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.”
The impending Apple iPad 3 announcement may be getting everyone
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.
Millions of borrowers who suffered financial losses because their mortgage lenders played fast and loose while processing their foreclosures now have two ways of getting a payback.
They can tap the $26 billion settlement between the state attorneys general and the nation’s five biggest banks that was inked two weeks ago.
Foreclosure Fiasco
The other foreclosure settlement: Millions of homeowners eligible Foreclosures climbed in January What the foreclosure settlement means for you Mortgage deal could bring billions in relief Foreclosure deal has 40 states, but others balk
But there is also an earlier settlement that has been nearly forgotten — and that could lead to an even bigger payoff, in some cases.
As part of an enforcement action by federal authorities last April, 14 mortgage servicers, including Bank of America (, Fortune 500), Chase (, Fortune 500), Citibank (, Fortune 500), HSBC (), MetLife Bank (, Fortune 500), PNC Mortgage (, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500), agreed to hire independent consultants to investigate foreclosure abuses and compensate those who suffered financial harm.
As a result of the program, up to 4.3 million mortgage borrowers who were foreclosed on in 2009 and 2010 will have a chance to request an independent review of how their foreclosure was handled.
So far, only 90,000 eligible homeowners have submitted claims, prompting the feds to extend the deadline for applications by three months to July 31.
The exact amount of money borrowers will receive has yet to be determined. But if a review finds that "financial injury" occurred — say a bank charged inappropriate fees or it went forward with a foreclosure without a valid claim to the property — a homeowner could be repaid in full for their losses.
Borrowers who were improperly charged even just a single fee could be repaid for it, according to Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the federal regulatory agencies that negotiated the agreement.
And borrowers who suffered much larger losses could be in line for much bigger repayments than promised by the AG’s settlement, which will pay up to $2,000 to the estimated 750,000 who lost their homes to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011.
The compensation could even repay the cost of regaining a wrongfully lost home if warranted by the facts of the case, according to Hubbard.
The Independent Foreclosure Review was sparked by the robo-signing scandal that exposed the bank’s treatment of borrowers in the foreclosure process. The lenders lost documents and recreated them, had low-level employees with no knowledge of what they were attesting to sign legal papers and bent the rules requiring them to halt foreclosures if borrowers sought mortgage modifications.
What the $26B foreclosure settlement means for you
Unlike the $26 billion settlement with the state attorneys general, borrowers didn’t have to lose their homes in order to receive compensation, according to Hubbard.
"It could be anyone who suffered financial loss because of errors made in the foreclosure process," he said.
Since the settlements are completely independent of one another, claimants can double-dip, filing for compensation under both settlements. (To seek compensation under the state attorneys general settlement, contact your lender or servicer and ask them to review your case).
To make a claim for the Independent Foreclosure Review, borrowers have to fill out a five-page form that identifies some examples of situations that may have led to financial injury. Borrowers do not have to provide documentation. That will be handled by an independent agency.
No reviews have been completed yet, according to Hubbard. And individual cases may take months to come to decision.
For more information on the forms, go to the website set up by the servicers. And for a full list of the mortgage services involved in the Independent Foreclosure Review, go to the Federal Reserve website
Diplomats say Iran is poised for a major expansion of its nuclear program at a cavernous underground site.
They have told The Associated Press that Tehran has readied the site for the installation of thousands of new-generation centrifuges. These machines could greatly speed up production of material that can be turned into the core of nuclear warheads.
The diplomats say that electrical circuitry, piping and supporting equipment for the new centrifuges is in place.
They emphasize that Tehran has not started installing the more efficient machines at its Fordow facility and cannot say whether it was planning to payday loan lenders.
But the diplomats say Iran has little reason to prepare the ground for the better centrifuges unless it planned to operate them.
The diplomats asked for anonymity because their information is privileged.
Singapore
Firefighters doused smoldering buildings and cleanup crews swept rubble from the streets of central Athens on Monday following a night of rioting during which lawmakers approved harsh new austerity measures demanded by bailout creditors to save the nation from bankruptcy.
Police said rioters destroyed or damaged more than 110 buildings, of which 50 were burned. They included nine listed as national heritage buildings, mostly in the neoclassical style, while 30 stores were looted.
Smoke still rose from the remains of a landmark 1870 building which had housed one of the capital’s most loved cinemas, the Attikon, since 1916. About 100 people held a candle-light protest outside the gutted structure late Monday.
“Criminals targeted all that was best in the city of Athens, its neoclassical monuments,” said Thanassis Davakis, cultural policy chief of the conservative New Democracy party, a coalition government partner. “The damage must be swiftly redressed and the city’s memory restored.”
The stench of tear gas still hung in the air on Monday, choking passers-by, while traffic lights at many major intersections were out after being smashed. The Athens municipality said cleanup crews had gathered an estimated 40 tons of broken marble and rocks from the streets of the center, while railings, drainage covers and paving stones from sidewalks also suffered extensive damage.
More than 170 people were hurt in the rioting which also broke out in other Greek cities. Authorities said 109 police needed medical care after being injured by gasoline bombs, rocks and other objects hurled at them, while at least 70 protesters were hospitalized.
Police arrested 79 people _ including a 14-year-old _ and detained a further 92, while in several cases they had to escort fire crews to burning buildings after hooded and masked protesters prevented access, injuring four firefighters. Police also said they were investigating a complaint from a businessman that rioters demanded money to leave his establishment intact.
A police statement said the suspects would be charged with offenses ranging from attempted murder and possession of explosives to looting.
“(The rioters) intentionally picked traditional buildings to burn,” New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said. “These scum must know that when the time comes I will rip off their hoods.”
Athens Traders’ Association head Panaghis Karellas demanded the dismissal of Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis, and said afflicted shopowners should receive state compensation.
“Once again, those in positions of responsibility, even though they should have been prepared, were unable to fulfill their duty and secure the well-being of citizens and visitors, cultural landmarks and historic buildings, public and private property and our country’s international image,” the association said in a statement.
The ESEE national commerce confederation said most of the badly damaged shops will very likely never open again. “The center of the capital looks as if it has been bombed,” an ESEE statement said.
The rioting began Sunday afternoon after more than 100,000 protesters marched to the parliament ahead of a vote on drastic austerity measures that include axing one in five civil service jobs over the next three years and slashing the minimum wage by more than a fifth no fax cash advance.
Lawmakers approved the bill in a 199-74 vote, to the relief of investors who pushed the Athens stock index up 4.7 percent.
The vote was crucial for the country to secure euro130 billion ($172 billion) in new rescue loans and avoid a potentially catastrophic default next month _ bankruptcy could push Greece out of Europe’s euro currency union, drag down other troubled eurozone countries and further roil global markets.
The new bailout deal, which has not yet been finalized, will be combined with a massive bond swap deal to write off half the country’s privately held debt, reducing Greece’s debt load by about euro100 billion.
However, it could take time before the country receives any of the cash. For both deals to materialize, Greece has to persuade deeply skeptical creditors it has the will to implement spending cuts and public sector reforms that will end years of fiscal profligacy and tame gaping budget deficits.
Eurozone finance ministers meet on Wednesday to discuss the issue, after refusing to approve the plan during a meeting last week, saying Athens had to first approve the new austerity measures.
But German Finance Ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe said the ministers will not make a final decision on the second aid package Wednesday. She said the bond swap agreement must be finalized first, and the ministers will focus on measures “necessary for the second Greek package.”
Before signing off on the bailout, the eurozone ministers also want Greek political leaders to commit in writing to uphold the austerity plan even after the general election in April. Government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis said the written guarantees are needed by Wednesday.
Although the bill passed the Parliamentary vote, there was strong dissent among the majority Socialists and rival Conservatives who make up Greece’s interim coalition government. The Socialists and Conservatives expelled the 22 and 21 lawmakers respectively, reducing their majority in the 300-member parliament from 236 to 193.
Germany gave the vote result a cautious welcome, with Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle describing it as “a first significant step along the right road.”
“However, the actual difficult work with implementing the reforms that have been agreed on is only just starting now,” he said. “That is the decisive precondition for Germany and the other euro partners being able to stand by Greece with a further rescue package.”
The new austerity comes after two years of deep spending cuts and repeated tax hikes that have sent unemployment soaring to more than 20 percent and left the country struggling through a fifth year of recession.
Those measures were taken in return for a first, euro110 billion ($145 billion) package of rescue loans, but despite the cutbacks, Greece repeatedly failed to meet its targets in reducing its debt and deficit and increasing economic competitiveness.
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Geir Moulson and Juergen Baetz in Berlin and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens contributed to this report.
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.
Diamond Foods Inc. is replacing its CEO and chief financial officer after an internal investigation found that the company improperly accounted for payments to walnut growers and it needs to restate two years of financial results.
The news, announced late Wednesday, sent shares of the San Francisco-based company plummeting more than 43 percent in after-hours trading.
Diamond Foods, which makes Emerald Nuts and Pop Secret popcorn, has been embroiled in a dispute over the payments for several months. The company said that its audit committee found that the payments were booked in the wrong period.
The payments _ an estimated $20 million in 2010 and $60 million in 2011 _ skewed the company’s financial results.
Diamond Foods placed its CEO Michael Mendes and Chief Financial Officer Steven Neil on administrative leave. The company is looking for permanent replacements. In the meantime, it appointed Rick Wolford, a Diamond Foods director and former CEO of Del Monte Foods, as its acting CEO. Michael Murphy, of Alix Parners, will serve as acting chief financial officer.
The deal could put Diamond Foods’ plans to acquire the Pringles brand from Procter & Gamble Co. in jeopardy. The deal, worth $1.5 billion when it was announced in April, would be the biggest acquisition ever for Diamond Foods and make it the second-largest snack maker in the nation behind PepsiCo Inc.
The collapse of Diamond Foods’ shares also hurts its ability to finance the deal.
Cincinnati-based P&G called the news from Diamond Foods “very disappointing.” It said in a statement that it is evaluating its next steps and keeping all its options open.
“Pringles remains a valuable asset and it has attracted considerable interest from other outside parties,” P&G said.
Shares of Diamond Foods were halted in trading earlier in the day but fell $15.88 to $20.78 in after-hours trading. Its shares have been on a downward slide since hitting $96.13 in late September.
Diamond Foods said it takes the integrity of its financial statements seriously and is working to complete the restatements as soon as possible.
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.
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