A new study from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) has found that the biggest need in Big Data is education, as two-thirds of businesses surveyed do not know what it is or how it can help their business. 20% of respondents with Big Data initiatives believe they are doing well analyzing web traffic patterns. 15% percent say they are doing well understanding email data, and only 12% state that they have a handle on social media data.

The Board of Selectmen from the Town of Princeton, Massachusetts voted yesterday to extend for one year the town's program of allowing citizens and local businesses to use the Princeton-MA.us email domain. The domain was originally established by the Princeton Municipal Light Department and is now used by over 300 local residents and businesses. 

Feedburner, Google's RSS distribution and tracking tool, appears likely to be shuttered. Google failed to renew the feedburner.jp domain, and has previously stopped producing content for the feedburner blog as well as signed off the brand's Twitter account. Feedburner is popular with blogs and other small online publishers in part for its ability to send subscribers automatic content updates via email. 

Nurturing existing customers is more profitable than acquiring new ones, according to research by Bain and Company that finds repeat customers spend an average of 67% more than new customers, and are 6-12 times cheaper to sell to. The targeted and direct contact afforded by email makes it an ideal channel for maintaining customer engagement and turning it into additional sales.

Email Services Provider Lyris Inc. has launched Lyris ONE, a platform to leverage Big Data through marketing automation. 

In advance of tomorrow's expected iPhone announcement, The Pew American Life and Internet Project released new data on mobile phone ownership. According to the data, 45% of Americans 18 and older own smartphones. Penetration increases with affluence, to 68% for adults earning $75K or more per year. 

In a carefully worded statement released this morning, GoDaddy cited "internal network events that corrupted router data tables" for the outage that took millions of websites and email accounts hosted by GoDaddy offline for six hours. The claim contradicts the claims of a hacker identifying himself as "Anonymous Own3r" who insists that he was responsible for the attack.

Sam Yin, a computer engineer who was fired by Gucci under suspiscion of selling Gucci products for a profit after racking up $105,000 in employee discounted, was sentenced to 2-6 years in prison for taking revenge against the email systems of the luxury brand. Yin used an electronic profile he planted in the system a year earlier to erase files and crash the email servers, causing $200,000 in damage. 

Changing Email Service Providers may allow brands to gain new features and functionality, but it can also mean a loss to sender reputation when the brand's emails begin sending from a new IP. To ensure your messages continue to find the inbox, be sure to migrate your sender reputation along with your lists and performance data.

Following the hiring of Virginia Rometty as CEO and a 2011 study that surveyed 1700 CMOs, IBM has ramped up initiatives to advocate closer ties between the CMO and CIO of large organizations. According to the company, mobile, social, big data and cloud computing are too significant to exist separately in marketing and technology departments.