SAN FRANCISCO – 5th Finger, the global authority in mobile marketing has announced that it is working with MSN Mobile on its mobile marketing strategy and spring campaign execution, aimed at consumer engagement and increasing adoption of the MSN mobile WAP site, MSN Mobile.

5th Finger is implementing a variety of innovative mobile marketing techniques for MSN, focused on developing consumer awareness and driving trial usage of the site – a place where consumers can ‘get their fix’ of compelling news, entertainment, weather and sports updates, as well as user-friendly search.

Campbell Corfe, CEO of 5th Finger said “MSN really understands the way consumers want to interact with mobile content, and we’ve worked closely with MSN to deliver creative opportunities to engage and inspire them”. “The aim is to make MSN Mobile the most convenient and compelling destination for people who use the mobile web, giving them their essential fix, every day,” he added.

Scott Crissman, MSN’s group marketing manager said “At MSN, we are constantly looking for the most intuitive ways to engage with the mobile community – with 5th Finger’s assistance on mobile strategy and fulfillment, we’re able to maximize the level of interaction we can have with consumers on a daily basis.”

Now Google seems to have dominated the mobile web search market, based on a new report from Nielson Mobile, the survey says that mobile phone users search Google an average of about nine times a month, while Yahoo users search only 6.7 times. Google maintains a 68 percent holding on the web search market, but with developments such as becoming the default search engine on Apple’s iPhone, the group hopes to extend its holdings in the mobile arena.

As smartphones are being developed more frequently with GPS capabilities, and able to browse on the new, much faster 3G networks, mobile browsing is becoming an increasingly popular market. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Mobile looks like it will ultimately be the highest of Ad rates.” But not all users are happy. The study reports 44 percent of Google users and only 40 percent of Yahoo users rated their experience towards the satisfactory end of the rating scale used.

Those partnerships are with Hong Kong CSL, Mahanagar Telephon Nigam in India, Smart Communications in the Philippines, Vibo Telecom in Taiwan and Digital Mobile in the Philippines. Yahoo also announced its Go 3.0 software for tapping into various online services such as photos, news and finance; now works in more local languages across Asia.

“In the mobile story, IM will be more important,” said Michael Wolf, an analyst at ABI Research. “Right now, it’s a fuzzy business proposition.” Much of the attention around the partnership announced last week between Yahoo and Google has been focused on a search advertising pact between the two Internet search giants. But as part of the deal, the two have agreed to allow users of their competing IM services to communicate with each other.

Analysts say that, in general; IM services relatively generate little revenue. Users see Ads in their lists of “buddies” and some users hit with Ads when logging into the services. But down the line, analysts say, Internet portals will likely be able to better target Ads based on monitoring how their users access such services.

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo has hired the internet search leader Google to sell some online ads in a hope of boosting their profits. The Sunnyvale-based company announced the plans late Thursday after its stock dropped to 10 percent on news that its efforts to revive takeover talks with Microsoft had hit a dead end.

Yahoo Inc. is now depending on Google Inc.’s superior moneymaking systems to appease its angry shareholders as it tries to fend off a shareholder mutiny being led by Carl Icahn, who is an activist investor.

By making use of Google’s superior advertising technology, Yahoo believes that the company can boost its annual cash flow by $250 million to $450 million during the first year of the deal. The partnership could last up to 10 years if it can win antitrust approval.

Microsoft said in its statement that it was offering Yahoo a deal which is even worth more than the original $33 per share for the whole company. In addition to offering to buy search business of Yahoo, Microsoft was ready to acquire a 16% stake in Yahoo at $35 a share, according to a source familiar with the company’s offer. This time, though, it appeared it was Yahoo which wanted Microsoft to get the whole company, an option that the company refused to revisit, according to a separate source. Microsoft and Yahoo executives met at Mineta San Jose International Airport, at which time Yahoo says it was told unequivocally that Microsoft would not resume its buyout bid, though it was interested in a deal for Yahoo’s search business.

Yahoo decided its search business was very strategic, even though later it agreed to allow Google to serve up a good chunk of the company’s search related advertising. “With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo’s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo’s board of directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction would not be consistent with the company’s view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future, and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders,” Yahoo said in its statement saying talks with Microsoft has come to an end.

Will Hollywood’s most pioneering executives help MSN become a player in advertiser-supported entertainment on the Internet? MSN, the Microsoft portal is betting in millions of dollars and MSN had signed an agreement with BermanBraun, a Los Angeles production company founded by Gail Berman, formerly a top executive at Fox Broadcasting, Paramount Pictures and Lloyd Braun, who previously led divisions of Yahoo and Walt Disney Company.

BermanBraun will build and maintain this new entertainment-focused site which the company calls it a “destination” site – within the MSN portal. The new unnamed site is scheduled to make its debut by 2009. It will have a blend of advertising with entertainment news, original video programming and games. Essentially, BermanBraun has been hired to help program and sell advertising for a television network – except that this network is a Web site.

Google has recently decided to get with the times and revive its worn out favicon. Marissa Mayer wrote on Google’s blog that the favicon – the small icon, which appears in browsers just before the URL or in lists of bookmark – has been changed to improved suit new web gadgets. “We wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices,” she wrote.

“So the new favicon is one of those, but we’ve also developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a unified set.” The favicon that has not been changed from past nine years required to upgrade from the upper-case ‘G’, which moved out quietly last week and was restored with a lower-case ‘g’ in blue. There are actually more than 300 possible favicons debatable to reinstate the ‘O.G’, but the one at present displaying would not be the final one for sure. Google is accepting new ideas for its favicon at http://www.google.com/faviconideas

Google has just incorporated a new feature in its services for Gmail users called ‘Gmail Labs’. This would provide Gmail users to test amazing new features successfully during their growth phases and share their opinion on them.

“Gmail Labs is a way for us to take lots of the ideas we wouldn’t normally pick and let you all (who use Gmail) decide whether they’re good or not. When you sign in, you’ll see a new page in Settings called Labs. It has a list of experimental new features, and you can enable or disable each one. Some of the popular ones will become core parts of the product, and we’ll eventually retire the ones that don’t get much use” according to official Gmailblog.

Gmail Labs is the open workshop for all Google engineers to share their advances in this proposal while maintaining their growth processes whole because all their work would get live users opinion which would act as online laboratory for innovators from all across the world on Google Mail platform. So in case you have Gmail account, then try to use it and share your feed with and innovators.