before grande there was regular and everyone drank from the same cup

Why you should never ask me for stock advice: Twenty years ago, when Starbucks announced they were on their way to New York, I predicted a fail, sure that New Yorkers were waaaay too savvy to pay premium for coffee when they could get fine brew in this cup for a mere fifty cents. In 1994, when the first Starbucks opened on Broadway, 500 million Greek coffee cups sold each year. A decade later, that number was down more than half, to 200 million. (And my tipster friends in Seattle were laughing all the way to the bank.)

The creator of the 57-year old cup was Holocaust survivor Leslie Buck (born Büch), a paper-cup salesman attempting to break into the New York diner market in 1963. Noting that most owners of diners were Greek, he concocted a design based on the image of the Greek vase known as an amphora. The cup soon became ubiquitous on the streets of New York, standard-issue at diners, coffeeshops, lunchtrucks and coffee carts, a requisite item not only for coffee-toters, but for propmasters for TV shows and films set in the city.

Buck passed away Monday, but died knowing that his Anthora (the altered name, due to his Eastern European accent) survives, albeit too often in the hand of the person next to you on the subway, who you hope keeps it upright as the train takes a curve.

defining His and Hers in digital space

A recent article in Forbes reports that users of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are predominantly women while men are heavier users of YouTube and LinkedIn. "Facebook, the largest social networking tool in the world, is dominated by women," it says. Then the piece goes on to explain that women use social media to "make connections and share items from their personal lives, men use them as means to gather information and increase their status."

I read the article a few times, searching for evidence upon which to base this conclusion which implies something I've heard a few times before: that women's use of social media is family-oriented and frivolous, while men's use of it is to get ahead in the world.

I could find no real evidence in the article to support the statement, which, curiously, the writer seems to have based upon:

1. A recent joint study from BlogHer and iVillage which reports that 75% of women use online communities to stay up to date with family and friends...and that 68% of them use them "to connect with others like me." But can't those statistics apply to the same women? And isn't "connecting with others like me" what men do when they use social media to gather information?

2. Berkeley Professor Lorrie Thomas says men use social media as an "interactive Rolodex" storing contact info for future use. But the same could be said of women users, the majority of whom use online communities for connections.

3. Jodi Kahn, the head of iVillage, says women want to learn about real people experiencing similar conflicts. (Don't men seek the same thing?) The conflict she unfortunately chooses to use as example is "potty-training." "If I'm a mom who is about to start potty training," she says," it's important to me to hear how other real moms are doing it." But no study shows that women talk mostly about potty training online, or even the broader topic of parenting techniques. Kahn might have just as easily wondered, "If I'm a woman juggling motherhood and management, it's important to me to hear how other real women are doing it."

5. Sherry Perlmutter Bowen, a gender and communication professor at Villanova University, says she's seeing men use social media to gather information and boost their influence. But as commenter to a response post on Jezebel noted, aren't these just less girly terms for "gossip" and "making social connections?"

Interestingly, another source interviewed for the article, Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder and chief operating officer of BlogHer, observes that "both men and women report that their most common blog topic is 'my life.' " The writer, however, finds this observation "surprising."

I'm not trying to argue that there are no differences in the way men and women approach social media. I'm just saying we need to be careful about how we define differences and assign norms, or risk perpetuating biases that have long created problems in the IRL world. Irin Carmon, who wrote a balanced response piece to Forbes on Jezebel, notes that online "there may be a chance to build a culture from scratch, but so far the Internet often simply perpetuates the [culture] we already have."

UPDATE
The writer of the Forbes piece responds in the comments. To save you the jump, here it is:

I am the writer, Jenna Goudreau, on this ForbesWoman.com piece and am pleased to see an active discussion on its contents. I’d have to disagree with this writer’s assessment that the article was meant to prove that “women’s use of social media is family-oriented and frivolous.” Rather, as the many experts in the piece confirmed, many more women than men are using social media to connect with others on a more personal level. That might mean that they are online discussing their families, and it may mean they’re online discussing their careers. The point, here, is that they are discussing more in general. I don’t believe that makes the group inferior, or that it’s true for all women or all men. It’s a pattern online that may reflect a gendered pattern offline.

cover letter train wreck

I've posted on clueless cover letters before, but here's a disaster of epic proportions. Writer's in for a shock when Mom and Dad stop paying the bills.

via Len Kendall

on the internet no one knows you're an ad

No wonder we have to spend government funds to alert our kids to advertising's ubiquitousness. Imagine how many Facebook readers mistake this landing page for a news site, as I did for a moment, until noting links to "the most credible and trustworthy supplier on the market." And mice type citing "Advertorial." (Just try to find it, Waldo.)

The "expose" states that the amazing concoction helped a News 7 reporter lose 25 lbs. Hilariously, that's not all it reduced. Elsewhere in the piece, she works for News 6.

When will DDMAC discover the interwebs?

from actual conversations in real life

Upon paying too much for a suit for a one-time event, a friend says, "Oh, well. Now I have something to wear to my funeral. Although after the ceremony, I'd like to be redressed in fuzzy PJs and socks."

I tell her to pack a bag and I'll ride with the casket. Unless I precede her.

"I hope I'll precede YOU!" she says, emphatically. Which is sweet, I think, until she adds, "Because I think you'll say something really great at my service and I am sorry I'm gonna miss it!"

last chance to see Tim Burton at MOMA

In case you've been meaning to see Tim Burton's show at MOMA, you've got just 30 hours. Museum is staying open until 8:45 tonite and tomorrow to accommodate procrastinators. Tickets are sold out (of course) but become a member and you can walk in anytime.

NSFK? The exhibit might appear to be kid-friendly, judging by the huge inflatable "Balloon Boy" in the lobby and the show's monster-mouth entrance. But it's only for kids in the way that his Alice in Wonderland is--that is, for kids who don't mind a trip to the dark side.

What I like about the collection is one thing the New York Times apparently didn't: it includes many drawings from his teenage years at Cal Arts and the four years when he worked as an animator for Disney. Interesting to see how his work develops, though his theme never veers from "revenge of the nerd" in brilliantly executed characters like Stainboy whose superpower is leaving powerful stains, Toxic Boy whose fumes burn the beard off Santa, and of course, Edward Scissorhands. There's paintings, sculptures, photographs and short films on flat screens. And, oh yes, a topiary deer in the garden.

Algonquin roundtable turns virtuous

If you're a lover of books (electronic or otherwise) you probably know about the Algonquin Roundtable where Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and other New York literati of the 1920's lunched daily for ten years, dubbing themselves "The Vicious Circle."

Yesterday, "The Virtuous Circle" gathered there, a group of tweeting authors, editors, publicists, publishers and book marketers, many meeting IRL for the first time, greeting each other with exuberant "You look much better than your avatar!"

@BettyDraper and I were honored to have a place at the table with circle organizers Bethanne Patrick and Denise Berthiaume, along with writers distinguished in mediums calling for far more than 140 characters: Susan Orlean, Martha McPhee, Jason Pinter, Erin McHugh, Julie Klam, MJ Rose. (And others, I'm sure. There wasn't one table, but several.) Prix fixe menu was surprisingly good and for several hours, the room reverberated with clinking glasses and buzz about publishers (how few are left), bookstores (ditto), readings (one writer had been dismayed to look down at a signing and realize he was wearing two different shoes) and, of course, e-publishing. Which turns out to account for just 5% of book sales these days, not the larger numbers I'd heard. Everyone in the business is trying to figure out how to make it make money. "The actual physical book--the printing and binding--is the least expensive part of publishing," an editor told me. "The real costs are the writing, the editing, the sales and promotion which don't change, whether the book is handheld or virtual."

Along with dessert, a book exchange. Kind of like a not-Secret Santa, in which I nabbed Road Trip. Other takeaways: I learned that Dorothy Parker tweets from the grave. And, on the way to the ladies, made the acquaintance of the hotel's most famous resident- Matilda, a glamorous cat who not only has the run of the place but her own email address.