Facebook officials say new design helps advertisers

For a long time I've been waiting for evidence that online branding advertising works. Click-troughs work, although evidence is spotty on that, but I've not seen any evidence that branding work.

Facebook officials are claiming that their new design will "boost sharing activity and create new opportunities for advertisers." The idea is that the timeline will allow advertisers to link to products my friends "like" and are purchasing. We assume that will push me to buy (in fact, Facebook officials said a friend's "liking" a product increased the chances I will use it by 51 percent). Still no hard evidence.

Wall Street protesters turn to dead-tree technology

Interesting choice for the Wall Street protesters who felt their story wasn't getting told. They started a print newspaper. Certainly they've had plenty of new media "ink," lots of videos on YouTube, blogs and other electronic publicity.

But, when it came to generating buzz, they turned back to print.

70% of Americans read or visit newspaper sites weekly

A couple of years ago Marquette's Communication College sponsored a visit from a media "futurist" who said that newspapers had something valuable going for them that other media missed. It was, she said, the trust of their audience.

I remembered her comment while reading of the latest National Newspaper Association survey that indicated 70 percent of American had read either a printed newspaper or its online version in the past week. That's a pretty high number, but believable because it supports data passed along by individual newspaper companies.

The NNA said the high reader/viewership is "because newspapers still represent the most trusted source of news in America"

The survey also supported by observation -- go into any coffee shop and look at the people reading newspapers and scanning online news sites.