Follow Twitter Accounts Without One

If you are located in the US, Twitter is now providing the ability to follow anyone on Twitter through SMS, even if you do not have a Twitter account yourself. The feature is called Fast Follow and was presented on Twitter’s blog with some other SMS tips. It seems pretty simple and straight forward according to the blog’s description. Just send a message to the Twitter shortcode from your phone as “follow [TwitterAccount]”. So if you wanted to Follow Steve Patterson (@srpatterson) then send a message to 40404 like “follow SRPatterson”. You will then begin to receive all their tweats as text messages.

Groupon Offers Personalized Deals

The Groupon way has been to offer up one deal per day per city. But yesterday, they began a new program with new deals. It is called Personalized Deals, and is expected to revolutionized the company.

Personalized Deals allows subscribers in New York City, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles to be offered deals that are tailored to them, their tastes and their past purchases. Groupon subscribers complete on online profile as well to help the company get to know them even better.

YouTube Increases Video Length to 15 Minutes

If you have ever felt that the amount of time provided to you by YouTube was just too short, you will be pleased to know that the video-sharing site has announced an increase in the video upload limit from ten minutes to fifteen minutes for non-partners. Whatever you like to film, you will now be able to capture more footage to put online.

In a bid to establish a major presence among Internet streaming music services, VEVO and YouTube have made public their partnering with American Express in initiating a live-streamed concerts to be called "Unstaged: An Original Series From American Express."

On August 5th, the first of five concerts commences with an event in Madison Square Garden featuring the group Arcade Fire. It will be concurrent with the band's August 3rd release of "The Suburbs", their latest album. Also performing in the event are The Roots and also John Legend, both of whom have album releases this year. The Arcade Fire concert in New York is only the beginning of this outstanding program of five musical events planned by VEVO,YouTube and Amex.

Borders Creates New and Used Textbook Marketplace

Borders, based in Ann Arbor Michigan, has launched a new Textbook Marketplace this week for students to purchase greatly discounted textbooks for class. Over 1.4 million textbooks are available currently in the marketplace. Discounts can be as high as 90% off the new price for the same class material. The site was developed in partnership with Alibris and offers books for college, elementary school and everything in between. Also included are supplemental books that are often referenced in class.

There is no way that LeBron James made use of a decision engine when he was in the midst of making The Decision but that did not stop Microsoft’s Bing from getting deeply involved in the announcement. Never has such a display of hype been presented in the name of entertainment since Geraldo Rivera embarrassed himself in front of the world when he discovered two bottles of liquor in a vault in Chicago.

MySpace Searches for Ad Revenue

With MySpace losing customers at a 13% pace over the past 52 weeks, they now face the difficult task of selling their advertising space to one of the big ad networks. Their last deal was made in 2006 with Google for $900 over the course of four years. But since then, their viewership has eroded as Facebook has overtaken the social web space. They currently in talks with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo but will most likely receive a significant reduction in revenue for this contract compare to the last one.

Amazon Wants Android Users as Readers

Amazon today released a Kindle App for Android owners to allow them to access the 600,000+ digital content pieces (e-books) available from Amazon, without owning a Kindle. And the new mobile app provides a feature to sync your Kindle with your Android so you do not lose your place in a book when you switch reading devices. Books are available at discount prices compared to hardcover new releases, often times in the $10 range and free chapters are provided while you make a purchase decision.

Apple Sells 3 Million iPads in the First 11 Weeks

According to a press release from Apple this week, the company sold 3 million units in the United States in just the first 80 days that the new device has been on the market. This is ahead of schedule and accelerating from the 1 and 2 million sold marks already reached. The company speaks glowingly about the advantages of the iPad over other ways to connect to the Internet. And users feel similar emotions with a long battery life and easy to use functionality, the laptop like device is a winner. While keeping up with demand has been a small issue for the company.

When giving away promotional items during a marketing campaign, it has become more and more popular to give potential customers something they can actually use instead of something that stands a real good chance of being deposited in the nearest trash can. Customized USB drives are the newest rage in promotional items. Convenient to carry and able to be packed with useful information, corporations have discovered that USB drives offer effective ways to circulate large amounts of data as well as the company name and logo.