Facebook Offer For Tasmanian Retreat Alarms Facebookers
Via TheNextWeb: Some of you may know that Facebook started a Groupon-like coupon feature called Facebook Offers. It turns out, though, that Facebook hasn't been publicizing it much, which means many people haven't a clue it exists. When a Tasmanian company pilot-testing Facebook's Offers service signed up to trial the service, they saw replies and shares of their $99/night offer spike. Facebook page visitors who "Liked" the resort were automatically received a no-pay coupon that they could redeem if they chose. Well and good, except that many Facebookers panicked: they flagged the note as spam and wondered if their accounts had been hacked. With 3 million people connecting with their Facebook page after the offer went into effect (they had 50 vouchers), and asking to be removed from their "list," Huon Bush Retreats posted an explanatory note on their Facebook page. "We apologise to anyone who finds our offer to be offensive. However there is nothing that we can do to change this. Only Facebook has control of how Offers are distributed."
Lenovo Invests $800 Million to improve its Mobile Gaming Products
Lenovo is spending the better part of a billion dollars (even more impressive in local currency: five billion yuan) to improve its chances in the mobile products game. Thousands of new employees will populate a new production facility in Wuhan and produce smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices--for both its native Chinese market and overseas. The new factory will open in October 2013, and Lenovo estimates total revenues from this facility alone will reach 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) by 2014 and reach 50 billion yuan in ten years. Lenovo (the "Apple of China") recently revealed its first Intel-powered smartphone, and is best known for producing solid, if very tradtional laptops based on the boxy ThinkPad design for enterprise customers, which it purchased from IBM. The investment is yet another sign that the future market for laptops is dim.
Rovio Reports 2011 Financials
Via The Guardian: Rovio, the company behind the hit game Angry Birds, just revealed their high-flying financials for the 2011 fiscal year. The company revealed total revenues of $98.1 million, and the earnings were largely due to the Angry Birds game and franchise. Angry Birds had 648 million downloads by the end of 2011. In March, the company launched the latest version of their game--Angry Birds Space--which saw 10 million downloads in the first three days it was out. The company added on about 200 employees (from 20) at the start of the year. Rovio is also opening a Stockholm studio.
LG to launch TV sets with inbuilt Google TV
LG is the number two TV set maker in the world, and now Reuters is reporting that in just two weeks on May 21st the Korean firm will reveal its own net-connected TV injected with Google TV technology. The Mexican-made sets will go on sale in the U.S. as LG tries to grab a bigger share of the young and growing connected TV market, and then depending on the success they may be offered elsewhere in the world. The move is said to be a preemptive one, designed to grab market share before the arrival of the Apple television (which, at this point, is still an entirely imaginary product) and comes just as rival TV makers like Sony are seeing their TV divisions experience huge losses.
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