The social networking site will give at least $50 to up to 200,000 small business in a partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business.

Facebook already makes an estimated $4.05 billion in global advertising revenue.

Facebook will start the advertising push with a roadshow and a series of webinars that teach small business owners how to use the site and social media. Facebook has set up a page for more information.

Currently, brands and business are not be able to operate like a person when the Timeline feature rolls out on Thursday. But the site is making changes to how businesses represent themselves.

Contextual advertising on the site has been increasing in quality. It used to be spotty, but the amount of social sharing going on is making it easier for people to pinpoint how to deliver ads,improving conversion rates.

This trend may have moved Facebook to change how it allows consumers to interact with brands. Right before the launch, Facebook took away the "Like" requirement for brands. Fans no longer had to "Like" a brand page in order to comment on it. This news came in the wake of an infographic that showed over 40% of fans don't care about the page or interacting with the brand, if they are not given a reason to do so.

As social sharing becomes more prevalent, it's likely that display advertising will continue to be the most efficient source of revenue for the company.

Ad revenue for the site, which has over 750 million registered users, will miss the expected $4.05 billion mark, according to analysts, but the slowdown in growth is explained as a diversification into other revenue streams like Facebook Credits.

The numbers suggest that attempts to drive consumption and spending across games, credits and other Facebook add-ons is fleshing out the bigger ad revenue picture.

When all streams are taken into consideration, total revenues at Facebook should reach $4.27 billion this year, eMarketer estimates. That more than doubles the $2 billion Facebook is estimated to have earned in 2010. Ad revenues will make up 89% of the total this year, down from 95% in 2009, says the site.

The $4.27 billion should beat FB's internal estimates, which were about $4 billion. Based on earlier reports, Facebook has been moving at a fast clip, doubling its first half revenues. An earlier report showed that it had doubled its half-yearly revenues.

Revenues in US territory will do just as well. Ad revenues here are expected to pass $2 billion in 2011, making for over half of the company's total revenue. Overseas ad revenue will continue to eat away at the US chunk of the market as mobile penetration and broadband to the home increases across developing nations, especially in Asia.

Overseas ad dollars is predicted to represent 50% of the pie next year and a slight majority by 2013.

IMGuest is a premium marketing tool launched three days ago that enables marketing and guest relations staff to use the social graph to interact with hotel guests at check-in. From that moment on, staff can push out discounts and other offers to them instantaneously based on their interests.

The data reflect the interests, histories and demographics that marketing staff can leverage to make the physical experience at the hotel more gratifying. Instead of having guests search out their own next actions, the actions are delivered to them as cues in emails.

Mendolovich says the Tel Aviv-based company started by running a pilot with eight international hotels that he could not mention because of confidentiality agreements. The hotels are global.

We got a sneak peek into how this social graph for hotel managers works.

Essentially, hotel staff log into IMGuest through the portal and then monitor guests who check-in to the social graph. The interface shows all their profiles, and then you can dig down deeper to get metadata about those individuals.

Staff can post to the guests marketing offers for things like a jazz night, a flash sale on free drinks, or a spa discount, throughout the chain or specifically to guests at the particular hotel, and it will go directly to the people who are logged in as guests at that moment. Staff can filter through demographic data like age, gender, origin, or interests.

This premium account is available only to hotels and the price is about $50 per hotel, per month. There is a free version available to anyone.

From inspiring Windows to pioneering creative uses of personal computers to popularizing quality industrial design and mobile media consumption, to finally delivering on the sci-fi promise of tablet computing, Jobs has been at the forefront of global cultural evolution for decades.

Apple's acquisition of NeXT brought Jobs back into the fold, and the era that followed brought us the iMac, the iPod, and all the successive innovations in personal computing and digital media that followed. This year, Apple has launched a major release of Mac OS X, and the iOS 5 update for its mobile devices is set to launch this fall. Jobs' vision for Apple's range of products has made the company one of the most valuable in the world.

The Right Man For the Job
COO Tim Cook, who will succeed Jobs as CEO, has made much of this success possible by ensuring efficient supply chains and exclusive access to parts and materials for the manufacture of Apple's hardware. Thanks to Cook's operational vision, Apple's new family of devices has made it difficult for other companies to compete on both quality and price.

The iPad dominates the tablet market, which has so upended PC sales that HP left the PC business entirely, citing the punishing reality of the "tablet effect." Cook has been instrumental in shaping Apple's current strategy, and he already acted as CEO while Jobs was on medical leave.

Apple's board of directors issued this press release today:

CUPERTINO, Calif., Aug 24, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Apple's Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple's Chief Operating Officer, as the company's new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.

"Steve's extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world's most innovative and valuable technology company," said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple's Board. "Steve has made countless contributions to Apple's success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple's immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration."

"The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO," added Levinson. "Tim's 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does."

Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.

Business Insider has Jobs' resignation letter to Apple and its board of directors.

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Photo credit: Apple

Net revenue growth was not as strong, but CEO Jeff Weiner says this is due to heavy reinvestment in the growth and development of the site. LinkedIn earned $4.5 million in net income this quarter, compared to $4.3 million last year, just a 5% increase. But their top-line revenue was up considerably, more than doubling since Q2 2010. Before costs, they pulled in $121 million last quarter.

The earnings overview breaks down revenue among three essential products: premium subscriptions, marketing solutions and hiring solutions. Premium LinkedIn subscriptions, which give individual users access to more valuable information about activity in their professional networks, accounted for 20% of revenue, and this percentage has declined slightly for four quarters straight. Marketing solutions comprised 32% of earnings.

Hiring solutions became LinkedIn's most profitable product in Q1 2010, and that lead has grown wider over time. They're down 1% since last quarter, but hiring solutions still comprise 48% of LinkedIn's overall revenue. Their announcement last week of LinkedIn-powered job applications should bolster LinkedIn's position as a hiring solution.

LinkedIn's Web traffic is great by any measure; it saw 7.1 billion page views in Q2, which is an 80% increase since 2010. But there seems to be a slight problem with sustained user engagement. The service boasts 115.8 million members now, but only 81.8 million people, 71% of members at the very most, visit the site once a month. Many of their newest initiatives seem aimed to address this issue.

This year's launch of LinkedIn Today greatly expanded the amount of content available on the site and mobile apps, with news targeted by industry, and the company is constantly experimenting with new email formats and other engagement strategies. April's launch of the LinkedIn Share Button has already reached 100,000 sites. And Jeff Weiner has been open about his desire for the site to implement a Yammer-like enterprise chat/collaboration feature.

LinkedIn's next goal appears to be making the site and its services more indispensable to the workplace, both for job seekers and for the enterprise.

This acquisition is sure to have interesting implications for Microsoft, who have been partnered with The Dealmap for their competing Bing Deals service.

Google, the giant that it is, doesn't have to worry about scale, but it is moving against entrenched competitors, such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Foursquare, who have been solely devoted to building these capabilities all this time. Google is building these applications slowly, one piece at a time, and there's no clear path to adoption for users. Google users already see bits and pieces of these services across various applications, but there's no starting point as obvious as a Groupon email landing in one's inbox.

Google has acquired other startups working on local business this year, such as TalkBin, a mobile service that lets users communicate with local businesses in real time. Whether that was an acquisition for talent, technology or both, it's clear that Google wants a wide range of options for how to proceed in this space. What will that look like on the user end?

Google Maps is a natural place to integrate deals into location searches, but how do Latitude check-ins play in? How will these services integrate into Google Plus, which does currently feature location check-ins, but in a sparse and half-finished way, especially on iOS? Google's whole business is built on precisely-targeted advertising, but Google ads come at users from all directions as they navigate between the various Google services. The Dealmap would make a welcome addition to local searches for shopping or restaurants, but it only addresses part of Google's relationship to local businesses and their customers.

Facebook for Business looks almost exactly like Facebook for Journalists, an initiative that the company rolled out last month to help reporters, writers, TV and radio personalities set up their own pages to post content and be "Liked" without making their personal profiles public. It seems a touch odd that Facebook would focus on journalists first and not businesses, as it is far more likely that businesses would buy ads to promote their products on the store front, whereas only the most hardcore of personal branding journalists buy any type of ads. Yet, it may be a matter of targeting online influencers first.

That is exactly what we have right now between Facebook and Google Plus - a feature war. Plus, in and of itself, is a reactionary move from Google, with features designed to take advantage of Facebook's vulnerabilities, such as Circles (privacy) and Hangout (video chat) and news feed (the "bump" system, where Google may actually be losing). Facebook is beginning to punch back, starting with the Skype video chat integration and now with Facebook for Business.

What is the next front of the war? Facebook's dip into mobile and HTML5 looks like it will be the big battle of the struggle (which brings Apple, Microsoft and HP into the mix). Payments will also be a front. Until that gauntlet gets thrown down, expect a lot of little skirmishes like this one between Facebook and Google Plus in the battle for the hearts and minds of users across the world.

Apply with LinkedIn allows applicants to adjust their LinkedIn profile information to suit the position before they apply. After they submit, the confirmation screen displays people in the applicant's LinkedIn network who work at the company, allowing them to connect or ask for a referral.

But this is also a win for job applicants. Using LinkedIn as the primary point of contact in a job application, rather than a secondary Web presence that doesn't replace the good old-fashioned résumé, makes maintaining one's profile a much better use of time. The customization options in the Apply with LinkedIn plug-in solve the problem of maintaining multiple résumés. Best of all, this can solve the unending mysteries of email attachments and file formats in job applications.

Email-based job applications follow a basic pattern, imitating the way things used to work on paper, but the lack of standards makes for a bewildering experience that changes from one application to the next. Some employers require files in DOC format, others allow PDF; some want cover letters in the email, others want them as attachments. This is no more fun for the employer than it is for the applicant.

LinkedIn could solve those problems if it can drive widespread adoption of Apply with LinkedIn, and it's in a strong position to do so. While other social networks are elbowing their way into the jobs space, LinkedIn, as the dominant dedicated professional networking site, has a clear head start. The company went public this year, and the site crossed 100 million members in March.

I.T. can still wipe data from lost or stolen phones, but only corporate data. It can deploy enterprise apps over-the-air, but it can't see what personal apps a user has installed. And it can't track the location of a phone unless the employee gives it permission to do so.

For I.T., Control Where it Matters

If that sounds like a deal that would make the control-freak I.T. admins uncomfortable, Divide offers some enterprise-ready features that should sweeten the deal. On the work "side" of the device, enterprise-grade applications for email, contacts, calendar, text messaging, IM and Web browsing are provided, and they sync with ActiveSync-compatible systems, including Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps and Lotus Notes.

I.T. still has the ability to set policies on the devices - for example, to enforce encryption or to specify under what scenarios an employee can connect to the network. It can also enforce legal terms of service, like the management of email signatures, and it can require a password to be entered every time a user switches from the personal profile to the work one.

The switching process is done by a simple double-tap of the "home" button.

Divide also includes a secure API (application programming interface) that allows third-parties (or even I.T. itself) to write apps that access corporate data. These apps can then be sent down to end users' devices over-the-air.

Finally, I.T. can brand the business profile to their liking, right down to the background image and the icons that appear on the homescreen.

Private Beta Today & Other Company Details

Today, Enterproid launches into private beta via a sign-up form on its website. A mid-2011 commercial launch on the Android platform is planned with support for Windows Phone 7 and iOS devices to soon follow.

There are some interesting co-founders behind Enterproid, it's worth mentioning: CEO Andrew Toy formerly served as VP of Mobile and Syndication Technology at MTV Networks, VP of Business Development Alexander Trewby spent 10 years at Morgan Stanley as VP of Mobile Development and VP of Engineering David Zhu was previously Director of Engineering at iOS-focused startup Smule, the maker of a slew of  #1 hits on the iTunes App Store.

Enterproid was also a finalist in the 2011 Qualcomm Ventures QPrize competition and is presenting at the DEMO conference today in Palm Desert, California.

One prominent example is supply chain management (SCM), which is the process by which businesses acquire physical materials and resources, assemble them and deliver them to customers.

While not all companies have the budget for such state-of-the-art technology, there is no shortage of innovation and automation available to most companies when it comes to SCM.

Of course, exactly what SCM processes look like will vary from business to business, but regardless of how complex the process is, automating it will not only reduce costs and increase productivity, but also produce lots of data.

Integrating SCM data with other vital business data

There is no shortage of SCM software, from big players like SAP and Oracle, to newer players like NetSuite, a SaaS solution, and MyERP, a low-cost solution for small businesses.

Whichever platform your company goes with, you'll want to ensure it's either part of a larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite that contains other modules like CRM and accounting, or that it's extensible enough to be plugged into third party services with relative ease.

For example, plugging in Web analytics data alongside SCM data using tools like the Google Analytics API or related add-ons can begin to paint a more thorough picture of the relationship between Website traffic and real-world, on-the-ground sales and shipments. Likewise, CRM platforms whether its part of your ERP solution or a separate product can give you a much more detailed picture of who your paying customers actually are.

Even when dealing with SCM by itself, it can sometimes be a challenge to get all of the most vital data under one roof, due to issues like incompatible data formats or other players in the supply chain who may not share the same idea of transparency as you. Thus, bolting on additional sources of information about your business can be critical to gaining a more complete picture of what's going on.

The more data you have available to you, the more you understand about how your business actually functions and thus the more you can do to streamline processes, cut unnecessary costs and gauge productivity.

According to McDowell, the partnership will increase foot traffic to small businesses that adopt the service by at least 10%.

Specifics about how the technology will be implemented and distributed were not delved into in any detail, but at one point McDowell referred to this suite of services as an "app." The app will connect businesses to potential customers over multiple channels, including social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, as well as SMS and email. Location-based services will also play a role, which will be tied into Nokia's Ovi Maps, something that McDowell said will be an important part of the new offering.

Businesses are hungry for tools that increase customer loyalty and increase sales, but often don't have the technological infrastructure to support this, the execs explained in their joint presentation. That is, businesses in emerging markets don't necessarily have PCs, they have phones.

For Nokia, providing a valuable service like this to the estimated 500 million small businesses worldwide will help increase customer loyalty and sell more phones. For Intuit, it's about bringing their experience with small business-focused products like QuickBooks to a new market.

The offering is set to launch in the 4th quarter of this year with a larger rollout following in 2011.

There are currently 1.3 billion Nokia devices in use today and the company announced new products this week running an updated mobile operating system (OS), Symbian^3. Nokia execs said yesterday they expect to sell 50 million smartphones running the new OS. Symbian is also a current mobile market share leader, with 40% of the worldwide smartphone market.

Disclosure: Nokia paid for this reporter's travel and accommodations to Nokia World 2010.

The phone call is no longer considered sexy. However, just like the human need for conversation, the phone call is never going to go away. People will always talk, and that conversation will continue to be a perennial part of any communication strategy. Building apps for the smartphone may be cool, but building apps for the voice network is essential.

Personalization to Stay Relevant

The nature of the phone call is rapidly evolving, especially as it relates to commerce. As businesses fight to stay relevant in the conversation - no pun intended - they see the value of using new data streams to access customers and utilizing existing streams effectively. They do this by using the telephone to send out a message that attracts customers.

There is a need to personalize the phone call. It's a direct response to the fact that people have little patience for the generic phone message, especially in this microblogging age. Unless it's apparent early on in the message that it was meant specifically for them, it's going to take a lot more to get the customer's attention. Not only does the phone call need to be personalized for each customer, but this personalization has to be able to scale with the business.

There are two aspects to personalization. The first is to unlock the information in disparate data sources, and the second is to interject this data into the conversation at the right time and in the right format. This has and always will be the dominion of the app developer with deep smarts in the business domain. These apps need to discern data quality, employ complex business rules and interject the data in real time into the conversation, all in an effort to make the conversation relevant.

This relevance can be in the form of traditional messaging, like personalized appointment reminders that give clients details of the appointment along with the ability to automatically reschedule, or it can be in newer methods, like in student education where key presses on the phone can be tied in real time to an online seminar.

No Longer a "Tool of the Big Boys"

Unlike the mobile device, these apps are hosted on the network, meaning it's up to the telecom provider to build the platform to support these apps. This is where the cloud-based IVR comes in, providing the full set of features and scale with very little up-front costs.

It's important to note that the technologies that make up the IVR developers palette have been around for decades; what's changing is the access to these technologies. For example, open standards like Voice XML, CCXML and technologies like text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text have been available for a while, but until a couple of years ago, building an IVR that could customize a phone call was the dominion of large enterprise applications.

Building IVRs was a complex, multi-person endeavor, partly because of bloated protocols and high learning curves, and partly because of licensing and related costs. Not only was the barrier for entry high for developers, but the pricing of the technologies involved made the business case for a small development shop even harder to make.

To compound this problem even further, providing quality "copper-to-copper" termination at scale has always been an expensive proposition. It was the case that the only way to guarantee that 10 simultaneous calls would have the same call quality as 10,000 was to buy 10,000 phone lines worth of hardware, manage direct carrier relationships and keep dozens of servers idling, just in case the big flood came. Understandably, this made small- and medium-sized businesses even more wary of doing too much with their IVR other than what was available from cookie-cutter software. IVRs remained the tool of the big boys.

Cloud telephony is disrupting this old way of business. It has abstracted the complexity of telephony and the associated costs and provided an on-demand platform where anyone can create apps that are relevant to the conversation. Platforms provided by the likes of CloudVox, Adhearsion and CallFire are disrupting this status quo by creating an environment where the IVR resides in the cloud and can be invoked either by calling out to phones, or by consumers calling in to a hosted number.

"The Illusion of Simplicity"

The cloud solves the problem by creating the illusion of simplicity. The tasks of setting up trunk groups, interacting with carriers, and so on are taken care of by the service provider, who in turn provides open, on-demand APIs to connect, create and execute calls. In fact, many providers are ignoring VoiceXML and CCXML and are creating simplified standards that are more appealing to developers.

CloudVox, for example, provides a JSON-like representation of a call that can then be executed via the Web on its cloud. CallFireXML , on the other hand, provides a reductionist XML spec that allows for great expressiveness by providing a simplified XML tag set. Simplification in cloud telephony means not having to worry about how the phone call is made; you simply tag your data, and the service provider takes care of the rest.

This trend has not gone unnoticed by the big boys. In fact, there's a mini-consolidation wave happening in the industry. The big players - the AT&Ts, Verizons, and the Level 3s of the world - are now on the prowl to dominate this space, either by innovation or by acquisition. Of course, their deep pockets make it easier to buy rather than build. BT's acquisition of Ribbit and Microsoft's acquisition of TellMe are perfect examples.

This is also a validation of the fact that the telephone call is not going away. As long as people want to talk, there will be a need for building apps that allow for person-to-person calls, and that's a great business to be in. What kind of hosted IVR apps would you like to build today?

Photo by Per Hardestam

The app uses your phone's location and accelerometer features to send a signal to the Bump server whenever the app is running and your phone shakes. If Bump detects that two users have their phones jostled in the same place, at the same time, the service presumes those two people want to exchange contact info. It's a great little system, and with the new version users can do even more.

Bump has already proven itself the easiest way to replace business cards - and actually save peoples' info - between smartphone users. Now it's even more powerful. The company opened its mobile data sharing API to the world in February, but there's something to be said for advanced features right inside one single app.

Bump 2.0 is an upgrade to the existing app, or can be downloaded via iTunes at this link. Bump 2.0 for Android will be released later this Summer, the company says.

Tags appear below a business's listing and carry information such as coupon offers, sales and website URLs. Starting with the states where the previous 11 trial cities are located, the goal is to roll them out across the U.S. Currently, the only place they are available statewide is in California.

Location-based advertising has proven very profitable, as we have reported before. One in four U.S. adults use location-based services. Half of those users engage with location-based advertisements on those services. Check-in service Foursquare has grown wildly. Competitors like TopGuest have entered the arena, offering real-world deals.

We looked up vinyl, books, shoes, archery and other searches in both San Francisco and Seattle to no effect. (The screenshot above is from the Google announcement) Admittedly, this is in the early stages. But, Google Tags will prove useful, to both businesses and customers, only if they get used and get seen.

Thanks to Charly Omer

Moses Kahlon, the Minister of Communications, announced the lift in a press release. The original decision to ban the iPad was made without the minister's knowledge, inspiring a governmental squabblefest in Israel.

The Ministry is allowing the importation of only one iPad per person.There is no information explaining this restriction in the press release. If there is no risk, it does not immediately make sense.