Men vs. Women: A Happiness Gap

A few decades ago, women’s goals in life were to have a beautiful garden, a well-kept house, and studious children. Today those goals have been upgraded: not only women want squeaky clean houses and genius kids, but they also want to have great careers, have an impact on the broader world, and look flawless.

According to the New York Times, new research has shown that there appears to be a happiness gap between men and women. Today, it’s the men who report being happier. Part of that may be due to the fact that since the 1960s, men have cut back on the activities they find unpleasant and women have replaced housework with paid work and are doing more tasks throughout the day that they find unpleasant.

“What has changed-and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends- is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did and they can’t possibly get it all done”, theorizes the author.

I think that not only women’s’ ambitions have increased along the years, but so has their competition. The NY Times reports that a few decades ago, women used to compare themselves only to other women whereas now, they also get to compare themselves to men. What’s worse, I think, we now have a whole other levelof competition: celebrities and because of Internet and our ability to always be connected, women also get to compare themselves to people around the whole globe.

While research shows that there is a happiness gap, most women I know are happy and proud to be women. Maybe women are not necessarily unhappier, they just have bigger dreams and expectations for themselves. What could this mean to us? Maybe we just need to help them to be better and more efficient. Or maybe we just have to encourage them to take a break once in a while. Whatever it is, we need to remember and acknowledge that, more than ever, it takes a lot to be a woman - especially a happy one!

To read more, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/business/26leonhardt.html

Uber, A New Social Networking Site

Since I joined Facebook, I’ve been so busy updating and editing my new profile that I haven’t even had a chance to handle my MySpace account. Honestly, how many online networks can one person join and manage? How many different identities can one have? From Flickr, to Second Life, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Blogger, to MySpace and Facebook, it’s hard and time consuming to keep track of it all. Why not have all in one place? Well, wonder no more.

Uber.com, "the Visual Index," is a new social networking site that has been getting a lot of buzz lately for being "the next big thing." It has more functions and features than any of the other sites and is known for being the single place to store everything digital. You can also manage other pages and properties from YouTube, Flickr, MySpace and Facebook. Based on the premise of 'creative collaboration', it is quickly evolving into a next-generation media publishing company.

It should be interesting to see how brands will get involved with this new social platform and the creative community that will be part of it.

Actions speak louder than words.

When every other product on TV proclaims to be the fastest, prettiest or best, it becomes really hard to know what to believe in. So when the relatively unknown Swiss online printer company, Maxiprint.com, decided to advertise that they were indeed the fastest printer in the world, they figured out that their actions would have to speak louder than their words.

Instead of having their ads say they were the fastest, they proved to be so by creating the fastest advertising campaign. Their ads didn’t necessarily say they were fast, but by 6am, Zurich business executives were able to read the news that had just broke at 2am. By being able to get their ads/posters before the newspapers, Maxiprint no longer had to say they were the fastest. They just were.

Maxiprint estimates that their campaign generated about 2.8 million contacts due to the amount of press coverage they received.

Check out their campaign here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xsQUcCblFs