Articles by Erika

New online book publisher StoryBundle is taking a leap of faith with its customer base: Readers get to decide how much to pay StoryBundle, which launched this week, offers readers five e-books written by independent authors in one bundle. The bundles are grouped according to genre. First out of the gate is a group of sci-fi novels. However, anyth...

Awareness has enhanced its social marketing automation suite, Social Marketing Hub, with a new feature called "social scoring." The feature allows marketers and brands to identify, store and rank prospects across all the major social networks based on scoring criteria they define ...

HP dropped a bombshell on the investment community: The tech conglomerate said it was taking a goodwill charge, or write-down of US$8 billion. It didn't say for what exactly -- just that it stems from the recent trading values of HP's stock, coupled with market conditions and business trends within the services segment However, the write-down is wi...

Facebook announced Tuesday that it is testing a new ad program for mobile apps in a limited beta The system is aimed at iOS and Android developers who want to grow the audience for their apps, according to Facebook engineer Vijaye Raji. Anyone who clicks on an ad for an app will be sent to the App Store or Google Play to download it, assuming it i...

Facebook filed a friend-of-the-court brief this week arguing that clicking on a "Like" button is akin to making a statement and therefore is protected speech The case, being heard in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, stems from a 2009 incident in which a deputy sheriff, Daniel Ray Carter, lost his job after he "Liked" his boss' rival, w...

Facebook on Tuesday launched "Bingo & Slots Friendzy" -- a bingo game that uses real money -- exclusively for its members in the UK. As with all of its apps, Facebook is taking 30 percent of the revenue Facebook has its fingers in numerous revenue-generating pies. To name a few examples, it is developing new ad products and moving further into soc...

There is a new natural-language, speech-based virtual assistant in town: Nuance on Monday introduced Nina to rival Apple's Siri. Nina can be used by smartphone application developers -- or any other type of user who would like to deploy the technology's mix of speech recognition, text-to-speech and voice biometric technology, for that matter. Nuan...

A marketing campaign by Southwest Airlines to mark the growth of its Facebook fan base to 3-million turned into an unmitigated PR nightmare last Friday -- one that does not appear to be ending any time soon for the airline, which is typically lauded for its stellar customer service ratings Southwest offered discounted flights that day to celebrate ...

Electronics Arts on Friday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that Zynga's "The Ville" infringes its copyright for "The Sims Social." EA filed the suit on behalf of the studio Maxis on the basis that Zynga copied "original and distinctive expressive elements" of "The Sims Social," according...

It is hard to remember that only a few months ago, the market was greedily speculating about how high Facebook's stock might go. Fast-forward to one IPO debacle, several negative research reports, the departure of several top executives, and a lukewarm earnings report, and the question is now fearfully being asked in reverse. How low can Facebook go?...

Samsung ranked as the top smartphone in the U.S. for the three-month average period ending in June, claiming 25.6 percent of mobile subscribers, according to the comScore MobiLens service. LG followed, with its 18.8 percent share Apple ranked third in the OEM market, claiming 15.4 percent of mobile subscribers. Next came Motorola with 11.7 percent...

Oracle has released version 20 of its Oracle CRM On Demand product. It is a major release with significant upgrades to the industry-specific life sciences vertical as well as horizontal functionality, Anthony Lye, SVP for cloud applications strategy, told CRM Buyer "We have made improvements and enhancements in our core functionality, improved secu...

Facebook is a great company with a massive following -- and a lousy stock price Facebook erred greatly when it priced its stock at US$38 per share for many reasons -- not the least of which is that everything it will ever do will be viewed through that overpriced prism....

Amazon reported late Thursday that its Q2 net income had dropped an astounding 96 percent, but the market didn't seem to mind. Its stock jumped nearly 8 percent in Friday trading -- never mind the fact that it posted a net income of US$7 million compared to $191 million in the second quarter of 2011 The picture these numbers paint is of a company t...

When Yardi CRM launched in the fall of 2010, it was targeting what it saw as a lack of industry-specific CRM within the commercial real estate broker industry -- or to be more precise, CRM functionality that was integrated into a property management system. ...

Foursquare is following up on a feature it introduced last week that layers on new ad functionality for brands seeking to target local customers Unveiled last week, "Local Updates" lets users keep up with places they like in their Friends tab. Now the social service has rolled out "Promoted Updates" in the Explore tab....

Wall Street took Netflix at its word, and then some, when the company said in its earnings report that it probably would sign up fewer new subscribers this year than it had expected That, coupled with a 91 percent year-over-year drop in net income, caused shares of the company to promptly drop by 25 percent by late afternoon on Wednesday. Meanwhile...

AT&T delivered a respectable set of numbers in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday. At the same time, its report on Q2 activity revealed how much it still depends on Apple and its devices for its revenues. First, the numbers: For the quarter ended June 30, 2012, AT&T's consolidated revenues totaled US$31.6 billion, up 0.3 percent versus the y...

AT&T delivered a respectable set of numbers in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday. At the same time, its report on Q2 activity revealed how much it still depends on Apple and its devices for its revenues. First, the numbers: For the quarter ended June 30, 2012, AT&T's consolidated revenues totaled US$31.6 billion, up 0.3 percent versus the y...

The 16 GB Nexus 7 tablet has sold out at Google Play and there is no indication when Google will have more of the devices in stock Shoppers who visit the Google Play store seeking to buy the tablet are invited to leave their email address so they can be notified when the product becomes available....