A New York Court has dismissed a $1 billion law suit by Indian TV network New Delhi Television against Nielsen and WPP and some of their subsidiaries for breach of contract and negligence in connection with a TV ratings service the companies operate in India. The New York State Supreme Court indicated that New York was an inappropriate venue for the suit, ruling that since the ratings company joint venture run by WPP and Nielsen, known as TAM, is based in India, that's where the suit should be contested. Nielsen and WPP said they were pleased with the decision. NDTV …

Facebook is once again accepting applications for its Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) Program after temporarily closing the ad program to new candidates last month pending updated requirements. The social network on Monday announced PMD applicants must now be referred by a Facebook employee or a current PMD vendor. Facebook also set additional requirements for earning badges for qualification across the four areas of expertise covered by its partners: ads, apps, insights and pages. "These new requirements will facilitate the implementation of features such as boosting Page content in news feed, accessing Open Graph insights for app developers or …

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in September offered employees the smartphone of their choice, BlackBerry wasn’t among the options. Now Yahoo is dissing the struggling smartphone maker again, phasing out its app for BlackBerry devices as of April 1. The company announced plans to pull its BlackBerry app in a blog post Friday in which it listed several other properties slated for shutdown including the Yahoo Search App, Yahoo Avatars and the Yahoo Message Boards Web site. Mayer said during the company’s fourth quarter conference call that Yahoo planned to reduce its roster of 60 to 75 mobile apps …

Larry Page has leap-frogged fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin in the latest edition of Forbes' billionaires list. Page, who is also Google CEO, is estimated to be worth $23 billion, placing him at No. 20 in Forbes' ranking, and just ahead of 21st place Brin, who is worth $22.8 billion. (Google's Eric Schmidt ranges 138th, worth $8.2 billion.) In other media-industry mogul movements, most experienced some downward momentum on the list, including relative newcomer Mark Zuckerberg, who has fallen to No. 66 with a worth of $13.3 billion, AOL founder Steve Case (down to 1,031st place with $1.4 billion), and …

WPP's Possible unit has relaunched its own website as a "publishing platform and creative showcase for collectively sourced original content," and has promoted Jonathan McVey to Global Creative Officer from Chief Creative Officer. McVey, who oversaw Possible's corporate site redesign, says Possible is practicing what it preaches to its clients: "[We're taking] a dose of our own medicine - namely, creating a dynamic showcase where the content and insights reflect the collective intelligence of our agency-wide community of strategists, technologists and dreamers." Among the new content elements featured on the site are exclusive interviews with technologist and developer of the …

More smartphones will be shipped globally than feature phones this year for the first time ever, according to IDC. The research firm predicts manufacturers will ship 918.6 million phones in 2013, or 50.1% of total shipments. By 2017, IDC projects 1.5 million phones will be shipped worldwide, equating to two-thirds of all mobile phone shipments. China, the U.S., the U.K. Japan, and Brazil will be the biggest smartphone markets this year. Read more here.

Facebook today sent out notices for a press event at its Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters next Thursday, inviting the media to “Come see a new look for News Feed.” TechCrunch last month reported Facebook was testing a redesigned version of its mobile news feed to bring it more in line with content streams on other apps such as Google+ and Flipboard. But the announcement suggests Facebook will introduce a News Feed revamp spanning both desktop and mobile.  

WPP reported a 2.5% revenue gain to $16.46 billion for full-year 2012 with a pre-tax profit of just over $1.7 billion, up 8.2%. The revenue gain was suppressed in part due to currency fluctuations-as reported in British Pounds, revenues were up 3.5%. Organic revenue growth for the year was 2.9% which was in the middle of the pack compared to other holding companies. For example, Omnicom reported 2012 organic growth of 4%; Publicis reported it at 2.9% while Interpublic said its full year organic growth was less than 1%. The company said it was taking a charge against earnings of …

Facebook Thursday said the company intends to acquire Microsoft's ad serving platform Atlas. In a statement on Microsoft's blog detailing the reasons behind the sale, Tom Phillips, senior director of communications, Microsoft Advertising, explains how Microsoft doesn't believe digital advertising has lived up to its promise.

HP may no longer be the brightest light in Silicon Valley, but it’s become the first company to reach 1 million followers on LinkedIn. The computer giant says its million followers are in turn connected to 43 million people on LinkedIn, or roughly a quarter of the professional network’s 200 million users. How did HP do it? In a blog post today, Nick Besbeas, VP marketing, at Linked points to factors including posts by HP CEO Meg Whitman as part of the “Influencer” blog network set up last year on the site. Beyond Whitman’s star power, HP also used …