Author: Michael Litman

Uniqlo and FirstBorn team up for a project that owns Pinterest — literally.

To wake Pinterest users from a scrolling slumber, the agency created 100 separate shell Pinterest accounts that pinned images simultaneously. As users scrolled down their favorite categories, they came across all the images, which combined to create giant mosaics that “animated” when scrolled through.

The giant branded mosaics can be seen by Pinterest users whether or not they follow the Uniqlo brand page. The project targets five categories on which mosaics will appear: men’s apparel, women’s apparel, geek, fitness and sports.

Microsoft Corp. and Yammer Inc. have announced Yammer, a leading provider of enterprise social networks is to be acquired for $1.2 billion in cash. Yammer will join the Microsoft Office Division, led by division President Kurt DelBene, and the team will continue to report to current CEO David Sacks.

Yammer will continue to develop its standalone service and maintain its commitment to simplicity, innovation and cross-platform experiences. Moving forward, Microsoft plans to accelerate Yammer’s adoption alongside complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype.

Launched in 2008, Yammer now has more than 5 million corporate users, including employees at 85 percent of the Fortune 500. The service allows employees to join a secure, private social network for free and then makes it easy for companies to convert a grassroots movement into companywide strategic initiative.

Facebook was seen as the source of personal data that reveal the most about a person, with 26 percent of respondents to a survey of more than 2,000 U.K. consumers citing the social network.

Following Facebook on the survey, conducted by YouGov and commissioned by Informatica, were:

Bank statements, 24 percent
Search-engine history, 14 percent
Credit-card statements, 11 percent
Twitter profiles, 1 percent

The survey also found that five times as many 18- to 34-year-olds would use their Facebook credentials to log into a website without being offered incentives to do so (10 percent versus 2 percent), and more than three times would do so if provided a discount or offer (20 percent versus 6 percent).

Informatica Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Enablement and Informatica University Chris Boorman said:

There is clearly a trust issue over data in the U.K., which could easily be addressed through better communication. Consumers want to know what their personal data will be used for and how the privacy of that information will be upheld. The younger generation is spot-on: They feed the likes of Facebook and search-engine histories with more information about themselves than any other sources. With this in mind, there’s an opportunity here for organizations to be more transparent with consumers when it comes to how they plan to use their personal information and what’s in it for the consumer. Achieve this, and companies can forge stronger relationships with their customers.

I like the thinking here by @faris.

According to research by Microsoft, 75 percent of the people who were polled plan to take their laptop with them, versus 70 percent for their smartphone. The number one thing people do on their laptop while on vacation is share their adventures on social networking sites. Other top features include gathering information, getting directions, and playing games and movies.

Speaking of movies, Microsoft’s study claims that 57 percent of the people who were polled admit to looking at the screen of another person’s laptop while they are on a plane. The biggest reason for doing so is seeing what movie or TV show that person might be watching.

Just how ubiquitous are smartphones becoming? More than a billion such devices will be sold in the year 2014, according to a Credit Suisse estimate. By the same year, the market for cloud-based mobile apps will have increased by 90% compared to 2009. By 2016, analysts predict there will be 10 billion connected mobile devices in use globally, and smartphone traffic will be 50 times what it is today.

Apps are moving to cloud for three primary reasons, according to a survey of IT executives: accessibility to data from multiple devices, lower cost and increased speed for businesses.

Publishing your own book, it’s the new writing a blog post…

Mobile Safari is the fastest growing browser and other stats in this infograph.

While giving away services for free may seem to be a risky move for businesses, recent data is proving otherwise. Mobile analytic firm Flurry found that freemium games generated more profit than paid games. There is a simple reason for this success, according to Phil Libin, CEO of freemium note-taking and archiving software service Evernote.

“The easiest way to get 1 million people paying is to get 1 billion people playing,” Libin said.

The basic idea of getting as many people as possible to use a service is a large part of the success of freemiums, but allowing people to get a free test drive before making a purchase is the biggest reason behind that success. Customers, however, are not willing to pay for just any old service. In particular, the infographic by Mavenlink found that customers are willing to pay for things such as unlimited services, support, add-ons and greater data storage after testing the free versions of products.

By conservative estimates, emerging markets are projected to account for 2/3rds of the world’s output by 2030.