On the hill of Santa Susana Mountains sits Pico No. 4, the first production and commercially successful oil well in California, which is considered a birthplace of the state’s petroleum boom.

The well was considered the longest operating oil well in the world until it was conserved in 1990 after operating for more than 114 years, according to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy website.

It was drilled in 1876 near the city of Newhall by a French entrepreneur named Charles Alexander Mentry who explored the oilfield in Pico Canyon.

Within a year, Mentry drilled three wells that didn’t produce much oil, but it was the Well No. 4 that streamed a geyser to the top of a derrick.

Drilled 370 feet deep, the well producing 25 barrels per day, ultimately becoming a success that allowed Mentry to make a bigger investment  the oil production. 

The discovery of the Well No. 4 quickly led to the appearance of a new town called Mentryville, named after the well’s founder, which hosted more than 200 residents, majority of them arrived from Pensilvania’s oil fields to work for Metry, the L.A. Times reported.

But during Great Depression in 1930s when the oil production declined, residents started leaving the town.

In 1995, Chevron acquired Standard Oil of California and donated the Mentyville site to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy group.

Today the town is a one block village with only Mentry’s 13-rooms mansion survived. The site was turned into a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

While the California’s oil continue to gush in the Santa Susana Mountains and other fields across the state, the oil prices continue to change every day.

Almost 150 years after drilling the first Californian well, it’s still unclear where the oil prices are going.

On Dec. 3, crude oil costs $70.30 per barrel.

 

 

It seemed like a big year for Chinese pop music’s international performance. In the American Music Awards (AMAs) 2014, two international awards went to Chinese recipients. China’s talent show-grown pop singer Zhang Jie was presented with the International Artist Award; while the Chopstick Brothers, an immensely popular Chinese boy group, snatched the Best International Song award with their song “Little Apple”.

The outrage and laughter on Chinese social media began when the audience found out that the performance was only taped during a commercial break and then released online on Chinese video-sharing websites. The local audience in the States never got the chance to see the Chopstick Brothers Xiao Yang and Wang Taili danced and lip-synched on the state of AMAs. It was also found out later that these two categories of International Artist and Best International Song did not exist in past editions of the AMAs.

Speculations started both in China and on some of the U.S. entertainment news media. China’s state-run CCTV called it a “Mixed reactions to Chopsticks Brothers performance and win at AMA”. The Rolling Stone questioned: “Do the American Music Awards have a deal in China that requires goosing the broadcast with the Chinese-related content?” Rumour circulated on China’s Sina Weibo, saying the Chinese artists paid 6 million RMB (roughly equals to 0.95 million U.S. dollars) to let AMA to establish these two awards for the Chinese artists exclusively.

The speculations and rumours accumulated. Mark Rafalowski, AMA’s organiser Dick Clark Productions’ vice president of the International Division, later cleared out the rumours in an interview with Xinhua News Agency. “The AMAs have a decent history of 40 years, do you think that is what we will do? It doesn’t fit our tastes and status,” said Rafalowski.

Nevertheless, Rafalowski admitted these two exclusive awards were for certain marketing consideration: “We are glad to promote the brand of Dick Clark Productions internationally and feel proud to bring outstanding international singers like Zhang to the stage.”

The AMA Chinese content remind people of what happened earlier this year when Chinese actress Jing Tian won the Hollywood International Award from the Hollywood Film Awards. Jing was the “first-ever recipient of the Hollywood International Award”, according to  Hollywood Reporter.

Just like decades ago when the Chinese magazine People’s Movie has introduced the Oscars to the Chinese readers, the prominent awards in the industry, such as the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards and the Grammy Awards still play big roles among Chinese audience. The major difference nowadays, however, would be the audience’s judgmental capability to tell the credibility of the awards that been presented to the Chinese singers and celebrities.

According to a social media poll on Sina Weibo about the AMA 2014 scandal, 64 percents of the Chinese social media users claimed that they would like to see real recognition, not just the gesture to show the interest to the Chinese market.

China has a huge entertainment content market with great potential. Last but not at least, many of the Chinese media hold strong investment capability and purchasing power.

 

So, despite the efforts that singers like the Chopsticks Brothers and Zhang Jie have put, China’s music industry is still looking for its first truly global hit. And it might be hard for any of the global awards to win the Chinese market just by adding one-time, exclusive items for the Chinese.

A $1-billion restoration project, which aims to recreate the ecosystem and develop business spaces adjacent to Los Angeles River, is becoming a gentrification plan.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on May 28, recommended approval of spending $1.08 billion on creating wetlands, restoring habitat, and building bike trails along 11 miles of the Los Angeles River. This project, also known as Alternative 20,  is a critical part of the L.A. River Revitalization Master Plan that is dedicated to transform the concrete river channel into a comfort, livable environment. Before the funding is pledged, however, real estate and land prices in some places have already risen steeply, which concerns many low-income residents.

According to Zillow.com, the median list price per square foot in Frogtown rose almost 85 percent from 2012 to 2013. And the median home value in Frogtown rose 10.2 percent over the past year to $469,300.

Frogtown, whose official name is Elysian Valley, is a tiny, isolated, lip-shaped neighborhood. Blogger Isaac Simpson described this town that “there are no retailers but the streets are packed with yard sales. There are no restaurants but tacos fry in front yard… It’s a community that supports itself in its own way.”

Now this town is about to lose its own serenity. Under the Master Plan, nonprofits, such as Friends of L.A. River is leading the river revitalization: building bike path, and cleaning up the river bed. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a $3.2-million plan to transform Frogtown’s river-adjacent Marsh Park. And luxurious waterfront houses next to the park are midway through construction. The Frogtown Art Walk, an annual arts festival, where thousands of Angelenos show up every year, also helps promote this eco-friendly suburb to the rich.

The rising home prices in the Frogtown raises a question: is it possible for the poor and the rich to co-exist? The answer actually depends on how many jobs and how much wealth the revitalization plan can provide for the local community.

The $1-billion plan, according to a L.A. River Ecosystem Restoration Feasibility Study conducted by the Army Corps, is estimated to generate 16,833 opportunities in a variety of industries – construction, food services, real estate establishments, and wholesale trade business- and $4.68-billion labor income in total.

Also, city officials said that revamping the entire river could create recreational opportunities, such as kayaking, fishing and bicycling, and attract more than $5 billion in investment over the next 10 to 15 years, according to Los Angeles Times.

However, few officials can tell whether the river will be entirely restored in the next 10 or 15 years. Revamping the entire river, which means to un-pave the concrete banks, and preventing the floods at the same time require a whole transformation in L.A.’s urban form: building parking lots that could absorb rainfall during storm, narrowing streets to reduce runoff, or replacing neighborhoods away from floodplains.

Otherwise, the restoration of the entire river might end up like the one in the Tujunga Wash. The Tujunga Wash, according to Grist reporter Christian MiNeil, is one of Los Angeles’ first restoration site, which has a small parallel stream next to the larger paved river channel and surrounded by native vegetation and a cycling path. Melanie Winter, a watershed advocate, said the scope of the Tujunga Wash restoration project was too narrow.

Winter also said that until Los Angeles embraced those broader changes, restoration effort like the one at Tujunga Wash would end up spending more tax money to achieve less.

The billion-dollar proposal requires the federal government and local sources to share equally. According to Post-Periodical, 13 members of Congress representing districts in the Southland called on President Barack Obama on Nov. 24 to include this funding in his 2016 budget.

Where do most Angelenos go for Chinese restaurant tips? Yelp, maybe? But a local Chinese residents would probably say, nah, never, except for finding certain restaurant’s address. But what’s their source? And how do hundreds of Chinese restaurants in San Gabriel Valley get their name out?

Chihuo, founded in 2011, is a Mandarin-language website sharing food reviews, restaurant news, recipes, deals, and other recreational information like travel tips and upcoming events in Los Angeles. Within three years, the website along with its several social media accounts has attracted over 180,000 followers and become the biggest online food influencer for local Chinese community.

Chihuo stands for foodie in Chinese. Motivated by sharing food information with other foodie friends, the founder, Amy Duan, started to post food reviews on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter. On June 15th, 2011, the first Weibo was sent out and it said: “ So for the very first post, let me introduce the ‘grand old man’ of Hong Kong style tea restaurant in Los Angeles—Tasty Garden. The one located in Atlantic Times Square opens until 4 a.m. Right next to AMC Theater, it’s a great place for late supper. Main dishes include Walnut Shrimp and Chicken Curry. Porridges and noodles are also highly recommended…”

To Duan’s surprise, credibility and popularity accumulated quickly. By late July 2011, barely six weeks after its launch, despite posting only around 50 reviews, Chihuo had already drawn a lot of attention and support. “Chihuo now has 1000 followers,” Duan posted. “I am so excited! SO EXCITED! EXCITED!”

As the fan base grows, Chihuo’s posts are also becoming more objective and formal. But what it’s doing keeps the same: sharing information.

Although Chihuo provides the similar service as Yelp does, its contents are mainly created by its own members rather than followers or fans. This feature hits home for many Chinese people. In general, Chinese people prefer to read reviews rather than generate them. That explains why many Chinese people have Yelp on their phones, but they still don’t trust it when finding a Chinese restaurant.

Chihuo’s success can partially owe to the rise of social media. Chihuo started from a Sina Weibo account and until now it still plays as a major platform to send new posts. Just like Twitter, followers can attach Chihuo in their own posts. As a result, there are a lot of interactions between Chihuo and followers and sometimes followers can contribute valuable food information.

Two year later, Chihuo had the website, Chihuo.org, where the food reviews are preserved permanently.

 Wechat, a free messaging and calling app like WhatsApp, also helps enhance Chihuo’s influence. In Wechat, Chihuo can send blog posts to every follower. As many Chinese people depend so heavily on Wechat to communication that they check the messages on Wechat every several minutes. So the posts sent via Wechat got circulated like virus.

 Within three years, Chihuo gets so influential that its food reviews can draw hundreds of customers to a restaurant, keeping them waiting in line for almost two hours only to try out the recommended dishes.

 Not only LA Chinese foodies take Chihuo as their go-to source, Jonathan Gold, the famous restaurant critic for Los Angels Times, also told Amy Duan that “I actually put your articles on Google translate.” And Gold once mentioned Chihuo and Amy Duan in one of his food reviews.

Businesses are also catching the trend. They provide sponsorship for publishing promotional food reviews on Chihuo. In 2013, Chihuo registered into a company and started to generate revenue by sharing information.

Recently, Chihuo launched another Northern California based website and started to cover food information in major cities like San Francisco.

Amy Duan, graduated from the communication management program in USC Annenberg, is now working full time as the CEO of Chihuo. Her goal is to spread the information sharing business and passion for food all over the U.S.

Coca-Cola does not only sell soft drinks; the beverage giant has its presence in water, energy drink, and juice markets as well. Now Coca-Cola is about to take another leap–it has announced that it will be expanding its beverage portfolio through the nationwide launching of high-end milk called Fairlife in 2015.

According to Coca-Cola, Fairlife milk will contain 50% more protein and calcium, and 30% less sugar than other milk, and contain no lactose. Coca-Cola also insists that it tastes better than regular milk.

What is interesting is that Coca-Cola is jumping into the milk business right at a time when milk sales in the U.S. are falling. Milk sales have declined by about 8% during the last decade. The premium milk which would be sold at twice the price of regular milk seems like a somewhat risky bet Coca-Cola is making.

Nonetheless, Coca-Cola seems quite confident about its new venture. At a recent conference announcing Fairlife’s launch, Sandy Douglas, the president of Coca-Cola said the company expects the premium milk to “rain money”.

It is hard to guess whether Fairlife will be a success or not. Milk market in the United States remains fragmented with only a few number of famous brands. One-third of U.S. milk sales come from store-brand milk. Coca-Cola’s breakthrough can either change the whole dynamic of the milk industry, maybe even boosting overall milk sales or become a complete disaster.

Coca-Coal’s main advantage in the new move is that it has a high brand recognition and that it has plenty of resources to support its marketing muscle. However, consumers are highly sensitive to price when it comes to milk. According to research by Nielson, people are more likely to consumers are much more likely to go for cheaper option since the perceived difference in milk is very low.Therefore, it is very hard to predict whether Coca-Cola’s use of differentiation strategy using higher price and marketing it as ‘healthier’ milk would be a success or not.

Coca-Cola has recently been investing more in non-carbonated drinks such as juices and teas, given an overall decline in soda sales across North America and rest of the world due to increasing concerns over obesity and artificial sweeteners as more people are becoming health-conscious. It October this year, it was announced that Coca-Cola has scored the lowest number in market shares in six years.

Fairlife products have already pre-launched in some states like Colorado and Minnesota. According to Steven Thueringer, dairy manager Coborn’s grocery store in Belle Plaine, Minnesota, the new milk products are “going pretty awesome”, especially being popular among younger population between their 20s to 40s.

Fairlife is scheduled to launch nationwide early next year. Will it become Coca-Cola’s next cash cow to compensate for declining soda sales?

The Los Angeles housing market is swinging back into shape after imploding during the financial crash. Homes are selling for more than a million dollars in West L.A. and hitting above the million and a half mark in Beverly Hills.

Recovery is underway even in low-income areas such as South L.A., which was stung particularly hard by predatory loans and foreclosures. Prices have crept up to the pre-bust levels of 2005. And just like 10 years ago, residents today want to become homeowners. But realtors are finding there just aren’t enough homes go around.

“Any home that’s halfway decent is selling,” said realtor Leon Higgins, who’s worked in South L.A. for 15 years. “But you still have more buyers than what’s available to sell.” [Read more…]

The California Department of Transportation is planning to build a 63-mile highway that will link the Antelope Valley and the Victor Valley.

The High Desert Corridor Project, a collective project of Los Angeles County Metropolitan and Caltrans, is designed to connect the fastest growing residential areas such as Lancaster, Adelanto and Victorville to serve passengers who travel across Mojave desert.

The project that will include solar installations, charging stations for electric cars and bike lane, is designed to connect two proposed high-speed rail system, the road and several cities across the Mohave Desert.

But with the cost of $8 billion, is the ambitious transportation project feasible?

Last months, county officials released a report about the project.

According to the plan, the highway will run through the City of Palmdale and will connect Fresno, Burbank and San Bernardino County.

Palmdale will play a role of a transportation hub, with a station that will link the Palmdale Transpiration Center and Metrolink trains, the report stated.

The High Desert Corridor will connect the highway with the terminal at the Palmdale Regional Airport, which Metro officials are planning to open again after it was closed for six years. 

On their website, Metro officials said highway will cost from $4 billion to $8 billion. The construction of the four-lane freeway will start in four years and will be completed by 2024. 

As the population of the Antelope Valley will grow 50 percent by 2020, the highway might be seen as a chance to push for the commercial and economic growth. Antelope Valley officials, a city known for its gravitation towards innovations, were pushing for the project.

The highway will stretch through 3,200 acres of land, an area that doesn’t include the railway that will occupy additional area.

The highway will run through 252 acres of farmland and 2,9000 acres of grazing land, that might become a disturbance with natural inhabitants such as Golden Eagle and desert tortoise.

But the major problem for the agency in charge is still ahead: Metro is the leading agency of the proposal are required to submit a route and get the funding.

By spring Metro will announce its decision on the route of the freeway.

The biggest concern is the financing, which is very unclear at this point.

The Metro High Desert Corridor posted on their website that the estimated cost will be included in the Environmental Impact report is which is currently underway.

Officials are planning to allocate $30 million from Measure R, a half-cent sales tax passed in 2009 that contributes to financing the county’s transportation projects.

But some critics say the project will more likely heavily depend on the private financing.

Environmental activists might also oppose the project.

Transportation official noted in the report that solar panels will be installed along the freeway, and creators hope they will produce energy for charging stations, according to the Metro’s website. 

With the solar panels producing energy for streetlights and  electric cars charging stations, Metro officials say they hope the highway will be self-sustaining and bring new economic opportunities to the region.

The newest version of WeChat, China’s biggest messaging communication service, brought a bringing a new video capture and sharing feature called Sight. Holding a button to a 6-second video clip and share, sounds familiar?- yes, it’s basically just Vine.

Already impacting the overseas market, Vine’s potential is undeniable. Kids with huge numbers of followers are a great medium to promote a product. Vine, as a simple video-sharing platform, is everything advertisers want.

Sixteen-year-old Lauren Giraldo has 2.8 million followers on her Vine account. Her fans love the six-second videos she posts on Vine, which show what she describes in her profile as “my random life.” The latest clips include her trip to Europe, dancing in a wired cloak, and attending concerts. Whether you like it or not, she has 2.8 million people following these abrupt snippets of her life. The account started as a hobby for her, but she now makes about $2,000 per sponsored vine by simply clicking on the “re-vine” button to share her sponsor’s video.

Vine’s parent company is Twitter. Twitter acquired Vine in October 2012 for $30 million in a move widely viewed as a counter to Facebook’s presence in the mobile messaging market. The easiest comparison to Vine is Facebook’s photo-sharing service, Instagram. Instagam stepped into Vine’s territory in December 2012 by launching similar video functionality with a 15-second length.

In terms of functionality, the biggest difference is that Instagram can share videos that are 15 seconds in length as compared to Vine’s six seconds. Instagram also retains many of its photo-sharing options for this new video-sharing functionality, such as filters, importing videos, image stabilization, save to camera roll, and so on. Vine, meanwhile, could not be simpler, with only a “save to camera roll” option.

Instagram users can share posts to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, email, foursquare, etc., but Vine’s sharing platform is limited to Facebook and Twitter. This could be a reason that brands on Twitter refer to Instagram more than Vine. In a study looking at how often brands posted on Twitter using Instagram or Vine between November 2013 and February 2014, the statistics shows there are 4 times as many brand accounts using Instagram to advertise than Vine.

After Instagram’s short video service debuted last year, the company now offers two forms of content sharing. Vine still offers its signature 6-second videos, which, one could argue, is no longer as big a draw.

However, on June 7, 2013, four days after Android released a new version of Vine on its system. Vine reached the milestone of having more vines shared on Twitter than were Instagram pictures and videos combined. The user base is still growing, and, with its monetization trend, Vine could be Twitter’s best weapon for holding its valuation in the long term.

As simple it is, Vine seems more interested in giving creators a platform to make more interesting and creative moving imagery. In particular, content that is more “idea oriented.” The 6-second length can be viewed as a challenge, but it can also push users to squeeze only the most useful and important information into the video. In comparison, Instagram’s user base is more likely to document the details of their life no matter how seemingly trivial. The most-shared posts typically revolve around coffee, pets, family party, feet, hands, selfies, and other aspects of users’ daily lives.

Despite having fewer features than Instagram’s new service, Vine’s looping and embeddable function makes it easier to embed content to other websites, circumventing the limitations on sharable platforms to some degree.

Six seconds, looping, idea-oriented: these features are what advertisers are looking for. It mimics the powerful technique of sound-bite advertising, which is characterized by repeating a short phrase or sentence that captures the essence of a certain topic.

Vine, to some extent, achieves that effect. Instagram users upload pictures more than videos, and many users don’t watch videos on Instagram because they tend to take up more memory. Vine videos are very small — usually taking up only bytes. Without so many filters, playing in a loop, users might watch the GIF-like video multiple times, something marketers crave.

People often compare Vine to Instagram because they both offer short video sharing platforms. But in essence Vine is more like YouTube, a platform to share creative video content. The comparison is somewhat ridiculous, though, because there’s no way to put Vine’s 40 million active users into the same context as YouTube’s 1 billion active users per month.

Vine is now in its early stages of growth, but based on the speed at which the number of households with computers, tablets, or smartphones that can film videos is growing, Vine could reach YouTube’s scale much faster than YouTube did. With the now-rapid pace of adoption in the digitalization era, Vine was born in a good age.