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Social media advertising revenues will double by 2016, and native ads -- such as sponsored stories on Facebook and promoted tweets on Twitter -- will be its fastest-growing segment, according to a forecast from BIA/Kelsey. The channel will grow from $4.6 billion in 2012 to $9.2 billion in 2016, pred...

Today, few people are using an IBM desktop computer -- and if they are, the machine could be close to 20 years old. However, back in 1995 when IBM bought Lotus Notes, it was the world's largest software company and still made personal computers. Fast-forward, and today IBM isn't really known either ...

Google is stepping up its game in the battle for cloud supremacy by slashing prices and beefing up the services it offers with Compute Engine. The Infrastructure as a Service product was first announced at Google's I/O show in June and is currently available in a preview version. Google hasn't set a...

Cyber Monday online sales broke records this year, clocking in at 30 percent higher than 2011, according to IBM Smarter Commerce. Sales are expected to reach $1.5 billion for the day, making Cyber Monday 2012 the biggest online shopping day in history, comScore projects. Including high online sales ...

Cyber Monday was the biggest day ever for Kindle sales worldwide, Amazon reported. Although it did not release specific figures -- it typically doesn't -- Amazon did say Kindle sales were more than double last year's figure for the holiday weekend. Nine of the 10 best-selling items on its site are K...

It makes sense to watch the calendar when putting together a marketing plan. Holidays, seasons and events, after all, drive sales. "There's good reason to ride the coattails of seasonal events and holidays," said Shannon Byrne, marketing coordinator at BlueGlass Interactive. "When done right, it pro...

Google is adding its voice to a chorus of opposition to a proposal to update the International Telecommunication Union treaty in a way that could give governments more power to restrict the flow of information online. Next week, members of the ITU -- the UN organization that oversees international c...

Samsung Electronics will implement new measures to keep its Chinese suppliers compliant with labor laws after it completed a round of audits that found notable problems relating to labor policies, the company announced Monday. These included problems with overtime, but Samsung is also looking to ens...

Shopping and sales activity on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday rocked this year, with online purchases on Black Friday topping $1 billion for the first time. More than 35 million Americans visited retailers' stores or websites on Thanksgiving Day, up from 29 million last year, the National Retail ...

I have been taking a closer look at two of the brand-new technologies that are really shaking up the computer world. One is Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system with all those funky tiles. The other is the Lenovo Yoga 13 laptop. The changes are many. Some will think all this change is good, others...

The Internet has become the world's largest shopping mall, and the market is continuing to grow. Q4 2011 U.S. retail ecommerce sales were up 14 percent compared with 2010, reaching nearly $50 billion for the quarter, ComScore recently reported. Total U.S. e-commerce sales are projected to reach $2...

OK, it's time to officially close the book on the 2011 holiday retail season and to shift our attention forward to 2012. For me personally, what makes it difficult to stop looking back are the new trends that emerged that will forever change holiday shopping: Mobile made its mark, with 11 percent of...

Stick a fork in the sacrosanctity of Thanksgiving -- it is done. A number of retailers, most famously Walmart, will be opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day, on the premise that they will be scooping up sales from consumers too eager to wait for Black Friday. Whether that is true or whether so-cal...

Adoption of cloud technology at the federal level is still far from routine -- but cloud transactions continue to emerge on a regular basis. The deals range in value, demonstrating that cloud migration can be applied for relatively small deployments or for huge networks. In the latest major deal, HP...

HP released its fourth quarter earnings report, bearing out CEO Meg Whitman's warning last month. It is not pretty. For the full year fiscal 2012, net revenue was $120.4 billion, down 5 percent from the prior-year period. For the fourth quarter, HP posted net revenue of $30 billion, down 7 percent y...