Emerging Stars, an online portal that offers a selection of business opportunities in emerging economies, has announced the launch of their extended online service designed to partner entrepreneurs, distributors and investors.

Founded as a television project to scout emerging countries for young, innovative entrepreneurs, Emerging Stars introduced the online portal as a natural extension of the brand.

Initially a free service utilised to generate and direct interest from its TV series, the directory became a trusted listing service for entrepreneurs, distributors and funders alike. While working on the series, the research team built a fast-growing network of entrepreneurs, investment agencies and business consultancies – along with a cache of already-vetted business opportunities.

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Disqus has reached a significant milestone having hit 1 billion monthly unique visitors.

Other data also reveals 7 billion pageviews, 100 million user profiles and 1 million WordPress plug-in downloads.

To celebrate Disqus has launched a new product called called AudienceSync that “enables users to port their profile information to their favorite sites’ registration systems” and is useful for publishers who want to access the largest audience of commenters online.

In addition, Disqus’s engineers dug a little deeper into its 1 million monthly visitors to get a better understanding of comments and the community dialogues they make up. They published this information on the Disqus blog to share some of the results:

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Synergi.st founder and CEO Jared Kleinert

Synergi.st, a new crowdsourcing site has launched a campaign to raise funds for its innovative project and is rewarding backers for their contributions.

Synergi.st aims to use crowdsourcing in creative ways to raise funds for social entrepreneurs that helps them create, collaborate on, and share social movements and enterprises.

On April 27th, Synergi.st made history by becoming the first crowdsourcing company to raise money for itself using its very own platform. In a relatively new but overpopulated industry, this is something no one has ever done before.

What’s more is that this start-up was founded by 17-year-old Jared Kleinert who has been featured on Forbes , Fast Company and Tech Crunch for crowdfunding his own crowdfunding site, using technology for good and inspiring others to do the same.

Kleinert hopes to raise $25, 000 for Synergi.st

Kleinert tells Tech Crunch that “We help teams crowdsource ideas based around shared values and strengths and weaknesses. Anyone can post an idea.”

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Pinterest has today announced the introduction of Pinterest Web Analytics to provide website owners insight and understanding into what content their users find most interesting and how they are interacting with pins. This service adds to the current set of tools, including business accounts, Pin It buttons and board widgets, available for websites. 

Website owners can now get information about how many people have pinned from their site, seen these pins, and visited their site from Pinterest.

The free analytics service will also provide information about the most popular types of pins including those that have been repinned and clicked on the most.

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Google+ has just announced some updates based on feedback received from users that include improvements to pages and profiles.

“We spend lots of time listening to your feedback, and today we’re launching some profile and page updates that you’ve been asking for.”

The update includes a new tab for Local reviews which will now appear alongside your photos, +1′s and YouTube videos. The Local reviews tab, which will highlight favourite restaurants, can also be hidden via settings.

Google+ now provides users with an easier way to edit information with the  ’About’ tab that now consists of separate cards (like Story, Places, and Links) each with its own prominent edit link making for a much cleaner appearance.

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Since the re-launch of a new Mxit platform, Junk Mail xchange (JMx), Junk Mail, a leading publisher of classified ads, has seen ads double in just four months.

“We’re getting close to 30,000 new ads a week,” says Junk Mail MD Felix Erken. “This gives the entire Junk Mail community, across all media, access to a much greater range of ads – and we now have a very strong national footprint.”

JMx is fully integrated with Junk Mail’s website and mobile site, with all of the sites sharing the same database.

Erken points out that Mxit classified users are distinguished from those on other channels by their high level of interaction and engagement proved by the three million Mxit users that placed an ad or sent a message on JMx in November 2012.

The company is also enjoying the volume and detail of feedback it is receiving. “When we first launched JMx the feedback was honest, direct and constructive – users quickly pointed out where they were having problems, so we were able fix things just as quickly. We responded to every comment,” says Erken.

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If you managed to sit through the entire 2013 Oscars ceremony in L.A. be it at 3am on Monday morning or the repeat on Monday night you will have seen Inocente win the prestigious golden statue award in the category of Best Documentary (Short Subject).

You may have even sat through the acceptance speech. What you may not know about this film is that it was funded by 294 backers on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

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Skype has now added the ability for Mac and Windows users to send gift cards for call credits to family and friends when a birthday notification pops up on screen.

The added feature comes with the launch of a new version for Mac and Windows 8 desktop applications announced today by the instant messenger and VoIP service. The update also comes with a re-designed toolbar for PC users.

The birthday notification is now accompanied by the following message: “Forgot the birthday card? We can help you send them a Skype Gift Card instead.”

Users wishing to send a Skype gift card can choose the design of the card, the amount, from where the amount should be debited and write a personal message.

Source: The Next Web