of [the other] Nielsen suggesting that even “spendthrift youth” will have [and grab] the opportunity to upgrade to smartphones with cheaper devices from Android and lower prices on earlier models from Apple) (Fast Company)

- Teen blogging continues to decline (In other trend updates that might sound a tad familiar, Pew finds less teens creating and maintaining blogs. Some of this might be due to the factors Anastasia noted earlier, as well as the growing numbers of collaborative creative platforms like Figment.com featured in today’s YAB review) (Fast Company)

- Unplugging as punishment (Not surprisingly, the Internet has joined TV as a go-to parental restriction with 57 percent of the households taking away web privileges as a form of punishment for kids under 18. Meanwhile, a study on the regular caffeine intake of children as young as 5 suggest a need to generally limit soft drinks) (CNET) (CBS News)

- We need more smart teen shows (according to EW’s Jennifer Armstrong, who points to the lack thereof  hammered home by the recent PTC report as an alarm bell. Hear, hear. And speaking of strong, empowered female role models… Katniss Everdeen inspires gift ideas for the “Hunger Games” fan in your life) (EW)