William Hill is reviewing its commercial arrangements with one British tabloid after a number of allegations surfaced. The News of the World (NotW) is embroiled in yet another phone hacking scandal and it has meant that one of their key digital sponsors is reviewing its position. A spokesperson for William Hill said, “We’re reviewing any commercial arrangements we may in place with the News of the World.”
Hills were a launch sponsor for the NotW iPad app and are a key partner of both the NotW site and sister paper The Sun’s site. They’ve stayed on-board since the site went behind a pay-wall. The latest disgusting allegations have meant that many companies are looking to pull advertising and that the commercial situation was “a huge deal.” This is what happens when you hack the phones of teenagers that have been abducted. In all honesty, the loss of commercial agreements should be the least of their worries.
Facebook is assembling the armory for a fight against Google. The latest piece of their arsenal involves signing a deal with Skype thus bringing video messaging capabilities to the service. According to a number of news sites, CEO Mark Zuckerberg will announce something “awesome” later today and a deal with Skype is expected to be just that.
It’s been prompted by the unveiling last week by Google of their news social networking site, Google+. Skype’s features being integrated into Facebook will mimic Google’s Hangouts feature and mean that Zuckerberg’s site maintains the upper hand in the race for social greatness. Either that or Facebook will turn into ChatRoulette with friend requests. Now that’d be quite something.
