As Get Satisfaction says in its recent infographic, The Death of Print, “While 2010 may not have been the year print died, it was certainly the year it bled ink.”

According to the research, both newspaper and magazine subscriptions and advertising have dropped across the board (as we know), while digital subscriptions and advertising are flourishing. Of Americans polled: 10% have a newspaper subscription and 11% have a magazine subscription, while 18% have a digital subscription.

As shown in the section below, more than 35% of all unique internet visits in 2010 were to newspaper websites. And while the advent of tablets like the iPad have been referred to as “print killers,” they do provide an opportunity for growth for printed sources, should they find the proper way to harness this potential.

To see the full infographic, visit Get Satsifaction.

ImageShack’s yfrog – best known as a platform for sharing images on Twitter – has recently undergone a logo redesign, abandoning its frog imagery for a series of speech bubbles instead.

Of course, the recurring comment among critics is, “Where’s the frog?” As Brand New explains, a logo certainly doesn’t have to literally reflect its name, “but when the name includes the word ‘frog’ it seems to me like there are dozens of visual ideas that could be exploited. Instead we have a circle of speech bubbles.”

While the new logo is tremendously more professional-looking, it’s also quite generic. However, there may be a reason: yfrog is attempting to transform into a “full-fledged social platform,” with profiles, commenting, and “other accoutrements of sharing and liking.” Like a platform dedicated to MySpace layout customization would have faded into obscurity as soon as MySpace did, yfrog’s success is almost entirely linked to that of Twitter. Not that Twitter is necessarily dying any time soon, but it seems sensible for such a niche platform to expand its service to help it stand on its own. The internet is flooded with similar Twitter-dedicated photo-sharing platforms, including the massive TwitPic, and yfrog may be attempting to differentiate itself.

A look through the comments on Brand New provide a lot of interesting critiques, suggestions, and insight on yfrog’s logo change:

“If they were going for the thoughtless literal representation why didn’t they at least mold the speech bubbles closer together and tilted it to give it perspective and WHAM you [got] yourself a lilypad, ‘a platform for social networkers to LEAP from’…”
“Seems like there was a huge missed opportunity here to do something cool with the frog croaking… if they were intent on the ’speech/dialog/networking’ concept. Frogs croaking is more exciting than this logo.”
“[I'm] a bit worried that everyone would have designed this with a frog in the logo. That would be way too literal and far too abstract from what the company actually does. Maybe I’m missing something here, but how is a frog related to this service?”
“A significant improvement but very generic.”

For a special relaunch of its formerly discontinued “Taco flavor” tortilla chips, Doritos has rereleased the flavor in its original 1960s packaging. This is definitely a treat for those fans of the former flavor; according to Wikipedia (via The Dieline), “numerous impromptu online support groups have sprung up over the years among devoted fans who miss the original Taco Doritos flavor formula.” The retro packaging is a nice way to honor the return of the apparently beloved flavor. The response must have been great, because Doritos has recently announced that this “limited edition” release will now be permanently returning to its product line-up – a triumph for those long-time devoted fans, I’m sure.

Compare the nostalgic retro packaging to the current Doritos logo, below.

The Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee has officially revealed the visual concept for the XXII Olympic Winter Games taking place in Sochi, Russia.

The look concept is centered around “the principle of the ‘patchwork quilt’ – a combination of 16 designs representing the most famous traditional Russian arts and crafts… [the concept] is the visual embodiment of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games philosophy and is intended to express the character of modern Russia whilst at the same time introducing guests from all over the world to traditional Russian hospitality.”

Certainly a beautiful, memorable, fitting, and festive design.

Well, not you specifically, but rather certain defining characteristics, like your age and gender.

NYC startup Immersive Labs has created billboards and in-store displays that use facial-recognition software to determine the age and gender of viewers. Why? For targeting of course – these displays can then change the ad being shown based on viewers’ characteristics. The displays can also customize ads based on the local data like the weather, and can monitor viewers’ attention, distance from the display, and number of “glances.” As HuffPost Tech reports, “Targeted advertising is the golden goose of the online economy: ads keyed to a user’s unique interests have been shown to double the effectiveness of traditional ads. But those ads have been restricted to the Internet – until now.”

Customer relationship management is a major element of successful marketing. However, it’s often one-on-one, between the brand and a particular customer at a time. How can you leverage customer relationships to benefit your brand?

Having developed with the age of digital marketing is the concept of “sharing” – encouraging audiences to share compelling original content through with their social networks. Most commonly the items shared are in the form of blog posts, Tweets, photos, and videos, but even customer relationships can be shared…

Marketing Profs suggested the following scenario, regarding positive feedback emails from customers:

An email comes in.

An email goes out thanking them and asking if we can use it for marketing.

Permission is almost always granted.

Email goes out after content is posted, inviting the writer to see the content and SHARE it to their Facebook.

Writer almost always does.

New traffic comes in from both Organic Search and from Facebook Referrals.

Email subscriber list grows.

So, from one email that would have simply died (or, at best, been printed out and put on a bulletin board), you now get search traffic from Google and lots of referral traffic from Facebook.

It’s not uncommon for companies to receive these types of “love letters” – letters and emails praising your products and/or services. So, why not leverage these customer relationship interactions? They’re the best kind of testimonial you can share since they are completely unsolicited, coming from an honest and evidently passionate source. Chances are your customer will be honored to have the chance to “speak” on your behalf. Rather than ending the communication with a “thank you,” that communication can become original content to improve social media marketing and search engine optimization efforts.

What’s the difference between branding and personal branding? As Bernadette Jiwa of The Story of Telling explains, “‘Personal branding’ is simply how we market ourselves to others, we do it subconsciously every day in the way we dress, speak and act.” The same is true for companies – branding is the way companies market themselves to others in the way they “dress” (like with a logo or website), ”speak” (like in marketing communications), and “act” (like in public relations).

A great example Jiwa gives is regarding the graphic designer David Airey. As she explains, a Google search for the term “graphic designer” turns up over 25 million organic results and Airey is one of the first. If you think about it, through personal branding, designer Airey has made is name virtually synonymous with the general term “graphic designer” – an impressive feat! Just imagine the number of graphic designers and graphic design agencies all across the web that come up in those 25 million results.

After a discussion with Airey, Jiwa composed a list of ways in which he accomplished developing his personal brand. Though geared toward personal branding, many of these strategies could be tweaked to apply to companies as well:

• Invest time in creating a reputation – define who you are and what you stand for with an online presence.

• Decide how you would like to be perceived in your niche and set goals to achieve.

• Leverage your online platforms – communicate your abilities/services/products and showcase your expertise.

• Build a community and connections around your work using social media.

• Evolve your brand as your reputation grows.

• Openly display your work, ethics  and authenticity across all marketing platforms.

• Give your audience a place to stay up to date, interact, and acquire and share knowledge.

• Do great work!

Following up on our last post, Imagining a World Without Facebook, here’s another great infographic from Social Grain for those more interested in search than social: A World Without Google. This isn’t about search engines in general – the graphic isn’t illustrating a world without all search engines – but just Google. That may not sound as serious, but just consider all of the services Google has expanded into beyond search: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Blogger.

It feels like Google has been around forever, but it really hasn’t been much more than a decade since it incorporated in 1998. In addition, the Google services we take for granted today are even younger – AdSense and Blogger were just acquired in 2003, while Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Talk, and Google Analytics were introduced in 2005, followed by the introduction of Google Docs and Google Calendar in 2006.

Without Google, there would still be other search engines, like Yahoo and Bing. But Google has become the powerhouse it is by fulfilling needs that these other search engines don’t. As Social Grain points out, users appreciate Google’s minimalist design to Yahoo’s “cluttered” homepage. In addition, Yahoo may not always understand or meet the needs of its users, indicated by its “mishandling” of popular acquisitions like del.icio.us. As for Microsoft’s Bing, users have criticized its slow indexing time (compared to Google’s) and its lack of advanced algorithms.

However, Social Grain’s graphic reveals both arguments regarding whether or not we would be “better off” without Google. Some feel that Google monopolizes search and could misuse stored user information, while others trust Google to protect their personal information and feel that the benefits of Google’s services outweigh any risks. What’s your stance?

Search and social marketing blog Single Grain recently created an interesting infographic showing how Facebook plays a role in our daily lives – and how life would be different without it.

From a marketing standpoint, Social Grain’s graphic shows that a whopping 70% of local businesses use Facebook for marketing. This is probably a massively helpful and valuable tool for local businesses. Just imagine, less than a decade ago it did not exist! Clearly Facebook marketing has caught on, and is fairly mainstream, from major global brands to your neighborhood small businesses.

Still not convinced about the power of content marketing? According to Social Grain, the average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content per month… that’s an average of about 3 pieces of original content per day! Considering the number of Facebook users is now approximately 600 million (as of January 2011), this is an incredible statistic. At 600 million users, the “population” of Facebook has now surpassed the entire population of North America (344 million), exceeded the total number of internet users in all of Europe (475 million), and eclipsed the entire population of Russia (143 million) approximately 4 times. There are more people on Facebook today than there were in existence just 400 years ago (in the year 1600, the world population was 545 million).

With 770 billion page views per month, what would the world be like without Facebook?