WebProNews

Zynga Reportedly Pulls Farmville From MSN

Zynga has apparently removed its massively popular game Farmville from Microsoft's MSN Games, and nobody seems to know why. The timing of this is interesting as Google has reportedly been in investment talks with Zynga, while it has been acquiring other social game-related properties.

Microsoft Launches Online Circular Ads for MSN Local

Microsoft Advertising has unveiled new localized deals through interactive online circulars (like those ads that fall out of your newspaper, the company notes) as part of MSN Local Edition. The site is geo-targeted, so only location-relevant circulars will be shown to consumers.

MSN Homepage Gets Bing Prominence Tweak

Update 2:  Microsoft has decided to give Bing a little bit more prominence on the recently redesigned MSN homepage. Probably not a bad idea, considering MSN.com had nearly 90 million unique visitors in March, according to Compete. Bing had 52 million.

MSN Launches Online Magazine For Women

Microsoft's MSN has launched Glo, an online magazine aimed at women. The new site is a joint partnership with BermanBraun and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., which publishes Elle magazine and Woman's Day. Glo has the feel of a magazine and has navigation similar to MSN's celebrity focused site Wonderwall, which BermanBraun also helped to develop.

Yahoo And NBC Benefit From Winter Olympics

Yahoo Sports said today traffic to its site during the Winter Olympics has soared, beating out both NBCOlympics.com and ESPN.com. According to comScore, Yahoo's Winter Games coverage attracted 9.3 million unique visitors, more than NBC's Olympics site (7.6 million unique visitors) and ESPN (8.4 million unique visitors). Yahoo Sports attracted over 17.5 million unique visitors over the week, more than double the visitors to its nearest competitors.

MSN Teams With NBC And Hearst On Local Video

MSN Local Edition has struck content deals with NBC Local Media and Hearst Television. Microsoft says the partnerships with NBC Local Media and Hearst Television will give MSN around 3,000 news video clips a week across 36 local media markets. The new video content will be available in January 2010.

MySpace, MSN Now Said To Be In Talks

Yesterday, the surprising news that Facebook and MySpace are negotiating a content-sharing partnership broke, yet that's not all the latter social network has on its plate.  A fresh report indicates MySpace is also in talks with MSN over some sort of music deal.

Bidding On Keywords Related To Trademarks

Bidding on keywords that are related to brands that are trademarked is a legally murky issue when it comes to infringement. (Coverage of the SMX Eastconference will continue at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Microsoft Launches H1N1 Flu Website

Microsoft has launched a new website, "H1N1 Response Center," which provides people with up to date relevant content and allows them to monitor symptoms and get advice using an H1N1 self-service tool. The H1N1 Response Center's self-assessment tool is licensed from medical and public health experts at Emory University. The service helps people determine if their symptoms could be caused by the H1N1 flu virus and provides recommendations about what they can do next.  

IT Sector To Help Global Economic Recovery

The expected growth rate for IT employment of 3 percent per year is more than three times the rate of growth of total employment and a solid indicator that investing in IT will contribute to economic recovery and growth, according to a new study by Microsoft and IDC.