Wow. This is kind of harsh. Social game maker Zynga's share price dropped 40% after reporting a dismal second quarter. The company, which had a roller coaster stock debut managed a net loss of US$22.8-million for the second quarter of 2012 compared to net income of US$1.4-million for the second quarter of 2011. While revenue was US$332.5 million for the second quarter of 2012, an increase of 19% compared to the second quarter of 2011, it was lower than analysts were ...

Think General Motors', now reversed, decision to pull its Facebook advertising had the industry rattled? Think again. Social media is set to bring in US$16.9-billion in 2012, over half of which will come from advertising. According to tech research company Gartner social revenue is up 43.1% from 2011 and advertising projected to contribute US$8.8-billion worth of that. Social gaming is the other big winner. Revenue from the medium more than doubled between 2010 and 2011 and is expected ...

A triple jump athlete from Greece will no longer be taking part in the Olympics after she expressed racist views on her personal Twitter account ahead of this year's Games. Voula Papachristou was due to leave for London shortly, but a "joke" she tweeted earlier today lead to the Hellenic Olympic Committee cancelling her trip. She has deleted the original message, but according to an English translation from Keep Talking Greece, the athlete tweeted: "With so many Africans in Greece… ...

Goodbye, voice calls, hello WhatsApp. Ok, so maybe we're not quite there yet, but the latest research confirms that it's definitely a trend to watch: data is becoming responsible for a larger portion of peoples' cellphone bills, as smartphone adoption rates continue to climb. World Wide Worx has just released the results of its latest Mobility study. Managing director Arthur Goldstuck tweeted the highlights, if you're more of a 140-characters-only-please sort of person. Their latest study of South African cellphone ...

If you've ever wondered what your office stationery gets up to when you leave the office, the answer is probably a resounding nothing. In the mind of one geeky video maker however, it comes to life and Mario-style magic happens. The stop-motion video shows a post-it note Mario conquering the office, evading fellow 80s game legend Pacman and the Tetris bricks. The man behind the video is FinalCutKing, who also once made a little video about Jedi kittens that ...

The way we do banking on our mobile phones is changing rapidly, very rapidly. While most cellphone banking in emerging markets like South Africa is still conducted via text messages, people are increasingly also using phone browsers for their banking. In fact, the latest survey results from tech research company World Wide Worx suggest that more than a third of South Africans now use their browsers for mobile banking. That said, only five percent of cellphone bankers exclusively use phone ...

We all jokingly confess our own internet-addiction sins: how we always find ourselves lost in a black hole of Lolcats the night before a big deadline, how we send off 20 emails before we get out of bed, how we only know what’s going on in our partner’s life by following their Twitter feed. But more and more research is mounting up to suggest that it isn’t a joke at all, and that our internet dependences actually might be making ...

It has been widely established that the success of a Facebook Page is not its size, but rather the amount of people engaging with it. This is indicated by the amount of people “talking about this”. The reason why you want a higher percentage of people “talking about this” is to ensure that the brand’s content remains in peoples’ newsfeeds. That is why a high number of “likes” means much less. If only a very small percentage of fans ...

Oh, so you've got a startup that's going to change the world using social media? Tell someone else about it. I'm not listening any more. Here's why: social media got boring. Yup, it's boring and its lost the luster that made it so revolutionary in the first place. I can pinpoint when it happened too: The Evolution of a Social Media Professional: 2007: Holy crap, this is so cool. 2008: This is really cool. You should check it out. 2009: Why won’t anyone listen ...

Following in the footsteps of socially conscious toys and games such as Karito Kids and Xeko, TrashCanKidz is taking an everything but the kitchen sink approach with a unique game and retail product one-two punch that contributes 20% of its revenue to charity. The startup hailing from Mauritius is seeking funding via Kickstarter, hoping to raise US$100 000 to bring the project to life. The aforementioned game Xeko also took to Kickstarter for funding and succeeded in reaching its target of ...