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Facebook to charge merchants to run offers
REUTERS, San Francisco
Facebook Inc said it will start charging businesses to run Offers on its social network, turning a previously free service into a potential revenue generator at a time when Wall Street is demanding new sources of growth and profit from the company.
Facebook launched Facebook Offers earlier this year, letting retailers and other local merchants send deals to their Facebook fans. Users claim the offers from their News Feeds and redeem the vouchers at stores to get discounts.
The service has been free, but in coming weeks Facebook will require merchants to pay at least $5 on related ads to promote each Facebook Offer to a targeted audience of fans and friends of fans. The cost will vary based on the size of a company1 s Facebook pages.
Since Facebook went public in May, the company has been under pressure from Wall Street to show how it can turn its giant social network into a money machine. Facebook shares have lost about 40 percent of their value since the IPO.
The commerce potential of Facebook, known as f-commerce, has yet to materialize, pardy because retailers have been able to feast on a host of free tools on the social network to attract customers.
Smartphones dominate Tokyo Game Show
AFP, Makuhari, Japan
Sophisticated gameplay and cheap downloads that are fuelling a boom in software for smartphones and tablets were on display Thursday at the Tokyo Game Show, the biggest of its kind in Asia.
Developers from all over the world flocked to the town of Makuhari outside the Japanese capital to showcase their latest offerings as the world readied for Friday's first sales of the iPhone 5.
Even the upcoming launch of faster, slicker and more capacious versions of Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Wii U, set to go head-to-head in the run-up to Christmas, could not take the spotlight off the everimproving world of smartphone gaming.
"iTunes store has been the main provider of games for smartphones, but now you can download games that you used to play at shopping mall arcades on this Android phone," said Tetsuya Kamoto at Sony Mobile'sXperia booth.
Court lifts freeze on three telcos' bank accounts
FROM PAGE Bl
Later, the operators separately filed petitions at the High Court, challenging the NBR directive.
The vacation bench of the HC had declined to hear the petitions, saying the matter was not urgent.
The court had also said it could not hear the petitions without going through the certified copy of the verdict of the Appellate Division, which last month declared the taxon SIM card legal.
Asaduzzaman said the Chamber-in-Judge court of Justice Md Abdul Wahhab Miah also issued an eightweek stay on the NBR directive.
It means the dispute over the rest 50 percent of tax payment will be settled after the release of the full text of the Appellate Division verdict, he said.
" If we are to pay the amount, we will do so. If not, the government will pay back," he said.
Ekramul Hoque, deputy attorney general, said the stay order will become invalid if the telecom companies fail to pay the half of the tax in ten days.
The NBR move, asking payment of the outstanding taxes on SIM card sales, came after the Appellate Division reversed an HC verdict against the imposition of such tax by the government earlier.
In August 2006, the HC declared such tax illegal. In March 2007, the NBR went to the Appellate Division challenging the HC order.
In the order, the NBR asked banks to deduct the amount from the accounts of the three mobile operators and transfer the money to the state coffers if the operators do not pay the dues in 15 days.
The NBR had earlier asked four mobile operators, including Grameenphone, to pay a combined amount of Tk 746 crore in tax. Grameenphone paidTk348 crore to the tax administrator.
Robi was supposed to payTk 181.79 crore, Banglalink Tk 168.64 crore and CitycellTk 47.6 crore as suppiemen-