Yeah, I'm the new girl

Hi, I'm Bridget Aymar, the new intern here at Axiom. Although I'm struggling to avoid the clichés that often arise in writing one's own bio, let's address the unavoidable first: I am a recent University of Minnesota grad, with a degree in strategic communication. I have done a lot of work with Uptown Association, the producers of The Uptown Art Fair, in the past, but my professional experience has been fairly schizophrenic. I recently bought a house in north Minneapolis, but I grew up in New Brighton, a suburb about fifteen minutes north of the cities.

Beyond my resumé, I am happy as long as I get to write, be creative and work with others that like to do the same. I pay the bills off the spoils of pizza and beer, waiting tables at Old Chicago in Uptown. I remain on the steering committee of the art fair coordinating volunteers and taking on miscellaneous projects for other aspects of the event. Due to the time I spent as a copy editor at The Minnesota Daily, I am an AP-style stickler: I breathed a sigh of relief when "Web site," became "website," phew.

When I'm not writing, volunteering or wearing an apron, I like to spend time with friends and family. I love to go boating on Long Lake, throw the frisbee to my dog Sancho, watch movies and burn through as many books as possible on my new Amazon Kindle. I'm also getting pretty good at cooking, now that I have a kitchen larger than a postage stamp, and am looking forward to learning how to start a garden. (Hint, hint, Axiom home and garden clients who have products that need to be put to the test.)

As an intern at Axiom, I'm looking forward to writing blog posts, pitching stories, learning more about social media and enjoying margarita Fridays.

Redefining the Fine Print

The deal-a-day website Groupon has had a pretty good year. They've rocketed to fame, more than doubled their unique visitors (4.6 million in May, according to Compete.com), and just last week started partnering with a few major newspapers.

CorePower Yoga, one of the Twin Cities' most popular yoga studios, took advantage of Groupon's fame with a coupon for a free month of classes on Friday. However, the catch was that the coupon couldn't be used if you had purchased a package or taken a class within the last 60 days.

Obviously, this was CorePower's attempt to bring in people who were probably new to yoga or weren't familiar with the studio. However, the majority of people who would want to use the coupon were victims of that fine print stipulation.

This resulted in quite a backlash on Friday, with a flurry of angry and frustrated tweets and posts about not being able to use the CorePower deal.

This brings up an intriguing issue with these mass deal-a-day web coupons. With Groupon launching coupons back into the mainstream, at what point do promotions and deals like these factor into a company's social media plan? More importantly, what will be your response if that coupon isn't received all that positively?

Facebook Breaks An Egg To Make An Omelet

It's been a good morning for me. My morning coffee was strong, traffic wasn't too bad, and to top it all off I just read the news that Facebook is getting rid of Facebook Gifts.

I won't bash Facebook Gifts too much, but personally, I was never a fan of them. I did give and receive a few of them (provided they were free), but grew tired of them fast. My main problem with them was that I could never figure out how to hide them, so I would always have awkward gifts from ex-girlfriends on my profile.

However, personal venting aside, Facebook Gifts seemed to be a lucrative business. Facebook even projected it to grow by $35 million a year back in 2008. This begs the question as to why Facebook would kill off such a profitable business.

The reason for this Facebook failure is actually Facebook's success. That $35-million-per-year projection was before the rise of Farmville and the start of Facebook Credits. Services like those were obviously taking away from the Gifts, so Facebook is just refocusing on where the money is.

You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. In this case, the Farmville/Credit omelet required the cracking of the Gift egg, and personally I think that egg was a little rotten anyway.

Online Video More Than Just a Blip on the Radar

For years, the vast majority of online videos were shot by amateurs...and looked like it. Most of these movies were either 2-minute clips of cats and dogs, or teenagers doing stupid things trying to be funny (admittedly I had been guilty of that second one in my younger days).

However, the trend that's been emerging lately has been for professionally-produced, original online content. Just think about how much more common phrases like webisodes and web series have become. There's even a Webby Awards recognizing original online content.

But as with any emerging media, the focus needs to be on content. You need innovative creators to make it. Web video platform Blip.tv has recognized this, and are planning to increase payouts to content creators by 77% between Q1 and Q2 of this year, after already having increased the payouts by 119% from last year.

I like where this trend is going, and hopefully Blip.tv's move will provide more incentive for both content creators and video hosting companies to get quality videos on the Internet.

Surprising Female Facebook Stats You Should See

A study was recently released by Oxygen Media about the Facebook habits of people ages 18-34. Feel free to check out Mashable's article about the study to get more details, but here's a quick breakdown of the surprising stats regarding females.

34% check Facebook first thing in the morning.

Mark Zuckerberg is probably loving this, because despite all of the warnings and threats of people leaving the social networking site, a third of women in that all-important 18-34 demographic are extremely loyal to Facebook.

42% feel it's okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated.

This was one of the more shocking stats I saw, especially when considering the number of companies who utilize Facebook to some extent in the hiring/interview process. As a side note, 89% also said that you shouldn't post anything on Facebook that you wouldn't want your parents to see, which means a lot of these women don't view public drunkenness as a major issue.

50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers.

This stat also surprised me, given the debate about Facebook privacy issues. However, the study was also done during the height of the privacy debate (May-June of this year) so it's possible that doing the study just a month or two later would've change things.

49% of women believe it’s fine to keep tabs on a boyfriend by having access to his accounts.

I'll start of by pointing out that 42% of men in this study felt the same way. But either way, this is alarming to me. This is basically saying hacking someone's profile is okay, as long as you're dating them.

I know that's a lot of percentages and stats, but I'm a numbers junkie. I'd highly recommend checking out the story to get more perspective. The one point out of all this that's abundantly clear is that the debate about social media and Facebook is still going strong.