A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Daniel Jarosch, Co founder and managing director of brandsExclusive, one of the more prominent invitation only websites that offers branded products at reduced prices for limited periods. Armed with Business degrees from the Heinrich Heine University, D sseldorf (Germany) and the MIT, Boston, Daniel s career includes an eight year stint at Price Waterhouse Coopers, then two years in the Senior Management of eBay Europe. Daniel has also been involved in numerous ecommerce start ups prior to brandsExclusive. Read on

Marks reaction: A fantastic article about brandsExclusive and its business model, and how it is working - Enjoy!

The board of Australia's biggest media buyer Mitchell Communication Group has recommended to shareholders that they accept a bid from Aegis to purchase the company for $363m. Read on

Johns reaction: The end of the last big independent

Election 2010 offers politicians the opportunity to embrace an ever-maturing portfolio of social media platforms to engage with Australian voters, but are the politicians making the most of the available platforms? Research by Edelman suggests it is currently being underutilised. Read on

Johns reaction: And #GreensMPs second

SYDNEY: MySpace has hired former AOL UK director of affiliate and search Peter Mycock as commercial director in Australia and New Zealand, ahead of a major MySpace global relaunch.Mycock will head up the Australian operations of the social networking site's relaunch, codenamed 'Futura'. The first phase will feature new aesthetics, including a redesigned logo, and simplified interface and navigation. The “reimagining” will also present new advertising products and Mycock said the new site will endeavour to, “deliver engaging and deeply integrated advertising opportunities. MySpace will offer unique social advertising products that leverage our social leaders, and spread network-wide virally”. Read on

Darains reaction: ‘Peter not only brings extensive digital sales leadership and commercial experience to our team, but also has a first class track record in mentoring and developing people whilst growing revenues and yield. With MySpace and IGN Entertainment evolving rapidly, Peter’s all encompassing knowledge of digital environments and entrepreneurial spirit, makes him a welcome addition to the business.’

You notice it when you're reading email, but not so much writing it. Most email clients show just the first 50-75 characters of a message in the inbox view. Write your first line to that limit, and you'll likely get noticed. It s a tip offered up by web PR consultant Steve Rubel, who notes that an ebook author reached through his own crowded inbox and managed to get a click-through with a first line that grabbed him. Rubel dubs it tweetifying of your email s lead sentence, but it s actually about half a 140-character tweet. The idea is the same though let the character limit guide you to a punchier first impression. Read on

Brads reaction: Good idea

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released preliminary results to an upcoming survey in which marketers were asked about their mobile marketing budgets for the remainder of 2010 through 2011. The results thus far indicate budgets for mobile marketing spend is set to rise 124% from 2010 to 2011, putting the total allocation to the mobile channel at roughly 4% of overall marketing budgets. Mobile as a marketing channel is up by the greatest single percentage, with events and trade shows the only other channel that s projected to see growth in budget totals, surprisingly enough. Read on

Brads reaction: Mobile is on the move....again?

With the increasing focus on Facebook, the largest social media platform in the US, we've begun to see brands fall into two distinct camps the collectors and the investors. Read on

Lucios reaction: It is easy to amass an audience. You can do that with money. Creating active audience who cares about and understands the value of your brand is quite a different matter

Let s review: solar and wind are both unreliable, boutique technologies that demand ridiculously expensive backup and storage systems. Read on

Lucios reaction: The U.S. has long been a leader in green technologies. It has also long been a leader in fumbling that lead. Look at the historical record:

As the Internet progressively moves towards real-time information, the need to know what s popular right now is becoming increasingly important. Here are the best ways to track trends of all types, so you ll always be in the know about what s hot on the Internet. Read on

Johns reaction: Interesting

There has definitely been staggering growth in the Australian digital space during the 1st 6 months of the year. With a new financial year upon us I have no doubt that companies in Australia will continue to shift funding from offline to online. Thus I felt it timely to release a compilation of general digital statistics from the first half of 2010 to assist marketers and agencies alike to build their business case for online marketing initiatives. Enjoy! Read on

Teresas reaction: Here is my latest digital stats compilation. Enjoy!