Standard Bank, which is one of South Africa’s largest financial institutions, has gone "gloves off" with FNB (another large South African bank) on Twitter. Over the last few months First National Bank, a Division of First Rand Bank LTD, has made a concerted effort to portray itself as a customer-Orientated bank. Its official Twitter account, @rbjacobs, has been on call virtually 24 hours a day helping FNB clients with any and all problems and banking queries. FNB also made ...

Nothing Microsoft has ever built, or bought for that matter, has ever succeeded in the social sphere. But what about Skype? Surely Skype should be counted as a social network. It fulfills many of the same functions that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. You can set a status "mood" message, you can text message, use it as a group chat system, you can share files, photos, your computer screen. Plus, you can talk with people plus video calls, and set up videoconferences ...

Customers can be tricky business at the best of times. Add in the power of blogs and social networks, and customer complaints can turn into a complete nightmare. It probably makes sense to spend when it comes to online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) right? Maybe, but you might not need to dole out as much as you think. New research from renowned tech analysis firm Gartner suggests that businesses can save up to 50% on CRM by integrating communities into ...

Facebook is core to any brand’s social marketing push. Advertising also makes up a major portion of the social network’s revenue. Hardly surprising, therefore, that it should want to evolve its ads platform. With the launch a brand new advertising platform, called Page Post Ads it appears to be doing just that. Page Post Ads will replace the Premium ads that currently appear on users’ homepages. Facebook representatives claim the new adverts will “have a bold new design, larger than other ...

Indian ecommerce giant Flipkart is launching its own DRM free music store. According to Indian tech blog Pluggd.in, Flipkart’s new service, called Flyte, will allow people to download DRM free MP3s capable of working on any device. The offering reportedly comes courtesy of Mime 360, a startup bought out by Flipkart, as well as a massive Bollywood back catalogue from Chakpak. Users will apparently be able to download each song they purchase five times (including the initial purchase) before being ...

Most entrepreneurs and businesses know that they need to "get online" and establish their company’s presence in the digital space, however too often the focus is placed on creating a flashy website with all the bells and whistles, which takes ages to load, the navigation is bad and it ends up crashing more often than not. Not ideal. What many businesses don’t understand is that having a website is key however it’s not the website itself, but what you put ...

With over 50-million users, Instagram is the photography app of choice for many photographers with an iPhone and a love of vintage-inspired pics. Instagram recently announced that their retro photography app will be available for Android devices soon, but it seems that BlackBerry users are neglected yet again. If you're sick of seeing the instagr.am links on Twitter and don’t have the inclination (or financial ability) to switch smartphones, here are some similar (and free) apps directly from BlackBerry App ...

Despite RIM’s fall from grace, BlackBerry still enjoys large-scale endorsement from celebrities as well as the president of the United States, something once acknowledged on video by RIM’s ex-CEO Mike Lazaridis -- shortly before abruptly ending the interview. Most agree that iPhones are cool and you see plenty of celebrity Twitpic mirror shots with those, but how about Android and Windows Phone? I couldn’t find many celebrities using Android. Android isn’t cool yet and in an industry where image is ...

Nokia has had a rough couple of years in the eye of the public but in the emerging markets it's still the king of the castle. Their dominance in markets such as Africa has remained mostly unchallenged in recent times. Nokia was the phone that taught me about mobile. I had the Nokia 6310 back in the day and that was definitely the most stable and effective communication device I've ever used, ever. I have an historical affiliation to its ...

One of our regular columnists, Rowan Puttergill, is running a marathon to raise money for a rural school in South Africa. Memeburn has agreed to donate toward the cause, so we decided to interview Rowan to find out more about his efforts and to discover what technology he has been making use of during his training. Memeburn: What inspired you to run your marathon? Rowan Puttergill: During one of my visits to South Africa, I spent some time up in the Limpopo ...