From Crain’s Chicago Business | Social coupon giant Groupon is investing in TV advertising, including pregame spots in the Feb. 6 broadcast of Super Bowl XLV. Get the full story>>
Inside these posts: Social media
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Facebook tops Google as most visited site in U.S.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces a new Facebook email messaging system in November. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Facebook surpassed Google for the first time as the most visited website in the United States for most of 2010.
The social network site edged out Google.com with 8.9 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, while Google.com ranked second with about 7.2 percent of all visits, according to online measurement service Experian Hitwise. Get the full story »
Facebook CEO named Time’s ‘Person of Year’
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (AP/Paul Sakuma)
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been named TIME magazine’s Person of the Year. Rick Stengel, the magazine’s managing editor, made the announcement Wednesday on NBC’s “Today“ show.
Zuckerberg created the widely popular and influential social networking site, which reflects a major transformation in the way people communicate and do business.
“Facebook has merged with the social fabric of American life, and not just American but human life: nearly half of all Americans have a Facebook account, but 70 percent of Facebook users live outside the U.S. It’s a permanent fact of our global social reality. We have entered the Facebook age, and Mark Zuckerberg is the man who brought us here.“ Get the full story »
Groupon buys 3 Asia sites as part of shopping spree
Chicago-based Groupon has offices at 600 W. Chicago, pictured here on Nov. 30, 2010. (Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune)
Daily deal startup Groupon is on a shopping spree of its own, even amid feverish speculation that Google is on the verge of making a big offer for the Chicago company.
Groupon said late Tuesday it has bought three daily deal sites based in Asia, moving the company into Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan. Terms of the deals with uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost were not disclosed. Groupon’s first foray into Asia was in August, when it acquired a Japanese rival. The company said it is now in 35 countries.
Closer to home, Groupon has acquired Ludic Labs, a Silicon Valley technology company, for an undisclosed amount. Groupon said Ludic Labs’ most well-known products are Offer Foundry, an advertising and promotional platform for local businesses, and Diddit, a Web-based community where members can browse through local activities and attractions. Ludic Labs and Groupon have both raised money from Accel Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Get the full story »
New Facebook messaging takes on Google, Yahoo
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the 350 million active users daily of Facebook messaging in San Francisco, Nov. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
In a bid to become the junction box for people’s digital communications, Facebook announced Monday it plans to launch a new communication platform intended to unify e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging and the social network’s existing message system through a single “social in-box.”
While each of the social network’s more than 500 million users will have the chance to get an @facebook.com e-mail address as the new service gradually rolls out to members in coming months, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the goal was not to create the world’s largest e-mail network, but to merge external e-mail, text messaging, instant messages and Facebook’s existing internal messaging service into a new kind of seamless communication system. Get the full story »
