Facebook has landed a multi-million dollar advertsiing deal with alcoholic beverages company Diageo, which owns a diverse portfolio of brands, including Smirnoff and Guiness. According to the Financial Times, the deal is the latest move by the world’s largest social network to strengthen its ties with marketers.The newspaper states that the deal will see the two companies sharing skills and pooling resources in an attempt to figure out new ways of harnessing the activity of Facebook's 750-milion or so ...

With smartphones becoming cheaper and telecom carriers investing in high-speed wireless infrastructure, Google expects that by the number of people using the internet in India will have tripled by 2014.Currently, according to Google India chief Rajan Anandan speaking with the Wall Street Journal, India has about 100-million web users, and in 2014, will have at least 300-million.Those 100-million users, however, represents only eight percent of India's 1.2-billion strong population. Despite this, India is still the world's third-largest internet market (by ...

Shares of Research In Motion (RIM) plunged almost a fifth on Wall Street on Friday after reporting sales and profits that fell short of expectations. The company's signature BlackBerry mobile phones have been selling like hotcakes in many developing markets, largely thanks to the budget-friendly low, fixed data price for messaging and browsing from the phone, but are struggling in the Americas and Europe.RIM shares lost 19 percent on the Nasdaq stock exchange to close at US$23.93. It had a ...

Gamers have taken to a purpose-written computer game called Foldit to twist open the secrets of an enzyme of an AIDS-family virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade – in a record three weeks.The exploit was published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where — exceptionally in scientific publishing — both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors. Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, ...

Google has added 1 023 more IBM patents to its technology arsenal to fend off legal attacks by rivals such as Apple and Microsoft. The purchases added to the 1 000 or so patents the firm bought from IBM in July and reportedly ranged from mobile software to computer hardware and processes.Google spokesman Jim Prosser told said that the patent transfers had taken place but would not disclose financial terms of the deal or specifics regarding the intellectual property.The push ...

Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, is making a bid for Yahoo! reports the Wall Street Journal. The bid comes as the internet company's executive board tries to consolidate following the firing of CEO Carol Bartz.While the company claims that its primary focus is on stabilising its executive ranks and bolstering it online-ad business, there have been persistent reports that the board is looking to sell all or part of the company.Silver Lake, which recently sold its ...

Robin Li, chief of China's largest search engine Baidu hopes to have expanded his company across the world in less than five years. He made the statement at a recent meeting and posted it onto the company's website with the blessing of China's propaganda chief."Robin Li reported on Baidu's target for the next decade to become a household name in more than half the countries around the world and represent Chinese businesses to influence global economies.”While Baidu may have a ...

Controversial South African tabloid favourite Nonhle Thema, courtesy of another of her Twitter tirades, has landed in hot water to the tune of ZAR85 000.According to the City Press, Thema is being sued by LeBlerh Artist Management and Brand Activators on the grounds that statements Thema made on Twitter constituted the defamation of their client, television presenter Minenhle Dlamini.Thema had sent out tweets to her more than 70 000 followers calling Dlamini a classless drunken nightclub brawler following a ...

Where are the world's next internet entrepreneurs and innovators going to come from? This question was posed by Koos Bekker of Naspers, a global emerging markets giant that has invested heavily in internet properties around the world, at the Highway Africa conference held in Cape Town this weekend.Among the 129 companies it has invested in world-wide, Naspers owns a stake in one of the biggest Instant Messaging/Social Networking properties in the world, Chinese TenCent.The company indirectly landed up with a ...

Earlier this month, social news site reddit became operationally independent from its owner Condé Nast Publications, forming Reddit Inc. as a subsidiary of Advance Publications, Condé Nast's parent company. Condé Nast acquired Reddit in October 2006, when reddit was still considered the smaller, tighter knit, cousin of Digg.Back then reddit was receiving around 700 000 page views per day. Now reddit "routinely gets that much traffic in 15 minutes". Over the last four years reddit has been steadily ...