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BEVERLY HILLS, CA (MARKET WIRE) Spark Networks, Inc. (NYSE Alternext US: LOV), a leading provider of online personals services, today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2008.

Even if Yahoo has fallen far behind Google in the search game, let's admit that the runner-up tries; updates and fresh features launch on a monthly (or weekly) basis. But new stats show that Yahoo Mail continues to be the company's real bread and butter in terms of traffic.Hitwise's Heather Hopkins reports, "Yahoo!'s mail property is its most trafficked property, receiving more than a third (36.71%) of visits to a custom category of 80 leading Yahoo! properties in February. The next two most popular domains are the portal front page, www.yahoo.com, and Yahoo! Search." (Credit: Hitwise)Those properties obtained shares of 25.48 and 11.75 percent, respectively, which barely add up to meet Yahoo Mail's total.What's more, Yahoo Mail seems to be growing in influence over time. While visits to Windows Live Mail are down 25 percent on a year-over-year basis, visits to Yahoo Mail have risen by three percent. And although visits to Gmail have

(Telecompaper) EU broadband penetration rose to 110.5 million users or 22.5 percent of the population in September 2008, according to industry association ECTA's latest Broadband Scorecard. This represents an increase of 9 percent over six months and 20 percent from a year earlier. The highest penetration rates were recorded in Denmark (37.5%) and Netherlands (36.3%) followed by Sweden, Finland and the UK. The lowest penetration rates at just above 10 percent were recorded in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia. The highest growth rates over the full year were seen in Greece, Cyprus and Malta. Additional competitive impetus from local loop unbundling was particularly pronounced in Greece and Cyprus. Growth rates began to slow in several of the leading countries including Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and the UK, suggesting market maturity. Some countries with lower absolute take-up levels also experienced slow growth including Spain, Italy and Austria. Fibre penetration was

The number one video site in the US and the world's largest music label are said to be cooking up a deal and a new service. YouTube and Universal Music Group are reportedly in talks to create a premium online music video service.YouTube has been the go to site for music videos for many people for years. The problem with that is that the music videos there are not legally supposed to be there. This often leads to them getting pulled and makes it frustrating for users, and hard for them to rely on the site for finding the music videos they're looking for. In the later part of last year, MTV launched music video site MTVmusic.com. A quick look at Compete data illustrates quite a decline in interest in that since its launch.There's no decline to be found with YouTube though, and perhaps that is why a music video site makes good sense there. People are going to continue searching for music videos with YouTube. Why not provide them?The site would operate separately from YouTube.com,

PITTSBURGH & ATLANTA - Wizzard Media , the world's largest podcasting network today announced that it has signed an agreement with Get Married, a leading multi-platform entertainment and wedding resource , to ...

Technology and society: “Alternate reality” games mixing puzzles and plot lines, online and off, are becoming more popularWHAT do you get when you combine technology, advertising and unconventional storytelling? Scores of “Batman” fans roaming the streets of San Diego wearing Joker costumes and carrying smart-phones. One of hundreds of alternate-reality games (ARGs) orchestrated for marketing purposes, this elaborate quest, staged at a comic-book convention in 2007, began with $1 bills that led players to a Joker-themed website. The site, in turn, gave them a time and a set of satellite-positioning co-ordinates. At the time and place specified, players found a plane writing a phone number in the sky. Calling the number sent them on a scavenger hunt with online components.And this massive cross-media event represented only one part of a game called “The Dark Knight”, put together by 42 Entertainment, an advertising company, to promote the film of the

With the economy in a recession and people looking for more ways to save money, Google is offering help with a new money saving site called Tip Jar.Google says the site is an experiment that it hopes will offer users the most effective ways to save money. Tip Jar is powered by Google Moderator, which itself began as an experiment for the Google App Engine."There are lots of money-saving tips scattered across the web, but even if you found them, it would be hard to know which ones were worth trying," Google explains on its blog."Tip Jar gathers tips in one place and invites people - i.e., you, me and everyone else - to rank them in order of usefulness and even add their own tips to the list. Over time, the best and most useful tips will rise to the top."Tip Jar is divided into nine different categories allowing users to share and receive tips on finance, shopping, kids & family, cars & transit, food, vacation, at home, at work and miscellaneous topics.&

Wow your readers with these thrilling topics Realising the power of blogging and new media, storage major Seagate has launched a contest for bloggers called 'Seagate Freeagent and I'. Blog topics include the thrilling subjects 'the most creative

Giving ministers power to appoint senior civil servants would make officials more accountable, a think tank says.