Twitter acquires mobile ad firm Tap Commerce

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Monday announced that it has cut a deal to buy mobile ad firm Tap Commerce to bolster money-making tools at the popular one-to-many messaging service.

San Francisco-based Twitter did not disclose how much it paid for Tap Commerce, which is located in New York City, but technology news website Recode.net reported the deal to be valued around $100 million.

Tap Commerce specializes in getting people to "re-engage" with applications installed, then ignored, on smartphones or tablet computers.

"Advertisers spend aggressively to get new users, but re-activating existing or previous users can provide just as attractive a return on investment," Twitter said in a blog post about the Tap Commerce acquisition.

"Together with the Tap Commerce team, Twitter will be able to offer mobile app marketers more robust capabilities for app re-engagement, tools and managed service solutions for real-time programmatic buying, and better measurement capabilities."

Twitter maintained that working with Tap Commerce would result in the service offering mobile gadget users better and more relevant ads in applications on devices.

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Google Will Shut Down Its Orkut Social Network In September

Orkut, the social networking service Google launched back in 2004, miraculously survived multiple rounds of spring cleaning despite the fact that it was never a huge hit outside of Brazil, India and a few other countries. It was always just a matter of time before Google was going to shut it down, however, and that day has now come.
On September 30, 2014, Orkut will be officially shut down. At that point, users won’t be able to log in anymore, photo export to Google+ will be unavailable, and all the APIs and other tools will go down, too.
Until September 2016, however, Orkut aficionados will still be able to export all of their data using Google Takeout. If you still want to see what Orkut was all about but you don’t have an account yet, it’s sadly too late to do that now. Sign-ups for new accounts have been disabled.
Orkut was one of Google’s first attempts to launch a social network. It never caught on in the U.S., but it did find its niche in countries like Brazil, where — for a while at least — it was the most popular social network. It wasn’t until 2012, for example, that Facebook finally overtook it there. In India, Orkut wasn’t able to hold on quite as long. There, it fell to Facebook in 2010.
Today, 50 percent of Orkut users are still in Brazil, 20 percent in India and just under 18 percent are from the U.S.

As far as active development goes, it looks like most of that stopped around 2012. The site still features Google’s old menu bar, and it looks like Google Talk never got any upgrade there either. After all this neglect, the site definitely looks a bit antiquated by now, so it’s no wonder that Google now wants users to move over to Google+ instead.
That’s not a bad record for a Google service that started out as a 20 percent project, but Google says that as YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off (though some people may argue about the success of Google+), “the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut’s growth.” Google says it wants to focus its “energy and resources on making these other social platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.”

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Apple goes back to school for iTunes U update

Tech giant Apple has made some changes to its education-focussed iTunes U application, adding the ability to build whole courses solely with an iPad tablet.

Apple's iTunes U software, which has been available since 2010, contains a whole host of educational information that allows teachers to create public and private courses that include lectures, assignments, books, and quizzes
iTunes U received a sizeable update today, primarily bringing course creation, management for teachers and student discussions to iPad,
“Education is at the core of Apple’s DNA and iTunes U is an incredibly valuable resource for teachers and students,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.
“iTunes U features an amazing selection of academic materials for everyone around the world. Now, with the ability to better manage and discuss educational content, learning becomes even more personalised on iPad.”
The new in-app updates to iTunes U give teachers full course creation capabilities on iPad, with the ability to directly add rich content and learning materials from iWork, iBooks Author or what Apple described as any of the over 75,000 educational apps available for the tablet.
                          
Teachers can also use the device's camera to capture photos and videos to incorporate real-world subject matter into any course, making relevant content available to all students in an instant.
“iTunes U is the most powerful destination for bringing the entire educational experience to life on iPad,” said Fraser Speirs, head of computing and IT at Cedars School of Excellence in Scotland.
“By freeing teachers to create and organise courses right on iPad, educators can be better focused on enabling student participation both with the content and one another.”
Additionally, students using iPads can ask questions, start topic discussions and collaborate using the new Discussions feature. Teachers can participate in forums, as well, and will be able to moderate discussions.
iTunes U helps educators create courses including lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and more for millions of iOS users around the world.
Today, thousands of educational institutions are hosting over 7,500 public and thousands of private courses* encompassing the arts, sciences, health and medicine, education, business and more.

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Sterlite Technologies bags Rs 2,500 crore deal from BSNL

KOLKATA: Vedanta group company Sterlite Technologies Ltd has just bagged nearly Rs 2500 crore of contracts from Bharat Sanchar Nigam to supply optic fibre cables for a mega alternate communications network that the state-run telco is building for India's armed forces.

Sterlite Technologies will be one of the prime suppliers of optic fibre cables for the crucial optic fibre backbone that will meet the strategic communication needs of the army and navy.

Sterlite Technologies has secured an Rs 1950 crore advance purchase order to supply optic fibre cables in Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Northeast. In addition, it has inked a Rs 500 crore deal to maintain the future optic fibre network in J&K for seven years. Sterlite Technologies will be one of the prime suppliers of optic fibre cables for the crucial optic fibre backbone.

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12 major brands show off their customer-conversion strategies at Mobile Beat

Consumer traffic is spiking on mobile devices. It’s shifting away from the desktop, which is dangerous for brands that took the PC experience granted for so long.
So brands are scrambling to manage the shift, seeking to build mobile experiences that generate awareness, engagement, and trust, and to convert that experience into purchases.
At our upcoming MobileBeat event on July 8-9, we’re gathering a host of major brands to unveil never-before-seen case studies of how they’re growing revenue — and sometimes even profits — by tracking and serving customers along every phase of their journey on mobile.
We’ve got household names like Nascar and Walmart, along with some monster tech brands like LinkedIn and Airbnb that are also vying for consumer loyalty and conversion on mobile.
Some major talking points in these sessions will include the following: seamless payments, driving purchases in store, mobile marketplaces, monetizing content, analytics, international growth, ad tech/programmatic advertising, and more.

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India Can Become The World’s Largest Economy, Says Facebook’s Sandberg

India has the potential to become the world's largest economy, said Facebook's chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg. Sandberg, who served as the Chief of Staff for the US Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton, said the over $2 trillion Indian economy has potential to create jobs and drive growth.

"India has the potential to become the largest economy in the world. And if you look at economic growth, particularly recently, jobs are a very hard situation all over the world. From the US to developing markets, everyone is very concerned about jobs. And the majority of the growth, as I understand it, is certainly here, certainly in the US. In most countries, I have visited, SMBs are the way to growth," she said.
Emphasising on entrepreneurship, she said, "The answer to growth is entrepreneurship."

"Individuals are creating businesses and employing other people, and in India, the small and medium businesses (SMBs) growth is strong. And the Internet provides more growth stories to SMBs. People are connecting to people and getting more customers and that's what leads to economic growth," she added.

Micro, small and medium businesses contribute almost 8% of India's GDP, 45% of the manufacturing output and 40% of exports.
Recalling her association with India, she said she started her career in India in 1981, working with the World Bank on leprosy. "And now when I look at leprosy, it's no longer a threat here. The way I see it, India has grown so much in the past two decades," she added.

Sandberg said Facebook wanted to be a part of India's growth story. "India is Facebook's second largest market, fastest growing market, fastest growing Internet connectivity in the Asia Pacific. It is of high priority for us," she said.

India has more than 100 million Facebook users, with around 84 million of them accessing the social networking site from their mobile phones.

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Bosses use private social media more than employees

LONDON: Bosses are more likely to use social media for private purposes during working hours than their subordinates, a new study has found.

The research from the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, shows that managers are more critical of private use of social media at work. However, middle managers and top executives are most negative to private social media use at work.

"It is very interesting that top executives, who are negative to private web-surfing during working hours, are the ones who surf the most for private purposes when at work," said Postdoctoral Fellow Cecilie Schou Andreassen at UiB's Department of Psychosocial Science.

She suggests that this can be explained by the fact that top executives have longer working hours, and that work and leisure are much more integrated than it is for employees.

"It is likely that managers are worried about reductions in output and financial loss as a result of use of private social media among their employees," said Andreassen.

About 11,000 Norwegian employees participated in the study.

The study also found that younger employees use social media for private purposes more than older employees do.

Men browse the internet more for private purposes than women do during working hours. People with higher education are the most active social media users, researchers said.

Singles are more active on social media than those in relationships. Extrovert and nervous people are more active online, they found.

"Social media probably has a greater social function for singles than it has for people in relationships," said Andreassen.

Those with higher education and socioeconomic status are likely more familiar with computer use, which may explain why they are more active online than those with lower education.

Their work situation may also provide more opportunities to engage in private use of social media at work compared to those with lower education.

"The finding may also reflect that people with a high socioeconomic status, are not as afraid to lose their job as those in low-status jobs," said Andreassen.

The study also showed that people who are outgoing, so-called extrovert personalities, and neurotic people spend more time online and on social media for personal purposes during working hours than their counterparts.

People who are organised and punctual, however, spend the least time online for personal purposes during working hours, researchers said.

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