Articles by Erika

Monmouth, Wales, has become the first "Wikipedia town," making it an area of international interest as it informally redubbed itself "Monmouthpedia." The Saturday event was attended by 70 to 75 people, project leader John Cummings told TechNewsWorld -- a sizable group for the area.

Silverpop has been on the vanguard of old-school digital marketing providers -- that is, email marketing firms -- embracing social media. The company has released a slew of products designed to integrate the two disciplines, as well as incorporate mobile and local technologies along the way. Given that history, it is difficult to imagine a subsect...

For all the anticipation leading up to Facebook's initial public offering, opinions about how it performed are decidedly mixed. Clearly, though, the market didn't think the stock, which started at US$38 per unit, was a grand bargain: Facebook ended trading on Friday just a few cents over its opening price. Underwriters had to step in during the day to support the price, according to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal...

Wearing his trademark hoodie, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg virtually rang Nasdaq's opening bell from Silicon Valley this morning to kick off the start of what will be a very interesting Friday. This is, of course, Facebook IPO day -- the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated initial public offering of the social media giant. It's an event that is b...

Twitter has made an important overture to privacy advocates: It is giving users the ability to opt out of being tracked on the service by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser. Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, broke the news at an industry event Thursday morning in New York. The company later...

Google is extensively updating its search function with the rollout of a new Knowledge Graph. The heart of the Knowledge Graph is a database Google has compiled, via its own research and through its acquisition of MetaWeb Technologies, of 500 million people, places, things and points of history. That, coupled with a refined approach to search, wil...

General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook because the ad campaigns are not paying off in any measurable way. "We felt we were not getting an ROI for our advertising spend," GM spokesperson Pat Morrissey told the E-Commerce Times.

Groupon delivered earnings that pleasantly surprised shareholders. The daily deal provider reported a net loss of US$11.7 million, a huge improvement from the $146.5 million it lost a year ago in its first quarter as a private company It also posted stronger-than-expected revenue for the quarter, at $559.3 million -- an 89 percent increase from the...

Nvidia and Intellectual Ventures have partnered to buy a set of patents developed and owned by IPWireless. The patent portfolio comprises approximately 500 wireless patents, including in such areas as LTE, LTE-Advanced and 3G/4G technologies. The acquisition is viewed as another sign that the company is getting more serious about diversifying beyo...

The Sapphire Now conference kicked off Monday in Orlando, Fla., with 60,000 customers, partners and employees of SAP participating, either at the conference facility or watching it online The first day of the event offered the usual lineup of celebrity speakers -- corporate and otherwise -- with Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong featured in the...

Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin, a Brazilian native who is currently a resident of Singapore, has given up his U.S. citizenship. The widely-held assumption is that Saverin wanted to escape the tax liability he would assume from the Facebook initial public offering, expected as early as this week, by becoming a citizen of Singapore.

The Facebook IPO roadshow -- a crucial time for the company -- is well under way, and the company's CEO has been in the spotlight. It was no doubt expected that Mark Zuckerberg would ditch his trademark hoodie for attire more befitting the circumstances, but no. At the few events Zuckerberg has attended, including the launch event in New York, he has sported the hoodie.

Zoho has enhanced its menu of offerings by incorporating social media into its customer support features. It has also added a Facebook social media integration point to its flagship application. The changes went live on Thursday, added automatically to the applications. These two developments -- the Facebook integration point and the social media ...

Deutsche Telekom is pursuing a merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS Communications, according to a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources How the merger may be executed appears to be a moving target at the moment. It could take the form of a stock-swap, giving Deutsche Telekom control of the combined entity, or it could be an initial public offe...

The Oracle v. Google copyright infringement and patent violation trial is continuing with the second phase, despite key unresolved issues from the copyright portion of the case. Following the jury's partial verdict earlier this week, Google is seeking a new trial on the copyright phase. Meanwhile, as arguments over whether Google infringed on Orac...

E-tailers are getting better and better at making their customers happy, according to the annual E-Retail Satisfaction Index released by ForeSee. In this year's report, a record 36 online retailers out of 100 achieved the so-called "threshold for excellence," with scores of 80 or higher on the 100-point scale. That compares with 28 sites achieving...

The last seven days have no doubt felt surreal for executives and board members at Yahoo. It was a week ago that shareholder Daniel Loeb, CEO of hedge fund Third Point, revealed that Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson's educational credentials included a computer science bachelor's degree he never earned, spurring demands for the company to take action The ...

Facebook kicked off its IPO roadshow in New York City on Monday, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg sporting his trademark hoodie sweatshirt and sneakers. A 30-minute video was part of the presentation, along with a Q&A session in which Zuckerberg and other executives took questions. The format apparently did not suit some attendees, so Facebook made some ...

The jury hearing the Oracle-Google copyright infringement and patent violation case rendered a partial verdict in the copyright phase of the trial on Monday Although its findings appear to favor Oracle, the jury deadlocked on a key question about fair use, prompting Google attorneys to call for a mistrial.

Dan Loeb is not letting up the pressure on Yahoo, its board of directors or, most certainly, its CEO, Scott Thompson. Loeb, manager and founder of Third Point, a hedge fund that owns a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo, has demanded more information about the process that led to the hiring of Thompson, after charging last week that the CEOdid not have a ...