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Sony on Monday announced plans to sell its entire holding in social networking firm DeNA, as the Japanese electronics giant offloads assets to help repair its tattered balance sheet.

The company said it would log a gain of about 40.9 billion yen ($437 million) from the sale to Japan's top brokerage house Nomura Holdings. It did not immediately disclose the sale price.

Last week, Sony said it had sold one of its main buildings in Tokyo for $1.2 billion, as the maker of Bravia television and PlayStation game consoles eyes a net profit for the fiscal year to March, its first in four years.

Since January, Sony has also said it would sell its US headquarters in Manhattan for more than $1.0 billion and book a $1.2 billion gain from selling part of an online medical services unit.

The company has launched a massive corporate overhaul that includes thousands of job cuts, the sale of a chemical division and an investment in Olympus to tap the camera and medical equipment maker's strong foothold in the global market for endoscopes.

Last month, Sony announced it would launch its PlayStation 4 system as it faces increasing competition from cheap -- or sometimes free -- downloadable video games for smartphones and tablets.

Shares in the firm, which last year fell below 1,000 yen for the first time since the era of the Walkman, closed up 3.45 percent at 1,438 yen in Tokyo trading.

Japan's electronics sector, including Sony rivals Panasonic and Sharp, has suffered myriad problems including a strong yen, slowing demand in key export markets, fierce competition especially in the struggling TV division and strategic mistakes that left its finances in ruins.

Continued here:
Troubled Sony selling shares in social networking firm

By Natasha Wasinski | Contributor March 5, 2013 6:56PM

Lincolnwood Chamber Executive Director Jackie Boland said the association aims to educate businesses on what they to need to thrive, which today means online social networking sites. | Curtis Lehmkuhl~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 5, 2013 7:23PM

Barbara Faermark acknowledged that, as a business owner, she could no longer afford to stay off Facebook.

She mostly communicates with clients of Marc Printing & Graphics by phone and email. Social networking is the next frontier.

Weve fallen behind the times, Faermark said. Its time to jump in.

Migrating to the web to better interact with customers and colleagues is on the mind of other Lincolnwood organizations. Even masters of monstrous book collections are excited to embrace technology.

Social media is a fantastic tool for communication, said Julie Anne Nitz-Weiss, assistant director and head of community relations for the Lincolnwood Public Library.

Excerpt from:
Lincolnwood businesses take to social media

Segun Akiode

Social media is the ravel of the moment and, by all indications so far, it would be so for a while. In these new days of social networking, many find it even more comfortable to send a Facebook invite, follow you on Twitter or ask for your BlackBerry pin than ask for your mobile number. A funny trend, right? Welcome to the new world my friend!

For every trend in the society, one can induce some applicability to every area of life. I know many have written and talked about social media marketing in all its form but little is said of how social media can be applicable to the job search process. From my point of view, as a recruiter, any job seeker that has a mind to win in the talent war must take his/her job search seriously because job searching is a job in itself!

Traditional methods of job searching are gradually fading off with the emergence of new methods web 2.0, social media. The Internet age has brought with it online recruitment and now social media age births social media recruitment or social recruiting. This is the age where job seekers need to embrace the job hunting side of social media and learn how to harness them to their benefit. This article would explore a major factors that would help job seekers standing out in the social media age of job searching.

Build a personal brand that is attractive to employers About four years ago, I took a conscious decision to take charge of my personal brand both offline and online. And I have kept to just that ever since.

According to Wikipedia, personal branding is, for some people, a description of the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands. The personal branding concept suggests that success comes from self-packaging.

Tom Peters confirmed the concept of a personal brand, when he wrote a post titled The brand called You for fastcompany.com in August 1997. He went ahead to posit that big companies understand the importance of brands. Today, in the age of the Individual, you have to be your own brand.

We live in a brand new world of perception! You decide what others and, especially, what Google would say about you. How you are perceived as an individual goes to affect your career as well as the type of job you get. In this new world, employers/jobs are looking for personal brands instead of you looking for jobs. Hence, the need to take a conscious effort of taking charge of your personal brand, so as to attract employers.

In order for you to take charge of your personal brand (both offline and online), take note of the following useful tips:

Decide ahead, how your personal brand would be perceived

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Personal branding on social media

Sunday, March 3, 2013 10:57 PM EST

By SUSAN CORICA STAFF WRITER

In a move termed long overdue, the Bristol Board of Education is considering adopting a policy on the use of social networking sites by teachers and other district employees.

The Bristol board recently took a first look at the proposed policy, similar to that of New Britains, which is intended to deter school employees social media use from disrupting school operations, while respecting employees free speech rights. The policy will likely come up for further discussion in March.

A survey of some other area school districts found that New Britain already has policies in place for both students and staff detailing the use of the internet and electronic media, according to Paul Salina, chief operations officer for the district.

The Bristol proposal follows the New Britain policy very closely, Salina said.

Dennis Bieu, district director of human resources in Bristol, said the move was long overdue because social networking is a fact of life that is not going away.

Basically the policy needs to be in place to protect our students, to protect our staff, and to protect our school system, Bieu told the board.

It identifies what teachers may do, and if they choose to use social media what the rules are around that, as well as what they cant do, he said.

The proposed policy has been vetted very closely by the law firm of Shipman and Goodwin, said Board Chairman Christopher Wilson. The district would have the firm take another look at it if its modified before being adopted, he added.

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Bristol school board considers adopting policy on social networking

Posted: Mar. 5, 2013 | 2:36 p.m. Updated: Mar. 5, 2013 | 3:24 p.m.

If "The Bachelor" TV show can post Twitter feeds from viewers during its broadcasts, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway figures it can also offer instantaneous social networking quips at a new social media nerve center at this weekend's NASCAR race event.

Speedway officials are rolling out the social media hub at the Neon Garage for the Thursday-Sunday NASCAR weekend, which will feature guests from Team Lowe's Racing, NASCAR, Sprint and media churning out real-time comments. About 130,000 fans are expected for Sunday's NASCAR main event, the Kobalt Tools 400.

The hub - dubbed the "Kobalt Social Media Command Center" - will host computers and large video monitors that will give fans a live glimpse at the racing luminaries cranking out insights on Twitter and Facebook. NASCAR racer Brad Keselowski is the circuit's famed Twitter man, and was even fined $25,000 for sending out tweets from his car during a race.

"There's no question it's a must-do at this point at every major sports event and property. You have to be active in social media," said Nancy Lough, University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor of higher education and editor of the Sport Marketing Quarterly.

Lough explained that the fans' responses and observations to NASCAR's social media content will allow race officials to monitor trends among their consumers.

"They're putting out content that can be accessed by their consumers and then they can listen to what the response is by taking out the intermediary," Lough said Tuesday. "Twitter is a monitor or meter, if you will. You can monitor what is resonating with fans."

Dave Wills, a radio broadcaster for the Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team, sends out numerous tweets and answers many fans' tweets during his Rays broadcasts.

Wills said it's all about connecting instantly with fans.

"Twitter allows me to have one-on-one conversations with my followers while still broadcasting to the masses," Wills said. "It's all about fan connectivity, first and foremost."

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Social Media At 180 Mph: Las Vegas Motor Speedway Turns To Twitter