For years, we’ve heard chatter in the business community that there’s no rhyme or reason around which businesses receive government support and which don’t.

Despite the rumblings, many didn’t want to — or couldn’t — believe that government would be so arbitrary, inconsistent and elusive with tax dollars, and billions’ worth.

Thanks to the auditor general’s report, we now know those rumblings were bang on, at least with regards to the Industrial Expansion Fund. This is utterly inexcusable, and the response to shut the fund down was really the only option.

In doing so, we have an opportunity to go beyond our inherently paternalistic approach to economic development and move in a more grassroots direction. Such an approach would be grounded in business’s own desire that the province focus its energies on creating an environment where all can succeed (read: more competitive tax and regulatory regimes), rather than picking and choosing the ones they want to succeed.

Aside from the fund, the report — and all aspects of it — unearthed a separate but equally concerning theme and trend: government’s inability or unwillingness to put rules in place and/or follow them. I’m finding this piece of the report most difficult to digest due to the rigour with which it creates new rules for businesses to follow and sets up penalties that are lodged if they don’t.

In reading the report, I was imagining the reaction of a small-business owner doing the same. And here’s where I think they’d land: There are two different, yet unspoken realities — one for businesses and the other for government.

The business reality is one in which there’s a good chance they’ll get punished in some way for missing one of the hundreds of things government requires them to do. Don’t have an occupational health and safety policy posted in your business? You could get a slap on the wrist — or worse. Filed your taxes a month too late? Interest will be charged — maybe even a penalty.

Tale of two realities: Government not held to standard it demands of business – Business – TheChronicleHerald.ca.

Skype will be integrated into Microsoft devices and systems such as Xbox and Kinect, Xbox Live, the Windows Phone, Lync and Outlook, Microsoft said in a statement. The company has pledged to continue supporting and developing Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms as well.

The deal, which was spearheaded by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with assistance from Charles Songhurst, the company’s head of corporate strategy, was completed Monday evening, AllThingsD reported earlier.

The acquisition is an expensive one for Microsoft. Not only is it the largest price Microsoft has paid for a company in decades, Skype is not yet profitable. Despite revenues totaling $860 million last year and operating profits of $264 million, the company lost $6.9 million overall, according to documents filed with the SEC. And the company carries $686 million in debt.

Read the full Article>>>>>>    Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.5 Billion.

By ANUPREETA DAS And NICK WINGFIELD

Microsoft Corp. is close to a deal to buy Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA for more than $7 billion, and a deal could be announced as early as Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.

Negotiations were wrapping up Monday evening, and a deal could still fall apart, the people cautioned. Representatives for Microsoft and Skype declined to comment.

A deal represents Microsoft’s most aggressive move yet to play in the increasingly-converged worlds of communication, information and entertainment. Skype connects more than 663 million users around the world via Internet-based telephony and video, making it a key technology platform for a new generation of Web-savvy consumers. During 2010, those users made 207 billion minutes of voice and voice video calls over Skype.

Buying Skype would give Microsoft a recognized brand name on the Internet at a time when it is struggling to get more traction in the consumer market. The company has invested heavily in marketing and improving the technology of its Bing search engine. While it has made some market share gains over the past year, Google Inc. still dominates the search market with more than 65% of U.S. searches going through its site.

At a value over $7 billion, the Skype deal would rank at or near the top of the biggest acquisitions in the 36-year history of Microsoft, a company that traditionally has shied away from large deals. In 2007, Microsoft paid approximately $6 billion to acquire online advertising firm aQuantive Inc. Many current and former Microsoft executives believe Microsoft significantly overpaid for that deal. But they are also relieved that Microsoft gave up on an unsolicited $48 billion offer for Yahoo Inc. nearly three years ago. Yahoo is valued at half that sum today.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, though, sees the Internet as an essential battleground for Microsoft, a company that still makes the vast bulk of its profits from Windows and Office software systems. Investors have become increasingly concerned about Microsoft’s ability to squeeze continued growth out of those businesses, as rival technologies from Apple, Google and others put more pressure on profits.

The Microsoft division behind the company’s hugely lucrative Office suite of applications also makes a product, known as Lync, which ties together email, instant messaging and voice communications into a single application. Skype could strengthen that offering.

The deal shows how far Skype has come since it was launched in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, two men who had created a file-sharing technology called Kazaa that became widely associated with music piracy. While Skype was initially popular with techies, it increasingly worked its way into the mainstream by offering free or cheap phone calls which were especially appealing to international callers.

When EBay purchased the company in 2005 for $2.6 billion in cash and stock, Skype was regarded as something of an experiment, in which EBay’s buyers and sellers would use the service to communicate about potential transactions.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576313932659388852.html#ixzz1LudAc8xT

As more businesses become social and move past the initial excitement of adoption, they need to tackle the nitty gritty of executing a social media strategy. It will involve cultural alignment, training, and building a solid process so that the necessary parts of the organization can participate. A truly social organization is active both internally and externally. This is where things get complicated.

When we think of major corporate PR blunders, we think of those committed by careless employees and interns tweeting from branded accounts. The solution is obvious: Don’t put anyone on the branded account whom you don’t trust with the brand voice. But what about employees’ communication from their own accounts?

The solution here is a bit more nuanced, because there are two contradictory impulses at play: READ THE REST AT: HOW TO: Get Your Employees On Board With Your Social Media Policy.

Here we see the end game of a typical Facebook Survey Scam. Each time someone completes a survey, the scam creator gets a commission. The scam creator will possibly have your personal information to do you harm. (depending on the information you submitted in the survey) If you downloaded any games or other files then your computer could be infecting with a virus, trojan or other malware. Never download files from scams like this!

How to Deal with the Scam:

If you did make the mistake of pasting the code into your browser, you are now spamming your friends with the scammers message. You should clean-up your newsfeed and profile to remove references to the scam. (click the “x” in the top right hand corner of the post). It also appears that this scam creates a fake event on your wall. You need to delete this event as well.

Read the full Article >>>>> [SCAM ALERT] The BLOODIEST Fight EVER – BANNED FROM TV!.

Brian Solis is principal of Altimeter Group, a leading research-based advisory firm. Brian is also the author of the all-new Engage!, an award-winning guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web. Follow him on Twitter.

As a consumer, you are blasted with the same request over and over: “Follow Us on Twitter, Like Us on Facebook.” Why should I? What’s in it for me? These are questions of which a significant number of businesses cannot genuinely answer.

Today, a notable number of businesses are approaching branded social channels from a “ready, fire, aim” approach. This method conjures a facade of achievement when in fact, any progress, if at all recognized, is short term and shoddy at best. Many focus on numbers without first analyzing who they’re trying to reach and, more importantly, how engagement satisfies the needs of their customers. Without a mature content and engagement strategy, a great unfollow and unlike movement is inevitable.

A Focused Perspective

The key to zooming in on purpose and usefulness within social channels starts with the realization that there is no one audience. Nor is there a sustainable market for branded messages, marketing campaigns, or “Tweet/Like to Win” contests. Indeed, every channel created to represent the brand must carry a purpose, mission and corresponding value. One of the most common questions I’m asked by businesses of all shapes and sizes is, “What is the right number of accounts we should have in each social network?” Or, “How many profiles is too many or too few?”

Read the rest of this article >>>>>>> 14 Best Practices for Long-Term Social Media Success.

If you build a Facebook Page, will fans come? This is the great hope for many businesses. However, fans do not magically appear from the Facebook mist.

People must be lured to your fan page. And there are some good and bad ways to go about doing this. In this article, I’ll share a big myth and 21 ways to drive more fans to your Facebook fan page. (Though Facebook recently changed the “Become A Fan” button to the new, omnipresent “Like” button – and a fan page is called a “Business Page” or “Facebook Page” – we can still call them fan pages and people who join are fans!)

The Big Myth

There’s a great myth that once you create a Facebook fan page for your business, the first thing you should do to get fans is invite ALL your friendsfrom your personal profile using the “Suggest to Friends” feature.

Unfortunately, this strategy may not be that effective and can, in fact, often backfire. I have seen many industry gurus complain that when they decline a fan page request, it’s frustrating to continue to be asked again and again.

There are several reasons not to use the Suggest to Friends feature:

• Facebook users can only like up to 500 pages and may wish to be selective. (Though I have seen it’s possible to go over this limit).
• Fan page suggestions may often build up, unnoticed. (At last count, I have 593 overlooked fan page suggestions and am already a fan of 500!)
• To aggressively pursue all your friends to join your fan page – for no apparent incentive – is counterintuitive to the nature of social media.

So, the good news is there are many ways to promote your fan page and proactively increase your fan base without bugging all your current Facebook friends, and also by thinking wider than just Facebook.

Read the rest of this article>>>>> 

The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, which offers inbound marketing software that helps small and medium sized businesses get found on the Internet by the right prospects and converts more of them into leads and customers. Learn more.

We’ve already seen signs of it — targeted ads on Facebook, suggested people to follow on Twitter, even Google Instant seems to know what you’re thinking — but how is behavioral targeting changing the Internet at large?

Here’s how behavioral targeting works: Targeting companies establish an agreement with a publisher, who puts a piece of code on his website. (That publisher must have a clearly stated policy for the consumer to opt out from having data collected.) Then, when you’re browsing the web, the site will put a cookie on your browser, which populates as you surf. (Though one interviewee, ContextWeb, targets based on content and not cookies.)

Now that your browser has a cookie, the targeting begins. Data points amass as you click your way from site to site, taking note of what you buy, what you read and what you search for. The more time goes on, the more data is collected. Back in 2003, we had audience targeting, which assigned people to various demographics and targeted these demographics based on age, gender and location. Now, with more data, the targeting can be — and is — much more dynamic, and can gauge your interests and preferences. Companies that specialize in targeting can nearly promise more ad engagement by targeting people who have indicated -– through their behavioral patterns on the web -– that they might be interested in the product at hand. It’s a more costly form of advertising, but the conversion rate can offset the increased cost.

All of the data that has been collected by targeters has huge implications for the Internet of the future. We spoke with three experts in the field of behavioral targeting to discuss the biggest effects that targeting will have on the web as we know it.

Read the rest of this article>>>>> 4 Ways Behavioral Targeting Is Changing the Web.

By Peter Wylie                                                     Published April 26, 2011

Are you wondering if it makes sense to advertise on your favourite social network? Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have different demographic profiles and use cases that may provide good advertising opportunities.

All three platforms are also developing new and innovative ways to target advertising messages, based on the overwhelming amount of data they possess about their users. Marketers should explore the paid opportunities social networks offer with as much thought and effort as they experiment with the “earned” and “owned” aspects that these networks provide.

Depending on your business objective, one platform will likely prove more useful than others. In this article, I will explore the functionality each provides and how you can integrate the paid activity for maximum impact and return.

Read the rest of this article at >>>>>> Social Media Examiner

Locked BlackBerry Bridge Windows on the PlayBook Tablet

Whether you’re lucky enough to already have a BlackBerry PlayBook or are still considering the purchase, you’ll be happy to know that RIM packed a number of valuable security safeguards into its tablet to help ensure that your PlayBook experience is a safe, secure and private one.

The following BlackBerry PlayBook tablet security and privacy tips address how to browse the Web safely, how to deal with lost or stolen devices, and more.

Read the rest of this post>>>>   BlackBerry PlayBook Security Tips: How to Protect Your Tablet CIO.com.