Myspace launches new ad platform aimed at small-medium sized businesses.

Myspace and Facebook, the Coke and Pepsi of the social networking world, are going each other tooth and nail.  Myspace recently just announced it's launching of a new sweeping, advertising play.  If your familiar with Google AdWords you will understand this concept (It gives users the ability to buy keywords and serve ads to users searching for stuff).  Myspace's "MyAds" is targeted directly at the users themselves rather than "AdWords" targeting at what the users are searching for.  

Anyone can go and buy ads by going to the MyAds site and signing up.  There is a really easy tool that allows you to create a banner ad -- while you can upload your own image, graphic or corporate logo, and type out your message directly into it.  Myspace then allows you to hypertarget your ad at a market based on the many ways the social network's 76 million active users define themselves.  Age, gender, zipcode, hobbies, musical preference, etc.  Like Google, rates vary depending on the target market; MyAd advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ad, with prices starting at 25 cents per click-through.  

Will this be a huge success or a horrible failure? The market that Myspace is targeting (small and medium sized businesses) is expected to be the hardest hit by the financial crisis in the coming months and years.  They'll have way far few dollars to spend on marketing and advertising.  

You decide...

Energy drinks = Bad (but so good..)

Yes, this is not directly related to Training and /or conept strategies, but affects the individuals...

Your daily caffeine blast from "energy" drinks might be killing you. A new study says the high-powered drinks have so much of a jolt that the government should put warning labels on them.

"The caffeine content of energy drinks varies over a 10-fold range, with some containing the equivalent of 14 cans of Coca-Cola. Yet the caffeine amounts are often unlabeled, and few include warnings about the potential health risks of caffeine intoxication," Roland Griffiths writes in The Gazette of Johns Hopkins University, where the study took place.
But he and other researchers found that some energy drinks have as much as 500 mg. of caffeine in an 8-ounce can. That compares to 330 mg. in a 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee, or 35 mg. in a 12-ounce can of cola.

If drinkers are unaware of just how much caffeine is in their drinks, they run the risk of overimbibing and coming down with caffeine poisoning, the study found.
The symptoms include anxiety, an upset stomach, restlessness and, more seriously, a rapid heartbeat, which could put some people with cardiac problems in life-threatening danger, the report said.