Target has been under fire for an ad that shows a young woman spreading her legs over Target’s target. The advertisement puts the woman’s crotch right in the bullseye. As you might imagine the peculiar advertisement has raised many questions. You can see some discussion of the ad here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Apparently, Target is refusing to talk to nontraditional media outlets (like blogs) about the unusual advertisement. The New York Times reports that Target told Amy Jussel, the founder of the ShapingYouth.org blog, to go away. “Targeting crotches with a bull’s-eye is not the message we should be putting out there,” she said in an e-mail interview. Target offered an e-mail response: “Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth. “This practice,” the public relations person added, “is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest,” as Target refers to its shoppers. Word of the exchange quickly spread and the blogosphere did not appreciate the slight. “Target doesn’t participate in new media channels?” asked the Web site for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Target “dismisses bloggers” commented the blog for Parents for Ethical Marketing. “Ahem! So bloggers don’t count!” Ms. Jussel chimed in on ShapingYouth. Target told the New York Times that they don’t currently deal with bloggers but they might make an adjustment. Yes, at least for now. “We do not work with bloggers currently,” said a company spokeswoman, Amy von Walter, who agreed to speak with this traditional media outlet. “But we have made exceptions,” Ms. von Walter said. “And we are reviewing the policy and may adjust it.” An adjustment would be a good idea. Despite what Target thinks there are many blogs that reach Target’s “core guest.” This is 2008. It is common knowledge now that engaging in conversations with new media outlets is a good strategy. It’s certainly a better marketing strategy than putting your core guest’s crotch right in the bullseye. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
This 1998 Grammy-winning release–Lucinda Williams’s popular breakthrough–certainly merits the double-disc “deluxe edition” treatment. And it’s hard to find significant fault with anything here: the remastered version of the original album, the second-disc live performance from that year featuring guitarists Kenny Vaughn and Bo Ramsey, and the smattering of outtakes (highlighted by a slower, sadder version [...]

Automattic Raises $29.5 Million
GigaOm reported earlier today that WordPress firm Automattic has raised $29.5 million in a Series B Round of funding. The New York Times Co. is one of the investors in the blog software company. GigaOm says the funding will be used to hire engineers, expand product offerings and possibly add more social networking features. So what does Automattic need the money for? After all, from what I know of the business, Automattic has been bubbling around the break-even point for a while now. Matt explains that they are going to roll out newer, hosted services such as BBPress (forums), and will expand their other product offerings, such as Gravatar and the spam-protection service Akismet. The money will be spent to hire more engineers and build out a more robust infrastructure. That would be a start. Anne Zelenka made an impassioned case for using WordPress to build a social network, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some social features start to creep into WordPress.com as well. They just boosted their storage capacity to three gigabytes, which indicates that they are serious about allowing bloggers to add video and other multimedia content to their blogs. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has a post about the funding on his blog called Act Two. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Retirement Online Search Resource Center – Retirement – Retirement Jokes
A complete search engine tool. Date : Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:48:43 EDT The rich: Still bullish on real estate The very rich are different from you and me: they don’t seem to be too worried about the current housing slump. What do you really know about retirement planning. Date : Tue, 19 Jun 2007 [...]

Microsoft Makes $44.6B Bid for Yahoo
The big tech news of the day is Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo. The story has ignited a blogstorm on Techmeme and Megite as you might expect. Yahoo has been trying a variety of things to get going over the past few years. None of them have worked especially well for the company. If you look at Yahoo’s list of recent acquisitions you will see content companies, social media websites and software companies. Yahoo is still a very ambitious company but they lack a clear focus. They bought both Flickr and Rivals.com. Are they a search engine, a traditional media company or a social media website? Jeff Jarvis calls them the “last old media company.” Part of the reason Yahoo seems to be flip flopping in its acquisition strategy is the complexity of creating an Internet business model that works. This is something Google has accomplished. Microsoft wants to take Google on and they see a Yahoo acquisition as the best way to do this. Whether or not Yahoo accepts the offer or not remains to be seen but the stock is really jumping on the news. The New York Times Bits blog calls it an offer Yahoo can’t refuse. Bits’ posts points to a Henry Blodget spreadsheet that shows MICRO-HOO’s combined balance sheet. DealBook has posted a copy of Microsoft’s letter to Yahoo. Microsoft’s press release can be found here. Ars Technica reports that the two companies combined would control “25 to 35 percent of the search market.” It is worth noting that neither company has a blog-specific search engine. Perhaps the combined companies could then turn around and nab Technorati or launch one of their own to compete with Google Blog Search. Search Engine Land has more on what the deal might mean for search engines. Don’t get too excited about the prospect of a Microsoft-Yahoo. Forbes is reporting that Microsoft execs have said they may have to compete with other potential acquirers to win Yahoo. The Forbes article mentions Ebay, News Corp, AT&T and Comcast as the other companies that might try to out bid for Yahoo. Updates Some Flickr users are creating graphics to protest the possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo. Some don’t like the idea of a Microsoft-owned Flickr. Aggressive Microsoft: BoomToom reports that Microsoft gave Yahoo just two days before going public with the news of their offer for Yahoo. Henry Blodget says there may be another bidder – a major private-equity firm Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Google Maps Street View Parody
This is a clever and funny video that plays on the privacy concerns with Google’s Maps Street View feature. Privacy concerns were raised when Google’s cameras captured people and their thongs. There is a point at which Google’s efforts to map our cities will have to stop. The tagline of the video is “Two young men take a turn down the wrong street view.” (via Valleywag) Direct video link Posted in Videos Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

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