Blogs - Industry/Product Flash Point
- 9 Scary Ways Criminals Use Facebook to Scam and Rob You
- How to Save Money at the Movie Theater
- Think Your Mortgage Refi Rate is Great? IBM Pays Less Than 1%
- Weird-Mart: Tales of the Bizarre from the Walmart Aisles
- Solid Reasons for the Unbanked to Shun Chase's New 'Liquid Card'
- GM Had 1,999 Reasons to Crash Facebook's IPO Party
- JCPenney's Ron Johnson: 'Customers Don't Get Our Pricing Strategy'
- Can't Get a Piece of the Facebook IPO? Lucky You!
- The Truth About JPMorgan Chase's $2 Billion Loss: It's No Big Whoop
- Hollywood, Homeland Security Double Up Video Piracy Warnings
- GM Kills $10 Million Facebook Ad Campaign Because It Didn't Work
- Saver or Sensualist, Innocent or Vigilant: What's Your Money Type?
- ExxonMobil's Safety Obsession: Inside the Mind of an Oil Giant
- Best Buy Gets Worse: CEO Dunn May Be Done, but His Payday Isn't
- As Investors Fawn Over Facebook, Poll Finds User Distrust, Apathy
This Friday, Facebook will go public in one of the most anticipated IPOs in history. With more than 900 million users, Mark Zuckerberg's expanding social media empire has become a seemingly irreplaceable part of the online experience. Unfortunately, a byproduct of its success is that millions of Americans are far more at risk of falling victim to a number of cyber crimes.To be sure, cyber crime is nothing new, but the social media revolution has made such crimes much easier to commit. People...
9 Scary Ways Criminals Use Facebook to Scam and Rob You originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-17T11:40:00Z.
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Filed under: Saving Money
By Cameron HuddlestonMy family has a Friday night tradition: dinner and a movie. No, we don't go to a restaurant then the theater. We make the kids dinner and let them eat it while watching a DVD or movie that we download from a video-streaming service. If we were to actually go out, the cost of movie tickets alone for four of us would be enough to buy two DVDs (which we could watch again and again).
Watching a movie at the theater can be a real budget buster. But it's fun to occasionally...
How to Save Money at the Movie Theater originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-17T05:15:00Z.
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Think you've got a good mortgage rate? Thanks to record-low interest rates, Bankrate.com says consumers with good credit can get 30-year fixed-rate mortgages for about 3.75% today. 15-year fixed mortgages are going for as little as 3%, and homeowners who like to spin the wheel can take out a five-year adjustable rate mortgage for less than 2.7%. Great rates, no doubt -- but IBM (IBM) has got them all beat.
Last week, IBM floated its latest round of "record-low interest rate" debt, selling...
Think Your Mortgage Refi Rate is Great? IBM Pays Less Than 1% originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T15:35:00Z.
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Filed under: Wal-Mart Stores, Features, Secret Shopper
A 47-year-old man was bitten by a rattlesnake in the outdoor garden department of a Walmart (WMT) store in Lewiston, Idaho, this week. The rattlesnake latched onto the man's hand, prompting him to scream, shake the snake loose, and then stomp it to death. A peculiar incident, yes, but hardly the first odd thing to occur at one of the retailer's 3,878 U.S. locations: Strange things seem to happen in Walmart stores all the time.
True, Walmart is the nation's biggest retailer, which gives it...
Weird-Mart: Tales of the Bizarre from the Walmart Aisles originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T15:15:00Z.
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When bankers come up with a new wonder product, it's rarely good news for consumers. JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) new "Liquid" card is no exception.
Unveiled last week, Liquid is touted as "a reloadable card that offers customers financial control and flexibility with the convenience of Chase's extensive branch and ATM network." Co-branded with Visa (V), Liquid can be used much like a credit or debit card to withdraw cash from ATMs, pay for purchases in stores and online, and even pay the electric...
Solid Reasons for the Unbanked to Shun Chase's New 'Liquid Card' originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T14:40:00Z.
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Filed under: Technology, Facebook, General Motors
General Motors (GM) really knows how to time an exit.
The automaker has announced that it will no longer advertise on Facebook, just days before the social networking giant is set to go public.
GM doesn't have a beef with the content on Facebook. It's just not satisfied with the effectiveness of the paid ads that it's been placing on the wildly popular website.
Maybe that's not a surprise: When's the last time you clicked on a Facebook ad?
Search marketing manager WordStream compared the...
GM Had 1,999 Reasons to Crash Facebook's IPO Party originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T14:15:00Z.
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Filed under: Earnings, JC Penney, Retail
By Aimee GrothOn Tuesday, JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson presented on the company's Q1 earnings and its ongoing strategy in New York City. This was right after the company announced that it missed sales expectations by 15%.
One big problem is that customers don't get the new pricing strategy, which it started rolling out in February. A lot hinges on this.
"Our marketing isn't doing the...
JCPenney's Ron Johnson: 'Customers Don't Get Our Pricing Strategy' originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T10:35:00Z.
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Filed under: Technology, Investing, Facebook, Market News
A lot of people have been scrambling for a piece of Facebook's IPO this week, but you're probably out of luck. Underwriters save their allotments of freshly minted shares for prized clients, leaving most ordinary individual investors to bid on new offerings after they hit the open market and get bid up to higher prices.In this case, it's just as well.
Big institutional investors and wealthy brokerage clients will get first dibs on the Facebook IPO shares before they begin trading. That...
Can't Get a Piece of the Facebook IPO? Lucky You! originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T09:50:00Z.
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Filed under: JP Morgan Chase, Market News, Banking
Hey, Wall Street? Chicken Little called. She says you need to stop overreacting to JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading loss. I mean, it's not as if the sky were falling...
For the past few days, investors have been mulling the implications of JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion derivatives trading loss, reported Friday. Ask some folks what it means, and they'll tell you it's proof positive we need to implement the Volcker rule. Others say that because JPMorgan (JPM) lost the money trying to "hedge"...
The Truth About JPMorgan Chase's $2 Billion Loss: It's No Big Whoop originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-16T09:10:00Z.
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Filed under: Media, Crime, Entertainment
If you thought the unskippable FBI warning about piracy included on every DVD was annoying before, it's about to get even worse.
Soon, home entertainment customers will have to sit through an additional pre-roll message, brought to you by Homeland Security. Yes, Homeland Security.
In a joint press release, the FBI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Homeland Security Investigations Bureau announced the additional warning screen. Like the FBI stamp -- which warns of...
Hollywood, Homeland Security Double Up Video Piracy Warnings originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-15T16:52:00Z.
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Filed under: Company News, Technology, Facebook, General Motors
By Jim EdwardsGeneral Motors has pulled $10 million in ads from Facebook because they just didn't work, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Dennis K. Berman.
Berman, the Journal's Marketplace editor, wrote on Twitter:
"GM has pulled its $10 million advertising campaign from Facebook. Why? The ads didn't work."
UPDATE: GM will continue to use Facebook's free media to promote its brands, the WSJ reported. The $10 million was the entirety of GM's Facebook ad budget, the Journal noted.
...
GM Kills $10 Million Facebook Ad Campaign Because It Didn't Work originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-15T16:40:00Z.
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Filed under: Books, Personal Finance
John Robbins has lived an unusual life. Son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, John made a decision early in his adulthood to walk away from the chance to prosper in his father's business. After living with his wife and son on a remote Canadian island for 10 years, he returned to a more mainstream life.Over time, Robbins did exceptionally well for himself as a speaker and author. But his financial security was pulled out from under him after a trusted friend invested...
Saver or Sensualist, Innocent or Vigilant: What's Your Money Type? originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-15T15:20:00Z.
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Filed under: Energy, Exxon Mobil, Books
ExxonMobil (XOM) is an easy company to hate. As the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas company, it's hard not to blame it for the pain we experience at the pump -- particularly when you consider how much money it makes. If it were a country, its 2011 revenues of $486 billion would have placed it 20th in terms of GDP, ahead of Poland, Sweden, and Argentina, just to name a few.
Yet, like the bully who mistreated you in primary school, ExxonMobil is widely misunderstood. While many of...
ExxonMobil's Safety Obsession: Inside the Mind of an Oil Giant originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-15T12:15:00Z.
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Filed under: Company News, People, Best Buy
If you want to make an easy $6.6 million at Best Buy (BBY), find a way to be its next CEO and then commence an inappropriate relationship with an employee.
The struggling retailer's audit committee has found that even though ex-CEO Brian Dunn did have a "close personal relationship" with a female employee that violates Best Buy's policy, he will still receive a severance package worth roughly $6.6 million.
I wonder how much he would have gotten if he had carried on two inappropriate...
Best Buy Gets Worse: CEO Dunn May Be Done, but His Payday Isn't originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-15T11:20:00Z.
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Filed under: Investing, Facebook
By CNBC's Kayla Tausche and Jesse Bergman(Associated Press contributed to this post)
Facebook's initial public offering will be the largest and perhaps the most highly anticipated Internet deal in history.
Faced with great expectations, however, Facebook is staring down some potentially unnerving obstacles when it comes to key areas of monetization and growth: public distrust and display advertising apathy.
More than half (57 percent) of Facebook users polled said they never click on ads...
As Investors Fawn Over Facebook, Poll Finds User Distrust, Apathy originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-05-15T11:15:00Z.
