So What, Who Cares (vol 2, issue 22) Why it might matter when celebrities write children's books
Hello! Let's get right to it today ...
Department of Correction: Kudos to alert reader Julia who politely and correctly pointed out that when I was writing about the U.S.'s abysmal infant mortality rates last night, I should have written "The U.S. has the most first-day deaths of any industrialized country." We are not yet #1 in the whole wide world. I deeply regret the error and any confusion my omission may have caused.
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Also, in terms of "love songs you would like to see retired with extreme prejudice," the only entry I have thus far is "Lady in Red" by Chris De Burgh. You're telling me you're all okay with a world in which "Fields of Gold" by Sting is still permitted airplay? Register your opinions on love songs you'd banish to the negative zone through Twitter or email.
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Pinterest and Apple have teamed up to offer a new "App Pin" feature. As Mike Isaac reports in the NYT:
I could search for “health” on Pinterest and come across a fitness app that I may want to download. With App Pins, it takes only a few taps to download the app directly to my phone, without ever having to leave Pinterest to do so.
So what? This is a big deal for Apple: its app store is known for the careful curation of featured apps, and the Pinterest experience is a lot more grassroots in who builds collections and what criteria they employ.
But the bigger deal is that Apple's recognized that app discovery is key to driving sales and it's turning to Pinterest to deal with the question "We have 1.4 million apps. How do you get every single one out in front of the user who wants it?" (Or, since it gets tiresome asking that question all the time, just nod and say, "App discovery.")
App discovery is a tough nut to crack because it means finding ways to filter a constantly expanding dataset so that users aren't overwhelmed but they still get useful, relevant results. The Pinterest approach -- let users define and apply filters -- is a much different approach from the cottage industry that's sprung up in app discovery apps.
Who cares? Search engines do. Pinterest is already tweaking its search functions to help users get increasingly specific results -- a move that could help it become the go-to visual search engine for the Internet. Add in tight integration with the "walled garden" of Apple's app store, and that's one more way Pinterest grows its rep as a tool for finding and filtering results fast.
Also, a lot of people have worked very hard on technological solutions to app discovery -- most of them involving their own apps for discovering other apps (the word "apps" is starting to appear strange-looking) or search engines for app stores. These people are going to be very interested to see if this Apple-Pinterest thing pans out.
Side note: There may be subtle gender implications in this deal. I've read that Pinterest is perceived as having a "man problem" and has been rolling out products to pull in more male users, including search filters so men don't have to endure ombre french braid photos in their quest for more macho pins. Pinterest itself says the gender disparity is much less in its emerging markets, with its Indian, Korean and Japanese user bases evenly split between the genders. Also, men now account for one out of every three new U.S. sign-ups, so they're already Pinterest's fastest-growing demographic.
But guess the population most likely to use mobile phones and apps? Women. This new app discovery feature is playing to Pinterest's most loyal user base. It will be interesting to see if the company releases any stats on how app sales are going after App Pins has been out for a while.
(I think it's obvious why I chose the images I did. And guess where I found them ...)
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Your pop culture note of the day: This past Sunday, I was lucky enough to go to a children's book sale where every book was a dollar. I came home with 25 new books, among them Sue Macy's Roller Derby Rivals. I have a few pals who are avid derby skaters and I figured I could surprise one of them by sending them the book at some random time of the year.
The book centers on roller derbies back in 1948, when people had names like Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn and Gerry Murray. But this list of literary roller derby names among today's players is a thing of joy. I could not stop giggling in delight at Malice Walker and Luna Shovegood.
One book I did not bring home: Danielle Steel's Pretty Minnie in Paris. Maybe if it were by Judith Krantz, I'd have done so -- nobody in the sex-and-shopping genre writes about Paris like Krantz does -- but Steel? Eh.
The book got me thinking: Surely someone, somewhere has compiled a list of the best and worst children's books by celebrities and celebrity authors. Paper magazine put together a list of celebrity offerings with superlatives like "Least Reliable Biblical History" for Sting's Rock Steady: A Story of Noah's Ark.
But the really fascinating story, in my opinion, is the piece on writer Dustin Warburton, who has worked with celebrity-cum-children's authors ranging from Dennis Rodman to Corey Feldman. The article addresses why celebrities venture into the genre to begin with, and professional boxer Hector Camacho (who, along with Warburton, authored a book on dealing with the death of a parent) has the takeaway quote for the piece:
“Maybe we celebrities write these books because kids look up to us and we know this life isn’t what we should be giving them to follow. Especially kids in the ‘hood where I come from. Maybe it’s like a responsibility.”
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