Back in December, Twitter announced that it began beta testing a new feature called Contributors. The feature is aimed at businesses, and gives them a way to allow multiple users to tweet under the company account, while displaying exactly who from the company is doing the tweeting, with a clickable name that directs the reader to that person's own Twitter account.

"The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations," explained Twitter's Anamitra Banerji in the announcement.



It appears that the feature is being rolled out to more businesses. MG Siegler spotted it on Salesforce's Twitter account within the last day.

As I've written about before, businesses have already been finding different ways to personalize accounts. For example, the WebProNews Twitter account (feel free to follow it) utilizes "@cotags" to sign Tweets. However, this practice requires adding characters to tweets, and sometimes /> [...]

Thu Mar 25, 2010 15:25 pm

Digg CEO Jay Adelson told FOX Business tonight that ever since rolling out Digg Ads, the social link-sharing service has been making money and that profitability is right around the corner.

Although advertising continues to be the only seemingly reliable model for monetizing content-centric websites, Adelson reports that click-through rates are higher than expected. That being said, typical rates for online advertising are generally abysmal, so if Digg's ads are working better than most, good for them, and let's all study their model. Read - and watch - for the rest of the story on how Digg has grown and will continue to expand and monetize.

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The FOX interviewer asked Adelson if micropayments were considered as a monetization option, "I think that micropayments is interesting," he replied. "I think that if it works though - the level that it's going to work is between somebody like Digg and the newspaper, as opposed to necessarly expecting that consumer to subscribe to some sort of micropayment system."

This sort of talk would surely come as good news to Rupert Murdoch, who was referenced in the interview and has stated plans to charge search engines - and perhaps agg/> [...]

Tue Nov 17, 2009 18:45 pm

Amazon announced its second quarter earnings today. Net sales were up 41% at $6.57 billion, compared with $4.65 billion in the second quarter of '09.

"Excluding the $48 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 42% compared with second quarter 2009," the company said.

Operating income increased 71% to $270 million in Q2, compared with $159 million in Q2 2009. "The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $10 million. Second quarter 2009 operating income was negatively impacted by a $51 million legal settlement," says Amazon.

Net income reached $207 million, a 45% increase over the previous year.

"We're seeing rapid growth in Kindle, Amazon Web Services, third-party sales, and retail," says Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. "We're also encouraged by what we see in mobile. In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than $1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device.

"The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone, but we're excited by the potential of the new category of wireless tablet computers," adds Bezos. "Over time, tablet computers could become a meaningful additional driver for our business."

Kindle may play an increasingly large role in Amazon's numbers, as prices have come down for it and other eReaders.

[...]

Thu Jul 22, 2010 14:35 pm

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Microsoft Plans Stores To Tranform PC Buying

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In an attempt to change their image as not being appealing directly to consumers, Microsoft plans to open up stores around the U.S. in an attempt to create a environment where they can have trained retail associates on duty to better help the buyers get what they need from the computer. Alongside selling computers we can expect them to have all the latest Microsoft Zune players and accessories all in one place which will help for those who do not like dealing with Best Buy.

Really appealing directly to the consumer is the main concern for Microsoft here, in recent market changes they lost a full percentage of the market two months in a row while Apple grew to have 10% of personal computer sales. This is not the first attempt by Microsoft to open a retail store in 1999 they had a store in downtown San Francisco however it closed not long after due to the blue screen on death, er, I mean to say due to other shops in the area closing down as well (area desirability?.)

Personally I am excited to see what the stores will look like, Apple has unveiled some pretty cool stores and now it is Microsoft’s turn. I expect to see Xbox 360’s blaring and Zune advertisements everywhere and hopefully on the desktops of the latest of what Microsoft has to offer in the handheld/personal computer category. Microsoft has already hired a retail lead to head the project, David Porter, who is a dreamworks exec with 25 years under his belt as a Wal-mart’s VP and general merchandise manager of entertainment. All I can say is lets hope the service received at the Microsoft store chains is better than finding out what all these error codes mean in Vista.

p.s.  I am new to the staff here you can check out my personal blog the details (wip) for the latest in the blogging community, or my [...]

Thu Nov 12, 2009 21:03 pm

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