Tech giant Microsoft Tuesday became the first major company to endorse “crowd commerce,” a fast-growing form of eCommerce that is gaining traction in some of Silicon Valley’s highest circles.
Simply put, the goal of crowd commerce is to connect an army of mobile smart phone users with individuals or businesses that need things from those users, and are willing to pay for them.
Microsoft will be using this ‘crowd’ to seek out tens of thousands of photos of businesses around the country as part of a massive project to improve photographic content on its search engine Bing.com.
“We’ll be making the most of this great imagery on Bing this fall and winter, and we hope that it will become another strong feature to help attract customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC through email.
Microsoft has placed that enormous challenge on the shoulders of Gigwalk, a Mountain View, California startup that launched just nine weeks ago, but has already gained enormous interest from the Apple iPhone community with its flagship Gigwalk application.
The Gigwalk app matches iPhone users (looking to make a few extra dollars) with companies that need a specific location-based task done, and are willing to shell out the cash for it.
Gigwalk Task via iPhone
“They [Microsoft] asked us, hey, could your workforce be deployed to capture panoramic photos, tens of thousands of businesses, in all the metro areas you support?” Gigwalk CEO Ariel Seidman tells CNBC. “So we said sure.”
With the lure of quick and easy payouts—Microsoft will pay between $4 and $7 per photo job—Seidman, a former Yahoo mobile products manager, has successfully grown a large following.
Tuesday, the company announced that its user base has reached 50,000, and that companies are now posting over 100,000 paying ‘gigs’ (the app’s slang for a job) on its app.
Seidman has also attracted seed money from some Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors (including LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman).
Landing Microsoft as a major partner was not without its challenges. In order to allay potential concerns about Gigwalk’s near-anonymous user-base (pretty much anyone can sign up), and to justify the cost the program would incur to Microsoft, Gigwalk first had to prove its users were up to the task via a trial pilot program.
“We certainly wanted to be convinced that we could get good overall quality from a large casual workforce,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “And the results of our trial in New York City suggested we could.”
Gigwalk’s clients also include navigation company TomTom and the popular website Menupages.com.
A huge deposit of uranium India has found in a southern state could turn out to be among the biggest reserves of the mineral in the world, reports said on Tuesday citing the head of the country's atomic energy department.
Reports say the new find in southern India could make it the biggest uranium mine in the world.
The Tumalappalli mine in Andhra Pradesh state has confirmed 49,000 tons of ore and there are indications that it could hold reserves totaling three times its current size, The Times of India quoted Srikumar Banerjee as saying.
"If that be the case, it will become the largest uranium mine in the world," Banerjee, secretary at the Department of Atomic Energy, said, adding production will start in six months.
The mine's proven reserve is enough to support a 8,000 mega watts nuclear power plant for 40 years, the report added.
India plans to expand its nuclear power generation capacity from 4.7 gigawatts (GW) now to 7.3 GW by the end of March 2012 and 20 GW by 2020.
To make this possible, the country has signed a landmark nuclear power deal with the United States and opened up its estimated $150 billion nuclear power market to private reactor builders such as GE and Areva.
India, which has a total installed power generation capacity of 164 gigawatts (GW), aims to raise it to 187 GW by the end of March 2012. Even this target is modest, given a 12 percent peak-hour power shortfall that crimps the country's near 9 percent economic growth.
Tencent Holdings Ltd, the world's third largest Internet firm, aims to be China's Facebook, Twitter and Google -- all rolled into one.
While the company's market value has quadrupled to USD 50 billion over the past 2-1/2 years, its revenue and profit growth is expected to slow over the next few years, forcing the company to rethink its future.
Tencent is aggressively diversifying away from the highly competitive online gaming industry and into China's social networking, e-commerce and mobile search engine sector.
The company, an investor darling whose mascots are a pair of chubby penguins with wraparound scarves, faces many risks, including managing its partners, content regulations and strong competition from rivals such as Baidu Inc, SINA Corp and Alibaba.com.
"Tencent needs to look for other gold mines to counter slowing online gaming growth. Otherwise, they won't be able to maintain the strong growth they've had over the past few years," said Hover Xiao, an analyst at technology research firm IDC.
Tencent, which runs China's largest instant-messaging service QQ and online gaming community with 674 million QQ accounts in total, has been relying on its games business for about 60% of its revenues, which totalled 19.6 billion yuan (USD 3 billion) in 2010.
This month, Tencent opened its once-proprietary platform by launching a so-called Q+ platform, an open system championed by Facebook and Apple to attract external software developers to boost users and grow revenue.
With this launch, Tencent can allow third-party developers to market their products to the legions of QQ users on the platform through a revenue-sharing scheme.
"The idea is to make sure users can do everything they want in an Internet site. It's a way for Internet companies to make sure users stick to their sites rather than go to their rivals," said Jane Wang, an analyst with UK-based research firm Ovum.
Tencent dominates China's USD 5-billion online gaming market with hits such as Dungeon & Fighter where players slay monsters like lightsabres and Three Kingdoms where swordsmen battle in ancient China.
"There is a ceiling in Internet value-added services, so that is giving us a sense of urgency," Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma told reporters this month.
"How can we push the team and company to adjust our DNA and change our business model to get revenues from business-to-business space? It may need 5-6 years, or even 10 years, but we'll do what it takes," said the 39-year-old, who is among the top 10 Chinese billionaires on Forbes' list.
Headquartered in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, Tencent is now seeking to capture China's booming e-commerce market, setting sights on web advertising and online malls after relying on individual online consumers for its revenue over the past 10 years.
It also hopes to grab a larger piece of pie in the wireless search engine sector, hoping to take the No. 2 spot in China in the next few years, Ma said, declining to give a more specific timeframe. In the wireless search engine sector, Tencent now has 14.7%, ranking behind Baidu's 36.1% and Easou.com's 19.1%, industry figures showed.
GROWTH SPUTTERING
With growth in China's online gaming sector slowing to teen percentages from over 20 percent now, Tencent, a third owned by Naspers, needs new ideas to lock in its millions of users.
"Investors in the capital markets are bound to give them a lot of pressure and also, they are facing increasing stiff competition in the market," Xiao said.
Baidu, China's No.1 search engine, has increased its focus on e-commerce and online video. Last Friday, it said it was buying China's leading travel website Qunar to boost its foothold in the search engine market.
SINA runs the country's top microblogging site, a Twitter-like product that Sina is bent on expanding further. Alibaba is China's No. 1 e-commerce company.
"Truth be told, we do have some regrets for being way too careful in some areas. We should be started investing when we saw the opportunity and we've paid a price playing catch-up," the lanky Ma told reporters.
Over the past five years, Tencent's revenue and net profit rocketed by seven-fold, with annual growth averaging over 60%. But this will slow to about 30% over the next two to three years, according to forecasts from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
With 2011 P/E at 28.16 that outpaces the industry, 29 out of 34 analysts had a buy or strong buy for Tencent, with 4 recommending a hold and 1 rating it underperform, I/B/E/S estimates showed.
Competition in the Chinese online game sector is cut-throat, with competitors such as Shanda Games and Changyou.com upping their ante.
Eric Wen, analyst at Mirae Asset, likened Tencent's launch of Q+ platform to China's transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented one that would be key to its future prosperity.
"We believe at a time of limited content supply and poor infrastructure, Tencent's planning economy actually works. But as bandwidth opens up and content supply multiplies, Tencent must transition to the "market economy"," Wen said in a research report.
So far, Tencent has poured resources into providing more functions on its Qzone social networking site, Facebook-like QQ Friends and iTunes-inspired QQ Music. Half of Tencent's 12,000 staff are in research and development, with the company spending over 10 percent of its revenues in research and development.
"Tencent is undoubtedly a strong survivor in China's Internet business because of its big number of users. It has also carved out a business that is hard for some to emulate," said Wu Da, fund manager at Beijing-based Changsheng Fund Management Co Ltd, a joint venture with DBS Asset Management.
"But this sector changes too quickly and it's sometimes difficult to see where it's headed. Is Facebook, or Twitter's model the best or is it Tencent's? A major uncertainty lies in how active these users are on these different platforms."
It's a down economy. Men would rather go dutch on a date. Guys, I have bad news. The more attractive your date is (yes!), the less likely she's going to help cover the dinner bill (d'oh!).
A British study — naturally — reveals that hot women don't think they should have to pay on a date.
Less attractive women are more willing to chip in. Why?
Pretty girls put all that time and effort into looking good and figure they bring more to the table at dinner.
"The intriguing finding comes from a study of 416 men and women who were asked to rate themselves for attractiveness, ahead of going on a series of hypothetical dates." Ah, they rated themselves on their looks. So a woman whom you and I might consider so-so, but who thinks of herself as the next Heidi Klum, will have the confidence to say, "You are one lucky dude to be with me," and order another lemon drop. On your dime. Meantime, a drop-dead gorgeous gal who can't stand the sight of herself in the mirror will just be glad you're talking to her.
Men in the study agreed that they would be more willing to pay the total bill for a good-looking date, though men who considered themselves handsome were less inclined to do so. Perfect. Barbie and Ken deserve each other.
Who should really pay on a date? The article consulted etiquette experts who say the person who requested the date must cover the cost.
I have a different question. If an attractive woman expects a man to pay for dinner, what does the man expect in return? Ah, my friends, they didn't cover that in the survey, but I think we know the answer.
Which leads me to another shocking headline: Sex Can Kill You. Or at least give you a coronary. Tufts researchers found that sudden bursts of activity — like sex — make it 2.7 times more likely someone will have a heart attack. Exactly how did they monitor and measure that?? Still, frazzled housewives now have a better excuse for bowing out for the night than coming down with a headache.
However, take heart. Your chances of avoiding a heart attack during sex improve if you get regular exercise. Here's one unusual way to do that. I don't mean to cast the first stone, but... pole dancing for Jesus?
Gold always falls in summer. That is the conventional wisdom among gold traders, conditioned over decades in which the period from June to August has been characterised by slack demand for bullion.
Indian gold buying, which traditionally follows seasonal patterns, is now seeing a pickup even in the quieter months like June.
But this summer has been rather different. On Monday, gold surpassed $1,600 a troy ounce for the first time. Even when it did suffer a brief correction at the end of June, it dropped only as far as $1,478, a level that only three months earlier would have been a record.
It is a swirl of macroeconomic worries – from sovereign default in the eurozone and the US to the possibility of a third round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve – that have helped push gold through the psychological barrier of $1,600.
Yet one driver that has underpinned the market has gone largely unnoticed: an unexpected rush of buying from India.
With India battling high inflation, gold has found favour there as a means of wealth preservation, just as in China and other parts of Asia. According to the most recent data from the World Gold Council, India and China accounted for 58 per cent of global physical gold demand in the first quarter of this year.
In recent weeks, though, Asian buyers and western investors have been taking turns to drive prices higher. Investments in exchange traded funds backed by physical bullion rose to a record 2,156 tonnes on Friday, according to Barclays Capital, while investors boosted their bets on higher gold prices in the US futures market by the most since September 2009.
Monday’s jump in the gold price came as part of a wider risk-aversion trade that saw US and European bank shares sold off, the euro slide to a record low against the Swiss franc and yields on Spanish and Italian debt resume their upward march: a flight to safety.
But the scale of the Indian buying has surprised traders because its gold market is usually quiet in June. The country has traditionally bought gold in seasonal patterns, dictated by festivals such as Akshaya Tritiya in May and Diwali in September, as well as the wedding season, which runs from September to December.
The shift in buying patterns from India, the world’s top consumer of bullion, is changing the seasonality of the global gold market. While gold’s performance in the summer months has tended to be sluggish over the past three decades, the yellow metal this year has risen 4.5 per cent since the start of June.
Abha Kachaliya, Mumbai-born chartered accountant in her mid-20s, is typical of the trend. As a child, she remembers her mother would dress her up to go out to buy gold at Zaveri Bazaar, the city’s precious metals hub, for Diwali, the festival of lights.
“It was a special and exciting moment,” she says. “Every year for Diwali the whole family would go out together to buy as much gold as we could afford.”
Now, though, Ms Kachaliya takes a more opportunistic approach to buying gold. Although Diwali continues to be a special day for her family, she does not feel that is the only day she can buy gold any longer. “Whenever I have a chance I invest in gold, be it at the bazaar or online I’ll jump on any good deal.”
Buyers like Ms Kachaliya helped the Indian market buck the normal trend in June. Large bullion-dealing banks reported a surge in buying from the country, a factor traders say has been instrumental in keeping prices close to historical highs. Sales to India from UBS were more than double the level of a year earlier.
“Undoubtedly over time the market is becoming less seasonal,” says Tom Kendall, precious metals strategist at Credit Suisse.
There are several reasons for the shift. One is simply the growing wealth in India and across emerging economies that has lifted demand for gold.
“What used to be wedding season now lasts for nine months of the year,” Mr Kendall says. “There were not enough auspicious days of the year, so they found some more.”
But Indians are also beginning to approach gold more like western investors, traders and analysts say, putting a proportion of their wealth into gold and buying opportunistically on dips. Atul Shah, head of commodities at Mumbai-based brokering firm Emkay, says the days when people acquired gold only during festivals and weddings are over. “Indian consumers are buying gold all year round,” he says.
Vishal Kapoor, head of wealth management at Standard Chartered in Mumbai, says Indian consumption habits have changed over the past decade. “In recent times we have seen a shift in buying trends,” says Mr Kapoor. “What is different of late is the availability and the acceptance of gold as a financial asset and not just as something you keep in a locker at home.”
If gold’s recent run, the bullish futures bets and sums being poured into ETFs are any guide, then western buyers may share the Indian way of thinking. As Mr Shah of Emkay says: “Whenever they see the price dip they immediately buy more as they are confident that valuations are going to go up again.”
( Source: Financial Times )
Computer hackers broke into the website of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling British tabloid and altered the front page to show a fake report about the media mogul's death.
The hackers redirected visitors to the twitter feed of hacker group Lulz Security, which came to prominence after several cyber assaults on the websites of Sony, the CIA, and News Corp's Fox TV.
"We have owned Sun/News of the World," LulzSec posted on Twitter late on Monday, when Tuesday's front page story on The Sun's website read "Media moguls body discovered." News International, the British subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp, is at the center of a phone hacking scandal rocking his business empire, British politicians and senior police.
Earlier on Monday, LulzSec member Sabu tweeted the hackers were "sitting on (Sun/News of the World) emails" and would release a statement on Tuesday.
Sabu also begun to tweet what it said were the contact details and logins of News International employees including ex-chief executive Rebekah Brooks.
It was not possible to verify if the details were genuine.
News International said the company was "aware of what was happening and that the company's technical teams were working on the it." In late June, the hacker group said it was disbanding with one last data dump, which included internal AOL and AT&T documents.
IBM beat earnings expectations and raised its full-year guidance, helped by strong sales of its computers and software. Its shares rebounded in after-hours trading.
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| IBM Inc |
The tech company reported earnings excluding items rose to $3.09 from $2.61 a share in the year-earlier period.
The company also said signings of new business at its services division surged more than expected during the second quarter, and raised its full-year guidance by 10 cents to $13.25 a share; analysts had expected $13.22 a share.
Revenue for the quarter increased 13 percent to $26.67 billion from $23.72 billion a year ago. IBM said it logged double-digit percent increases for sales of hardware, software and services.
Analysts had expected IBM to report earnings of $3.03 a share on revenue of $25.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
"IBM's results in my view satisfied my expectations as a shareholder and as I look for the balance of the earnings reports this week, I think it's going to set a pretty good tone," said Keith Wirtz, president and chief investment officer of Fifth Third Asset Management. "It was a solid report. They not only exceeded expectations on the top line, they exceeded expectations on the net ... Backlog on the services side was better than expected."
The resulted included a one-time charge of 10 cents a share for the amortization of purchased intangible assets and other acquisition-related charges, as well as a one-time gain of 1 cent a share for changes related to fluctuations in its retirement plan holidings due to market activity.
Net income rose to $3.66 billion, or $3 a share, from $3.39 billion, or $2.61 a share, in the year-earlier quarter.
The company's gross profit margins increased nearly 1 percent to 46.4 percent.
Signings for new business, a gauge closely watched by analysts, rose 16 percent to $14.3 billion. That eased investor concerns after the number dropped in the first quarter.
Deutsche Bank had said in a research note that Wall Street expectations were for signings of $12 billion to $13 billion.
Investors believe that signings is a key indicator of future profits. But IBM says the focus should be more on total backlog of business, which grew by $15 billion during the quarter to $144 billion.
IBM shares ended slightly lower in regular trading Monday, but rebounded after the company's earnings report. Click here for the latest after-hour quotes for IBM here.
IBM's results came after a strong report from chip giant Intel that showed consumers and enterprises have been spending more on tech services.
The new version of Microsoft Office will also hit the markets in a few weeks and could spark an increase in buying from corporate clients for IBM.
As the deadline for raising ceiling debt limit lingering, US lawmakers have tentatively reached a plan to raise a debt limit. What will be the final deal still nobody knows but, if we see the clues coming from different indicators.
For example Gold Prices as it break out above $1600 an ounce and stay firm above it as demand has been exploded as the deadline nears. Investors are looking for safe heaven that send the Gold prices higher. Silver prices has been soared due to the fear in world financial markets. Credit Rating agencies are about to downgrade United States and financial firms according to the reports.
Fitch Ratings said Monday if the debt ceiling was not raised before Aug. 2 it would place the AAA rating on "watch negative," which means it could downgrade it within a three-to-six-month period. This echoed similar warnings last week from the other two big rating agencies, Moody's and S&P.
Obama has set a Friday deadline for congressional leaders to agree on a budget deal. The White House says the July 22 deadline would give Congress enough leeway to write and pass legislation before Aug. 2.
The United States will default on its financial obligations by Aug. 2 if Congress does not allow the U.S. Treasury to sell more debt by then. That would increase interest rates and could force the U.S. economy back into recession.
Layoffs in the United states continued as big companies looking for cost cutting or shutting down its operations. Cisco Inc and Borders Group today announced another round of layoffs.
Borders Group, the second largest book store chain announced that it will shuts down all its stores as company was unable to find a buyer and it will sell itself to a group of liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources.
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| Borders Group Inc |
Borders was unable to overcome competition from larger rival Barnes & Noble and from Amazon.com, which began to dominate book retail when the industry shifted largely online.
Borders, which declared bankruptcy in February, also never caught up to its rivals' e-reader sales, namely Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook.
Borders had hoped to sell itself to buyout firm Najafi Cos, which owns the Book-of-the-Month Club.
While Najafi was willing to pay $435 million for the assets, the deal fell apart last week after creditors objected to terms that would have allowed Najafi to liquidate after completing the sale.
Earlier Monday, Reuters reported that Books-A-Million, the nation's third-largest bookstore chain, was in talks to acquire a small number of Borders stores, citing sources close to Borders' bankruptcy.
Representatives for Borders did not address the report when contacted by Reuters, and the company's statement did not say whether formal talks had taken place.
The Hilco group will begin liquidations as early as Friday, with the process to conclude sometime in September, Borders said.
The bookseller will seek bankruptcy court approval of the closing procedures at a hearing Thursday in U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan.
Andrew Glenn, an attorney for Borders, told Reuters last week the company expected a liquidation sale to bring in between $250 million and $284 million.
Cisco Systems plans to cut its workforce by 11,500 employees as part of its plan to cut annual expenses by $1 billion and revive its business.
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| Cisco Systems |
The company also plans to sell its manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico, to Foxconn and transfer 5,000 employees to the contract manufacturing company as part of the deal.
Analysts had predicted thousands of job cuts after Cisco said in May that it planned to reorganize the company which has been losing ground in the network equipment business.
The company announced more cuts than some analysts expected.
The job cuts will result in pre-tax restructuring charges "not expected to exceed $1.3 billion over several quarters," the company said.
( Source: Reuters )
Citigroup profits surged in the second quarter, smashing Wall Street estimates and sending shares higher before the market's open, even though the bank's revenue was essentially flat from the previous year.
Citigroup's second-quarter net income rose 22 percent to $3.3 billion as the bank lost less money on bad loans. Earnings per share came in at $1.09, topping estimates of 96 cents a share. A year ago, the company earned 90 cents a share.
Shares gained 3 percent in premarket trading.
The financial services group reported $16.3 billion in revenue, slightly lower than the previous year due to a revenue drop at Citi Holdings, the unit devoted to ridding the company of its toxic assets.
According to Thomson Reuters, analysts expected Citigroup to earn 96 cents a share on revenue of $1.98 billion.
It was the sixth consecutive quarterly profit for Citigroup, which needed $45 billion in U.S. bailouts to survive the financial crisis.
"Revenues were higher than we expected. The actual reserve release came in below expectations," Anthony Polini, analyst at Raymond James, told CNBC. "So the quality of earnings given a little lower tax rate seems to be better than the prior quarter."
Profit growth had come mainly from the bank setting aside less money to cover bad loans, which is not a source of profits long term.
Since December, when the U.S. government sold off the last of its common share stake in Citigroup, Chief Executive Vikram Pandit has been trying to show investors that the bank can move beyond recovery to growth.
"Citi achieved another solid quarter of operating performance as we continue to execute our strategy," Pandit said in a statement.
Boosting business has been difficult this year for most US banks, as weak fixed-income trading and market volatility weighed heavily on Citigroup and its main rivals.
JPMorgan Chase said on Thursday that bond trading revenue fell in the second quarter, though the drop-off was not as bad as some investors had feared.
The two earnings beats come as financials have vastly underperformed the rest of the market through the year and expectations have been low.
"There's got to be a crowded trade on the upside down the road," Polini said in general of the banks, on which he has a strong buy rating. "They're being killed not by the fundamental outlook but by the regulatory, political and macro uncertainty. If you believe those clouds will thin these are great buying opportunities."
This year, Pandit has tried to rebuild Citigroup's investment bank, which lost talent, business and reputation during the crisis. Since taking over the bank at the start of the crisis, he has shed assets and tried to refocus Citigroup on its main banking businesses.
This spring Citigroup reinstated a nominal dividend, after shrinking its outstanding share count with the 1-for-10 reverse split.
Investors remain skeptical that the bank's recovery is completely over.
Citigroup's shares have fallen more than 13 percent since the split took effect, and closed down 1.1 percent at $39.02 on Thursday.
© 2011 CNBC.com
