• Ad Agencies, Web Firms Unite
  • Gladwell: 'Free' Not Necessarily the Model of the Future
  • The Pirate Bay to be Sold for $7.7 Million
    It's been less than a week since a Swedish court denied an appeal for a retrial in the case of major media firms versus The Pirate Bay, and the controversial file sharing outfit is now selling itself, Information Week reports. Global Gaming Factory X on Tuesday said it reached an agreement to acquire The Pirate Bay for about $7.7 million. The Swedish tech company claims it will introduce legitimate business models to the site, which for years helped facilitate illegal file-sharing. "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid …
  • Report: Mobile Ad Spending to Reach $28.8 Billion by 2014
    A new report claims that advertising on mobile phones could reach $28.8 billion within five years, as consumers embrace new Internet-enabled devices like Apple's iPhone. According to Ineum Consulting, mobile advertising will grow at an annual rate of 45%, reaching $28.8 billion in five years, up from $3.1 billion today. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that ad agencies are seeing an uptick in mobile campaign interest. "We have launched many mobile campaigns for the first time in the last three months. New people are coming in every week," David Kenny, Managing Partner at VivaKi, a unit of Publicis Groupe, …
  • 80% of Twitter Traffic Comes from Third Parties
    The Guardian has some interesting stats about Twitter, which were disclosed by Evan Weaver, Twitter's lead engineer in its services division, who gave a talk at QCon 2009. -The average Twitter user has 126 followers -Only 20% of Twitter's traffic comes through the Twitter Web site; the other 80% comes from third-party programs on smartphones or computers. This means that if you're looking at only twitter.com generated stats on your Web site, you may be underestimating the source of that traffic by a factor of five. -During President Obama's inauguration in …
  • Yahoo Kills Maven Networks
    Carol Bartz continues to swing the axe at Yahoo, closing down weak and under-performing products at the Sunnyvale, Calif. Web giant. According to TechCrunch's Robin Wauters, the latest to go is online video advertising provider Maven Networks, which Yahoo acquired at the beginning of last year for around $160 million. The news comes from a Maven customer who was informed last week that Yahoo will cease development on the platform and will no longer support it in 2010. Another source confirms that Yahoo has fired most of Maven's employees in a move that's being called a restructuring. …
  • China Bans "Gold Farming" in Games
    China has banned the trading of virtual goods for real money, putting hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity at risk, InformationWeek's Thomas Claburn reports. According to China's Ministries of Culture and Commerce, "The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services." The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year. One billion yuan is currently about $146 million. The ruling could have a massive …
  • Marketers Want to Know: Will Facebook Users Go Public?
    Facebook undoubtedly caught marketers' attention last week when it began testing a feature that lets users share their updates with the greater public. Now, each time a user posts to "What's on your mind" they will be asked who may be allowed to see it, with "everyone" being an option. BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan reports that third-party companies are already working on software that can analyze the information to see what products or services Facebook members might be interested in based on these posts. Facebook will also modify its search engine to look for these real-time feeds. "It …
  • Marketers Move Fast On Mobile Coupons
  • Jackson's Death Slows Internet to a Crawl
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