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Reuters – A skit of “Dinner for One,” the British vaudeville comedy sketch so loved in Germany it holds cult status and is screened every New Year’s Eve, with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy as “Miss Sophie” and her bumbling butler, has become an Internet smash.

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NewsFactor – Verizon Wireless was pulling a Netflix of sorts. In the midst of three unexplained data outages in less than a month, the wireless carrier decided to start charging customers a $2 fee to pay their bill on its Web site. To say that customers got angry would be an understatement.

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Reuters – Verizon Wireless has reversed its decision to charge a $2 fee for telephone and online bill payments, bowing to a storm of criticism from consumers and the U.S. communications regulator.

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AP – After a customer backlash, Verizon Wireless on Friday dropped a plan to start charging $2 for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit or debit cards.

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NewsFactor – Verizon Wireless was pulling a Netflix of sorts. In the midst of three unexplained data outages in less than a month, the wireless carrier decided to start charging customers a $2 fee to pay their bill on its Web site. To say that customers got angry would be an understatement.

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Mashable – Whenever one of us here at Mashable finds a new joke, meme or parody account, it quickly makes its way around the office.
We really get a kick out of hilarious Tumblrs, fake Twitter accounts and memes. They’re a type of humor that brings digital geeks like us together for a laugh whether we’re Apple fans or Windows users, Android owners or iPhone addicts. Internet humor bridges these gaps and unites all of us for a smirk, giggle or full-on laugh.

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Reuters – Verizon Wireless, which this month angered customers with three separate data service problems, said on Thursday it will add a $2 fee for one-time telephone and online bill payments.

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Mashable – Ronald Brown is a successful startup CEO with an extensive background in technology and consumer marketing. His new book, Anticipate. The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success is available via iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
The subject of finding customers is one of the most mysterious in business development. I’m often asked how the most successful companies do it, maybe in the hope that there’s a secret or shortcut to success. Sorry to say, no silver bullet exists.

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Mashable – The public has spoken and they don’t want to pay fees. Verizon is the most recent company to announce a fee, in this case a $2 fee to pay your bills online, and back-out less than a week after it was reported.
The public has proven that if a strong consumer backlash is instigated, companies will respond. The interwebs got word of the fee on Thursday. Soon after, many on Twitter were tweeting their outrage about the proposed “convenience fee.”

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Mashable – With just over one day left until 2012, the Internet is chock full of digital thought leaders sharing their predictions for the coming year.
Now, we want to know: What do you think will be the biggest tech and social media trends of 2012?

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Mashable – Aaron Sperling is CEO and co-founder of vFlyer, which provides online marketing solutions for small businesses and independent service providers. You can follow Aaron and his team on their Facebook page, Twitter and on the company blog.


A scenario: You envision a phenomenal idea, put all of the necessary pieces into place, and now run your own successful business. You’ve got a functioning website, but you’re struggling with 60% bounce rates, and users don’t seem to be completing the necessary conversion processes. 



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Mashable – Verizon’s been having a lousy month. On top of the PR disaster of introducing a new $2 service fee for paying bills online, the wireless carrier with the reputation for having the best service suffered no less than three outages for its ultra-fast 4G LTE data network. Now the company has finally come forward and explained itself.
Each of the outages was caused by an separate bug, Verizon says, though none as serious as the one that took down the entire network for an extended period in April. Now Verizon says it’s taking a key step to prevent nationwide LTE outages: geo-segmentation. By partitioning the network by area, the carrier can isolate problems before they spread and take down the whole system.

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Appolicious – The holiday week has seen a freeze on adding new games to the iTunes App Store, but there are still plenty of great ones floating around. Leading this week’s charge is Terra Noctis, a side-scrolling platforming game that will remind players of the greats in the genre. Check it out, and four other quality titles, below.

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Mashable – In-demand products, unparalleled site design and usability, competitive search engine marketing, continuous innovative, exciting holiday specials — these are just some of the variables that make up a successful ecommerce business.

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Reuters – The Chinese government is working with domestic Internet search engines like Baidu Inc and Sohu.com and financial institutions to prevent phishing attacks on unsuspecting Chinese web users.

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AP – Verizon Wireless, the country’s largest cellphone company, said Thursday that it will start charging $2 for every payment subscribers make over the phone or online with their credit cards.

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Mashable – Three appeals court judges unanimously upheld a controversial federal law on Thursday — one that grants immunity to phone companies that give government officials access to users’ online communications.
“It is disappointing that today’s decision endorsed the rights of telecommunications companies over those over their customers,” said Kurt Opsahl, Senior Staff Attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an online statement.

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Reuters – Netflix Inc and Gap Inc were among the worst performers in customer satisfaction among the largest online retailers this holiday season, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

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Appolicious – After releasing the iPhone 4S in November, Apple and its iTunes App Store saw a big jump in app downloads, rising 83 percent over the same period in 2010.

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Reuters – Amazon.com Inc shares fell to their lowest level since late March on Thursday on concern about sales growth during the online retailer’s crucial fourth quarter.

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1352571560001" /]
Google is the top digital brand for 2011, followed by Facebook and Yahoo, according to recent research tracking unique monthly visitors per month.

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AP – Online retailer Amazon says 2011 was the best holiday ever for its Kindle-brand e-readers and tablet computers.

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Mashable – Curry Smith is affiliated with NOLAbound, a unique program that immerses 25 professionals in New Orleans business to discuss the city’s entrepreneurial and social media influence. You can apply to be considered for a spot in the program at www.benolabound.com/apply.
As long as brands want to improve and increase social media engagement and fellowship, they’ll need authentic, relevant, community-oriented content.

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Mashable – Streaming music site Spotify has released its list of this year’s most-played tracks on the site, and indie-pop band Foster the People not only claimed the top spot, it’s the only group with two singles in the top 10.

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Appolicious – The iTunes App Store remains frozen for the holidays, which means there haven’t been new games in a few days. Nevertheless, Thursday traditionally sees a crop of cool new games to play, and while there aren’t technically any “new” games in the App Store today, we’ve found a crop of four quality titles that deserve your attention. Up first is tilt-controlled 3-D platformer Crazy Hedgy, featuring a cartoon hedgehog. Next, Gravity Rocks has you controlling a probe, using gravity and thrusters to navigate dangerous space. …

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Mashable – Verizon customers who make single payments by phone or online will be charged a $2 fee per payment starting January 15. The new fee is intended to offset the cost of processing these payments.
“The fee will help allow us to continue to support these single bill payment options in these channels,” Verizon said in a statement to Mashable.

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Mashable – Members of the Reddit community have launched a digital grassroots campaign against pro-SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) politicians.
Redditors began the campaign Wednesday with a post asking fellow Redditors for suggestions on a politician to target. The original poster, Reddit user “digitalboy,” was inspired by the social news site’s community effort to boycott GoDaddy over their support for SOPA.

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Reuters – Private intelligence analysis firm Strategic Forecasting Inc., which was attacked by online hackers at the weekend, said in a letter to free subscribers that it has decided to delay the launching of its website by about a week.

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Reuters – Alibaba Group has hired a Washington lobbying firm in a sign that the Chinese e-commerce company would be willing to make a bid for all of Yahoo Inc in the event that talks to unwind their Asian partnership fail.

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Mashable – The leaked subpoena sent to Twitter this month by the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office in Boston is causing some hoopla on the web and raising the issue of law enforcement’s access to online personal data.
On Dec. 14, the D.A.’s Office issued a subpoena to Twitter in order to access the account information of two users who tweeted a list of personal information they allegedly obtained by hacking into the Boston Police Patrolmens’ Association. The hackers stole identifying information and Tweeted it to followers. The subpoena requests “available subscriber information, for the account or accounts associated with the following information, including IP address logs for account creation.”

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Reuters – While the Internet poker world salivates at the prospect of its business coming back to life thanks to an Obama administration ruling, a future president could reverse that decision and send the industry back to drawing board if it is not codified into law.

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Mashable – It’s possible your Roomba has more to say online than you do.
A new social network, MyRobots, hopes to be the “Facebook for robots.” The network allows users to connect their robotic devices, which can then post status updates like, “The cat is in my way” or “my bin is full.” Users can monitor their devices remotely and add to the capabilities of their robotics by connecting them to the site.

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NewsFactor – Anonymous struck again on Monday morning — and the backlash by the infamous hacking group may not be over yet. Anonymous, which took down Strategic Forecasting’s Web site over the weekend, has vowed to strike again. This time, the targets are Stratfor members who are speaking out to support the firm.

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1350778361001" /]
Internet shoppers were happy with Amazon and disappointed in Netflix this holiday season, according to a study released Wednesday.

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Reuters – Netflix Inc and Gap Inc were among the worst performers in customer satisfaction among the largest online retailers this holiday season, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1350030941001" /]
We all know (or should know) that there’s no magic formula to creating a “viral video,” but there are some core ingredients to getting thousands and even millions of views. Do you know the secrets? Internet celebrity and top YouTuber iJustine talks about how she built her YouTube channel from zero to now over 1 million subscribers. You’ll also learn her secrets to managing a community and creating videos that people want to watch, talk about and share with their friends. Check out the latest episode of Behind the Brand with iJustine.

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Mashable – The year 2011 brought extraordinary progress for online journalism.
From breaking news curation to new revenue models, many an organization put its best digital foot forward. Social media became more tightly integrated into reporting and overall strategy, while mobile app creation and content optimization were no longer a nice-to-have, but a must.

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Reuters – U.S. consumers spent more than $35 billion online this holiday season, up 15 percent from the same period last year, comScore Inc estimated on Tuesday.

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NewsFactor – Go Daddy is backpedaling over its support of the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” or SOPA, that’s working its way through Congress. It may be too little, too late. But is Go Daddy being unfairly boycotted for its involvement in the bill just because it’s perhaps the most visible and largest domain registrar?

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Mashable – When sitting down for a job interview at a top U.S. tech company, you’d typically expect the interviewer to hammer you with questions testing your abilities, past history and knowledge of the company. You wouldn’t think it was the time or the place to start exploring solutions to world hunger, but that’s exactly what happened to one candidate looking to be a software developer at Amazon.
In Glassdoor’s annual review of the top 25 oddball questions asked in job interviews in 2011, tech companies feature highly. Although there’s just one question from Google on the list, the Wall Street Journal recently profiled the search giant’s interview process, highlighting the trademark strangeness of some of the questions.

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Mashable – Google began positioning its new flight-finding feature at the top of general search results for airline booking information earlier this month. And its new competitors in the $110 billion online travel industry aren’t happy about the search giant crashing the party, according to a Tuesday Wall Street Journal report.
The charge: that Google is using its ubiquity in search to gain an unfair advantage on the rest of the industry. When users type in a travel query — “San Francisco to Los Angeles flights”, say — the first search result is a listing of the cheapest flights for the given trip. Beneath the chart is a link to “more Google flight search results.”

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1349399927001" /]
One in every seven minutes online and three out of every four minutes on social networking sites are spent on Facebook, according to a comScore report released Tuesday.

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Mashable – The makers behind the popular Infinity Blade 2 app — which shot to the top of the iTunes download charts earlier this month — are working on an update to make the game more social.

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AP – A growing number of shoppers apparently need only the briefest of breaks before diving back in, especially if they can log in to shop.

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Mashable – Online lotteries and poker may be poised to become legal thanks to a new decision by the Justice Department reinterpreting the Wire Act of 1961.
The decision, written in September but made public last Friday, found the Act’s prohibition of wagers via telecommunications crossing state lines or international borders refers only to bets on a “sporting event or contest” and not to lottery tickets sold online. The decision doesn’t mention online poker, but some reason that the ruling will pave the way for online poker.

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Mashable – Nathan Safran heads the research department at Conductor, a leading SEO technology firm. Formerly, Nathan was an analyst for Forrester Research’s consumer product strategy group, where he researched trend studies, consumer attitudes and behaviors toward technology adoption. Nathan blogs at exceljockey.com.
The status quo for visual content has always been that its creation, delivery and consumption have clearly delineated borders. Content creators make it, cable providers deliver it, and viewers consume it on the big screen in their living room.

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Mashable – Star Wars: The Old Republic, the latest MMORPG from BioWare and Electronic Arts, already has a million registered users, and momentum seems to be picking up a week after the game’s launch.
The “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game” reached 1 million users Dec. 23, just three days after launch, and it includes users who have pre-ordered the game. Now, however, Electronic Arts has published a new set of milestones, which tell us more about how users are actually interacting with the game.

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Mashable – [brightcove video="1347944471001 " /]
Reddit user SelfProdigy has declared Dec. 29 Dump GoDaddy Day, following the domain registrar’s short-lived public support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Although GoDaddy has announced that it no longer supports SOPA, the site is still facing the backlash from its initial position.

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NewsFactor – The use of mobile devices for making online purchases doubled in December from nine months earlier, according to a new report from RichRelevance. The customized-shopping-experience designer’s study also indicates that over 90 percent of U.S. consumers making mobile purchases over the period were using an Apple device.

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Mashable – A colleague here at Mashable proposed an Onion-style spoof story entitled “Google Buys Everyone,” which would detail how the search giant hoovered every company in existence. As Homer Simpson once said, “It’s funny because it’s true.”
Google’s insatiable appetite for other companies was just one of the business narratives of 2011, though. The other was the handful of social media IPOs that were eager to align themselves with the loony Dot-com era, a baseless comparison if there ever was one.

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