With its testosterone-heavy marketing aimed at “young, hungry guys,” Hardee’s may seem like an unlikely user of Pinterest, a social media website that has become a popular place for women to find wedding ideas or to share pictures of shoes they covet.
But nonetheless, the St. Louis-based fast-food chain launched a Pinterest page a few weeks ago. The page now has boards full of everything from an homage to bacon to pictures of scantily-clad “Hardee’s hotties.”
“It is skewing very heavily female, which is not our demographic,” Jenna Petroff, Hardee’s spokeswoman, said of Pinterest. “But we’ve always been a brand that has been on the ground running with new technology. So we want to be there should our customers find their way there.”
There’s been a recent flurry of brands and retailers rushing to Pinterest, which is operated from Palo Alto, Calif., with less than two dozen employees, as buzz about the site has begun to bubble up into the mainstream. It’s a natural fit since retailers are interested in anything that helps inspire a desire for their products.
For the uninitiated, the site basically works like this: users create visual bulletin boards by uploading or “pinning” (tagging) pictures of things they want or find interesting.
While critics may wonder whether the Pinterest will be just another short-lived fad, data from the research firm comScore, which measures Internet traffic, shows that the site has been on an impressive growth trajectory.
The site’s numbers of visitors has grown about 55 percent in recent months and hit 11.7 million in January.
Pinterest is the fastest standalone site that comScore has tracked to hit the 10 million unique visitors, said Andrew Lipsman, the research firm’s vice president of industry analysis.
“It’s really showing an exponential growth curve at the moment,” he said.
Still, industry watchers aren’t sure how Pinterest plans to make money. Like many other social media startups, the site is figuring out a way to generate revenue and post a profit.
The website, which doesn’t charge users to sign up, is being funded by venture capital. On its site, Pinterest says it is looking at various possible funding methods in the future, such as advertising.
TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC
It’s not just Pinterest’s focus on products that are making many brands salivate. Women, who are a core consumer group for many companies, make up about 68 percent of Pinterest users and drive about 85 percent of page views, Lipsman said.
And when Pinterest users are spending some considerable time on the site — an average of 100 minutes a month, Lipsman added. (That compares to 400 minutes a month on Facebook and 20 minutes a month on LinkedIn.)
Another peculiarity of Pinterest is that it’s been predominantly a Midwestern phenomenon so far. One theory for that is the strong scrapbooking culture in this region.
“Typically, with a hot social media site, we see it take off on the coasts first,” Lipsman said. “But it’s been the exact opposite (with Pinterest). The coasts are under-represented and the Midwest is the highest indexing region faxless payday advance.”
Haim Mano, a marketing professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said that companies have to be careful to not use social media, including Pinterest, just to blast their products.
They have to include some added content, too, otherwise people will zone it out, he said.
In any case, Mano added, “The younger generation are very savvy in understanding and realizing when this is a promotion created by a company or when it’s something that is consumer-generated.”
Jayme O’Renic, digital marketing manager for Overland-based Build-A-Bear Workshop, noted that some brands are merely pinning their entire catalog on Pinterest.
“But I think we’re making ourselves more authentic on Pinterest,” she said, noting the company has tagged everything from birthday party ideas to craft projects for St. Patrick’s Day. “We really want to be engaging with Mom.”
It’s a site that many Build-A-Bear’s customers are immersed in, she noted. For example, after the retailer recently launched new Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy products, some users began immediately pinning the pictures to their Pinterest boards.
It’s hard to know whether Build-A-Bear has found new fans through the site, but O’Renic says it is surely driving some traffic to the company’s website.
Natalie Trivundza has been an avid Pinterest user herself and so decided a few weeks ago to launch a page for Phillips Furniture where she works as an advertising and marketing specialist.
“I love Pinterest myself for decorating ideas,” she said. “And our business is very visual. So I think it’s important for us to have a page because we’re design experts.”
When she first suggested that the company join Pinterest, she said many of her female co-workers were already familiar with the site.
“But all of the guys we work with had no clue what we were talking about,” she said.
Bill Elcan had been hearing the buzz about Pinterest for awhile, so finally decided to put Kirkwood-based Seeds of Happiness on it about a month ago.
The business, which is a little over a year old, makes and sells smiley faces out of lumps of clay.
“I know it’s one of the up and coming social media sites, so we might as well ride the wave,” said Elcan, the company’s president. “Right now we’re trying to grow our brand. This is just one more thing we can do to get in front of the public.”
He imagines that Facebook will continue to be the primary social media avenue for his business. But Pinterest can be another valuable outlet in the mix.
In addition to Facebook and Pinterest, he also manages Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn accounts. And he recently launched a related blog. It can be a lot, especially for a small business where the president also runs the company’s social media pages.
“It’s a lot to think about and to manage,” he said. “But it’s worth it because it doesn’t really cost us anything.”
A group of ground staff at Frankfurt airport is beginning a new three-day strike in a long-running pay dispute.
The GdF union called the strike from 9 p.m. Sunday (2000 GMT; 3 p.m. EST) until 5 a.m. Thursday (0400 GMT; 11 p.m. EST Wednesday) after the latest talks collapsed. It follows a three-day strike last week at Europe’s third-busiest airport.
Airport operator Fraport says it kept more than 80 percent of flights running last week and expects to do so this time, too. Still, German news agency dapd reported that Lufthansa canceled some 140 flights for Monday.
Fraport has criticized GdF demands for double-digit wage increases for around 200 workers who oversee operations on the tarmac. The union says it just wants Frankfurt salaries brought into line with other airports.
Home prices fell to their lowest point in more than a decade in January, which helped to lift the pace of home sales, according to a report from an industry trade group.
The National Association of Realtors reported that the median home price in January fell 2% from December to $154,700. That’s the lowest price reading since November 2001, before the run-up in home prices that became known as the housing bubble.
The median price is the point at which half of homes are sold for a higher price, and half are sold at a lower price. (Multi-million dollar foreclosures)
Serving as a drag on existing home prices is a large inventory of homes in foreclosure. Distressed home sales, which includes homes in foreclosure and so-called short sales in which the home is sold for less than what is owed on the mortgage, made up 35% of sales in January.
"Prices will continue to fall through the first half of 2012 due to the high share of distressed sales," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist with PNC Financial. "The recent agreement between the big mortgage servicers, state attorneys general and the Obama administration will also result in more homes going to foreclosure over the next few months, adding to downward pressure on prices."
But the pace of sales rose to the highest level since May of 2010, helped by the low prices and rock-bottom mortgage rates. The seasonally-adjusted annual sales pace of 4.57 million homes was up slightly from the revised 4.38 million in December. The last time homes sold at that pace, buyers were rushing to qualify for an $8,000 homebuyer’s tax credit that was about to expire. The latest reading was roughly in line with the expectations of economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
"The uptrend in home sales is in line with all of the underlying fundamentals — pent-up household formation, record-low mortgage interest rates, bargain home prices, sustained job creation and rising rents," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.
The housing market has been showing signs of recovery in recent months. The combination of low mortgage rates and a decline in home prices means homes are more affordable than they’ve been in decades. PNC’s Hoffman agreed that the report is a further sign of recovery in the market, although he cautioned "it will remain a long process."
New home starts by builders have been rising, along with their confidence and customer traffic, according to an industry survey.
The supply of existing homes on the market tightened slightly in the Realtors’ latest report, slipping 0.4% to 2.3 million homes, roughly a 6 month supply. That is down 20% from the supply of homes a year ago.
Home sales in the U.S. probably climbed in January to the highest level since May 2010, adding to evidence the housing market is regaining its footing, economists said reports this week will show.
Combined purchases of new and existing houses rose to a 4.97 million annual rate from 4.92 million in December, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Claims for jobless benefits held near the lowest level since 2008, bolstering consumer confidence, other reports may show.
A strengthening job market, combined with record affordability driven by the drop in home prices and mortgage rates, will probably keep underpinning demand. Nonetheless, the Federal Reserve and Obama administration are striving to find ways to lend the industry additional assistance amid concern that mounting foreclosures will continue to hinder the recovery.
Singapore
Greece’s finance minister says all pending issues in its international creditors’ requirements for the country’s second bailout will be completed ahead of a Wednesday evening conference call between eurozone finance ministers.
Evangelos Venizelos said that “very few” issues remained and would be wrapped up before the call at 6p.m. Greek time (1600GMT) Wednesday.
The call is being held instead of a meeting between the ministers, which was called off Tuesday because Athens had not met all the requirements, including plugging a euro325 million ($427.99 million) financing gap and providing written guarantees from the governing coalition’s party leaders.
Venizelos made the comments after a meeting with President Karolos Papoulias, who he said will give up his presidential salary to help in the crisis.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) _ The leaders of the two parties participating in Greece’s governing coalition have prepared written assurances committing to implement the terms of Greece’s new bailout _ a key requirement demanded by international creditors, officials said Wednesday.
Socialist leader George Papandreou signed the letter Tuesday night, and Conservative head Antonis Samaras prepared his letter Wednesday morning and was to send it within the day, the officials said.
A meeting of eurozone finance ministers that had been expected Wednesday on Greece’s second multibillion bailout was postponed. Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the ministers’ meetings, said Tuesday night that “further technical work” was needed from Athens. This included providing the written assurances and detailing how Greece will plug a euro325 million ($428 million) financing gap, he said.
Wednesday’s meeting had been expected to give the green light for a bond-swap deal with private creditors designed to slice some euro100 billion ($132 billion) off Greece’s debt.
The swap deal, which will take several weeks to implement, has to be finalized by March 20, when Greece faces a euro14.5 billion ($19.1 billion) bond redemption that it cannot pay.
Instead, the ministers will hold a conference call Wednesday evening, and will meet in person in Brussels next Monday.
In Athens, a government official said the issue of the euro325 million gap was expected to be resolved within the day. On Tuesday, government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis said the funds would come “from spending cuts from ministries, from areas including defense.”
The bond swap deal is an integral part of Greece’s second international bailout, worth euro130 billion ($171 billion) in loans, without which the country faces a default that could drag down other economically vulnerable eurozone countries and threaten Europe’s single currency itself.
The country has been surviving since May 2010 on funds from a first, euro110 billion ($145 billion) package of rescue loans. But harsh austerity measures demanded in return for the emergency loans have hammered Greece’s economy, leaving it in a fifth year of recession. Official figures Tuesday showed that the Greek economy shrank by 7 percent on the year in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The austerity measures, which have included repeated waves of tax hikes and cuts to salaries and pensions, have also led to an explosion of public anger, with strikes and demonstrations often turning violent.
On Sunday, rioters burned buildings in central Athens and clashed with riot police while lawmakers approved a new round of austerity, slashing the minimum wage and planning mass layoffs in the civil service as part of requirements for the second bailout.
Iraq has opened the taps at a new oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf in a vital step to bringing sorely needed cash for reconstruction after decades of war and international sanctions.
Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad says oil exports through southern Iraq _ which currently stand at about 1.7 million barrels a day _ will be boosted by about 200,000 barrels per day beginning in March.
Jihad said the new single point mooring (SPM) was inaugurated Sunday by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during a ceremony in the oil-rich province of Basra.
Iraq’s total daily oil exports averaged 2.145 million barrels in December. The government relies on oil exports for 95 percent of its revenue.
WASHINGTON • Friday’s surprisingly strong January jobs report prompted hope that the economy’s recovery is finally kicking into high gear.
“It feels like businesses are finally looking to expand their operations, which means more hiring,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, a forecasting and consulting firm. “The lack of hiring has been the missing link in this recovery. We may have found the missing link.”
Employers added a better than expected 243,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Private sector employers actually added 257,000 jobs in January, but the national total was dragged down by 14,000 lost government jobs.
Most encouraging was the broad nature of job gains. Manufacturing added 50,000 posts, and professional and business services — many of them well-paid white-collar jobs — posted the largest gain, 70,000 new jobs.
Even the hard-hit construction sector improved, adding 21,000 jobs.
“It is a fantastic jobs report, not a single blemish,” said Zandi. “Jobs were up big, and unemployment was down big. All the leading indicators in the report suggest continued solid job growth at least into the spring.”
The unemployment rate fell another two-tenths of a percentage point to 8.3 percent — the fifth straight month that the unemployment rate dropped. It was at 9.1 percent as recently as August.
Wall Street investors sent stocks soaring. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 157 points, or 1.23 percent, to close at 12,862. The NASDAQ rose 46 points, or 1.61 percent, to close at 2,906. The Standard & Poors 500 rose 19 points, or 1.46 percent, to close at 1,345.
“The real stimulant to future economic growth is the ‘boost in confidence’ this report provides to the roughly 92 percent of the workforce (that) already has a job,” said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, in a research note.
Over the last three months, employers have averaged job creation above 200,000; this trend mirrors strong recent data on manufacturing, car sales and improving consumer sentiment.
Adding weight to that view, new data Friday showed that December factory orders were up modestly and a closely watched index of nonmanufacturing activity shot up 3.8 percentage points.
President Barack Obama welcomed the numbers during an appearance at a suburban Washington fire station in Arlington, Va.
“The numbers came down because more people found work. … These numbers will go up and down in coming months …”, but the economy is growing stronger, the recovery is speeding up,” he said.
The president pressed Republicans in Congress to support the economy by extending the payroll tax holiday that is set to expire at the end of this month.
“They’ve got to renew the payroll tax cut they’ve extended and do it without drama, without delay, without linking it to some ideological side issue,” Obama said. “Now is not the time for self-inflicted wounds for our economy. Don’t muck it up — keep it moving in the right direction.”
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, blamed Democrats for holding up the payroll tax extension, and in a statement, he gave a qualified thumbs-up for the January numbers.
“There’s welcome news in this latest jobs report as more Americans found work last month, but the fact is our unemployment rate is still far too high,” Boehner said. “Our economy still isn’t creating jobs the way it should be, and that’s why we need a new approach.”
The workforce shrank by about 1.2 million workers in January, which may have helped drive down the unemployment rate. The Labor Department began using new adjusted numbers to calculate workforce size, spurring some economists to question the falling jobless rate.
If the hiring numbers stay strong in coming months, it would confirm that Europe’s debt woes are having less of an impact on the U.S. economy than economists thought, and it may force revised projections of sluggish U.S. growth for the first half of 2012.
“We believe that consensus expectations for growth are understating the rising momentum in the economy,” economists for forecaster RDQ Economics in New York wrote in a note to investors.
The U.K. economy shrank more than economists forecast in the fourth quarter as manufacturers cut output and services stagnated, leaving Britain on the brink of another recession.
Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent from the third quarter, when it increased 0.6 percent, the Office for National Statistics said in London today. The median forecast of 33 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey was for a drop of 0.1 percent. Public-sector strikes over pensions on Nov. 30 had
Outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh will leave soon to Oman, en route to medical treatment in the United States, Yemeni officials said on Saturday, part of an American effort to get the embattled strongman out of the country to allow a peaceful transition from his rule.
Washington has been trying for weeks to find a country where Saleh can live in exile, since it does not want him to settle permanently in the United States. The mercurial president, who has ruled for more than 33 years, has repeatedly gone back and forth on whether he would leave.
The officials’ comments Saturday suggested Oman, Yemen’s neighbor, could be a potential home for him. Three officials said he would go, but they were divided on whether he would remain in exile in Oman or return to Yemen after treatment. His return, even if he no longer holds the post of president, could mean continued turmoil for the impoverished nation at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
After nearly a year of protests demanding his ouster, Saleh in November handed his powers over to his vice president and agreed to step down. A unity government between his party and the opposition has since been created. However, Saleh _ still formally the president _ has continued to influence politics from behind the scenes through his family and loyalists in power positions.
The U.S. does not want to take him in, concerned it would be seen by Yemenis as harboring a leader they say has blood on his hands for the killings of protesters. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates already have rejected Saleh, American officials said.
Senior ruling party figure Mohammed al-Shayef told The Associated Press that Saleh would travel “in the coming days” to Oman, then head to the United States for treatment of wounds he suffered in an June assassination attempt.
After treatment, Saleh would return to Yemen to head his People’s Congress Party, said al-Shayef, who is also a prominent tribal leader. Another top party official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk of the plans, gave the same itinerary, though he said Saleh would pass through Ethiopia en route from Oman to the U.S.
Saleh himself has spoken in recent weeks of working as an opposition politician after he leaves the presidency.
However, an official in the prime minister’s office said Saleh “is supposed” to return to Oman to stay after his U.S. treatment is completed.
The official said Saleh’s powerful son Ahmed was currently in Oman, arranging a residence for his father. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk the press. It did not seem that Ahmed, who commands the elite Republican Guard that has been at the forefront of the crackdown on protests, would remain in Oman.
The unity government has been struggling to establish its authority in the face of Saleh’s continuing strength in the country. Like Saleh’s son Ahmed, Saleh’s nephew also commands one of Yemen’s best trained and equipped security forces, and the president’s loyalists remain in place in the government and bureaucracy.
Saleh agreed to step down under a U.S.-approved and Gulf-mediated accord with the opposition in return for immunity for prosecution.
Yemen’s parliament on Saturday approved the immunity law, a key step toward Saleh’s formal retirement from his post. Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi signed it into law later in the day.
Saleh is scheduled to hand over the presidency to his vice president on Feb. 21.
The law grants Saleh complete immunity for any crimes committed during his rule, including the killing of protesters during the uprising against his regime. However, parliament limited the scope of immunity for other regime officials and excluded immunity for terrorism-related crimes.
Initially, the law would have similarly given complete immunity to everyone who served Saleh’s governments throughout his rule, sparking a public outcry and a new wave of protests. In response, the law was changed to grant them immunity only on “politically motivated” criminal acts. That apparently would not cover corruption charges.
Most protesters have rejected the accord entirely, saying Saleh should not be given immunity and demanding he be prosecuted.
Human Rights Watch said Saturday in a statement that the law allows senior officials to “get away with murder” and “sends the disgraceful message that there is no consequence for killing those who express dissent.”
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