Facebook, the social network that already has more than 400 million users expected to reach the mark of $ 1 billion in revenue in 2010, an amount too high for a social network.

Last year, the company earned about $ 550 million in campaigns for brands and advertising, according to information from the site Read Write Web. For 2010, the bet is on Facebook Credits, a system of purchasing credits to be used in social network from real money, paid with credit cards. Thus, users can buy gifts and games within the Facebook, which will retain about 30% of the purchase, the site explains Geek.com.

As a result, Facebook is even more profitable, and passes some of the gains for developers of applications. The Facebook will retain 30% of the amount spent by users. With a commitment to invest heavily in the ecosystem and to explore various ways to improve, both the program and the conversion and net income for developers.

A  good relationship between staff and Facebook application developers is crucial in order to keep them interested in the social network, contributing to a profitable year for the partnership between Facebook and developers.

Via: Allfacebook.

Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas have agreed to do the sequel of the film ‘Wall Street’ (1987). Fox Studios is also negotiating with actor Shia LaBeouf for a role in the film. Allan Loeb wrote the screenplay. Ed Pressman, producer of the original film, will likewise finance the sequel. Filming is expected to start this summer.

Douglas, 64, won a best-actor Oscar for his work on the original version. His character Gordon Gekko, a powerful and unscrupulous corporate raider who made for himself a huge fortune, became the iconic representation of Wall Street and capitalistic greed and corruption. The film is now known as the ‘archetypal portrayal of 1980s excess,’ especially with Douglas’s character’s mantra of “greed, for lack of a better word, is good” and his thinking that a few million dollars is a negligible amount.

A repeat of his role these days augurs well for the current theme of the times: a global economic meltdown that commenced at Wall street and is traceable to greedy financial executives.

The sequel is said to focus on a young Wall Street tyro, much like Charlie Sheen’s role of a stockbroker upstart in the original version.

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Via The Huffington Post

While the current recession may be pinching them a bit, some of the world’s billionaires see the proverbial silver lining in the global economic rain clouds. Credit their healthy outlook on money, maybe. They earned their billions, so what can stop them from earning more? – well, only the (real) end of the world, perhaps.

Forbes magazine released its list entitled ‘Billionaire Vultures’ composed of deal-hunting and fortune-seeking top moneymakers such as Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu and US investor George Soros. Others on the list are founder of Saudi Arabia’s MBI International group Mohamed bin Issa Al Jaber, member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahayan, American investors Wilbur L Ross Jr, John Catsimatidis and Nicolas Berggruen, US-based Gerald Ford, Germany’s Gunter Herz, and Russia’s Mikhail Prokhorov.

Which brings us to the tiny matter called investment opportunities. These people are obviously no dilly-dallying pansies when it comes to making money. Hey, if they were, they could have stopped at the millions. These people know, only because they have reached this billionth far, what business risks really mean. They know risk like the back of their hand, and a global economic meltdown is just one of ‘em risks. It is really no puzzlement why they are betting (once again) in a time of economic turmoil.

Besides, these people also know that if they stop investing, the buck stops there. Economy’s health rests on the continuous flow of investments that subsequently generate all the other fruits of trade, commerce, employment, income, purchasing power, etc. It’s a (capitalist) vicious cycle, really.

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Via livemint.com

Recession may not be best times to promote credits cards but world’s leading credit card brand, Visa, is all set to launch its new campaign on American Idol on Wednesday. The first two ads of the series, ‘Let’s go’ and ‘Aquarium’ will go on air followed by print campaign and online promotion will be made by an interactive microsite Visa.com/go.

Visa is optimistic and upbeat about the new campaign. Instead of asking people to spend more they will focus more on handling money wisely and using plastic instead of cash. Plus there will be range of promotion schemes for payment options where in they’ll provide financial education information and money management tools.

A good brand always sails through bad times because of their campaign and promotion strategies. But these are real hard times when credit cards are being cancelled. So this is a tough call indeed. Yes, money transaction modes have changed for good. So credit cards and schemes will forever try to entice people. The ‘More people go with Visa’ campaign by AKQA digital agency does seem realistic.

Via Brandweek

As would be obvious to most by now, entire business enterprises that market and sell the foretelling of things to come can go on the up and up. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were known to be close followers of what their psychic said and advised. Unfortunately, the much-consulted seer missed to foresee the huge deficits that Reaganomics brought to America. In Chinese society, fortune-telling is a big thing, so big that it dictates practically everything from where to situate your bed to exactly when to move it around and the color of what you should be wearing when you finally decide to relocate it.

Divination hedges on what can only be speculated on by the human mind. And because the future will forever be unknown, uncovering the myth that surrounds it can actually sell. Psychics have, thus, been cashing in on people’s fear of what might be and/or their hopes of what could be. Most seers will say that 2009 as the Year of the Ox will bring hardship, as well as hard work to address the hardship. This is because the ox is an animal of labor, work, and struggle. They, of course, completely avoid saying the obvious – that the whole world is suffering from an economic meltdown.

The ultimate purpose of divination is for good fortune. Most of these seers offer magic numerical combinations for betting at numbers game as bait, not knowing that there are some people who do not even know how to gamble. Money, money, money is what diviners of the future harp on. This is because it is really what people hope for. It is a truly market-based enterprise. In the process, there is an exchange of cash for psychic talent, making the business of foreseeing what lies ahead a multibillion dollar industry worldwide.

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Via Times Online

The world goes haywire, that’s for sure. Money is beneficial in its utilitarian role. It is also meant to be circulated so that an economy can thrive. Problems start when people keep their money, instead of bringing it back into circulation as it should be. But the rich wouldn’t have become so without stashing their money in banks to grow interest on. Thus, the fallibility of economic equality is yet the most factual reality of all. The disparity between the haves and the have-nots is the most palpable social division there is.

Trade is greatly affected when the rich do not spend the cash. Since they are the ones with the biggest expendable incomes, trade and commerce rely heavily on them. Their purchasing power is what oils the merchant machinery. Without purchase, merchants cannot sell. Without sales, producers cannot pursue the creation of goods. A huge part of the world as we know it comes to a halt – all because the rich chose to put their money in investment schemes and retirement funds.

Out of the process of money circulation comes the financial capacity to pay for services. Economies are basically dependent on their services sector. Human capacity in brain and brawn are what most people on earth get paid for and live on. So, if we follow the yellow brick road, we can see that if the rich don’t spend, many people can die of starvation. A little extreme thought but totally possible.

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Via Wall Street Journal

Believe it or not, there is such a scientific field of study as Behavioral Economics. It wants to find out why you deal with money the way you do. Of course, it doesn’t stop there. It also makes recommendations on how you can stop managing your finances as crazily as you have. In other words, it is meant to end this insanity we all have with cash.

Scrimping on money in one area does not necessarily mean you have, indeed, saved. While you pedaled on your bicycle for your short trip to town and saved on gas for your car, you actually headed to KFC and splurged on oodles of food upon hitting town. Is buying that exorbitantly expensive exercise machine really cheaper in the long run than monthly membership dues at the gym where there’s a free trainer on hand? C’mon. Where do you really think you’d lose that flab faster, huh?

We also have to be aware that there’s no such thing as bargain or product promos. Companies will not willfully lose money in their business. So, you may have bought a bunch of bargain basement items but they all have some form of damage. That’s the reason why their prices have been slashed. Also, do you really need all those pairs of Havaianas just because they came discounted by dozen pairs? In other words, what makes us go bonkers with money is that point of realization when it dawns on us that we merely wasted the cash we spent hours to earn.

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Via yourtotalhealth

In a notice published in the specialist journal “Automotive News”, the American manufacturer of vehicles General Motors (GM) admitted that “disappointed” and sometimes “betrayed” U.S. consumers.

The initiative distunes the position that the company was adopting so far, the claim that the company’s executives could not have foreseen the effects of financial crisis on the company.

The text also says that the company found itself facing the risk of running out of money, despite the plan to reduce its spending by more than $ 20 billion. “Unfortunately, like all Americans, we were hit by a storm. Last year, all we had to deal with volatile energy prices, the collapse of U.S. real estate market, the decline of financial institutions, the decline of the stock market and complete freezing of the credit. ”

The memo from GM says the company needs to borrow the money of taxpayers, because if running out of money, will not pay bills, maintain its operations and investing in technology.

“A collapse of GM and the domestic auto industry will accelerate the downward spiral of an already anemic U.S. economy. This will be devastating for all Americans, not just for those who have a part in GM: it will bring millions of American jobs at risk and further deepen the recession” says the text.

Via: Yahoo News.

The couple of actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie has made an agreement with the “People” magazine so that the coverage on them is always positive.

The agreement was made after the birth of twin sons of the couple in July in France. Soon after, Pitt and Jolie have negotiated with the “People” and other magazines an interview and pictures to show the children, Vivienne Marcheline Knox and Leon.

The “NYT” says that in addition to receiving approximately $ 14 million, the couple also demanded “a promise that the magazine did a story that was positive with them not only at that time, but in the future.”

The proposal then was accepted by the “People”, which published the story about the birth of twins.
“People” published the photos of the twins and their parents in mid-August, in a report which gave extensive details of the activities of charities Pitt and Angelina. In no stretch the couple was called by the nickname “Brangelina”, often used by publications devoted to celebrities.

In 2006, the magazine also paid the two $ 4.1 million to exclusively publish an interview with the couple and the photos of Shiloh, her first biological child, and his brothers Maddox, Zahara and Pax, adopted in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam respectively.

The value, as the actors usually do, was intended for charity, says the newspaper.

Via: NYT.