Nutella Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter to Its Biggest Fan

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Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut spread brand, has soured many of its social media fans by cracking down on a superfan who has helped spread the word in social media for more than seven years. Ferrero SpA, the Italian owner of Nutella, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sara Rosso, the creator of the 7-year-old World Nutella Day. On Ferrero's orders, Rosso is pulling the plug on the holiday, which had been celebrated on Feb. 5. "The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I’ve had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA., and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants, and I’ve always tried to collaborate and work together in the spirit and goodwill of a fan-run celebration of a spread I (to this day) still eat," Rosso wrote on her blog Read more... More about Facebook , Marketing , Business , and Nutella Read more »

Laptop Week Review: The 13-Inch MacBook Pro With Retina Display

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Features: Ships with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion 2560 x 1600 13.3-inch at 227 PPI 128GB SSD 2.5GHz Intel Core i5 Processor MSRP: $1,499 Pros: Portability combined with high-quality display Super speedy sleep and resume Good battery life Cons: Just two USB ports Non-upgradeable RAM If I could only have one MacBook (which is usually the case for your average laptop-buyer), this is the one I’d pick without hesitation. Fewer issues than its 15-inch cousin, which pioneered the Retina line, combined with a much lighter design with a smaller desktop footprint for a display that can still give you crazy amounts of screen real estate all add up to a sure-fire winner. The Most Flexible Mac I’ve owned a lot of Macs. To find myself so ready to claim any single one a clear “winner” seems crazy, but the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is it. The smaller Retina notebook has proven itself through trial by fire and continues to be the Mac I pick for nearly every situation. For example it’s my constant companion at every travel event I ever go to. The 15-inch is just a hair too heavy and unwieldy, but the 13-inch Retina hits the sweet spot Read more »

Why Social Media Is the Front Line of Disaster Response

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Nearly one million people are affected by natural disasters each year. In the U.S. alone, some 400 people die from disasters that cost the economy $17.6 billion. Helping respond to these cataclysmic events, social media is now a go-to tool for those effected by disasters One in five Americans has used an emergency app. Of those Americans effected by natural disasters, 76% used social media to contact friends and family; 37% of used social media to help find shelter and supplies; and 24% used social media to let loved ones know they're safe. SEE ALSO: 13 Gadgets to Prepare You for a Natural Disaster Read more... More about Us , World , Social Media , Social Good , and Infographics Read more »

With A Media-Rich Platform To Stand Out From The Messaging Pack, MessageMe Hits 5M Users In 2.5 Months [Interview]

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Last week we reported that MessageMe , one of the latest messaging apps to hit the smartphone market, had picked up a $10 million Series A round of funding, and today, the company is officially confirming the news, along with some more details on how it’s been doing in the 2.5 months since it launched. It now has 5 million users across both iOS and Android — a five-fold increase on the 1 million that downloaded the app in its first 10 days. MessageMe aims to carve out a name for itself by offering more ways than the rest of the pack — which includes WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, Viber and Facebook (from which MessageMe gained some notoriety when it was restricted from using Facebook’s social graph API to find friends to use the app) — for users to communicate with each other on its messaging platform. In its case, this is done through notifications via text messages, but also pictures, doodles, video, voice, location and music sent from one user to another. Altogether, usage of these has risen three-fold, to 1,500 per second from 500 65 days ago. From what we understand, although MessageMe is partly founded by people with extensive gaming experience — Arjun Sethi and Justin Rosenthal both worked together at social games company LOLapps ( acquired by 6waves in 2011) — it will be messaging, not games, that will be the revenue driver for the company. Also: no plans to add in advertising, nor to charge for the app. Instead, it will build out premium messaging features such as stickers and money transfers Read more »

Why Internships Are Worth It

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Internships are becoming an increasingly popular way to differentiate yourself from the hoi polloi; in fact, interns are 70% more likely to be hired as full-time employees with a company than candidates with no experience at the company. Not only are interns getting hired more often — but there are companies that offer incredible perks and incentives to attract strong candidates. For example, Amazon interns earn $5,366 as a monthly salary, and Disney interns get free admission to all parks and resorts. SEE ALSO: 10 Creative Social Media Resumes To Learn From The following infographic offers a brief history of the internship, and why it is worth your time to pursue one Read more... More about Careers , Internship , Infographic , Job Search Series , and Business Read more »

Controversial Video Campaign Sparks Conversation and Other Top Comments

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There are two sides to every story, even a viral video. In the top comments above, we've highlighted our readers' reactions to the contentious campaign against Abercrombie and Fitch . After the company's CEO Mike Jeffries publicly stated that he "doesn't want larger people shopping in his store," Greg Karber created a video in which he gives the company's branded clothing to homeless people for free. Karber's intention was to publicly condemn Jeffries' statement, but some of our commenters had an adverse reaction to the video. We've highlighted the debate in the gallery above. Which side of the controversy do you agree with? Let us know in the comments section below Read more... More about Viral Video , Social Media , Top Comments , and Conversations Read more »

How Hike, India’s Fast Growing Mobile Messaging App, Is Banking On SMS & Local Diversity To Beat The Big Boys

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It’s still practically a newborn but Indian mobile messaging app Hike is already channelling almost a billion messages a month between its five million registered users. Those numbers sound insignificant when you stack them up against the big beasts of the messaging space – WhatsApp claims 200 million+ monthly active users , and some 600 billion in and outbound messages – but Hike’s growth is  impressive when you consider it’s only just over four months old. WhatsApp, of course, has been around for almost four years. Mobile messaging is hot property right now, with tech giants like Facebook  and most recently Google  bent on owning the messaging space. The reason for all this interest in cross-platform chit-chat is that mobile messaging looks poised to steal social networking’s crown jewels: aka the cool factor, and thus the user engagement (Hike incorporates social status updates and emoji-based moods into its messaging app, to hang on the social chain). But the idea that there can be one ultimate mobile messaging winner — or one player as dominant as Facebook in the full-fat social networking space — seems unlikely. And that’s what Hike is banking on to disrupt WhatsApp and keep Facebook Messenger and its ilk from crashing its just-getting-started party. There’s no doubt that local market realities intercede much more on mobile than on the traditional social networking playground of the desktop, especially in emerging markets where device, network and carrier variations influence how people communicate based on how they can afford to communicate. Read more »

Grubless? Online Takeout Giants GrubHub And Seamless In Talks To Merge

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Today, thanks to the maturation of the web, digital tech, and smartphones now in seemingly every pocket, startups are finding it easier than ever before to build scalable solutions to finally address the many inefficiencies in our food manufacturing, production and distribution systems. As interest in food tech balloons, one area in particular appears to already be at the tipping point: Online and mobile food delivery. Over the last few days, we’ve hearing about a merger between two of the largest companies in the space. Rumor has it that “arch rivals”  GrubHub and Seamless  are in talks which could see them join forces as part of a merger. While our sources tell us that the talks are serious, the terms of the merger are not yet clear and, of course, any potential deal could fall through. Furthermore, it’s not yet clear what kind of synergies would take place, how management of the new entity would be structured or even what the new business will be called. The two companies would not confirm on the record on any of the above. Read more »

Google Play In-App Purchase Revenue Growth Jumps 7X In One Year, Subscription Revenue Growing 2X Each Quarter

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Google held a session today at I/O 2013 about how to make money on Android, and in the initial few minutes it shared some updated stats around Google Play revenues and how those are progressing. Not surprisingly, the big growth is coming with in-app purchases, though Google’s recently launched subscription model is also making headway. Google said that its in-app revenues through Play are up 700 percent since the same time last year, which is reflected in the top apps as listed by highest grossing titles in the Play rankings. Subscriptions, which just launched around 12 months ago, is also making headway, doubling inbound revenue each quarter according to Google. Some apps which use subscription as their exclusive revenue model are now cracking the top grossing list, like Pandora. The momentum is still clearly behind in-app purchase, and as a result Google suggested that there’s good reason to consider that as a revenue model when building apps Read more »

Google I/O: Watch The Live Video Stream Here

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Google’s annual I/O conference  in San Francisco kicks off this morning at 9am PT/noon ET and, as usual, the good folks from Mountain View are making a live video stream of the event available for all of you who can’t be there in person. Unlike other years, when Google ran two separate keynotes on the first two days of I/O, the company is only running a single keynote this time around. Last year’s skydiving antics definitely set the bar very high for this year’s event and so far, we haven’t heard how Google plans to top this today. We do expect to hear quite a bit about Google+, however, and the rumor mill also predicts the launch of the next version of Google Talk/Hangouts, some news about Compute Engine and, of course, Google Glass – the star of last year’s event. The keynote is scheduled to last for a whopping three hours, so grab your coffee, donuts or popcorn, kick back, and enjoy the show. If you can’t watch the video, you can also find our play-by-play live blog here . Read more »