Wellington, Sept 22 NZPA – Changes that would have seen students paying off their student loan in their holidays have been scrapped. Currently people with student loans have to make repayments if they earn over $19,084 a year. The changes would have switched the threshold to weekly, fortnightly or monthly, in line with an individual’s pay period. The total yearly threshold will remain unchanged, however students who work full time during the holidays may have found themselves over the $367 weekly threshold and having to make payments while they save for the year ahead. Revenue Minister Peter Dunne said the…
Business
Changes To Student Loan Payments Scrapped
Facebook
YoVille Achieves Record Daily Traffic Numbers Despite Protests
Over the weekend I wrote about the “massive protests” taking place in Zynga’s virtual world YoVille. I kind of poked at the protesters in the article because they are the vocal minority. When you’re in the midst of a protest it appears as if everybody is protesting. The new changes were controversial for those users who had spent time and money on the game over the past year or two. The main issue was that users are now forced to return to the game on a timed basis in order to earn revenue. I’m still not convinced it’s an unfair…
Facebook
Virtual Protests Erupt In YoVille
YoVille, one of the largest virtual worlds on Facebook, recently experienced a relatively large protest against a major change yesterday which modified the way users can earn virtual currency. Previously, users entered a widget factory from where they could earn coins. While users can still earn coins there is a new process in which users must spend money to make money (as is typical in the real world). A number of users are furious and in the past few hours I’ve received numerous users frustrated with the change.
The position of the users was that less money was being generated…
Facebook
Facebook Now Testing New Ad Manager
Over the past few days Facebook has been pushing out a new version of their ad manager to a select group of advertisers. One of those advertisers, Tradimax, was kind enough to forward over screenshots of the latest ad manager. While we’ve previously written that Facebook has been working on a new iteration of their ad management system, this is the first time that we’ve had access to the screenshots and the first we’ve heard of this system being used by advertisers.
There are a few key changes with this new ad manager: multi-ad management, a manager-wide campaign selection area,…
Facebook
Offerpal Launches Multivariate Testing Platform For Developers
Yesterday Offerpal announced the launch of a new multivariate testing platform which helps developers optimize their virtual currency to maximize revenue and keep each application’s virtual economy more stable. Managing an overall economy isn’t easy however Offerpal hopes that this new system helps developers a bit more. They also hope developers implement the system as it helps not only the developers generate more revenue but Offerpal as well.
A number of companies have been announcing more advanced analytics and application management packages for developers over the past few weeks including Brainwave who recently launched a service for sending out notifications…
Facebook
Facebook Announces 300 Million Milestone And Cash Flow Positive
Facebook has announced today that the company has reached 300 million users and that they are cash flow positive. This is huge news for the company who was previously on track to surpass 300 million by the end of the year. Just a month and a half ago the company surpassed 250 million users which means that they are still gaining over 5 million new users a week. Also included in the announcement was that Facebook is now officially cash flow positive, something previously expected to take place in 2010.
That Facebook is able to continue this growth and build…
Facebook
Zynga Testing New Stealth Offers Platform From “DoubleDing”
Zynga, the largest social gaming network on Facebook, appears to be testing a new offers platform on their largest applications. Farmville is by far the largest Facebook application ever and it continues to grow with over 43 million users. So how does the most popular application ever generate revenue? Right now the company is using Offerpal as the primary offers monetization platform but as one inquisitive user noticed, the company appears to be testing out a service by a company never heard of before: “DoubleDing”.
My initial thoughts were that Zynga just cut out the middle man and built their…
Business
U.K. Reconsiders Ban on Product Placements in TV Shows
LONDON — The British government is moving toward lifting a longstanding ban on product placements in TV shows on commercial networks, in a move that would aid the country’s struggling commercial broadcasters, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday. Ben Bradshaw, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, is expected to explain why he thinks the ban should be lifted in a speech to the Royal Television Society this week. The British Broadcasting Corp., whose TV networks in the U.K. don’t air advertisements, will continue to ban product placements, or deals in which companies pay for a product…
Business
India Approves Release of 40 Billion Rupees in Farm Loan Subsidy
NEW DELHI — India’s federal cabinet Thursday approved the release of 40 billion rupees ($826.4 million) to state-run banks as a subsidy to offset revenue losses arising from the grant of cheap short-term farm loans. The funds, already provided for in this fiscal year’s budget, come at a time when loan demand for winter-sown crops usually picks up. “For this year, the government has decided to continue the ongoing interest subvention scheme with the provision of interest subvention at 2% to the banks on their own funds,” Information and Broadcasting Minister, Ambika Soni, said at a news conference. State-run banks…
Business
SAP exec: Business ByDesign will be smash success
A top SAP executive said Wednesday that the vendor’s Business ByDesign on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite for SMBs will take “the world by storm” one day, but declined to reveal when a long-anticipated broader release will occur. SAP initially announced the suite in late 2007, and predicted it would generate US$1 billion in revenue by 2010. But it subsequently limited the rollout to a handful of markets while working to make sure the SaaS (software as a service) application will be profitable enough at scale. In remarks at the Citigroup Global Technology Conference in New York Wednesday, SAP executive…
Business
Credit card cos revisit their revenue model
NEW DELHI: Credit card companies are revisiting their revenue models to sustain usage of cards and attract new clients. What could be in the offing is a lower or differential interest rate on credit cards. To make up for revenue loss on this front, companies may be levying a variety of fees, including an annual fee, annual or monthly maintenance cost, charges for direct services provided such as cheque representation charges and cash collection fees. Credit card issuers such as State Bank of India Cards, ING Vysya Bank, and Deutsche Bank have all hinted that they are giving this option…
Facebook
iTunes Has New Facebook Feature But Is Apple Preparing To Take On Facebook Credits?
iTunes may have just taken a massive blow at iLike today with the launch of a “share on Facebook” feature which will enable users to post iTunes songs to their profile. While there are few details about the new feature, there is the potential that actual song samples will eventually be posted to your Facebook feed. Such a move would be a direct attack on iLike who began offering a similar service since Facebook first opened up the stream. While the new “Share on Facebook” feature is extremely valuable, of more interest was a statement by Apple about the number…
