Can Location-Based Nets Woo Women with Privacy? by Erik Sass

Google has launched Latitude for the iPhone as a native iOS service, hoping to build on its already-substantial user base of nine million accessing the location-based network via Android. Even without the benefit of iPhone iOS compatibility, the total number of Latitude users has jumped 200% from one million in February 2009 to three million in May 2010, then another 200% to nine million today. That makes it bigger than Foursquare, with five million registered users, but smaller than Facebook Places, with about 30 million. These may seem like big numbers -- "million" has such a delightful sound -- but ...Read the whole story

  • financial services Northwestern Mutual Beefs Up Social Media by Tanya Irwin

    The goal of the videos is to show how the Milwaukee-based company can help provide financial security over a lifetime, no matter what the circumstances. The videos are part of the insurance company's "A Foundation for Life" campaign, which broke in August with TV, print and online and was created by Minneapolis-based Olson. ...Read the whole story

  • Glam Media Names Stern To Head New Social Communities Unit by Gavin O'Malley

    Signaling broader social ambitions, Glam Media on Monday named Ryan Stern as head of a newly created Social Communities unit. With its blog-based origins, the female-focused media and ad network has always been "social." Yet, as CEO Samir Arora admits, the social landscape has changed rapidly since he founded Glam in 2005. "We are now building the next-generation social communities platform for authors," Arora said. ...Read the whole story

Email and Social Marketing Top Budgets by Jack Loechner

A new StrongMail survey in late November, conducted by Zoomerang, reflects the attitudes of business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2011. The data reveals an optimistic marketing outlook, with half of businesses planning to increase marketing budgets, and another 43% keeping them steady. And, for the second year in a row, email marketing and social media marketing remain the top targets for increased spend. ...More