Good for business;
bad for the mirror

Agencies and Marketing Execs:

• CoActive Marketing Group has changed its name to "mktg." Seriously.
• Ford Motor Co.'s Global Media Manager Mark Kaline was escorted out of the building on Monday by security. No details yet on why.
• MySpace appointed Manu Thapar to SVP of engineering, Angela Courtin to SVP of marketing, entertainment and content; Tish Whitcraft to SVP of customer care; Jason Obervest to VP of biz dev; and Abe Thomas to VP of online marketing.

Biz Buzz:

• Starbucks posted its first-ever loss, $6.7 million in Q3, since going public 16 years ago.
• Home Depot is putting its marketing account into review. It is worth about $600 million.
• Interpublic took a majority stake in HUGE, an online agency.
• myYearbook made $13 million in its second round of funding.

Music:

• The Yahoo Music Store is closing on September 30. Yahoo is providing coupons or refunds to users that will no longer be able to access the music they bought.

Mobile:

• King Features Syndicate has launched a horoscopes feature, "Jacqueline Bigar's Horoscopes," on mobile phones via Cellyspace.com.

Publishing:

• Branded content sites give online ads a boost.
• Newspapers have begun looking local for online advertising. It's a good position; past research has shown that local-targeted news sites fare better than their broader rivals.

Social Networking:

• The Scrabulous app, which was scrapped after pressure from Scrabble co-owner Hasbro, has returned to Facebook as Wordscraper.
• Facebook added a comment feature to its News Feed. The action was interpreted as a competitive gesture against FriendFeed, a social network aggregator that is also considered a Twitter rival.

User Experience:

• A study finds thin models make viewers more receptive to brands, but less happy about themselves. Go figure.
• US election ad spend has begun outpacing record 2004 figures. Meanwhile, McCain begins ridiculing Obama on television.