Yahoo is on an aggressive expansion spree. Following the announcements of an extended partnership with Nokia, now Yahoo is aiming at entering the mobile social media.

Reports claim that Yahoo has acquired Koprol, a social networking start-up based in Indonesia. The move is aimed at making its presence felt in the mobile market.

Koprol, which is a social networking site, specializes in mobile networking that allows the users to share photos with their friends and search for places based on data of the location.

Following the buyout from Yahoo, Koprol would continue to maintain its base in Jakarta, Indonesia. Further all the employees would be converted to the Yahoo team.

In a blog post, Koprol noted that many of its planned features would soon be rolled out as the company now has access to more resources.

In the wake of being hit extremely hard by Google, Yahoo is determined to mark its place in the mobile sector.

The partnership of Yahoo and Nokia is aimed at enhancing the mobile offerings for search, mapping, e-mail, and instant messaging.

Though Yahoo has been successful in partnering with Nokia and buying Koprol, still it has a long way to go in becoming the top notch player of the market.

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Major management shakeup at Microsoft as the company reorganized its division focused on videogames, mobile phones and other devices, in an effort to focus on competition from Apple and Google.

Microsoft announced that the two men in charge of the divisions, J Allard and Robbie Bach are leaving the company. The two men were the fathers of the Entertainment and Devices division, which is home to the Xbox and Microsoft’s failing mobile efforts. The two men will not be replaced, instead the people in charge of each division will report to directly to Steve Ballmer.

Below is the email Steve Ballmer sent to employees.

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 8:01 AM
To: Microsoft – All Employees
Subject: Executive Leadership Transitions

After almost 22 years with the company, Robbie Bach has decided to retire from Microsoft. I have worked with Robbie during his entire tenure at Microsoft, and count him as both a friend and a great business partner and leader. Robbie has always had great timing, and is going out on a high note — this has been a phenomenal year for E&D overall, and with the coming launches of both Windows Phone 7 and “Project Natal,” the rest of the year looks stupendous as well. While we are announcing Robbie’s retirement today, he will remain here through the fall, ensuring we have a smooth transition.

Concurrent with Robbie’s retirement, I am making several organization changes to ensure we have the right leaders in the right positions as we set ourselves up for the next big wave of products and services. Effective July 1, Don Mattrick, who leads our interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, who leads our mobile communications business, will report directly to me. Don and Andy have built out strong leadership teams and product pipelines, and are well-positioned for the years ahead. Independent of Robbie’s decision, J Allard (currently serving as senior vice president of Design and Development for E&D), will also be leaving Microsoft. Given his ongoing passion and commitment to Microsoft, he will remain as an advisor to me, helping incubation efforts, looking at design and UI, and providing a cross-company perspective on these and similar topics. With J’s change in role, corporate vice president David Treadwell will join IEB to lead the core technology organization, reporting to Don. David has a great set of accomplishments at Microsoft, most recently working on the Windows Live Platform Services team. Over the next several months, Robbie and I will work together to finalize reporting and structure for the rest of his org.

Now that Office 2010 has been launched to business customers, Antoine Leblond, senior vice president in the Office Productivity Applications Group, will take a new role as senior vice president for the Windows Web Services team. This team brings together the integral Windows services that today deliver updates, solutions, community and depth information for the Windows consumer. Kurt DelBene, senior vice president in the Office Business Productivity Group, will take on all of the engineering responsibilities for the Office business.

Transitions are always hard. Robbie has been an instrumental part of so many key moments in Microsoft history — from the evolution of Office to the decision to create the first Xbox to pushing the company hard in entertainment overall. J as well has had a great impact in the market and on our culture, providing leadership in design, and in creating a passionate and involved Xbox community, and earlier being at the center of our work seizing the importance of the Web for the company. But most important, both have been great team builders with a strong record of attracting, coaching and growing talent. As a result, their teams are primed to continue to step up and deliver great products, great services and great results for the company. Don has led the Interactive Entertainment Business since July 2007, where he’s significantly grown our entertainment footprint as well as our profitability. He can count as successes the evolution of Xbox Live, the launch of blockbusters like “Halo 3” and the much-anticipated “Project Natal.” Previously, Don was president of Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios. Andy has led the Mobile Communications Business since February, 2008, and has been instrumental in reinvigorating our mobility efforts, bringing in new business and development talent and overseeing the creation of both KIN and Windows Phone 7.

As we finalize and ship so many of our key products (“Project Natal,” Windows Phone 7, Office 2010, Windows Live Wave 4 and others) it is a natural time for us to look ahead and make sure we have the right talent in the right roles to fuel our next set of offerings. I am confident that the changes above will set us up well for the months and years ahead.

I want to close by thanking Robbie for the incalculable contributions he has made to Microsoft over the years. He will be greatly missed when he retires this fall, and I am glad that I’ll have the opportunity to continue working closely with him between now and then. And as J makes a similar transition, I look forward to working with him in a new way.

Steve

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If you know how to have a conversation (which I assume you do), then you already have one of the key components of success in social media for dance, and any other industry for that matter.

Social media isn’t just about self-promotion. In fact, it’s really about conversation. You have to take the time to engage your audience, get to know your fans/followers, and show an interest in what they’re doing. It’s no different from having a conversation with someone, and only talking about yourself without asking the other person how they’re doing, or what’s going on their life. That would be pretty rude, right?

Here are my top 3 tips for engaging your social media audience:

1) Listen – I find that you can learn so much more from listening than you can from speaking. I recommend listening as part of your social media strategy. You will learn about what’s interesting to people, how to engage them, and also what things to avoid.

2) Ask questions – This may seem obvious but, when a person asks a question, most human beings will naturally be compelled to answer it. Once that happens, a conversation has begun, and you’re on your way.

3) Respond – This is very important, and it’s how you build relationships. When you see a question on Facebook or Twitter, answer it, leave a comment, and offer your insight. Read an interesting blog post? Leave a comment, and share what you liked about it. Of course, you should also always respond when people answer your questions, or leave comments for you. You should monitor these responses, so that you can acknowledge them, and respond to them within a timely manner.

One more thing, it’s important to be genuine when engaging people through social media. People can tell when your only motivation is to sell something, get something, or promote something. So be aware of that.

As you grow your social media network, be sure to remember common courtesy, and the art of conversation. It’s a two-way street, not a one-way promotion.

Join the 90-Day Social Media Success Challenge for Dance Studios and Dance Businesses by leaving a comment here, and submitting a question.

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Your brand gains exposure in two ways–through advertising and earned media. Advertising is everything you pay for to promote your brand, including advertisements on TV and radio, in newspapers and through social media venues (such as Facebook). Earned media is what results from other business efforts and achievements, such as delivering innovative products, high-quality customer service or winning an industry award. For an example of earned media, just look at how much positive press and word-of-mouth Apple received before it advertised–or even revealed–its iPad.

The same is true, perhaps even to a greater degree, in social media. Not only can you can pay for Facebook ads to increase your business or product visibility, you can also earn social media by maintaining an engaging Facebook Fan Page and having positive interactions with customers. Both are essential. Advertising brings customers in through the doors, earned social media retains those customers and transforms at least some of them into valuable brand evangelists.

The Nielsen Company divides Facebook’s social media into three distinct types:

1. Homepage Ads: Paid ads that contain an image, text and an option to Like the ad or the business or product it represents.
2. Social Impressions: Homepage ads with the addition of the names of a member’s Facebook friends who already expressed their Like for the ad. Social impressions are both paid (the ad itself) and earned (the names of a member’s Facebook friends).
3. Organic Impressions: Stories or status updates that appear on the Walls or in the News Feeds of a member’s friends whenever that member interacts with the brand.

Nielsen’s research shows that social impressions (homepage ads coupled with social advocacy) are significantly more effective than the ads alone in all three of the following categories:

* Ad recall: 10 percent homepage ad versus 16 percent social impression
* Awareness: 4 percent homepage ad versus 8 percent social impression
* Purchase intent: 2 percent homepage ad versus 8 percent social impression

Similarly, homepage ads perform significantly better when combined with organic exposure:

* Ad recall: 10 percent homepage ad alone versus 30 percent homepage ad + organic exposure
* Awareness: 4 percent homepage ad alone versus 13 percent social impression + organic exposure
* Purchase intent: 2 percent homepage ad alone versus 8 percent social impression + organic exposure

As you would expect, the more organic exposure a brand receives, the bigger the boost:

* Ad recall: 15 percent homepage ad plus 1-2 organic exposures versus 32 percent (with 3-9 exposures) versus 33 percent (with 10 or more exposures)
* Awareness: 7 percent homepage ad plus 1-2 organic exposures versus 13 percent (with 3-9 exposures) versus 28 percent (with 10 or more exposures)
* Purchase intent: 3 percent homepage ad plus 1-2 organic exposures versus 10 percent (with 3-9 exposures) versus 15 percent (with 10 or more exposures)

In short, advertising on Facebook is not enough. Your business must strive to make your ads as engaging as possible to generate more social and organic impressions–the types of media that have a chance to go viral.

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Social media has the potential to change the way many organizations do their B2B online marketing. However, a new survey from Omniture indicates that many businesses aren’t using emerging marketing platforms.

According to the survey, only 14 percent of respondents are using mobile, video, and social media to market their services, meaning that many business owners are missing out on potential markets. The key aspect that prevents more businesses from utilizing emerging marketing platforms is the fact that it is hard to measure ROI from them.

Of the three emerging platforms that Omniture polled businesses about, social media saw the most use, with 69.1 percent of respondents using it for marketing purposes. Video was the second most commonly used, with 42.9 percent of respondents utilizing it. Only 22.7 percent of businesses advertised their services on mobile devices.

“A significant opportunity exists for marketers to implement measurement and optimization strategies for mobile, social media and video,” said Omniture director of product marketing Matt Langie. Smart marketers are going where their customers are and sound strategies for these emerging channels can be a significant competitive advantage to drive revenue growth.”

Many businesses may increase their use of mobile marketing as the price of smartphones continues to decrease and they get into the hands of more consumers. According to the NPD Group, the average price of a smartphone dropped 3 percent in the first quarter of 2010.ADNFCR-1844-ID-19788423-ADNFCR

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Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani, spoke with Kojo Nnamdi today in Washington, D.C. and stated that the company would soon release simple privacy settings in the coming weeks. In addition to defending the company’s position for providing an extensive number of privacy settings (a position which is legitimate), Sparapani stated that there will be “simplistic bands of privacy that [users can choose from” in the “next couple weeks”.

Given that the company has come under significant pressure over the past couple weeks over new programs, including the highly controversial “Instant Personalization” program, it’s not surprising to hear Sparapani announce these features. What’s even more significant is that from the sounds of things, these “simple” privacy settings sounds as though they’ve most likely been in the works for a short period of time.

What I’m still wondering is why Mark Zuckerberg or any other executive haven’t made a formal announcement stating that they are listening. While representatives of the company’s communications department have stated that the company is listening and will effectively do the right thing, no formal statement has come from Mark Zuckerberg.

Perhaps this is a test of Mark’s ability to delegate some of the communication to the general public, however I’m pretty sure that most people want to hear that the company is listening from Mark’s own mouth (or at least a blog post under his name). While we are still waiting to hear from the company about the potential for making changes to the “Instant Personalization” program, just knowing that they are looking to simplify the privacy settings further is definitely reassuring.

If you want to listen to the full interview with Tim Sparapani, you can listen to it here. Do you find Facebook’s announcement of impending changes reassuring? Do you think the changes will be sufficient?

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LONDON, May 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — StatPro Group plc, a leading provider of portfolio analysis and asset evaluation services for the global asset management industry, today announces that Adepa Asset Management in Luxembourg has signed a contract for components of Seven, StatPro’s new SaaS system aimed at performance and risk specialists in large asset managers.

Adepa is the leading Spanish provider in Luxembourg of asset management, fund administration and corporate services for investment funds addressed to institutional clients, professional investors and high net worth individuals around the world.

StatPro provides Adepa with portfolio compliance, risk and data management services, within a hosted environment. StatPro Seven combines zero IT footprint with full data management and automatic upgrades.

“This agreement is our first deal for StatPro Seven in Luxembourg and we are really excited about that,” said Justin Wheatley, StatPro Group’s CEO. “In a tough regulatory climate such as this, it is crucial for asset management companies to choose a scalable and reliable solution to help support growth in their business. A hosted solution such as StatPro Seven means that implementation is fast and cheap, and maintenance for the client is minimal.”

Carlos Alberto Morales, Managing Director at Adepa Asset Management and Alex Bardaji, Head of Risk & Compliance at Adepa Asset Management:

“StatPro was able to offer an impressive and cost-effective outsourced response to our problem, enabling us to concentrate on what we do best — managing portfolios and controlling risks. We are now benefiting from StatPro’s compliance, risk and data management components, which among other things will help us to meet the requirements of Ucits IV.”

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A little over a year ago, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a piece highlighting the importance of corporate transparency, especially within Facebook. Just over one year later, he is coming under scrutiny for what is essentially a lack of transparency. While there have been excessive and unnecessary attacks on Zuckerberg himself within some of the press, a lack of a response this time around will paint him as someone who is dictatorial.

Last year’s article by Zuckerberg ends with the following paragraph:

“History tells us that systems are most fairly governed when there is an open and transparent dialogue between the people who make decisions and those who are affected by them. We believe history will one day show that this principle holds true for companies as well, and we’re looking to moving in this direction with you.”

In his book, “The Facebook Effect“, David Kirkpatrick writes about a dialogue he had with Mark Zuckerberg, just two weeks after the company announced the results of the company’s vote on two new documents: the Facebook Priciples and the “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities”:

Zuckerberg was please when I talked to him two weeks after the results were announced. He planned more such votes in the future. “If we do something controversial, what this will really mean is that we’re accountable to our users,” he told me. “We now need to communicate with them clearly about it. I think that keeps us honest.”

Just weeks into the company’s latest privacy dilemma, Facebook is remaining relatively silent about making any impending changes to satisfy users. The company appears to continue supporting the “Instant Personalization” service despite tens of thousands of users voting against the product by opting out in addition to posting status messages describing how to opt out of the program (continuing through today).

Rather than making any official statement, Mark Zuckerberg (and company) decided to let the company’s VP of Public Policy, Elliot Schrage, engage in a less-than-transparent reader Q&A with the New York Times. While the company’s communication team is clearly doing what they can to try and quell the backlash, it requires a stronger statement from Mark Zuckerberg himself. No matter what the company’s intentions are moving forward, it’s pretty obvious that they should be more open about it with the users.

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The U.S. video-game industry experienced a particularly rough month in April, with its worst year-over-year sales decline since last summer, according to the NPD Group market research firm. But unit sales of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were both up, compared to the same month last year, and Microsoft’s Xbox Live showed up in the results in a way that demonstrated how buying habits among gamers are changing.

Microsoft’s Xbox Live 1600-point game card was the top-selling accessory for the month for the second month in a row — coming out ahead of game controllers, memory units and other items, according to NPD. The $20 cards can be bought at retail, as an alternative to using a credit card online, giving gamers points for purchasing games and other items on the Xbox Live system.

The research firm’s video-game industry analyst, Anita Frazier, pointed out the result at the end of her monthly summary to underscore the rise of downloadable games as an alternative to traditional retail. Microsoft reported 23 million Xbox Live members as of the end of 2009, up from 17 million a year earlier.

In the video-game console race, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sold 185,400 units for the month, up from 175,000 the same month last year. The Playstation 3 came in at 180,800, compared with 172,000 previously. Nintendo’s Wii was still No. 1, although it declined substantially, from 340,000 last April to 277,200 units this time.

The Nintendo DS continued to reign in the handheld market with 449,800 units sold for the month (down from more than 1 million last April), compared with 65,600 for Sony’s PlayStation Portable (116,000 a year ago).

The top game for the month was Splinter Cell: Conviction for the Xbox 360, which sold 486,100 units in the U.S., according to NPD. That was more than twice the unit sales of the second-place game, Pokemon SoulSilver Version for the Nintendo DS.

Overall, sales of video-game hardware, software and accessories in the U.S. were down 26 percent, to $766,200, from more than $1 billion in April last year. Not the best of news as the industry heads into the key E3 video-game convention next month.

NPD cited factors including the timing of Easter, which came earlier this year than last year. That shifted much of the Easter gift-buying into March, according to the firm. Here’s a chart showing the overall industry sales trend.?

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Just days after we covered a new Facebook Page scam that automatically invites your friends to a misleading Facebook Page, comes a new copycat. While your personal information isn’t at risk, the new exploit automatically sends Facebook Page invites to all your friends (without your permission) and tries to convince them to take a survey which then generates revenue for these scammers. The craziest part of this scam is that it all takes place within Facebook.

In under 24 hours, the Facebook Page “10 Best Ways To Cheat On An Exam” has added close to 100,000 fans and is growing at close to 100 people a minute. It’s pretty clear that the developers behind this scam are extremely advanced. They also have been slowly improving their strategy over months, leveraging Facebook Groups initially, and then expanding on to Facebook Pages.

The reason that the scammers are so dedicated is that there is clearly big money in scamming people. Each survey that the scammers can get a user to complete results in a minimum of $1 for the scammer. If 5 percent of people complete the survey (a relatively high conversion rate), a group like this one could quickly generate $20,000 or more.

While we’d expect Facebook to shut down this group within hours, it’s interesting that it has been taking them so long to pick up on some of these Pages now. Clearly the scammers have recognized how to work around Facebook’s security algorithms. The lesson is this: do not visit the “10 Best Ways To Cheat On An Exam” Faebook Page as it will automatically invite your friends to the Page whether you want to or not.

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