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So, why is Yahoo shelling out $1.1 billion for blogging outfit Tumblr? Well, for one thing, it’s about being more social. “Email is slow and old and dying, so just being an email services provider is not sustainable for Yahoo. Google has had some success with Google+ and this looks like Yahoo is trying to replicate that with Tumblr,” says Warwick Business School associate professor John Baptista. “They are building capabilities to move into more dynamic forms of communication than email to offer Google + functionality to Yahoo customers.”

US cinema operator National CineMedia has cut deals with social platforms Twitter and Foursquare to enable advertisers to become part of the ‘social conversation’ around film. NCM, which boasts over 1,50 theatres in its network, is developing a weekly series highlighting trending movie topics powered by Twitter and its real-time data. Content will be featured on-screen and on Twitter, and will give audiences the opportunity to communicate before and after the films, as well as influence upcoming series. Over the next few weeks, NCM and Twitter say they will be in the market looking for a presenting sponsor.

Despite our preconceptions about gaming, in many cases it often goes beyond the simple yearning for entertainment, often fulfilling a deeper need. Oscar Diele* looks at how the concept of edutainment is gaining credence.

Global Radio’s Xfm has inked an eight-month partnership deal with Ford in the UK which will see the Ford Sync in-car entertainment system sponsor the radio station’s Xfm Presents series of live-music events. The deal covers all Xfm’s live-music activity including the Xfm Presents gigs which have recently seen performances from Suede at Barfly in London’s Camden and Biffy Clyro at the Borderline in Soho. Exclusive video content and audio from a selection of the sessions will be available for playback on a brand-new hub at xfm.co.uk, with music content specialists LoveLive producing all the content.

The more Tweets prospective UK car buyers see, the higher the likelihood that they will search for car brands and pursue offline activities such as signing up for a test drive or looking for a car dealership, according to the Tweets in Action: Auto study from Twitter and Compete.

The Beans Group is about to begin researching young people’s top brands for 2013. As we did last summer, the aim is to find the most-loved brands right now among 18-24s from a list of over 400 names, and create the Youth 100. Last year, YouTube, Google, Cadbury, Amazon and the BBC were among the top ten brands overall. How will they fare this time? Now is the opportunity to submit new entries to be included on our short-list.

At M&C Saatchi, the ‘Brutal Simplicity of Thought’ is our guiding philosophy, says Maurice Saatchi*. We believe that no matter what the medium, it is the thought process that should apply to all forms of advertising – including mobile, which is becoming increasingly important to brands as a means to engage and target relevant consumers. And yet the incredible rise of mobiles and tablets presents new challenges and concerns to advertisers, perhaps making mobile advertising appear more complicated than it should be.

We’re in the middle of a second creative revolution, driven by technology, says Google. You see, code is being added to the creative process, and that’s enabling new forms of brand expression and engagement. “Art, copy and code is the creative team for the connected world,” says the search giant on its Think Insights platform.