News

Social networking is the fastest growing activity on Web 2.0 – the basic idea behind it is socializing. Everyone has started socializing with each other for nurturing friendship and business. iSocial is a powerful social networking script that helps webmasters build an effecient, user-friendly social networking site.

One can make money on social networking sites through monthly subscriptions and at large, they can make money by placing advertisements. To make money, start an elegant website with a concept that could attract more visitors. A website could make money, only when the website attracts the attention of people towards itself.

iSocial facilitates webmasters to build a RIA-based website which offers a responsive and seamless interface to users. With RIA, users can get fast page loading, easy navigation and smooth handling of site. The Open social developer network in iSocial lets developers with standard JavaScript and HTML create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

Similar to Facebook connect, iSocial comes with iSocial connect to help users carry their credential data to other sites integrated with iSocial connect API. The photo snap features comes with the techniques- clear, filter, distort, frame and scene. The unique features of iSocial don’t stop with this, it includes open ID, multi-lingual support, Shindig and applications, videos, photos, customizable classifieds and much more.

“We are proud to launch the iSocial script with extraordinary features in the web masters’ networking world. We hope they can satisfy their users and earn more moeny with our iSocial script and recommend our excellent script to their friends” said Ms. Sheerin, the Vice President of Ahasan.

For More information visit: http://www.isocial.in

Synchronica plc, the international provider of mobile email and synchronization solutions, has launched an affordable, industry-standard push email and synchronization middleware enabling enterprises to connect entry-level devices to corporate networks. Synchronica Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition is a self-care solution that works on a wide variety of mobile handsets, so employers do not need to invest in a fleet of expensive new smartphones.

Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition Enables Nokia Series 40 Mobile Phones to Connect to Microsoft Exchange

Synchronica Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition is targeted at SMEs, as well as the middle / junior management layers in large enterprises where it can complement existing smartphone-based solutions. It is available immediately at www.synchronica.com/e and can be purchased, downloaded, and deployed on a mobile phone fleet within a few hours.

The cost-effective solution provides carrier-grade security, reliability, and scalability and has already been selected by a major Indian bank for its middle and junior management tiers. The bank is in the process of deploying Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition to an initial 10,000 employees to supplement the smartphones used by executive staff. Synchronica now expects this approach to be replicated in other businesses.

Kathryn Weldon, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Mobility, at Current Analysis says: “What makes Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition different from other enterprise mobile email offerings is that it works on almost any phone in use today. This makes it ideal for today’s tough economic conditions because businesses do not need to spend a fortune on new handsets and expensive contracts to cascade mobile email through the organization and realize productivity gains.”

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica, adds: “We felt there was a gap in the market for a low-cost, business-grade mobile email and synchronization solution that could be installed on the corporate network and managed internally as an alternative to a hosted solution. In today’s climate, where the focus is on improving employee productivity and keeping costs down, an affordable self-care mobility solution hits the right spot. Our solution can cost about half as much per year as competing options and is an ideal supplement enabling smartphone-like functionality on entry-level devices.”

Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition includes a Microsoft Windows installer allowing businesses to install and host it on their own servers.

Mobile Gateway Enterprise Edition key features:

Supports Microsoft Exchange, Sun Java System Communications Suite, and IBM Lotus Domino corporate email servers, as well as IMAP / POP3 consumer email back-ends

Based on the dominant open industry standards Push IMAP (IMAP IDLE) for mobile email and SyncML (OMA DS) for synchronization of contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes

Zero footprint architecture requires no additional client software to be installed on the handset

Built-in over-the-air device provisioning (OMA CP) using self-care portal enables end-users to configure their devices automatically without requiring corporate IT involvement

Administration portal keeps setup and ongoing management to a minimum and enables IT administrators to define individual and group policies for email, contact, calendar, task, and note entries

Provides strong security (SSL encryption) and scalability from five users up to tens of thousands of users

Works on a wide range of handsets in use today – from smartphones to entry-level phones, such as the Nokia Series 40

BT Tradespace, the business social networking website, has marked its second anniversary by signing up its 350,000 member.

A recent review of the site found that there has been a 400% year-on-year growth over the past year, with an average of up to 500 members joining each day since the launch.

In the past two years, nearly 3,000 different communities have been set up by BT Tradespace members to share information and expertise. The most popular BT Tradespace communities include a group for people who run home-based businesses and a community where new or seasoned entrepreneurs can leave advice, ask questions and share top tips.

The site is a dynamic online community for sales and marketing and offers a comprehensive directory of SME products and services. It allows members to use the latest social media tools – podcasts, videos and blogs – to promote themselves and engage with customers, partners and suppliers.

Free and easy to join, BT Tradespace also offers a secure and safe online marketplace trading platform where consumers can buy goods.

Ivan Croxford, general manager, BT Tradespace, said: “These figures show that social networking is not just a passing consumer fad, businesses are embracing it too, because of the obvious benefits it holds for companies of all sizes.

“The internet opens up a global marketplace for SMEs, helping them to compete and prosper in times of mounting economic difficulty. BT Tradespace offers a fantastic platform to exploit the full potential of the web by encouraging an ongoing open and honest dialogue with customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners”.

BT Tradespace research shows that three quarters of smaller companies see the web as a strategic business tool, and 45% make a quarter of their sales online. Social networking extends this playing field by offering SMEs the opportunity to compete with bigger firms, connect with niche audiences and target local markets.

Croxford explained: “The success of BT Tradespace reveals that companies are now realising that to prosper in the digital age, they must embrace the opportunities offered by the web and start using social networks to their full advantage”.

BT Tradespace member Tabitha Potts, who was voted runner-up as ’Mum-Entrepreneur of 2009’ at the Women’s Business Mastermind Awards, believes the site has been an invaluable tool for trading and marketing her company. She said: “I have had 10,000 hits on my BT Tradespace page and some of these have clicked through to my main site generating sales.

“The site has a very nice clean interface and I regularly blog and upload videos. This has worked wonders for my search engine rankings so customers can find me much easier on the Internet”

Lyn and John Hill created a Tradespace page to support their online business HedgePig, commented: “After just one month using the service, our BT Tradespace site had received over 1,600 hits. This corresponded with our main website, seeing a substantial rise in visitors and sales, resulting in a monthly turnover increase of around 20 per cent. We now feel confident in taking our business to the next level and offering a wholesale business-to-business service”

Businesses can get free advice on how to build a successful online presence at the week-long BT Business Experience event being held from 29 June to 3 July 2009. The event taking place in central London is specifically created to show businesses how the very latest technology and business thinking can help them manage their costs, market their business more effectively and make them more competitive especially in the current environment.

About BT Tradespace
BT Tradespace.com is a 350,000-member online community, that enables businesses to sell products and services and connect with other people effectively – both building business and customer relationships.

Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP), a sophisticated social networking for professional men and women. Attendees include business owners, sales professionals, executives and entrepreneurs. Announces its next event “Fast Pace Connections” Speed Networking Event to be held on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 5:30pm to 8:00pm at Blue in White Plains, NY.

This event hosted by Westchester Networking for Professionals and sponsored by Bookkeeping & More Services and Daddy Doggie Daycare. WNFP provides a quick and entertaining way to introduce yourself, promote your business and work your professional pitch with other professionals and business owners with other professionals, one-on-one, a few minutes at a time. Appetizers and “drink specials” will be available.

Attendees should come prepared with a brief introduction of their business and bring business cards. Dress is business casual.

Event Details:

Location: Blue, 99 Church Street, White Plains, NY 10601
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Time: 5:30pm – 8:00pm
Cost: $25.00

Event Website: http://wnfpevents.webs.com/upcomingevent.htm

Advance registration is required, MUST RSVP at [email protected] or REGISTER ONLINE at http://www.wnfp.org
# # #

About WNFP

Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a sophisticated social networking for Professional men and women. Our member network and stylish live events gives professionals and executives an opportunity to unwind, while socializing, networking and building their contacts. Professional men and women can connect with each other and develop long lasting relationships and opportunities for success.

Attending a Westchester for Professionals meeting or social event will give you the benefit to connect with professionals in your area.

Become a “Success Partner” and get listed on our webpage and in our e-newsletter distributions for this event. For more information visit www.wnfp.org or email: [email protected]

Economic declines have led to shrinking budgets for businesses of most sizes across many industries throughout the nation. Despite budget cuts, businesses already active on the Web are realizing the value of Internet marketing and plan to increase their promotional efforts and budgets on the Web this year. That’s according to early results of an informal visitor survey conducted by Toronto Web design and Internet marketing firm, Cost Effective Web Design (www.ekonline.com).
“Our clients and visitors are already actively involved in Internet marketing, meaning they have experience or at least an understanding of its value compared to other marketing tactics,” says Paul Coulter of Cost Effective Web Design. “We asked them to tell us about their upcoming marketing plans–whether they are planning to cut overall budgets or not, and how their future Internet marketing budget will relate to that. We think the results so far say a lot about current trends and the fact that Web-based marketing offers businesses more bang for their buck.”
The following highlights represent preliminary survey results of approximately 100 participants actively engaged enough on the Web to be seeking or soliciting Web design or Internet marketing services:
– 52% of respondents noted that their company recently trimmed budgets, or expects to within a year.
– 76% said their company was expected to increase its Internet marketing budget in 2009.
– 86% of respondents said Internet marketing will account for a larger percentage of their advertising budget within the next three years.
“Almost three quarters of the people taking our survey concede that Internet marketing has been the most cost efficient method of promoting their business,” says Coulter. “That isn’t surprising to us knowing the diverse tactics available on the Web, able to reach hundreds of millions of people around the world, all often costing far less than equivalent print and broadcast campaigns. Of course we at Cost Effective Web Design believe in the effectiveness of Internet marketing. Yet we’re pleased to see that the industry is getting the recognition it deserves from the people who matter most–those putting Web promotion tactics to use to see real growth in real business situations.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new social networking community designed to help its partners more easily connect and collaborate with each other from anywhere around the world to bring new technologies to market and close sales faster and more efficiently.

The new community enables companies to gain real-time access to IBM subject matter experts to support sales leads and client implementations. Partners can also create personalized profiling tools to develop online communities that make their skills visible to other partners, connect with them on new technology innovations and joint sales leads and develop and deliver new technologies online through interactive forums before test-marketing or taking offerings directly to clients.

IBM recently held an online idea exchange with 1,100 global partners to brainstorm new ways to grow profitability and develop skills. One of the leading ideas from that session called for a Web 2.0 approach to help IBM’s partners improve collaboration with each other and establish new relationships across global markets. IDC states that a typical client implementation usually involves more than one IT vendor to develop, deploy and implement an IT solution. In fact, 40 percent of partners who team with each other and build strategic relationships see greater than a 21 percent increase in sales.(1)

IBM is responding with PartnerWorld Communities, bringing together the best in social computing technologies and online community building tools to connect more than 100,000 partners worldwide on emerging business opportunities such as analytics, cloud computing, green IT and economic stimulus projects. The new online forum aims to facilitate partner to partner relationships and enable joint go to market planning and innovative solution building around smart infrastructure opportunities.

With today’s news, IBM is also making it easier for partners to tap these and other business opportunities with a new online skills resource that offers a single view of smarter planet education tools including more than 60 online classes, webcasts and extensive global in-person events on topics such as building a smarter planet and stimulus opportunities, creating dynamic infrastructures, selling to the midmarket, and selling to the CFO (chief financial officer).

Fostering Global Collaboration For More Effective Selling

Based on Lotus Connections, IBM’s enterprise networking and collaboration technology, PartnerWorld Communities enables members to collaborate through a secure network that connects people around a focused task or goal using blogs, forums, private teaming spaces for solution design and market planning activities, social bookmarking and RSS feeds for real-time access to key topics of interest.

For example, as stimulus funding accelerates smart grid projects across the energy and utilities sector, partners can collaborate real-time for faster access to other partners and IBM subject matter experts with the skills required for client implementation. Users can also tailor their homepage to automatically follow subject matter experts and business topics to connect with them on new technology developments and selling innovations.

Collaboration between partners is enhanced through profiles that make capabilities visible across the network, allowing businesses to match themselves with others who share complementary skill sets. Partners can also develop and deliver new technologies online through interactive forums before test-marketing or taking offerings directly to clients.

“We are seeing the emergence of new ecosystems being developed for the IBM smarter planet initiative and key growth plays” said Rich Hume, general manager, IBM Global Business Partners. “For IBM partners, smarter planet is about engaging clients in higher value discussions. With today’s launch of new skills-building and community opportunities for our partners, we are facilitating more effective, efficient selling in this unique economic environment, and jointly laying the groundwork along with our partners for the infrastructure of tomorrow”

Additional features include:

* Ability to create an open profile which can include a partner’s technology offerings, expertise, market reach and primary business interests.
* Live chat and telephone assistance for partners ready to deliver a new solution to the market
* Access to complementary Business Partners to create new solutions and jointly penetrate new markets, and access to IBM subject matter experts to help connect partners with the necessary skills and resources to close deals in the sales pipeline.

Building Smarter Skills

IBM has launched the Business Partner Development Series, an extensive online education and networking forum that connects partners on key skills building designed to help them identify new partnerships and create new routes to market. The online resource provides partners with a single view of new skills offerings available to help them build smarter infrastructures for clients beginning with 60 no-cost online classes and 25 global in-person education and networking events.

Topics include:

* Smarter planet for a challenging economy
* Dynamic infrastructure for key industries
* IBM Business Partner financial selling to the CFO
* Capturing the mid-market opportunity with infrastructure solutions
* Basic sales skills

In addition to on-line opportunities, the new development series includes several seminars at the 43 IBM Innovation Centers around the world, bringing leading IBM experts into these centers to provide partners with skills training. Scheduled events include Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Madrid, Sydney, Shanghai, Stuttgart, Seoul, Bangalore and others over the coming weeks.

To learn more about IBM PartnerWorld, a comprehensive program that offers marketing and sales resources, training, certification and technical support to help create new revenue and market opportunities for IBM Business Partners, visit http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld.

(1) Source: IDC Multiclient Study, Channel Profitability, May 2008

Web site: http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/

Impact Engine, the advertising technology company that pioneered display ad business optimization, announces the launch of 14 MediaNews Group sites on the Publisher Edition of its online display ad optimization platform. Impact Engine won the larger relationship after MediaNews Group corporate noted Monterey County Herald, one of the its largest sites, had recorded increase in spec ad production by 260%. The gains were without new hiring and required minimal training to derive the benefits of the Impact Engine platform.

“Transitioning to the Yahoo! APT serving system, we needed a certified partner that met the system’s specifications and guidelines,” said Steve Bennett, Advertising Manager at Monterey County Herald. “Impact Engine’s Yahoo!-certified ad creative ensured that deploying ads into the new APT platform was seamless.”

Impact Engine has been certified as a third-party rich media vendor by the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium in March 2008, ensuring its place in an exclusive group to be able to serve ads through the Yahoo! APT platform.

“The MediaNews Group win is a prime example of how Impact Engine is delivering much needed efficiencies to the online display advertising marketplace,” said Neil Greer, the CEO of Impact Engine. “We are pleased MediaNews Group has expanded its relationship with us. As a pioneer of the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium, MediaNews Group has proven time and again they are a forward thinking company.”

Prior to launching Impact Engine, Monterey County Herald was challenged with limited programming resources and limited budget for hiring and training new staff. Additionally, their advertisers wanted more control over the success of their display ad campaigns. Impact Engine enabled Monterey County Herald to shift 100% of its display ad hosting burden to Impact Engine’s robust infrastructure and in less than 20 minutes, the newspaper was able to train its non-technical sales team on how to create and edit spec ads for their advertisers. Further, Impact Engine’s self service tools for online advertisers and publishers enabled the Herald to enable their advertisers to make changes to their own ad campaigns; thus, increasing campaign success and enhancing advertiser satisfaction.

Bennett said the simplicity of creating and editing example Display ads for advertisers within Impact Engine eliminated almost all customer sales objections, as the sales team was able to react to customers’ feedback and make real-time ad edits during client meetings. “Impact Engine’s online library offers a variety of industry templates which get our clients’ creative juices flowing,” Bennett added.

Impact Engine’s new MediaNews Group clients include newspapers throughout the San Francisco Bay area, such as Chico ER, Paradise Post, and Eureka Times-Standard, just to mention a few.

About Impact Engine
Impact Engine is the leading display ad business optimization company for the online advertising industry. The company is focused on delivering efficiencies, scalability and increased ROI to Publishers, Advertisers and Agencies alike. The firm was founded by an experienced team of interactive ad agency principals, rich media veterans, and software professionals. Impact Engine enables publishers, advertisers, ad agencies, and ad networks of all sizes to leverage the fast growth and opportunities presented within the online display advertising space.

About MediaNews Group
MediaNews Group is one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States situated throughout California, the Rocky Mountain region and the Northeast. MediaNews Group is privately owned and operate 54 daily newspapers in 11 states with combined daily and Sunday circulation of approximately 2.4 million and 2.7 million, respectively.

Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to Harvard research.

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a study of 300,000 users found.

Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network.

The Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.

And most people only ever “tweet” once during their lifetime, the researchers found.

“Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it,” said Bill Heil, a graduate from Harvard Business School who carried out the work.

On a typical online social network, he said, the top 10% of users accounted for 30% of all production.

“This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network,” the team wrote in a blog post.

Twitter is a social networking website where people can post messages of up to 140 characters – known as tweets – that can be seen by other users who subscribe to their feed.

Its growth has been described as “explosive” and it has become the poster child of social networking sites, particularly among media companies.

“Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends”
Bill Heil

Recent figures from research firm Nielsen Online show that visitors to the site increased by 1,382%, from 475,000 to seven million, between February 2008 and February 2009

Blenz The Canadian Coffee Company Ltd has tweaked its online marketing strategy yet again. In addition to the recently launched www.blenzstore.com which provides products to Blenz coffee, tea and chocolate fans worldwide, and blenzcares.com which supports charity and fundraising drives with a turnkey coffee distribution program, Blenz has now taken a turn onto the new and rapidly growing branch called Twitter.

Blenz uses Twitter to announce special events, store openings, and promotions.
Blenz Daily Twitter Sweepstakes launched on www.Twitter.com on Monday, sparking an immediate flurry of “tweets” among the social media mavens and fans, and Blenz followers grew from 0 to over 300 in just a matter of hours. On Monday morning, BlenzCoffee (@blenzcoffee) tweeted that George Moen, president of Blenz, wants to buy you a coffee – mention Blenz in your tweet, and your tweet may be chosen as the Tweet of the Day.

The first Blenz Daily Twitter Sweepstakes winner, Shane Gibson (@shanegibson), was impressed when his $5.00 gift card was hand-delivered by George himself, who happened to be in the neighbourhood that afternoon. Shane was so excited by the transaction that within minutes he had posted a picture recording the event, and his post was re-tweeted by one of his followers, and so on, and so on…
Blenz activity in Twitterworld has resulted in a myriad of benefits, including more personalized relationships with Blenz customers, attracting new customers to Blenz stores, and reinforcing the Blenz brand in the local market.

Blenz online marketing philosophy is well communicated in this quote, from the site where Sweepstakes Winners are sent to claim their prizes, “We use this format to connect with our existing and future customers in a respectful manner because we believe that companies of any size can have a direct relationship with their customers.”

About Blenz The Canadian Coffee Company Ltd™
Blenz The Canadian Coffee Company Ltd is a premium retailer of handcrafted coffee, tea and other innovative and delicious specialty beverages. All of Blenz’ beverages are made in-store from only the highest quality ingredients available. Blenz’ commitment to serving a great cup of coffee, providing an excellent customer experience, and providing world-class staff training, has fueled Blenz’ growth from its inception. Blenz operates a network of over 85 franchise locations in British Columbia, Japan, China, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and the Philippines.

Find Blenz on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BlenzCoffee

Business Wire, exhibiting at the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) 2009 Annual Conference, will be highlighting its improved press release presentation at its Business Wire is High Definition booth.

Business Wire’s superior formatting and delivery technology will demonstrate the continued benefit of using a widely-distributed press release — including full financial tables — as the cornerstone of disclosure strategy, rather than a standalone web posting or a “Notice & Access” release which requires market participants to attempt to retrieve financial results from a company’s servers.

The Business Wire model of a widely-distributed financial press release conforms to NIRI’s Standards of Practice for Investor Relations regarding Earnings Release Content, which states that the best practice for financial statements is to “provide sufficient line item information for the investor to follow the calculation from revenue to net income.”

Business Wire’s advanced press release features include:

Delivery via Business Wire’s exclusive, patented NX platform. NX provides high-speed, simultaneous transmission of Business Wire’s technologically and aesthetically advanced news file to all recipients, including analysts, institutional investors, retail investors and financial information systems.
Exclusive XHTML formatting, enhancing press release functionality by embedding multimedia and data tags, as well as enhancing SEO through search-engine-friendly style benefits, such as embedded hyperlinks, bolds, and bulleted lists.
Earnings tables are presented in a format that closely mirrors the original spreadsheet presentation — wider tables, with underlined headers that can be cut and pasted into a spread sheet.
Delivery of XBRL-tagged financials. Business Wire offers complete in-house tagging and delivery of financial results in XBRL, helping companies to meet the SEC mandate on XBRL.
NewsTrak reports which provide measurement information including press release views, referring links, click-throughs and other crucial audience data.
Business Wire’s industry-leading technology and presentation make the press release more valuable than ever as the leading tool for maintaining best practices in disclosure.

When you distribute material news via Business Wire, your financials are available to all market participants simultaneously. Institutional investors, retail investors, automated financial news systems and algorithmic trading systems (which now comprise 40 percent of total US equities trading) all have instantaneous, simultaneous access to your financial results and other material news. Because our patented NX Network is push-driven and bi-directional for verification of receipt, capital markets and thousands of media have access to your press release. This model also fits with the SEC’s XBRL mandate, making your tagged financials instantly consumable by investors, analysts and financial news systems.

In contrast, Notice & Access releases require market participants to come to your servers, via a variety of routes, to retrieve your financials which must then be transferred manually, increasing the risk of errors and/or slowdowns in trading decisions and news delivery. Delivery is non-simultaneous, as users may access yours at different times and download speeds. These limitations in technology and information flow can increase the cost of capital for issuers and result in less efficient, less transparent markets.

Further information on the advantages of wire disclosure over “Notice & Access” and web posting will be available via a set of handouts available at the Business Wire booth.

Business Wire will also be hosting XBRL educational opportunities at the conference, with XBRL School. Disclosure and XBRL expert Gary Purnhagen will lead six 45-minute sessions on Monday, June 8 and Tuesday, June 9, to teach attendees all they need to know about XBRL, including what it is, how it fits each company’s mission statement, and what the SEC’s rules are regarding XBRL.

Visit Business Wire at Booth #312 & 314 to register for any of the XBRL School sessions and to register to win a Blu-Ray player and Blu-Ray discs in a raffle to be drawn at the conference.

About Business Wire

Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is utilized by tens of thousands of member companies and organizations worldwide to functionally enhance and communicate investor relations and public relations content to target audiences. As a recognized disclosure service in the United States, Canada and a dozen European countries, Business Wire facilitates the simultaneous flow of market-moving press releases from corporations to financial markets and their audiences, including regulatory authorities, media, investors, financial information systems and consumer news services. Business Wire also handles XBRL tagging, document formatting and regulatory filing into EDGAR, SEDAR, FSA and other systems.

Communications professionals turn to Business Wire to optimize and issue press releases, photos and multimedia to news organizations, journalists, trade publications, search engines, and individuals, with full-text posting to web sites, online services and databases. A range of distribution options enables members to target by geography, industry, news theme and audience demographics.

Founded in 1961, Business Wire has dual headquarters in San Francisco and New York, with 30 bureaus in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Toronto and Sydney and reciprocal offices throughout the world. Business Wire’s patented NX data platform supports XML, XHTML and XBRL code that enhances news release interactivity, social media sharing and search engine optimization. More information about Business Wire and its services is located on its website at www.BusinessWire.com.

Patty Briguglio, president of MMI Associates, Inc. (www.mmimarketing.com), a Raleigh-based public relations firm, has announced the release of a podcast outlining the public relations applications of Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging website that is growing in popularity. In the podcast, MMI new media specialist Bobby McDonald discusses how to use Twitter, who is using Twitter and what benefits Twitter provides for public relations professionals. MMI is launching the podcast as part of its initiative to provide a full range of new media services to clients.

The podcast is now available for download at www.mmimarketing.com/podcast/mmi-new-media-specialist-discusses-twitters-public-relations-applications.

Visit MMI on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MMIAssociates.

News Facts:
• Patty Briguglio, president of MMI Associates, Inc. (www.mmimarketing.com), a Raleigh-based public relations firm, has announced the release of a podcast outlining the public relations applications of Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging website that is growing in popularity.
• In the podcast, MMI new media specialist Bobby McDonald discusses how to use Twitter, who is using Twitter and what benefits Twitter provides for public relations professionals.
• MMI is launching the podcast as part of its initiative to provide a full range of new media services to clients.
• The podcast is now available for download at www.mmimarketing.com/podcast/mmi-new-media-specialist-discusses-twitters-public-relations-applications.
• Visit MMI on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MMIAssociates.

Quotes:
“Twitter is an exciting frontier for conversations drawn from all kinds of social circles,” said Briguglio. “There is tremendous opportunity for people and businesses to weave ideas into a larger discussion.”

About MMI Associates, Inc.:
MMI Associates, Inc. is a full-service public relations firm offering a wide range of services to help clients achieve measurable results in brand awareness, name recognition, market penetration and crisis management. Established in 1994 in Phoenix, Arizona, this award-winning firm was named one of the top 10 public relations firms in the state. In North Carolina, the Triangle Business Journal’s Book of Lists has recognized MMI as one of the top five public relations firms in the Triangle. The firm has received numerous awards for its work and was awarded the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce’s 2007 and 2008 Pinnacle Award for Steady Growth and Profitability, and was named a Best Place to Work by the Triangle Business Journal. For more information, please call (919) 233-6600 or visit the Web site at www.mmimarketing.com.

Veteran web copywriting company Michelle Salater Writing & Editorial, LLC, has relaunched with a new name, new website, and several new services. Now called Sumèr, LLC, the Charleston-based company specializes in web copywriting, SEO copywriting, and the marketing and promotion of websites after ch.

Marketing a business online differs greatly from marketing offline. For many business owners, necessary online marketing techniques such as optimization for the web and social media marketing sound like a foreign language.

“Over fifty percent of websites disappear within three years of launching,” says S?mèr president, Michelle Salater. “Even with hard work, a good idea, and well-written copy, sites often fail to connect to their target audience. In order for businesses to survive online, many need help connecting to their customers from someone who understands the ways of the web.”

Sumèr, LLC, helps clients around the country who are passionate about their brand message, dedicated to great results, and willing to make the investment required to fulfill their goals. With a focus on keeping websites current and search-engine friendly, S?mèr offers four services geared toward generating exposure and maintaining a robust online presence. These innovative services include Web Copywriting, Rank Your Site, Life after Launch, and Optimized Press Releases.

“Our name is inspired by the Sumerian civilization,” says Salater. “Their innovation inspired us to approach websites and online marketing possibilities in a more comprehensive way. From SEO web copy to the promotion of websites after launch, we are reinventing how companies communicate and connect to their target audience by providing a clear message and sharing that unique message with the world.”

Sumèr’s website describes the services offered in detail and features an ezine, S?mèr’s Secrets. In each issue, readers discover how to market their businesses and drive traffic to their websites without spending a fortune, while expanding their customer base and accelerating profits. Subscribers learn about marketing tools such as ezines and email marketing and receive special promotions on services and upcoming events such as teleseminars and workshops.

According to Salater, “Sumèr’s philosophy revolves around the power of personal connection, with the hope that capitalism across the globe can be healed through conscious entrepreneurship in small businesses and large corporations. Anything is possible—and great things can happen if everyone learns to communicate effectively.”

About Sumèr, LLC:
Sumèr, LLC, is a unique web marketing company located in Charleston, South Carolina, specializing in web copywriting, SEO copywriting, and the promotion and marketing of websites after they launch. Approaching websites and online marketing possibilities in a more comprehensive way, Sumèr’s mission is to continuously help clients craft a simplified message that clearly conveys their vision and objectives.