No doubt, at least part of Apple's recent success can be attributed to its distinctive physical retail presence. Hoping for a similarly positive effect, Microsoft has been opening stores of its own, the latest of which is reportedly destined for Costa Mesa, California, at the South Coast Plaza Shopping Center. "And yes, in case you were wondering, there's an Apple store in the same mall," reports ZDNet's resident Microsoft expert, Mary-Jo Foley. Indeed, "Microsoft's strategy with these stores has been to locate close to Apple stores in each city and use the stores as a showcase for new …

Coming as a surprise to Goldman Sachs -- if on one else -- the bank's top U.S. clients are fuming over losing their chance to invest early in Facebook. "Goldman also had to contend with angry Facebook executives who were miffed that the share offering -- meant to quietly increase the Palo Alto, Calif., company's luster -- turned out to be far more public than they expected," reports The Wall Street Journal, citing sources. Earlier this month, Goldman offered select customers part of a private offering of as much as $1.5 billion in Facebook shares. This weekend, however, Goldman …

So, how much faith should marketers put in a Twitter user's self-reported geographic information? Not much, according to a new study from Palo Alto Research Center. After digging deeper into about 10,000 Twitter user profiles, it determined that about 66% of users entered "valid" geographic information -- and it uses the term "valid" loosely. "This includes those who merely entered their continent and, more commonly, those who entered geographic information in highly vernacular forms," according to PARC. Still while MediaMemo suggests that marketers take any volunteered profile information with a grain of salt, it does believe that the information …

It looks like Groupon rival LivingSocial hit it big this week after offering members a $20 Amazon gift card for $10. "In just the first few hours of the sale, users have already purchased over 243,000 coupons," reports ReadWriteWeb. How did LivingSocial land such a sweat deal? Well, as you may recall, Amazon invested $175 million into the startup in December. As such, Lightspeed Venture Partners' Jeremy Lew calls this week's deal "the first step of operational integration from that investment." According to ReadWriteWeb, "Some are predicting the deal is on a course to outperform the previous blockbuster daily …

If there was any doubt that Apple currently dominates the tablet market, new IDC data shows that iPads accounted for 90% of all such devices sold in the third quarter. What's more, "IDC reports that Apple's iPad drove tablet demand almost exclusively in the third quarter," notes ZDNet. "Global tablet shipments in the third quarter checked in at 4.8 million units in the third quarter, up from 3.3 million in the second quarter." Meanwhile, Amazon has a commanding 41.5% share of the e-reader market, while e-reader shipments were 2.7 million units in the third quarter -- up …

Marking its first cable channel partner, content streaming company Roku on Tuesday is expected to announce a deal with WealthTV. "The dozens of brands already on Roku have one thing in common: they don't have any deals in place with cable operators, who contractually insist on maintaining some degree of exclusivity," reports paidContent. "Otherwise the over-the-top TV revolution in which Roku has been a leading force would be much better able to compete with traditional multichannel services." The cable industry will no doubt follow WealthTV's lead, according to Ed Lee, director of business development and content partnerships at Roku. …

Up from about $6.8 billion in 2010, the total global mobile applications market will be worth $25 billion by 2015, according to a new market research report by MarketsandMarkets. As TechCrunch points out: "The research firm reiterates the various factors that will be contributing to that growth, from advancements in network technologies to the lowering of mobile data usage cost, growing adoption of smartphones around the world, and a continuous increase in application usability." The research firm projects Apple's App Store to hold nearly 20.5% of the pie. Also, while North America has led the market since …

Sure to mystify the more practical among us, Seattle Web startup Cheezburger has raised $30 million led by Boulder-based Foundry Group, along with Seattle's Madrona Venture Group, Avalon Ventures and SoftBank Capital. Combining painfully-cute animal pictures with lobotomized captions, the company's network of sites now attracts over 16.5 million visitors, and 375 million page views, a month. "In advance of the funding, Cheezburger built up its leadership last summer, adding a full-time chief financial officer as [founder Ben Huh] plotted expanding into New York and Los Angeles," reports The Seattle Times. "The funding ... cements Cheezburger's position …

Based on research by comScore and Matt Cutts, head of Google's anti-webspam team, Facebook's third largest advertiser is a Bing affiliate scam site named Make-my-baby.com. Facilitated by affiliate company Zugo, the site gets unwitting Web users to switch their browser's default search and homepage to Microsoft's search engine. In the third quarter alone, Make-my-baby.com bought an estimated 1.75 billion ad impressions on Facebook, according to comScore. Notes ReadWriteWeb: "It's pretty remarkable that even at the top of this giant success story of Facebook advertising, and perhaps near the top of the story of Bing's steady rise …

Before users and privacy advocates had the chance to mount a full-scale revolt, Facebook just disabled a new feature that let users -- knowingly or not -- share their phone number and address with third-party applications and Web sites. "Either the company was blind to the potential for user uproar, or it figured it could sneak in the feature without users noticing," writes VentureBeat. To some, the move demonstrates Facebook's heightened sensitivity to privacy issues and bad press. "Facebook is learning that it may need to move slower and more thoughtfully as it pushes users …