@dunkindonuts joins @starbucks in the Twittersphere

Looks like a battle to the death (with two shots of amaretto, no froth in the milk).

Wall Street Grows Bearish On Online Ad Market

J.P.Morgan slashes its outlook for the second time in two months. While it still sees growth in online spending, display advertising is flat and all other categories will be down from 2008.

Interactive Ad Spending Will Top Out in 2009: Report

Looks like a rough year ahead for ad spending of all kinds. Print and broadcast will take the biggest hit, but even most categories of online ad spending will stay flat or fall, according to Borrell Associates.

People Search Engines Gain Sophistication

Emerging services act as a nexis point for information about individuals. New services scrape content from around the Web and increasingly mine public databases to enhance profiles. Quoting:

• People search engine Spock is working on a service that will give users access to public records stored in public databases across the Web. The service, scheduled to launch mid-January, will have a $1.99 monthly service fee. Subscribers will gain access to links and data mined from government and municipally databases such as mortgage brokers and courthouses, as well as social network pages at MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn.

BusinessWeek Rounds Up Twitter Wannabes

Yammer is a microblogging service for enterprises that lets companies create private discussion groups. Blip.fm attaches music clips to short messages. Zannel attaches photos. Seesmic adds video-sharing. “Twitter co-founder Biz Stone expects the site’s user base to grow 10 times its current size in the next 12 months.”

Capturing social media success in a bottle

Gary Vaynerchuk grabbed national visibility with a video series about wine. Now he’s dispensing social media advice. Quoting from the piece: “Companies go into social media half pregnant,” he says. “They want to be involved, but don’t want to put in the time to be authentic and real and execute properly.” What else is on his technology-loving radar? “I am very high on Twitter and Ustream, and I think Seesmic has a dark horse chance to be extremely important,” he says.

Is YouTube the right pipeline for you?

Examples of recent social media campaigns. Quotes from the article:

• Amazon MP3 is a simple concept — Twitter users simply sign up to Amazon MP3, which sends alerts about special MP3 download deals and includes a link where they can take immediate action. The model appears almost too simple, but since its launch, more than 5,700 people have signed up for this quick and easy direct connection with a global brand.

• Fiserv launched a Facebook application called MyMoney that lets users search, join and manage funds from their credit union account from their profile pages. To leverage Facebook’s viral capabilities, every person who adds the MyMoney widget then alerts their friends, which creates a powerful, self-propelled ripple effect.

• Coca-Cola recently released a Facebook application for its brand Burn. The application allows users to create a customizable virtual avatar and then “go out,” either with existing friends or new ones. The next day, users can check their avatar’s blog to see what went down the night before.The application recently crossed 150,000 installs with more than 85,000 users active on a monthly basis.

• Liberty Mutual transformed a one-way conversation broadcast on TV into a site that features a blog and video, all designed to get people to take a more active role in their community — all while interacting with the Liberty Mutual brand.

Great (Media) Depression Looms

Diane Mermigas paints a gloomy picture for ad spending, saying no one really knows how deep the recession will be or how long it will last. Using Disney’s recent dour earnings report, she predicts continuing broad declines in mainstream advertising spending and a dramatic slowdown in online ad growth. Quoting Mary Meeker: “The best way to counter the unknown depth and breadth of the recession is to persevere; master the mobile Internet, learn how to monetize social networks, create a cogent business model, get a foothold in emerging markets and provide digital consumers with value.”

LinkedIn and Reid Hoffman: Recession Ready – BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek profiles Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and one of the most successful investors in Silicon Valley. His advice to startups: it’s all about financing. Get your hands on the money first and then worry about developing the product. Many Web 2.0 startups won’t make it through the coming downturn, he says. Assume that those who do have a long-term value proposition.

Quoting from the article:

• Recent casualties: Music site Social.FM, travel site TripHub, and news site Thoof have closed their doors.Seesmic, a Web video company, laid off 7 of its 21 employees in October.

• Hoffman’s advice to entrepreneurs is hard-boiled pragmatism. Hoffman urges them to focus first on financing—and only later to hone a product or service. He describes the launch of a company as a sea crossing. The financing rounds are islands, where each venture can replenish its provisions. The goal of the product strategy is to carry them to the islands. In short, it’s the financing, not the products, that keeps them alive

Cell phones part of traffic monitoring network

Your cell phone can now be turned into a transciever that tracks the speed of traffic. When merged with data from thousands of other cell phones, municipalities can create real-time maps of traffic conditions and alert drivers of routes to avoid. This is experimental at this point. Developers say the whole thing is anonymous and that no one will be able to track your route or speed. The software can be downloaded for free.