“I would rather have a prostate exam on live telvision by a guy with very cold hands than have a Facebook page,” George Clooney told a group of reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival. Clooney, who was previously named the world’s sexiest man alive, probably didn’t realize that his Facebook fan page is not far from becoming one of the 1,000 most popular Pages. While I can’t blame the guy for preferring to jet set around the world without the hassle of managing his online presence, he’s missing a big opportunity.

There are millions of women would love the…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Credit granted by commercial banks to the private sector in Mexico is expected to decline by 3% in real terms this year due to the effects of the economic recession on the demand and supply of credit, according to Eduardo González, analyst at financial groupBanamex. The credit contraction has deepened in recent months, with direct performing loans to the private sector decreasing by 4.2% in the year through July, following a 3.7% drop for the 12 months through June, according to the latest data from the central bank. “We are close to seeing the worse in terms of annual credit…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

LONDON (Reuters) – Most people around the world support significantly increasing government spending to counter the economic crisis, according to a 20-nation opinion poll released on Monday. The findings will bring solace to leaders such as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who have backed multi-billion-dollar stimulus programmes to try to lift their economies out of recession. G20 finance leaders agreed this month they would not remove emergency stimulus until the recovery was well entrenched. The survey of more than 22,000 people in 20 countries for the BBC World Service found that, on average, 60 percent favoured “significantly increasing government…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

The RMB/BER Business Confidence Index continued to decline in the third quarter, falling by 3 points to 23. This is the index’s lowest level in 10 years – a reading of 15 was recorded in the second quarter of 1999, just before the start of the last cyclical economic upswing in September of that year. The third quarter decline in business confidence is the net outcome of divergent results for the individual sub-sectors comprising the overall index. Confidence continued to decline in the retail and wholesale trade sectors, whereas it increased in manufacturing and new vehicle trade. In the case…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Facebook is getting aggressive with a few developers who have been abusing the platform. Today the company alerted us to a “substantial” policy enforcement against the developers behind My Calendar, one of the largest Facebook applications. MyCalendar has been temporarily disabled and hundreds of other applications have been permanently shut down. According to Facebook, the developers have been engaging in misleading and spammy tactics in order to get more users rather than building valuable experiences.

The My Calendar developers have been making aggressive applications for a long time now. Back in May I questioned how the developers’ applications were growing…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Becoming a successful real estate investor
Becoming a successful real estate investor requires being able to find good real estate investment deals and put them together. Your job is not to become an closing attorney, a management expert, or a repair person. Use professionals!
You must learn how to appraise and find the true value of real estate this information will help you make better investment decisions. Realtors, appraisers, and banks determine what a property is worth by looking at comparable sales usually three to five sales of similar property that has recently sold in the same neighborhood. You must…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Doritos has launched a new “advergame” which integrates Facebook Connect to pull user information into a choose your own adventure type advertisement. The advertisement, developed by We Are Social and BBDO, lets the user find their way through a movie-like story about identity thieves. The most innovative implementation of Facebook Connect that I saw prior to today was the recent Prototype game trailer, which pulled in profile data to display images and information that only the viewer would understand.

This advertisement is much more extensive and actually involves a multi-act story, the first of which is accessible as of last…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]

Facebook has posted the statistics so far of Michael Jackson’s memorial and the initial results are phenomenal. As his Facebook page surpassed 7 million users, 500,000 status updates were being posted and 300,000 users were logged in to discuss the memorial. The numbers are nothing short of spectacular with over 6,000 status updates being posted per minute.

The live stream widget is also being implemented on E! Online, MTV and ABC News. The Michael Jackson virtual gift of his glove has been distributed to over 800,000 users. During the Obama inauguration in contrast there were 600,000 status updates for the…

[ Read the rest of the story in the original article... ]