We all strive to put our "best face forward" on social networking sites. On Facebook, to add another cliché, the right profile picture is worth a thousand words. (Or, for the lucky, a thousand dates.)

This reality has inspired the latest branding initiative from Esteé Lauder:  “Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile.” The beauty company will be holding events across the country where ladies (and, I’m sure, men who want to look pretty) can meet with a professional makeup artist to design a makeover tailored to the website you’re aiming to join or have recently joined.

For instance, you could stick to a conservative color palette for LinkedIn, and then add a bit of pizzazz for OKCupid or Nerve.Continue reading...

Fashion designers have long partnered with beauty brands, lending their names (if not always their talent) to nail polish, lipstick and makeup. Celebrities often do the same. But a PC maker?

Apparently so. The latest collaboration of note is between Dell and OPI; the two companies teamed up to create a series of laptops patterned on the nail polish line's most popular colors, 26 in all:

The color palette is Dell’s most popular option for consumer laptops, and the OPI partnership will soon add 26 exciting, high-style OPI fashion shades to the color and artwork offerings available as options in the Dell Design Studio. Beginning next month in the U.S., Dell will offer OPI 20 classic colors plus six Holiday Collection colors including “Dear Santa,” “Merry Midnight” and “Smitten with Mittens.” Seasonal choices will vary with Dell and OPI will periodically revise its other color offerings based on what’s most popular.

Color options will be available in the Mini, Inspiron, and Studio laptop styles at Dell.com, and will release first in the U.S. and later in other countries.Continue reading...

What goes around comes around: In the '90s, Conde Nast's Internet branch CondeNet shut down the thriving dating and personals service it ran through its Swoon website, ceding the lucrative space to Match, Nerve and eHarmony.

Now the company (facing a brutal round of closures, layoffs and cutbacks) has decided to try again, with trulymadlydating.com, aimed at matching women who read Glamour with GQ's male audience. Gawker's sleuths note the site appears aimed at the British market and is operated by The Dating Lab.

Conde Nast (my former employer, I need to note) moved quickly onto the Internet in the mid-90s, though it was slow to evolve online for a while thereafter. Swoon was their early attempt to take content from print magazines like Glamour, Self, and Mademoiselle and package it under new stand-alone web brands. Swoon, focused on relationship content, and Phys, which was about health and fitness, are long gone, but Conde Nast's approach of separate web brands continues with Style.com (fashion content from Vogue and W), Epicurious for food and Concierge for travel.Continue reading...

You may be a Mac and I may be a PC. But a new study says I probably live in your house.

The NDP Group 2009 Household Penetration Study looked at stats comparing Mac and PC households in the US. Some results are what you'd expect: Mac-owning households are more affluent, with 36% who report household income over $100,000, compared with the national average of 21%. And on average, an Apple home contains far more consumer electronics than PC-only households.Continue reading...

Mother Nature, watch out. Apple Inc. is on the warpath against any and all use of apples in corporate logos.

After highly publicized lawsuits against The Beatles, The City of New York, and a Canadian business school, Apple has set their litigious gaze on Australian supermarket chain Woolworths (not part of the US "five and dime" retailer).

Aussie Woolworths introduced their logo, an apple formed by a cursive "W" topped with a right-leaning leaf, in August 2008 to little fanfare. According to Daily Finance, it wasn't until they submitted a trademark application to place the icon on new consumer products -- including electronic goods -- that Apple's interest was piqued. Apple claims that the Woolworths logo will compete for market share and create confusion in the minds of consumers.Continue reading...

The practice of sponsored blogging, which we called out last week, is in for some new regulation from the US government. Ad Age reports that the Federal Trade Commission has voted to "require bloggers to clearly disclose any 'material connection' to an advertiser, including payments for an endorsement or free product," starting December 1, with fines up to $11,000. The new rules also govern celebrity endorsements.

Ad Age calls the new rules "the most far-reaching attempt to stamp some guidelines of conduct on the blogosphere, which generally operates according to informal codes and the notion that 'inauthentic' bloggers -- including those not disclosing commercial relationships -- will suffer in the web's court of public opinion."Continue reading...

It's only a rumor, says Wired, but Apple is widely thought to be launching another innovative product as early as January. Some think this electronic device could save print media from oblivion.

The so-called "Apple Tablet" is thought to be a 10-inch screen, possibly as part of a new iPod Touch/iPhone gadget. The new device would potentially compete withAmazon's e-book reader, Kindle. But it could be more than that, says Wired: "...an Apple tablet would specialize in reviving dead-tree media (i.e., newspapers, magazines and books)."Continue reading...

Brands with user-generated content have to be on alert for user-generated damage. As Facebook increases its ad partnerships on the way to achieving positive cash flow, some questionable affiliate ads appearing on the site have directed users’ ire at the social networking brand itself.

If you’ve used your Facebook account recently, you may have seen ads for Mylife.com, implying that a young, hot, scantily clad female has been Google-hunting you. But, Forbes reports, the ladies in those photos probably don’t know they’re appearing in those ads.Continue reading...