Reprise Media named the digital AoR of Microsoft India

Reprise Media India, the digital arm of IPG Mediabrands has been named the digital media AoR (Agency on Record) of Microsoft India across display and search, following a global alignment. The business was earlier handled by WPP-owned Quasar and Publicis’ Performics.  This new arrangement comes into effect from July 2012 and is expected to leverage global expertise from across the many markets where Reprise Media handles Microsoft’s search business.

“This shift aligns India with Microsoft’s global move to consolidate digital media buying and search with UM. This year will be a game-changing year for Microsoft with the impending launch of a breakthrough operating system, Windows 8, coupled with exciting developments across our entire product portfolio. We look forward to working with Reprise Media and deepening our partnership with UM,” said Shafalika Saxena, Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft India.

BlackBerry Porsche P‘9981 comes to India at Rs 1.3 lakh

In spite of the troubles its parent company is facing in the global markets,Research In Motion, the makers of the popularBlackBerry smartphones, today said it will top industry growth this year in India. 

The parent Canadian company RIM, which has been fast losing its grip on the market of late to more agile players like Samsung and Apple, launched the BlackBerry Porsche, developed in association with Porsche Design, early this year globally. The phone is set to be launched here this evening. 

Some of the specifications of P'9981 are the design by Porsche Design that comes with forged stainless steel frame, hand-wrapped leather back cover, sculpted QWERTY keyboard, and crystal clear touch display. 

Facebook buys facial-recognition startup

Facebook Inc (FB.O) is paying $55 million to $60 million to buy Face.com, according to people familiar with the matter, acquiring the company that provides the facial-recognition technology used by the world's largest social network to help users identify and tag photos.

The deal bolsters one of Facebook's most popular features -- the sharing and handling of photos -- but the use of the startup's technology has spurred concerns about user privacy.

The No. 1 social network will pay cash and stock for Face.com, potentially paying as much as $60 million, two sources with knowledge of the deal said. Media reports in past weeks have pegged the transaction at $80 million to $100 million.

Microsoft‘s tablet no threat to iPad: analysts

Microsoft Corp's new tablet computers are no threat to Apple Inc's iPad, given the lack of enthusiasm among developers to create applications that run on the new Windows operating system, analysts said.

Microsoft introduced its own "Surface" line of tablets on Monday, taking on Apple as well as its own hardware partners including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Hewlett-Packard Co.

"Though pricing details are unclear ... Microsoft will need to significantly undercut the iPad to be competitive," Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said.

The Surface tablet will come in two versions, one running Windows RT, based on the same chip designs that power most tablets, and a higher-performance version running Windows 8 Pro.

"The most important factor in the success of a tablet is its ecosystem. Based on our discussions with developers, we find the lack of enthusiasm concerning," Misek said.

NextPrev Editor's PickNews Article Mozilla launches Thimble, a new tool that makes creating a website simple

In 1997, making a website seemed like the simplest thing in the world. Of course, it wasn't — there was all sorts of HTML code involved, and making a professional-looking site took almost as much work then as it does now. But there were tools available to make it seem easy — Tripod and Geocities had templates and tutorials, and Netscape Navigator had a decent WYSIWYG web creation tool built in.

Fast forward 15 years, and creating a website seems like an endeavor best left to the professionals. But Mozilla, carriers of the old Netscape crown, wants to change that perception with Thimble, a web-creation tool that promises to make the act of creating a website easier than ever.

Aside from a basic page creation tool, Thimble has a number of interesting tutorials built in to help teach you HTML, and by extension, how to create your own page. One of the tutorials, called Hack a Map, gets you started by showing you some pretty advanced code. But the tutorial isn't about learning the advanced code, it's about learning the basic errors that are causing the page at the left to show up incorrectly. Thimble will show you exactly where the website is broken — say, in showing you where a missing HTML tag should go. Even though you're doing light work, you're doing that work on a complicated page. The whole process feels far more enjoyable than your usual tutorial, as if you're learning by doing something important. Even if that something important is a map filled with a Minecraft pig, CatBread, and a triple rainbow.

If you're curious, you can check out Thimble over at the Mozilla website. And who knows, while playing around with pictures of cats, you might actually wind up learning something.

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Satyan Gajwani to be the new CEO of Times Internet; Rishi Khiani plans own venture

Satyan Gajwani, Director, New Media at The Times of India Group will be taking over as the CEO of Times Internet (Indiatimes) from Rishi Khiani, the present CEO of the company. Gajwani has confirmed the news to India Digital Review saying that Rishi Khiani is moving ahead on an entrepreneurial journey. Though the official timings of this shift in leadership could not be confirmed, Gajwani tells us that Rishi Khiani will remain a part of TImes Internet till August 2012.

“I will be taking over as CEO TIL from Rishi. Rishi's been a great leader, and it's a disappointment to see him go, but we wish him the best as he starts back on his entrepreneurial journey. He's going to still remain close to us, working officially with us through mid-August,” Gajwani has said.

In August 2009, Times Internet had appointed Rishi Khiani as Chief Executive Officer. Prior to joining Times Internet, Khiani was chief operating officer at Web18. Khiani had joined Web18 after he had sold his web design and technology firm UrbanEye to Network18 in 2006. Khiani was instrumental in Indiatimes’ winning the Internet and mobile rights for the Indian Premier League, launching Gaana.com, revamping Indiatimes.com, TimesofIndia.com and EconomicTimes.com, among others.

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Pepsi and Twitter bring fans closer to what's hot in music

Today we announced a global partnership with Pepsi centered around one of the leading topics of conversation on Twitter: music. With this deal, Pepsi will give Twitter’s 140 million active users around the world a unique and real-time way to discover and consume music. Pepsi will break new ground by bringing fans closer to what’s hot in music and connecting them with the artists they are most passionate about, all through Twitter.

Part of Pepsi’s new “Live for Now” campaign, this partnership involves three elements that speak to  the key ways consumers find and enjoy music: music downloads, original content and live concerts.

Fans can LISTEN to weekly free music downloads from Amazon MP3. Starting today, the @pepsi account will tweet about new and notable music using the #LiveforNow hashtag. Every week, fans can also follow @pepsi for free download codes they can use to discover more music through Amazon.com’s MP3 Store. The open, public and unfiltered nature of Twitter lets everyone have conversations about this music, creating a more sharable, interactive experience for Pepsi.

Fans can WATCH a new weekly video series, “Live for Now Music”, based on the top music and artists trending on Twitter. This is the first time any partner will use Twitter’s real-time data to develop original programming. By using Tweets to take the pulse of music lovers around the globe, Pepsi will uncover what’s hot in music every week and give fans a bite-size snapshot of the conversation on Twitter in Pepsi’s videos. The “Live for Now Music” video series will be streamed on pepsi.com and twitter.com/pepsi.

Fans can EXPERIENCE a series of pop-up concerts in the U.S. this summer and fall. This is first time any brand has created a pop-up concert series with Twitter at the center. Each concert will feature a major artist with a large Twitter following and will be announced first on Twitter so fans can spread the word. Every concert will be streamed live on Twitter through @pepsi’s enhanced profile page, allowing anyone in the world the chance to watch and experience live music in a whole new way.

Twitter users love music: the top five most-followed accounts are all musicians. Now, Pepsi and Twitter are making it easier to indulge this passion. This partnership illustrates just how authentically brands can connect to the core interests of consumers by creating new, real-time experiences with multiple touch points on Twitter.

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Will social software startups "collapse into the orbit" of the big vendors?

Summary: With Microsoft finally making a major acquisition move in social software, are we now seeing the roll up of the entire social business industry? Or is this just an minor story in a vast parade of change when it comes to how enterprises are moving to social software?

While investors want to get their returns, in the end, companies that put their customers first and foremost tend to do better than those that do not. Will the end game of social software result in most of the products under the wings of big firms? With this week’s announcement — be sure to read Larry Dignan’s great analysis of this move — that Microsoft is acquiring enterprise microblogging firm Yammer, the rollup of the industry has perhaps now reached a seminal phase. Or has it?
While a few companies in both enterprise and consumer social media have stood out and created their own destiny, for instance Facebook most recently joined LinkedIn and Jive as stand-alone masters of the social universe as public companies, most companies in the industry with a decent value proposition are instead going the acquisition route.
So, as the social media industry in all its forms matures, we might be seeing the broad outlines for the end game. Or, as it turns out, at least the ongoing game. Firms that offer successful collaboration software, social customer service, social marketing, and social media analytics are all currently in play or likely targets as they reach an interesting size. Yet, most don’t have the kind of traction to achieve a dramatic IPO or even a major acquisition that would please their investors. In fact, I find that there are still too many social media companies and they haven’t shaken out enough yet.
Yet there is significant pressure for acquirers to make moves now. Fueling these particular flames are data such as iDC’s latest prediction that social software and team collaboration will be two of the three big areas that lead growth in the software industry this year. Industry leaders just can’t afford not to get invested where the market has traction.

Thus, given the large IPOs that are possible for companies that can build the right offerings out the right pieces (see: Facebook) or have a desperate need to continue growing (i.e. the major software vendors such as Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and IBM) the lack of a shakeout won’t stop them. In fact, some would say it’s smart to acquire companies early, when they first show promise, rather than wait until they prove their mettle and skyrocket in value, and therefore acquisition cost.

Digital Marketing'll Be Big...

Adobe's chief executive speaks about the company’s strategies to address the next big wave in enterprise technology, how customers want to measure everything that’s happening on the web, innovations within the organisation and acquisitions outside of it 

SHANTANU NARAYEN CEO & President, Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems, the world’s largest maker of graphic design software, has been adding capabilities for online marketing even as its core market undergoes a social media centric, web shift. In January Adobe acquired Efficient Frontier, a California-based company that lets advertisers place ads on Facebook, buy keywords on Google and purchase display ads on the web. This ties up with its previous purchases of Omniture, which helps analyse web traffic; Demdex that provides data on online users and Auditude, a video advertising company. Not surprisingly, Shantanu Narayen, the 48-year-old, CEO & president of Adobe likes to talk about a laser-like focus on digital marketing, which along with digital media will be the growth engines for the $4.2 billion company. In an interaction with Shelley Singh, on his recent visit to India, Narayen shares his views on how digital marketing is impacting companies, customization of advertising and more. Edited excerpts:

Adobe has identified digital marketing and digital media as twin growth engines for the company.What are your strategies to grow the two?

Digital marketing and digital media is what we will focus on. The creative process is going through a transformation — from print work-flow to web work flow. And now, how do companies get their content out on app stores? When you think about digital media, Adobe is already the largest provider of tools and services for the creative community. Everybody is re-tooling for the future of web — devising strategies for new and multiple screens (television, mobile, tablet/PC)and app stores. With devices like Photoshop touch and cloud-based services, we are aggressively moving towards that shift. Everyone including Reliance, Fox, Turner wants to stream out content on different platforms with customised ads. We help them achieve that goal. The other one, digital marketing, is a massive opportunity and relatively new from Adobe’s viewpoint. We have put together some of the core pieces for digital advertising with our acquisition of Efficient Frontier, Omniture and Day Software -- a Switzerland-based company which makes web content management software. We have supplemented the acquisitions with organic innovation that we have built around social analytics. We believe that enterprises have dealt with enterprise resource planning, finance and sales and now digital marketing is the next big thing for them. Customers want to measure what’s happening on the web and we help them do that. This is the space we will continue to target and grow.

How big will digital marketing be for Adobe?

We see digital marketing as our largest software-as a-service (SaaS) business and it will be $1 billion in three years. There’s an evolution which will happen towards that model. First step is that companies will really be able to understand they can measure impact of their marketing effort. Once you have that in place companies will seek actionable ways to do intelligent things (like target-specific buyers by age or gender). We believe we are on a multi-phase journey and to begin with, we are doing the plumbing that will help companies measure all information. Omniture helps analyse one trillion transactions every quarter. We will help create new business models for companies in financial services, publishing, retail, travel and other industries which are gearing up for an era of online marketing. It is going to be an ongoing campaign and that’s what digital advertising agencies are also thinking of — it’s a new opportunity for them as well.