Cake Marketing, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), announced that an Inc. 5000 and Direct Marketing News top Digital Marketing Agency, Direct Agents, is switching to the Cake Marketing tracking platform. Direct Agents is a top digital marketing agency that continues to gain market share across the Finance, Insurance, Consumer Services, Retail and Market Research verticals, by providing brand advertisers with customized performance-based marketing services and helping clients acquire new customers online. Working directly with globally recognized brands, Direct Agents made the switch to Cake Marketing for their accurate, scalable, and trusted software solution. The partnership with Cake Marketing enables the seamless management of business operations, from click to conversion, to enhance the performance of their marketing relationships with advertisers.

According to the SMB Spending Forecast by BIA/Kelsey, small and medium sized businesses will increase spending on performance-based commerce and transaction platforms from $1.7 billion in 2010 to $4.6 billion by 2015. Online marketers have an increasing need for a tracking and analytics platform that can power small and large scale business models and, as a result, have invested more resources into the tracking infrastructure for their businesses. Cake Marketing is fulfilling this demand for online marketers looking to outsource their tracking platform by providing them a scalable and accurate solution.

“As the Agency of Record for large scale brands and advertisers, it is imperative that we have a trusted infrastructure with real-time analytics, server uptime guarantees and superior customer support to uphold the Direct Agents reputation and further solidify our leading position in the industry,” said Josh Boaz, Managing Director and Co-founder of Direct Agents.

Direct Agents had previously used another platform to track its online campaigns; however with their move into the mobile marketing space, the firm needed a platform that could seamlessly track web-based and mobile campaigns simultaneously. The Cake Marketing platform tracks in Apps and Pay Per Installs for all mobile marketing campaigns, thus providing Direct Agents with the necessary tools to manage their mobile marketing initiatives and aggressively expand into this new channel.

“With Direct Agents working across multiple verticals, traffic distribution channels and with both domestic and international clients, the partnership proves the flexibility of the Cake Marketing platform to handle customized business models. The ability to make the platform work for custom businesses has helped Cake Marketing gain significant market share among online marketers and leading advertisers,” said Jeff McCollum, President of Cake Marketing.

As the Cake Marketing platform continues to gain significant recognition, management has increased its investment in its hosting infrastructure. The Cake Marketing platform is available to online marketers through a monthly license and usage fee and can power any business with ease, accuracy and precision.

After a horrendous week of basically being told by almost everyone that they suck, Facebook might have some good news on the horizon? According to various reports, it seems perhaps that Facebook is secretly (or not so secretly) working on a Facebook phone. Yes, coming perhaps in 2013 will be a mobile smart-phone, all about Facebook, with everything you could want about..well, Facebook.

According to the LA Times:

Rumors and reports that Facebook has been working on building its own cellphone go back to 2010 when Tech Crunch reported that two high-level Facebook staffers had been tasked with developing a Facebook phone in secret.

The rumor resurfaced in 2011 when All Things D reported that the company was working with the Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC to create a cellphone, code-named “Buffy,” that has the social network integrated into “the core of its being.”

While Facebook refused to comment on Buffy specifically, the company did send All Things D the following statement: “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.”

However, some people are asking, why does anyone really want a Facebook phone? CNET Columnist Chris Matyszczyk doesn’t think it would be a good idea:

 In Facebook’s case, I would be surprised if there were too many human beings for whom the essential idea of a phone made by Facebook is terribly exciting. The Facebook brand isn’t that strong. It’s more of a utility. It isn’t the sort of brand where acolytes cannot wait for the next thing to come out of Facebook.

SlashGear agrees and thinks the rumors are complete bull-hoey:

 Facebook hasn’t been the minor player the social segment for some time now, and chasing that position in mobile would do it few favors. Today, the smartphone market is dominated by two platforms, iOS and Android. Microsoft’s struggles to broach that dominance with Windows Phone (and its own untold billions) shows just how difficult a challenge it can be.

Mark Zuckerberg already has a footprint on each. Why should it threaten that position by becoming a bit-player in its own right? It’s a zero-sum game, really, distracting your development investment toward a platform with very few users from rivals with millions.

The Guys at IMGrind however seem to like the idea:

When you think of examples like Amazon and Apple that have gotten vertical with software, hardware, online stores, etc, it is obvious how profitable it can be to own and control more of the user experience. Whether or not Facebook pulls the trigger and builds a mobile device we will have to wait and see, but one thing is for sure, they will not rest on past success, they will continue to test and try new things, that’s what got them to this point.

What are your thoughts on a Facebook phone?

Rob Enderle, of TechNewsWorld has written an article that claims, among other things, that Facebook is nothing but one huge Fraud. According to the publication, Facebook is not being honest to anyone about their company and most of the statistics that they claim are just plain made up. It’s an interesting read, that examines both the actual user base and the value of the advertisements, combined with the reality about the company and who really owns and runs it. Here are a few interesting points:

The number that is officially tossed out is 1 billion users, and there are 1 billion people who in some way come into contact with Facebook. But the implied assumption is that this 1 billion is connected to making a profit, and there lies the rub. However, the person being misled, which makes this interesting, isn’t the investor — it is the advertiser.

Stop for a moment. Name one ad you have ever seen on Facebook? Just one. Now if you can, and most I’ve spoken with can’t, name one time you have actually bought something based on that ad. I’ve bought things after seeing Internet ads, TV ads, magazine ads — but I’ll bet even if you remember seeing a Facebook ad, you haven’t ever bought anything based on it.

Also:

Facebook is marketed as a corporation, but it uses a unique format that lets Zuckerberg exclusively control the company. In short, it isn’t really a corporation as we would think of it; it is more like a limited partnership in which the limited — and virtually powerless — investors are represented by a powerless board.

I would think a structure like that would need to be fully understood by investors, because they should fully understand the risks of having a 28-year-old-billionaire in charge without real oversight before investing.

We did get a warning when Zuckerberg used investor money to buy Instagram, a tiny company, for $1 billion, as if it were out of his own pocket — no corporate oversight or board involvement.

You can read the full article here: Facebook is a Fraud

New York Legislators have introduced a new bill, called the Internet Protection Act that would make it illegal to posts anonymously. The purpose of the bill was initially started to prevent cyber-bulling, but also includes attacks against businesses, and “baseless political attacks” when posted anonymously.

According to the author, one James Conte, “With more and more people relying on social media and the Internet to communicate and gather information, it is imperative that the legislature put into place some type of safeguard to prevent people from using the Internet’s cloak of anonymity to bully our children and make false accusations against local businesses and elected officials.”

Notice the part where they added “baseless political attacks” in order to protect themselves.

While at the outset this may not seem like something that affects our industry, it does. Anytime that the right of a person to speak their word, whether its anonymously or not, is restricted, it can be used to intimate advertisers. Much of performance-based marketing relies on viral based marketing about competing products.

Would you like to be in a situation where a company with a lot more money, decides to go after you because you were promoting a competing product without identifying yourself?

Any restriction on free speech is not only unconstitutional, but plain stupid.

On that note, James Conte you are an idiot for proposing this law. And that’s not “baseless” at all.