Business

On the heels of Google buying Wildfire and Salesforce nabbing Buddy Media, we have heard from two very reliable sources, plus a third anonymous source, that Gannett Co., the media giant that owns USA Today and other properties, is buying BLiNQ Media. The price for the Facebook advertising software and service is up to $92 million over a period of three to four years, with a quarter of that amount, $23 million, coming up front. We hear the purchase agreement has been signed and the pair are now marching towards a close at the end of this month. The rationale behind the deal is clear: when brands buy ad placements on Gannett properties, it could use BLiNQ to also sell them ads on social sites and collect a solid margin. Gannett is looking to BLiNQ, which has built up a profitable Facebook ads API business, to become G’s equivalent of the Washington Post Company’s SocialCode, its social media marketing and analytics agency (which picked up 15 Digg engineers in May). Gannett and BLiNQ, T...

Billy Gallagher is a writer for TechCrunch. He is also the president and editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. Billy previously worked at The Stanford Daily for two volumes as a managing editor of news. He has also worked in sports and staff development at The Daily. In March of 2012 the Friends of The Stanford Daily awarded him... ? Learn More During the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, Apple aired three ads for its Genius Bar. Over the ensuing weekend, a number of widely-read blogs posted mostly negative pieces about the ads. Today, Apple’s ad agency told Mashable that the ads are no longer running and they were only intended to run the first weekend of the Games. Again, several posts were written on widely-read sites. And therein lies the real “Genius” of the ads: we’re still talking about them. Mashable, Forbes and Venturebeat all embedded at least one of the ads in their posts today. MacRumors linked to the ads on Apple and YouTube. GigaOm was the only reputable source that ...

Billy Gallagher is a writer for TechCrunch. He is also the president and editor in chief of The Stanford Daily. Billy previously worked at The Stanford Daily for two volumes as a managing editor of news. He has also worked in sports and staff development at The Daily. In March of 2012 the Friends of The Stanford Daily awarded him... ? Learn More Buffer, a social media manager that aims to become a “widespread sharing standard,” opened its API to developers today. Buffer lets users post to their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts (Google+ isn’t as lenient with its API) and offers the usual array of analytic feedback. However, its focus on non-original content sharing, especially photos, videos and articles, and individual users differentiates it from a crowded market. While competitors like HootSuite and Sprout Social mainly target companies by offering them a dashboard for managing media, co-founder Leo Widrich tells me Buffer has a wide variety of users, many of whom use the se...

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More Investors demand more revenue from Facebook, and Sheryl’s got just the APIs to give it to them. Over the last two days, three major ads tech partners have revamped their products with recently released Facebook APIs that allow brands to track and optimize for on-site conversions including app installs, buy home page ads and logout page takeovers, and target ads specifically to mobile. The new capabilities in tools from Buddy Media, Nanigans, and BLiNQ Media (who just updated today) will attract ad dollars from app developers, huge brands, and local businesses. That...

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More For those of you who get frustrated with the idea that in many social networks, you are not just a user but also a product, prepare to grit your teeth a bit more: a new forecast out from Gartner notes that advertising will remain the main way that social media services make money. The analysts predict that this year social media revenue will generate $16.9 billion in revenues, with more than half of that, $8.8 billion, to come from advertising. The estimates are coming out on the same day that social gaming giant Zynga is reporting earnings, and days before Facebook posts its results. That $16.9 billio...

Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More As Amazon gears up for its quarterly earnings later this week, the company today has announced an expansion that points to its big ambitions in digital media, and an increasing focus on how that growth will come from outside the U.S.. Amazon is opening a new R&D hub in London focused on developing services and APIs for TVs, games consoles, smartphones and PCs, with the aim to roll those out across the company’s global footprint. That is a major development for a company that has been somewhat slow to roll out its newest services beyond its U.S.-homebase. Amazon says that the eight-floor, 47,000-squ...

Looking for a guide to taking on the challenges of motherhood and a fresh CEO position in one fell swoop? Sorry, Marissa Mayer, we can’t help you there! But for all our other readers, we’ve rounded up the week’s top digital media resources to help you tackle your latest challenge. If you’re seeking additional mojo in the workplace, scroll down to Business & Marketing. Look out for this week’s guides to daily deal sites, data science and seeking a job in the digital era. We’ve also got tips and tricks to power up your social reach, where to find the 10 must-follow Twitter accounts for foodies, home and garden lovers, and our list of the five things you didn’t know you could do on LinkedIn. And if you’re feeling like a good story, dig into our exciting history of HTML5 or our timeline on the rise and fall of Digg. Have at it! 11 Celebrities Who Reinvented Themselves With Social Media Whether utilizing followers to pursue opportunity or re-imagining a famous role, these celebrities h...

Free speech activists in Afghanistan launched Twitter and Facebook campaigns on Sunday to fight government media curbs as well as to dispel incorrect information being perpetuated by clashing NATO and Taliban claims. Both NATO and the Taliban have used social media in the past to perpetuate arguments and campaign for individual causes. And Afghani journalists have been pushed against a wall with the government’s new, strict press freedom laws, leaving the public confused about the current state of affairs. Media advocacy groups like Nai have decided to fight back, encouraging the use of social media to provide the public with a more reliable and a somewhat more accessible form of information. In the past, social media has been used to fight conditions like limited women’s rights — a topic the country’s mainstream media can’t easily cover without widespread backlash. “Social media is a free tool to use to transfer information without the influences of the government, warlords, or Talib...