Business News - Cyber Monday and FaceBook's World Domination
Cyber Monday, the digital equivalent of Black Friday, took place this week as many online retailers offered huge discounts on popular consumer goods. The media has reported gloomy projections for retail sales for the season, even though Black Friday turned out to be a huge success this year, leading many analysts to wonder if the large amount of articles written about poor retail sales could turn into a self fulfilling prophecy. NBC seems to be having a bit of trouble selling their remaining Super Bowl ad slots. The network announced in September that they had already sold 85 percent of the very expensive 30 second spots, but as of now, the Peacock has not been able to sell the remaining 8 slots. Companies hit hard by the economic crisis who have not purchased Super Bowl Ads include GM, FedEx, Chrysler, and Ford. Turning to video games, Sumner Redstone sold off 87 percent of Midway Games to Mark Thomas. Redstone made the sale to help alleviate National Amusement's 1.6 billion dollar debt. Facebook just keeps getting bigger. The extremely popular social networking site is looking to expand the reach of their Facebook Connect Service, which lets users log into multiple sites through their Facebook profile. New companies that will be weaved into the service include The Discovery Channel, The San Francisco Chronicle, DiGG, and Hulu. Launched in May, Facebook Connect can keep track of the activities of users on the connected third party sites and can update that information on the user's Facebook News Feed. A huge deal may be in the works as the Times of London is reporting that Microsoft might buy Yahoo's extremely valuable Search Business for 20 billion dollars. Though the Times article included very detailed information on the deal, many of the parties named in the report denied the rumor, including the founder of Velocity Investment Group, who said that there is "no truth to it." That's the latest tech biz news. Keep tuning in to Get The Daily.Com for the 411 on the tech biz, world news, politics, ...