A growing number of people are using mobile devices to access social networking services to chat, meet people, search the Web and play games, Jon Swartz reports, and this has marketers salivating about the opportunity for advertising. "There is an enormous opportunity" for display and banner ads promoting movies, TV shows, autos and restaurants in specific areas, says Jason Spero, gm of North America for mobile-advertising network AdMob. A lot of growth is taking place in cities and developing countries, particularly among young people who cannot afford PCs. "Mobile social networks have become a way of life …

Hilton, Coke, McDonald's, Anheuser-Busch and other United States Olympic Committee partners will hit Rockefeller Center on Nov. 4 for an event to commemorate '100 Days Out' until the 2010 Games in Vancouver.

Abe Sauer blogs that Twinkies' "complex character" makes them a favorite gustatory placement in films ranging from "Zombieland" to "Die Hard" to "Ghostbusters." "They are, all at once, iconic Americana: nutritional garbage, proof of man's triumph over nature, and self-deprecatingly modest," he writes. And they will outlive us all -- "surviving the coming centuries to be cleaned up by Wall-E."

Dr Pepper is experiencing a surprising renaissance, Nanette Byrnes reports, bucking the industry trend of fizzling sales. While overall soda consumption dropped 3% in the first six months of the year, Dr Pepper's sales have risen by the same amount. CEO Larry D. Young says the turning point came when Plano, Texas-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group was spun off from U.K.-based Cadbury in May 2008. Young was able to cut costs and invest the savings in building up his brands and distribution networks, spending more on quirkier and more plentiful advertising and new products. "Coke and …

The Wall Street Journal used to regularly run fascinating stories like this morning's tale of Ralph Anspach, who battled Hasbro for decades over its allegations that a board game he invented, Anti-Monopoly, infringed on its patent. Mary Pilon reports that the retired 83-year-old economics professor at San Francisco State University claims that the board game's official "legend," as Hasbro calls it, "is a corporate fairy tale." To wit, Anspach maintains that the game's developer, Charles B. Darrow, actually rejiggered "The Landlord's Game," which was patented in 1904 by a Quaker named Elizabeth Magie who wanted …

Apple posted record computer and iPhone sales yesterday, Troy Wolverton reports, sending the company's stock up 6.6% to a near-record high of $202.40. The iPhone maker's sales jumped 25% year over year to $9.87 billion. The only quarter it recorded more revenue was last year's holiday period. Apple sold 3.05 million Macintosh computers, with sales boosted by the release of the Snow Leopard update to its operating system. It sold 2.3 million laptops in the period, up 35% from the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, rumors are that Apple is …

Since the weekend, I've been asking myself the same question -- "What Are They Selling?" -- that's posed by the headline over Rita Chang's article about new ads touting "Droid" -- clearly shorthand for Google's Android operating system. What we mostly glean from the spots are the alleged deficits of "iDon't" -- a clear (to the digerati, if not the average consumer) put-down of the iPhone. But it would appear that a goodly number of wireless consumers are unfazed by such charges as "iDon't have a real keyboard" because Apple posted its second-highest quarterly revenue results ever yesterday and, …