Category: News and Views

Facebook and Yahoo! NOT forming strategic alliance | VentureBeat.com

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[Update] Rumor has it the rumors are wrong. While Facebook and Yahoo! may work together on certain projects and collaborations, a search alliance is not likely to be one of them in the near future.

Female executive powerhouses Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandburg may be forging an alliance between their two companies.

UK newspaper The Sunday Telegraph reported that Mayer, who is the CEO of Yahoo! and Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, are discussing ways the they can work together to conquer the internet. There is already some overlap between Yahoo! and Facebook, but according to unnamed sources, “board members expect the talks to lead to much more substantial collaboration based around web-based search.”

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Is bracing for impact really helpful in an airline crash? | Air & Space Magazine

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Or is it just meant to make us feel like we’re doing something?

Spending weeks (if not months) reading about Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s heroic landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January 2009 led the Air & Space copy chief to wonder: “When an airplane is about to make a bad landing and the pilot tells passengers ‘Brace for impact,’ does that instruction really help? Could it actually hurt? Is it just a placebo to make the passengers feel like they’re doing something?”

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4 things marketers can learn from the Papa John’s spam lawsuit | Econsultancy

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How much does it cost to send a text message?

It’s often less than a cent if you’re a marketer sending in bulk, but U.S. pizza chain Papa John’s could be forced to pay $1,500 a pop for 500,000 text messages its franchisees sent in 2010.

A class action lawsuit alleges that the chain’s franchisees, though a third party text messaging service, sent promotional ads to consumers without their permission in violation of a 1991 law. The attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case are asking for $250m in damages, but a jury could award triple that amount if it decides that Papa John’s willfully violated the law.

While it remains to be seen just how likely an eight-figure verdict is, and it would seem that there’s a decent chance the class action will be settled before the matter is put in the hands of a jury, Papa John’s plight provides several good lessons for other marketers using SMS to reach consumers.

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Spotify For Magazines Comes To The US | PSFK.com

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Paris-based startup, LeKiosk, has taken the concept of a physical newsstand and transferred it online. Offering a variety of publishers across genres, ‘a Spotify of the magazine world’ if you will,  they have already been touted as the top Apple app for 2011.  “The world’s first 3-D newsstand” is designed to offer users the chance to peruse content in a visual and simplified manner, eliminating ownership of physical versions yet still offering the chance to save the content. The UK version of the app actually provides a version of a British-style newsstand with a virtual way to scroll through available titles in a simulated version of the real life experience

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Pinterest’s New Business Tools ( Read The Fine Print) | MarketingVOX.com

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Pinterest took a giant step yesterday toward attracting business users when it unveiled a slew of business tools and resources. First among them, a set of “Business Terms of Service.”

Among them, a warning that you pretty much surrender your rights to anything you post there. “Pinterest and its users a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, store, display, reproduce…” (it goes on).

Second that, unlike most business arrangements, this is not a contract: Pinterest may terminate or suspend this license at any time “with our without cause or notice to you.” Third, an indemnity clause. They don’t summarize it on the Business Terms as they do for the personal terms, but the short story is that if Pinterest gets sued over your post, you pay for it.

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Liberty, Undeterred | El Cipayo

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To minimize coverage of an anti government protest in Argentina, the government banned access to the airspace around the event to limit images that could lead a viewer to estimate the size of the crowd, or the actions of the authorities.

El Cipayo simply used a radio controlled model helicopter to get the job done, posting the videos on YouTube.

Big Brother may be here, but the common man is sharing the technology.

Google Android Now Powers 3 in 4 Smartphones | searchenginewatch.com

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Google’s Android platform has reached record worldwide sales numbers, according to analysts. Research firm IDC said that the Google mobile OS is the first to surpass 100 million quarterly shipments in a single quarter.

The platform powered some 136 million handsets, giving Android a 75 percent market share of all shipments. The company noted that Android also saw its shipments rise by 91.5 percent over the previous year’s quarter, a growth rate roughly double that of the smartphone market as a whole.

Analysts credit the soaring sales in part to Google’s ability to build and maintain a large ecosystem for the platform.

“Google has a thriving, multi-faceted product portfolio. Many of its competitors, with weaker tie-ins to the mobile OS, do not,” explained IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “This factor and others have led to loss of share for competitors with few exceptions.”

Second in the quarter was Apple’s iPhone.

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