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Apple Launches Music Social NetworkSeptember 1

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled its first foray into social media, Ping.

Included in iTunes 10, Ping is a music-themed social network, and because it’s built right into iTunes, there’s a potential 160 million users already on the network.

Ping will allow users to follow their friends and find out what they’re listening to and follow artists as well.

Steve Jobs Says Eric Schmidt Is Full Of It (AAPL, GOOG)September 1

steve jobs

Steve Jobs just took a jab at Google.

At today Apple news conference, Jobs announced Apple has shipped 120 million iOS devices, and he said the company is activating 230,000 new iOS devices on a daily basis.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has previously said 200,000 Android devices are activated every day.

Steve Jobs said Apple’s 230,000 iOS activations are new activations and that “rivals” are counting updates when they count their activations.

In other words, Jobs suggested that Eric Schmidt is full of it when he says there’s 200,000 Android activations daily.

If Jobs is taking a shot at Google, it’s pretty ballsy. Schmidt specifically said Google is activating 200,000 new Android phones daily.

When you think sports marketing, many names come to mind like Nike, AT&T, and Budweiser, however it is Ralph Lauren that is changing the rules of the game with its Legends Clinic, featuring Venus Williams.

Big time sports events marketing are usually outdoors not on the web. However Ralph Lauren filled their home page with a high quality one-hour production that had Williams essentially giving anyone who was watching a clinic. Those viewing online could ask Williams questions.

“The concept was interesting from the beginning because of its potential to drive interest in the sport and to reach a larger viewing audience than many high profile televised matches will receive,” Williams’ agent Carlos Fleming said.

“While I appreciated that this was an innovative idea, it really hit home when I witnessed fans from around the world having a very personal interactive experience with Venus,” Fleming said. “And they were having this experience days out from the US Open with the number three seed. The overwhelming feedback was a desire to play the game and a sense of better understanding.”

If you missed the Internet broadcast, yo

eBay Bans Google Checkout From Its SitesSeptember 1

Starting next July, eBay will no longer let Google Checkout transactions on eBay web sites. eBay owned Paypal, will be the checkout allowed.

“To give eBay buyers a consistent, speedy checkout experience and to ensure support for fast-growing sales via mobile platforms, eBay announced today that third-party checkout solutions will no longer be supported on eBay after June 30, 2011″, blogged Todd Lutwak, eBay’s vice president of the seller experience.

Today less than 10% of all sales on eBay.com are processed via third-party checkout solutions and the vast majority of sellers will not be affected by this coming transition.

For those sellers who do use third-party solutions, eBay checkout is being enhanced with key functionality including advanced tax reporting, more credit card integration, and advanced shipping solutions.

PayPal, brought in revenue of $817 million, up 22% from the year-earlier quarter. EBay’s overall revenue for the same period was $2.21 billion.

Social To Increase Online Ad Spending 14%September 1

Online ad spending is expected to grow almost 14%, from $45.6 billion, in 2010, to $51.9 billion, in 2011 according to a new report by Borrell Associates. The total U.S. ad spending for 2010 is about $238.6 billion.

The fastest-growing segments of online advertising are the local sector, anything targeted, and everything involving social media.

Here is more from the report.

The big driver will be targeted display (such as banner ads) advertising, which we expect to grow almost 60% in 2011, reaching $10.9 billion for national and local combined. While national advertisers will increase their use of targeted display by nearly 50%, local advertisers will outperform even that. Use of targeted display by advertisers local to the markets where their ads run will more than double, reaching more than $2.3 billion next year.

However, the Web’s initial darling –run-of-site display– continues to lose luster. Sales of run-of-site display ads will continue to decrease, dropping nearly 14% from this year’s level – from $9.5 billion to $8.2 billion for both local and national. This early online for