The last-minute discounted hotels booking app, is bringing its service to the UK, with an initial service in London launching today. In addition, Heather Leisman, most recently of the troubled Jetsetter travel startup, has joined as MD for Europe. The company has also opened its London-based office in the Shoreditch area of East London, widely acknowledged to be home to the largest single cluster of tech companies in the city. Additional cities in the UK and Europe are being planned. So far the partners signed up include hotels such as Belgraves, Blakes Hotel, Chancery Court Hotel,The Cadogan and The Langham, …

AKQA, founded in 2001 by UK entrepreneur Ajaz Ahmed, is one of the few global independent advertising agencies that so far resisted being snapped up by one of the major marketing services giants. The move, which has stunned the advertising industry, values the company at almost GBP350 million. The deal is arguably the most significant in the digital advertising market since WPP's rival, Maurice Lvy's Publicis, bought Razorfish for $530 million in 2009. General Atlantic owned an 80% stake in AKQA, with the remainder held by management.

The US search engine has teamed up with the Canal and River Trust, a charity that will be in charge of UK's water network from July. The deal includes updating Google Maps to include 2,000 miles of canal and river paths across England and Wales. Currently, waterways are not listed on Google Maps as active routes people can use to move about. "Say, I'm by a canal in Paddington and I want to go to Camden, and I put this information into Google Maps as a walking route -- it wouldn't send me to the canal, even though it's a …

French magazine and book publisher and broadcaster Lagardre, which underperforms in digital media, is shelling out an improved EUR28 per share (EUR98.2 million, $124 million) for the site, which also does price comparison for 161 million offers and 76,200 merchants across 14 European countries. Lagardre is a giant, operating book publishers (incorporating Hachette Livre); magazines like Paris Match, Elle and Psychologies; broadcasters like Virgin Radio; plus a retail news distribution business and a sports talent management wing.

Media buying network ZenithOptimedia has halved its TV ad revenue growth forecast for the UK in 2012, while predicting digital spend will rise by GBP200 million. ZenithOptimedia, part of Maurice Lvy's Publicis Groupe, is forecasting year-on-year growth of just 0.5% in the UK television advertising market this year to GBP3.3 billion. The media buying network's revised forecast follows widespread concern that advertiser sentiment has failed to follow predictions of a "summer of love" for commercial broadcasters and other media owners from events such as the London Olympics.

Workers sacked over Facebook posts, a Twitter user arrested and summoned over a bomb threat joke - we've entered a brave new world when it comes to social media and the law, begging the question: do we need social media insurance? Surveying 2,000 consumers, the Chartered Insurance Institute found that 67% do not think that posting something inappropriate online could negatively affect their professional life, and 60% don't think that social media could affect their personal life.

That is more than the New York Times, Independent, Daily Mail, Telegraph and Times combined. The news outlet with a metered subscription service online has more than double the number of followers of the New York Times and five times the number that the Guardian has acquired. It is almost a year since the launch of Google's social network, with the Financial Times creating a page in November, when organisations were granted the ability to have a Google+ presence. On 16 June the FT thanked its one million followers on Google+ as it reached the milestone, a post which at …

The U.K. media regulator on Tuesday said it sees no benefit in setting absolute media ownership limits, but suggested a framework for reviewing whether any single company has gained too much influence. It suggested that the country go through a review of media plurality, including the BBC and online news operations, "every four or five years" in the absence of any major merger reviews. Industry folks have been divided on whether to include the public broadcaster and web outlets.

Working with Luke Bozier, a former aide to Tony Blair who defected to the Tories in January, Mrs Mensch today unveiled Menshn (pronounced "mention"), a social media service for "talking on topic". The service is initially only available in the United States and aiming attract online discussion about the upcoming presidential election. It is scheduled to open to British members in time for the Olympics. Menshn owes much to Twitter in its design and concept, with members invited to post short messages and links of 180 characters. The main difference is that it restricts discussions to pre-approved topics, with the …

Fairfax Media Ltd., Australia's second-largest newspaper publisher, plans to cut 22% of its workforce, close printing sites and introduce digital subscriptions to halt sliding sales and a stock price slump. The Sydney Morning Herald, bought by Fairfax in 1841, and its Melbourne sister, The Age, will shrink to tabloid size by March 2013, the company said in a statement Monday. Fairfax will start charging the publications' online readers in the first quarter of next year and may end print editions entirely if revenue declines materially, it said.