Los Angeles -- As it was touted, Skype has finally stepped up to the competition by adding two-way video chatting to its VoIP iPhone app! Skype has finally got the bells ringing in 2011 with the addition of video calling to its Skype for iPhone App including video calling and 3G access.

Indeed, this long awaited addition is one for which Skype-watchers and users have been yearning since Fring's two-way video calling app nosed into the iPhone app store this past July, following Apple's introduction of its own Face Time video chatting software.

The update that was rumored to be released at CES in Las Vegas in the coming week but it looks like Christmas has come early for millions of iPhone users everywhere.

Los Angeles -- Hitwise, a market analytics firm that tracks online stats, has some good news for the team at Facebook. The popular social-networking entity Facebook hit an audience milestone recently when it was crowned as the most visited site in the U.S., for the first time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, topping Google, according to research firm Hitwise.

Those two days mark the first time Facebook has historically gotten a traffic spike during the holidays. It seems that people flocked to Facebook to send season's greetings to friends and families, and all of that traffic catapulted the popular social networking site to the most visited site on the Internet. This was a first for the site in its history according to the statistics tracking company Hitwise.

San Francisco-- This year’s holiday shopping season appears to be one of the worst in history. Despite retailers’ attempting to lure shoppers with deep discounts, failed to save the final week of holiday shopping was pretty much a bust, as sales dipped throughout most categories on decreasing consumer spending, according to a report from a division of MasterCard Inc.

The cause: A depressing economy combined with poor weather, according to MasterCard’s SpendingPulse 2008 Holiday Wrap-Up Report.

Online holiday sales declined 2.3% from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24, according to the SpendingPulse report from MasterCard Advisors LLC, a subsidiary of payment card company MasterCard Worldwide, says: “It is probably one of the most difficult economic environment combined with unfavorable weather during the last week of shopping made 2008 one of the most challenging holiday shopping seasons in decades,” says Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis for SpendingPulse.

If not, then you are losing out on a huge volume of business. We have experience where our own clients make big money purely from their online internet stores (They do not have a brick and mortar shop). In some cases, our clients have purchased brick and mortar businesses from the profits of their internet ventures.

Deal Also Includes CBS Television Network VOD Content

Less than two months after CBS Corp. president Leslie Moonves told Wall Street he wanted the company to be paid for its signal, CBS snagged its first major deal with Verizon and its fledgling TV service.

Verizon and CBS recently announced a comprehensive retransmission consent and video-on-demand (VOD) agreement, which includes analog, digital, multicast and high-definition rights to programming on CBS owned-and-operated television stations; local VOD content from those stations; and CBS Television Network VOD content, including such current popular network series as "CSI," "NCIS" and "Survivor."...

Carat Interactive's Vice President of Search Marketing has jumped ship to join direct navigation firm BuyDomains.com as VP of Marketing. A Carat spokesperson confirmed his departure and said the agency would name a replacement in the next two weeks.

Belanger has been with Carat since late 2003 prior to which he was VP of Account Development at Inceptor. His new employer, Boston area-based BuyDomains, is a direct navigation and domain squatting firm that lays claim to approximately 500,000 domains and 20 million unique visitors a month...

New YorkLos Angeles -- In a move to capture the growing audience in the Asian markets, micro-blogging outfit Twitter Inc., has indicated its intention to expand its business and revenues in Asia after appointing “Shailesh Rao” the executive who headed up Google's display advertising in the region as vice president of international operations, according to India's Economic Times reports.

The social networking giant, Facebook, is back with its bounty rewards for security researchers, who can help the site flush out the problems and to make the site much safer to use. Facebook has used this trick earlier and it was a huge hit. So, the company has resolved to the same strategy to avoid privacy issues. This time, however, Facebook is not giving out hard cash. Instead, the researchers would get a Visa debit card.