Author: Serkadis

Webinars and podcasts are the most popular social media resources for business people, used by 69 percent of those who turn to such channels for business information, according to a new study by Business.com.

Facebook is the primary social network on which consumer-focused companies maintain one or more profiles, cited by 83 percent of respondents compared with 45 percent for Twitter. Business-to-business companies maintain a presence on both social sites with 77 percent maintaining a profile on Facebook and 73 percent on Twitter.

Among those using social media for business purposes in their jobs, 62 percent visit company or brand profiles on social networking sites and 55 percent search for business information on these sites.

Consultants and marketers are the most active users of social media as a resource for business information, particularly in micro (less than 10 employees) and small businesses (10-99 employees). IT professionals have the lowest participation rate.

The average company in this study was planning, developing or running seven different social media initiatives; 65 percent of respondents staffing those initiatives, and 71 percent of companies themselves, have less than two years of experience with social media for business.

Building brand awareness and brand reputation are two of the top social media success metrics, but nearly two-thirds of companies focused on these metrics have little insight into performance via standard or easily accessible reports.

"We are constantly analyzing trends to determine exactly what tools business professionals leverage most for purchasing," said Ben Hanna, Ph.D., vice president, marketing, Business.com

"This survey was a way for us to benchmark where businesses, and business people, are finding value in social media."

 

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG.N), a listed hedge fund and private equity giant, posted a third quarter loss on Friday as management fees tracked a decline in total assets.

Fortress shares were down 5 percent or 23 cents at $4.34 in morning trading.

Fortress said its net loss attributable to Class A shareholders was $59 million, or 43 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with a loss of $57 million, or 66 cents, in the year-earlier period.

Revenue came in at $143.7 million, down from $185.2 million a year earlier, mainly on lower management fees. Analysts had expected revenue of $123 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, and pretax distributed earnings of 9 cents a share. Pretax distributed earnings were 11 cents a share, the company said.

Like other hedge fund firms, Fortress was hit hard last fall as waves of cash-strapped investors tried to withdraw their money. At the end of the quarter Fortress managed $32 billion in assets, down from $34.3 billion a year earlier as it tried to block redemptions.

On a conference call with analysts, Fortress Chief Executive Daniel Mudd was upbeat, noting its assets under management were 21 percent higher than their low of $26.5 billion at the end of March. “After all the gloom and doom, I think we may be going into a golden age of alternatives,” he said.

Other hedge fund managers have also reported the return of new money as markets rebounded this year. Many industry watchers say last year’s worst-ever returns and record redemptions are safely behind them.

The stock has plunged 81 percent since going public at the peak of the buyout bubble in early 2007, though it has surged fourfold from a record low in December last year.

(Reporting by Joseph A. Giannone and Ross Kerber; Editing by Derek Caney, Phil Berlowitz)

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LONDON (Reuters) – Funds specialising in turning around troubled companies are among the favourites to buy the stores of British liquor chain Threshers from administrators, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

Private equity firms, convenience store operators, rival off-licence chains and retailers are all poring over First Quench’s stores, which include Threshers and other chains, as its administrator KPMG looks to secure a speedy sale, the people said.

R Capital, the owner of Little Chef, the roadside restaurant chain that called in Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal to revitalise the menu at the chain, is looking at the business, as is private equity firm Rutland Partners, sources said.

Hilco and Endless, which also specialise in turning around distressed companies, are interested in all or parts of First Quench’s network, sources said.

The firms declined to comment.

KPMG said on Thursday that it planned to close 373 loss-making First Quench stores, out of its 1,200 store network, at a cost of about 1,700 jobs. 

The stores, which include the Wine Rack, Victoria Wine, Bottoms Up and The Local brands, have been losing around 20 million pounds ($33.2 million) a year, hit by competition from large retailers and small convenience stores.

“We have had a range of interested parties considering everything from one store through to a very large number of stores,” said Ian Corfield, a joint administrator at KPMG.

Indicative offers are due by Nov. 13 with KPMG hoping to sew up the process by Nov. 26.

RETAIL INTEREST

Large multiple retailers are also on the list of parties requesting further information, though First Quench’s stores are viewed as too small for the likes of Tesco (TSCO.L), Asda (WMT.N) and Sainsbury’s (SBRY.L), one source said.

Convenience store chain Costcutter and rival off-licence Bargain Booze are also considering offers, but their franchise model makes them more likely to be interested in First Quench’s small franchise arm, numbering some 86 stores, the source said.

“The franchise business may well be a very attractive proposition for somebody to take on as a unit; we are certainly exploring with various parties whether that will be of interest,” said Corfield, though he declined to comment on individual interested parties.

Costcutter’s majority owner Bibby Line Group and Bargain Booze’s private equity owner ECI Partners both declined to comment.

KPMG’s preferred option is to find a buyer for a large part of the business but it may consider offers for individual brands or even individual stores, Corfield said.

But carving out a brand could present difficulties in separating the business’ supply chain, back office function, logistics and IT, one source said.

“It’s not beyond the wit of man, but it’s not the easiest option either,” the source said. ($1=.6025 Pound)

By Simon Meads and Tom Freke
(Editing by Karen Foster)

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Ragaboo writes ”

A congressional report was recently released estimating that the regulation of Internet gambling could amount to around $42 billion in revenue for the U.S. government. Considering both the current financial climate and the fact (given the nature of the Internet) Americans are gambling online anyway, whether the government likes it or not, it seems like an incredible waste not to simply regulate the industry. Regulation provides much-needed funds, allows standards to be imposed and oversight to ensure safety, and also allows safety nets and safeguards to be forced to be put in place against underage and problem gamblers. As it currently stands, millions are playing online poker alone from within the United States (whether or not the government approves of it, which in an of itself isn’t explicitly clear) and countless others are gambling, and yet every cent being made in that industry is going overseas.”

Indeed. Online gambling seems like one area where a regulated market would make a lot more sense than outright prohibition. Many other countries already do this, and it’s really odd that the US continues to resist it. Many claim that it’s really just an effort by the existing casinos to block out competition, but it would seem that those casinos would benefit greatly themselves by being able to offer their own online offerings. And, even with this new evidence, it looks like Congress is actually going in the opposite direction.

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Twellow has launched a new "Suggested Users" feature aimed at connecting Twitterers with similar interests. It should be much more useful to the common Twitter user than Twitter’s own suggested list, which is one static list for everybody, and includes mostly celebrities and other well-known people. In fact, Twitter may be getting rid of that list soon anyway.

Twellow’s feature is tailored to the interests of the specific user, so your list will be completely different than the next person’s. 

Twellow is a WebPronews service, which provides Twitter users with a directory of people to follow by category or location.

"Being able to find people that really share common interests is what Twellow is all about," says Twellow’s lead developer, Matthew Daines. "This new feature should really add value to our Twellow toolset in helping people meet this goal."

"While Twitter has offered a suggested users list for some time, it really hasn’t been very useful for the average Twitter user," he says. "Our large database of categorized users really has allowed us to provide a much better matching system for suggesting users to follow. These are relevant people who actually share your personal interests."

Twellow’s Suggested Users feature can:

– Display up to 500 profiles.
 
– Let you follow users right from the list.

– Let your ignore and hide profiles you don’t think are good matches.

– Let you click the More Info buttons on each profile to show the categories for that profile. Your matches are marked with a green star.

– Let you adjust your profile categories if suggestions are not accurate, then return and view the new results.

Check out the Suggested Users feature on Twellow, and let us know what you think about it. Our team is always open to feedback.

Do you think such a feature would make Twitter more useful? Comment here.

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Mandelbrot Project Inc., a stealth-mode startup founded by former Daily Candy CEO Pete Sheinbaum, has raised $500,000 in first-round funding from Foundry Group, according to a regulatory filing.

Seth Levine, the Foundry partner on Mandelbrot’s board of directors, declined to comment. Mandelbrot is based in Boulder, Colorado. www.themandelbrotproject.com

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Like military moms across the country, Dr. Jill Biden looked for small ways to send the comforts of home to son Beau during his deployment: she and Vice President Biden sent him a Christmas stocking stuffed with candy and playing cards; she baked him his favorite brownies for his birthday; she helped him keep up with children Natalie and Hunter by mailing artwork and photos of soccer games. This Veterans Day, with Beau safely home after almost a year in Iraq, Dr. Biden expresses her gratitude for the sacrifices of all military families in an essay published today in USA WEEKEND Magazine, and shares how she plans to honor the men and women who risk their lives for our country:

It helps that families such as ours realize we’re never alone, as I’ve seen this year how powerful the support of the community can be: A local restaurant provides pizzas at a welcome-home event; a minor-league baseball team, the Wilmington Blue Rocks, dedicates a game night in support of our troops; one of our schools adopts a military unit. Then, there’s an organization I’ve worked with in the past few years called Delaware Boots on the Ground. It started as a group of military moms and spouses who came together to support our Delaware National Guard members and their families. "Boots" now performs simple acts of service for deployed soldiers and their families, like supporting summer camps for children who have a deployed parent. There are just so many ways that each American can lend a hand and make a difference.

Beau came home safely Sept. 25, after almost a year in Iraq. My family feels so blessed.

Joe and I plan to visit Arlington National Cemetery this Veterans Day and spend time with veterans and soldiers to show our thanks. On Veterans Day and every day, it’s our duty to show appreciation for their service and remember that each of us has the ability to make a difference in the life of a service member. Even though Beau’s deployment is complete, I still consider myself a member of the military family. I always will.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The initial sales figures for Microsoft Windows 7 after its worldwide launch on October 22 are still being tabulated, but the early estimates sound very promising: According to industry analysis firm NPD, unit sales for Windows 7 software SKUs in the US were 234% higher — better than triple — the unit sales for Vista’s launch, and US revenue from Win7 software sales was up 82% over Vista’s launch.

But as Vista veterans will recall, that launch was botched somewhat, first by a costly delay, then by a decision to launch the product twice (first to businesses in October 2006, then to consumers in January 2007), and then by a lack of participation from partners. And there were still more reasons the Vista launch fizzled, one of which, believe it or not, included the scheduling of the launch on a Tuesday.

Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows XP all launched on Thursdays, to moderate success or higher; and Windows 7 launched on a Thursday. You would think that since NPD’s tabulation of sales figures runs between Sundays and Saturdays, the fact that the initial sales figures only reflect the first three days (plus all those pre-sales) of Windows 7 versus the first five days of Vista, would be even more impressive. Yet it’s those pre-sales that may tell the real tale here, according to NPD vice president of industry analysis Stephen Baker, who credited a better-run pre-sale event from Microsoft and its retail partners as contributing to the more successful launch this time around. If you’ll recall, the hype over Vista had fizzled long before January.

The top three selling SKUs in the three-day window were all upgrades: for Home Premium, followed by Professional (from Vista Business), and the Home Premium Family Pack. We don’t know specific unit sales numbers, but can we draw any conclusions yet about who is doing the upgrading and why? For instance, are they XP users, or are those folks more likely to purchase new PCs with Win7 pre-installed (whose sales are not included in these NPD figures, but whose early estimates also appear positive)?

“Questions like that on hardware are hard to answer after three days of sales,” Stephen Baker told Betanews this morning. “Some portion of the first three days of sales is just pent-up demand, driven by lack of product to sell in the first ten days. So in that respect, I am not sure what the initial motivators are.”

In his blog post on launch day, Baker credited stores like Best Buy with their willingness this time around to cooperate with Microsoft, especially with little things like displaying Win7-based PCs — not Vista — during early October even before Win7 or the PCs with Win7 were available. Seeing those systems, and some of their new form factors, might contribute to some of that pent-up demand Baker told us about.

“In general, though, consumers rarely buy PCs for ‘new’ features,” Baker told us, letting the air out of that balloon. “As a tool and a home communication necessity, PCs are most often bought on need. The latest form factor isn’t or design isn’t what motivates consumers to buy, it is what gets them to buy at the point-of-sale in the store. But getting them to make a decision to buy is based on need, price, and promotion.”

We definitely saw the promotion part of that solution as early as August, with a respectable and, for once, not insulting advertising campaign that blanketed all media, including television. But this time around, OEMs were participating in that promotion as well, and were in sync with Microsoft’s timetable, publishing early notices of markdown deals, and drumming October 22 into consumers’ heads.

But that doesn’t cover the need factor; and we wondered, how much did Vista contribute to that need. Since, after all, the top three selling SKUs were all upgrades, were folks really willing to dump Vista?

No, according to NPD’s Baker: He believes that the factor that publishers like Betanews had been calling the “Vista perception problem” are not as pervasive as we make it out to be, especially in the consumer space. More importantly than how we may dramatize things, consumers were simply more motivated by the “refresh” aspect of the new system, says Baker.

“I would suspect that most of it is new look-and-feel, and a PC refresh without the cost,” he told Betanews. “Bloggers may dislike Vista, but the vast majority of consumers really don’t mind it.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

Causes is a social networking donation platform that uses MySpace so that people can raise money for causes or issues that they believe in. Generally these kinds of activities help provide a community around issues like Breast Cancer, or stop smoking, or other issues that are part of our daily life. Causes is an excellent application that makes the process of raising and donating money for a specific cause very easy and embeddable into someone’s MySpace page.

Last night according to ReadWriteWeb and Stanford Social Innovation Review, Causes has sent an e-mail out to all their MySpace members stating that they will be moving over to Facebook and no longer supporting MySpace. I do not see why they could not do both, but apparently Causes does not want to support both platforms. From a business viewpoint – Causes would be very smart to provide support for both platforms; everyone needs a simple easy way to donate to the cause they believe in.

Stanford Social Innovation Review though also brings up the specter of money, in that it is well known that Facebook caters to a richer clientele than MySpace. Going out to Quanticast – the demographics for MySpace and Facebook makes this a compelling argument.

MySpace Demographics:

Facebook Demographics:

What is interesting about the Quanticast information is on the right side data pane where people who are likely to visit Facebook, Causes shows up as the number one entry in the likely to visit category.

Where on the likely to visit column causes does not even show up.

Demographics are also telling – people are much less likely to be college educated on MySpace, meaning they just simply do not make a lot of money. However, some research points out that poor people donate more overall money to causes that influence their groups or their interest groups than rich people do. The problem also might be in the micropayments processing side; small amounts of money usually are quickly degraded by mounting fees from payment processors, handling, and movement than larger payments, which is a definite possibility and, one of the drawbacks to the micropayment system.

What is sad though is that rather than supporting both platforms, which is just good business, Causes has decided to abandon MySpace in favor of Facebook. Regardless of the reason, from a business viewpoint you don’t abandon a channel until it stops being profitable, if Causes believes that MySpace is no longer profitable, then there is more here about the internal workings and visitor counts of MySpace than we generally have discussed in the blogging world, let alone the press.

Causes definitely needs to post a statement on their blog, so we know what the reason is, rather than speculating as to what the reasons are.

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Nintendo has sent out a press release announcing the final US release date for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. Nestled in all the PR-speak is a ni…

Duplicate content is a common occurrence on the web and in many cases can hurt search engine rankings. While the search engines may not always technically penalize webmasters for duplicate content, there are still a lot of ways it can hurt.

WebProNews is covering the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East in New York, where representatives from the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) discussed how their respective web properties handle duplicate content issues. Following are some takeaways from each.

Duplicate Content in Google

The way Google handles duplicate content has been discussed a lot in recent memory. This is largely due to a video Google’s Greg Grothaus uploaded, in which he discusses at length, the way Google handles a variety of different elements of the duplicate content conversation.

Joachim Kupke, Sr. Software Engineer of Google’s Indexing Team reiterated much of what Grothaus said. He also said that Google has a ton of infrastructure for content duplication elimination:

– redirects
– detection of recurrent URL patterns (the ability to ‘learn’ recurrent url patterns to find duplicated content)
– actual contents
– most recently crawled version
– earlier content
– contents minus things that don’t change on a site

Kupke said to avoid dynamic URLs when possible (although Google is "rather good" at eliminating dupes). If all else fails, use the canonical link element. Kupke calls this a "Swiss Army Knife" for duplicate content issues.

Google says the canonical link element has been tremendously successful. It didn’t even exist a year ago, and is has grown exponentially. It has had a huge impact on Google’s canonicalization decisions, and 2 out of 3 times, the canonical tag actually alters the organic decision in Google.

Google says a common mistake is designating a 404 as canonical, and this is typically caused by unnecessary relative links. So, avoid changing rel="canonical" designations, and avoid designating permanent redirects as canonical.

Also, do not disallow directives in robots.txt to annotate duplicate content. It makes it harder to detect dupes, and disallowed 404s are a nuisance. There is an exception however, and that is that interstitial login pages may be a good candidate to "robot out," according to Kupke.

Kupke says that canonical works, but indexing takes time. "Be patient and we WILL use your designated canonicals." Cleaning up an existing part of the index takes even longer, and this may leave dupes serving for a while despite rel=canonical, Kupke adds.

At SMX, Google announced that cross domain rel=canonical is coming within this year. So for example, if the Chicago Tribune has an article on the New York Times, and the rel=canonical points to the Chicago Tribune then Google will only credit the Chicago Tribune with the content.

Duplicate Content in Bing

As far as how Bing views duplicate content, intention is key. If your intent is to manipulate the search engine, you will be penalized.

Sasi Parthasarathy, Program Manager of Bing says to consolidate all versions of a page under one URL. "Less is more, in terms of duplicate content." If possible, use only one URL per piece of content.

Bing isn’t supporting the canonical link element (as a ranking factor) yet, but it is coming. They do say to use it, but it’s just not really a ranking factor in Bing yet. Bing says that there has been an increase in the usage of canonical tags in the past 6 months, but adoption issues still exist. According to Parthasarathy, 30% of canonical tags point to the same domain (which is fine), and 9% use it to point to other domains. This could be a mistake or it could be manipulative. Bing says they will look for other factors to try and determine which it is.

Bing says canonical tags are hints and not directives. "Use it with caution," and not as an alternative to good web design.

With regards to www vs non-www, just pick one and stick with it consistently. Remove default filenames at the end of your URLs. Bing also says 301 redirects are your best friend for redirecting, use rel="nofollow" on useless pages, and use robots.txt to keep content you don’t want crawled out.

Duplicate Content in Yahoo

If everything goes according to plan, you’re going to need to worry about how Bing handles duplicate content if you’re worried about how Yahoo handles it, but Yahoo’s Cris Pierry, Sr. Director of Search, offered a few additional tips.

Pierry says descriptive URLs should be easily readable, and it’s not a good idea to change URLs every year. In addition, use canonical, avoid case sensitivity, and avoid session IDs and parameters.

Pierry also says to use sitemaps, and submit them to Yahoo Site Explorer. Improve indexing by proper robots.txt usage, and use Site Explorer to delete URLs that you dont’ want Yahoo to index. Finally, provide feeds to Yahoo Site Explorer, and report spam sites linking to you in Site Explorer.

Yahoo says metadata and SearchMonkey are enhancing presentation.

WebProNews reporter Mike McDonald contributed to this article from SMX East.
 

 

Back in July Facebook updated policies for third-party ads on Facebook Platform. The company disabled two entire ad networks and over 100 more apps were suspended or brought into compliance over ad-related violations. Half of those had over a million monthly active users.

Facebook has now disabled two more offer and ad networks, which the company says have repeatedly violated its policies. This has all been part of Facebook’s continued action against deceptive ads. The company has addressed its efforts in this area on the company’s developer blog.

"First, deceptive ads are a widespread issue on the Web and one we fight aggressively," says Facebook’s Nick Gianos. "This battle is not new and it’s far from over. We faced stimulus scam ads on our own system earlier this year and pushed them off the site with rigorous enforcement. We did the same months later when deceptive ads from third-party ad networks appeared in applications. We’re doing that again now as we see them appear in the form of offers."

"We recognize that monitoring ads isn’t the first area of focus for an entrepreneur just getting started with social applications," he says. "That’s why ad networks that don’t play by the rules should expect to be our first point of contact in our line of enforcement. Our policies are clear. If you’re an ad network and don’t comply with them, you are doing a disservice to your customers, and you should expect your business opportunities on Facebook to cease."

The company emphasizes that it is the responsibility not only of ad networks, but also of developers to make sure content running in third-party apps is appropriate.

Facebook’s policies on offers and "inappropriate" ad content can be viewed here. If there are questions, which there no doubt will be, they can be sent to Facebook via the Platform Advertising Contact form.

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It looks as if Dell’s Android handset is getting ready for prime time with AT&T as a new filing found on the FCC’s website has revealed the Mini 3iX. With both 850/1900 MHz bands of UMTS as well as Wi-Fi on board, the 3iX is likely to be identical to the Mini 3i which was unveiled in mid-August by China Mobile, the only difference being the aforementioned. If this is indeed the case then we’re looking at a 3.5″ 360×640 touchscreen display, 3 megapixel camera, A-GPS and support for Microsoft Exchange. The question is, will anybody even care?

[Via Unwired View]

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Nearly half of all children in the United States and 90% of African American children will rely on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the recession could push those numbers higher.

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Google’s music service in China hasn’t achieved much so far; no one should look for Google’s next quarterly financial report to say it’s brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue or toppled Baidu.  But neither has it failed, and one person who’s close to the service recently indicated that it’s picking up steam.

Gary Chen is close by merit of being the founder and CEO of Orca Digital.  Orca Digital owns Top100.cn, which is Google’s partner in the venture.

As for what Chen to say, it turns out that some big companies have aligned themselves with the project, even if they’re not yet spending a lot of money.  According to Loretta Chao, "Chen . . . said in an interview that five advertisers have signed on for the service so far, including Nokia Corp., Apple Inc. and Volkswagen AG, with total commitments of 2.5 million yuan ($370,000)."

Then here’s the really interesting part: Chao continued, "Orca Digital and Google expect to sign several more ad deals that could bring in $1 million each, and hope to have a total of 30 advertisers within a half year . . ."

If things continue to snowball at that rate, Google’s music service in China could become quite important in a rather short period of time.

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