Lady Gaga Sets New Trends in Web Marketing With ‘Born This Way’

The latest Lady Gaga collaboration in web marketing involved a commercial ad for Google Chrome, having a slogan which says: “The web is what you make of it.” It is an ordinary advertisement of Google’s web browser, though when you relate it with Lady Gaga, it means much more. Lady Gaga has, this time, taken over the entire web to design such an unavoidable marketing display for her new album, Born This Way, that even her critics appreciate her endeavors.

                                        Image via Wikipedia

Her web promotional campaign till the album release date of 23^rd May, and even after that, has been commended by almost everyone. There is no doubt in asserting that Lady Gaga is a pure trendsetter, and this time she has set a massive trend for all her fellow stars in the industry on how to use the web in different ways to have digital and social media in promoting themselves and connect with fans. The 25-year-old superstar has kept her grip on the web since day one, which has led her to be a pro on all major social networking website. Just last year, Lady Gaga set a record to be the first artist reaching 1 billion views on YouTube, while she surpassed the President Barack Obama’s 10 million Facebook fans to reach another new record of almost 35 million Facebook Fans. While just very recently, her latest record was to be the first Twitter user to gain 10 million followers.

INQ Social Mobile Phone Maker Chooses Foursquare, Instead Of Facebook, To Power Location Services of Its New Model

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After having an astonishing success with "Facebook Phone," INQ Mobiles, the mobile maker most popular for its social tempt in manufacturing designs, has new ventures at its hand. It has collaborated previously with Facebook to launch its INQ Cloud Touch, an Android smartphone with immense Facebook integration. Just this Monday, INQ Mobile announced that its new venture will also involve Foursquare; it was declared that both companies will join forces with the same home screen experience which INQ mobile has kept in its Android devices lineup. This new Foursquare deal will allow the mobile have greater help in discovering and exploring nearby places via Foursquare than ever before.

This new deal will offer the same OS-level Foursquare integration, like it has done previously with Facebook integration in the INQ "Facebook Phone." It will provide the maximum deepest Foursquare integration giving the users instant access to share their location and recommend features. The official Foursquare blog explained that "Because it’s built directly into the Android system, you can check in and explore without even firing up the application." Whereas, the press release of INQ Mobile reveals that "Users will be able to swipe back and forth between Facebook and Foursquare home screens, depending on what they are doing, what they are looking for and who they want to connect with."

Twitter Confirmed To have acquired TweetDeck in exchange for $40 Million

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Supplementing all the previous stories being published for weeks, Twitter has finally announced that it is going to acquire the popular third-party app, TweetDeck. It was first revealed in early May by Mike Arrington, who claimed that the deal is quite confirmed, referring to it “as good as done.” However, the news was still being considered as a rumor, since it was not announced by either of the two companies were as they decided to delay the publicly release of the numbers. Finally it was revealed today, announced by both CNN and CNET, that TweetDeck has now been acquired by Twitter Inc. in exchange price of $40 million. Even though the news is still not confirmed or announced by Twitter Inc. but according to the brevity of the news and the sources close to the deal, it’s done.

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The acquisition of TweetDeck by Twitter was not just a simple result of investment plan; it has its own story starting from February. Many inside sources confirmed that that TweetDeck is in the last stages of negotiating a deal with Gross’ UberMedia, the suspected price of this deal was expected to be somewhere in between $25 and $30 million. It was these rumors which put Twitter Inc. into immediate action and it apparently hammered itself with a non-deniable counteroffer. This offer was considerably much better than UberMedia could have offered and proved be the one that TweetDeck couldn’t have refused.

Sony Declares Its Annual Loss to Be Around $3.2 Billion

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Sony Corp. has announced an expected annual loss of $3.2 billion this year, rectifying its previous projection of an annual profit. The electronics giant is striving due to the interruption caused in the production line due to Japan's tsunami, and the problems were further amplified by the history’s largest hacker attack on its PlayStation Network. Sony’ is most popular for its gaming console, PlayStation 3, and Bravia flat-panel TVs. It declared its updated projection on Monday, showing a 260 billion yen ($3.2 billion) net loss for the fiscal year ended March 2011. Such loss was accounted mostly tracked back to the writing of 360 billion yen ($4.4 billion) to a tax credit booked in a previous quarter. The company had previously declared a projected 70 billion yen ($860 million) of profit in this year.

Along with plenty other Japanese manufacturers, Sony is still facing vulnerability in its production line due to the disastrous effects of earthquake and tsunami of 11^th March. Sony has retained its operating profit forecast at 200 billion yen ($2.46 billion) as it expects total sales of 7.18 trillion yen ($88.2 billion), barely any less than its previous projection of 7.2 trillion yen ($88.5 billion). The C.F.O. of Sony Corp., Masaru Kato, told that that only some parts of shortages caused by the earthquake have been improved, hence we cannot claim a full recovery yet. He added that "In the first quarter, we saw quite a major impact on our manufacturing activities.” Explaining that situation economically he stated that "negative factors have grown much bigger."

A "Payment Processor" In the Online Poker Case Confesses In Front Of U.S. Court

A resident of Illinois confessed on Monday, in front of the federal court, accepting his help in allowing the large online poker websites to duck the U.S. gambling laws. He was processing millions of dollars through bank payments from his home, in Illinois, to Costa Rica while he deceived the banks regarding the nature of these transactions. The person involved in this crime, nicknamed "payment processor," is actually 41-year-old Bradley Franzen, who pled guilty in New York. He has confessed the criminal charges he was charged with i.e. conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and being part of operating an illegal gambling business. Experts have calculated that, regardless of his confession, he will be most probably imprisoned for at least 30 years time.

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Franzen is only one of the total eleven individuals indicted by the federal prosecutors in New York last month; the authorities immediately apprehended all the involved Internet domain names as a reaction, including Absolute Poker, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. Online gambling has been kept illegal in the United States since 2006. Overall the charges indicted by the prosecutors accuses the companies for appointing people to help them avoid the regulatory authorities and banks, while the processed $3 billion worth of payments illegally out of the country.

Franzen who was currently residing in Illinois also owns a home in Costa Rica, he confessed in front of the court informing that he was contacted by an Internet poker company back in 2009. He declared that "I was aware that most U.S. banks did not process the payments ... and I understood U.S. law prohibits it." Upon the inquiry by the U.S. Magistrate Judge, Kevin Nathaniel Fox, regarding the amount of money involved, Franzen added "I do understand in general terms that it was millions of dollars, but I don't know how much." He also told the court that he carried out majority of his work from his residence in Costa Rica.

Microsoft Gets Its Last Shot to Get Rid of EU’s Imposed Fine

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The record breaking fine imposed on Microsoft in 2008 by the European Commission, was a penalty for failing to abide by the orders of the regulatory authority four years back; it was asked to provide relevant information necessary for its rival competitors to work with computers running its software. Once such huge fine was imposed, Microsoft kept an extremely conciliatory approach in its dealings with the Commission; its competitors like Google Inc. have also learned from its example and kept a humble tone while dealing with EU.

"The hearing is a remnant of the old, aggressive Microsoft. The company has changed their strategy in dealing with the Commission dramatically since then," declared a lawyer from Latham & Watkins in Brussels, Susanne Zuehlke. She further explained that "They have become more cooperative in their own matters. In addition, they have become an active complainant. The Commission has picked up several matters against other companies in line with Microsoft's business objectives.”