BUSINESS BRIEFS
Paramount movie clips will go on Facebook
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Paramount Pictures will become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet.
The unit of Viacom Inc. is teaming with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to launch the VooZoo application today on Facebook.
The service gives Facebook users access to footage from thousands of movies, ranging from "The Ten Commandments" to "Forrest Gump," to send to others on the popular social networking site.
The clips last from a few seconds to several minutes and cover the gamut from Eddie Murphy's guffaw in "Beverly Hills Cop" to Audrey Hepburn's pleas over her "no-name slob" cat in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
The studio will market DVDs of the movies through a button that appears after each clip is played. It eventually wants to use the application to virally market upcoming releases.
RETIRING BOOMERS CREATE OPENINGS
New college graduates this spring can count on a welcoming job market as employers seek to replace retiring baby boomers.
Employers are planning to hire 16 percent more 2008 college graduates than they did a year ago, according to projections from a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a Bethlehem, Pa.-based group that tracks the market for new graduates.
The strong market for graduates stands in contrast with the weakness in the labor market generally. The government reported Friday that U.S. employers cut 63,000 jobs in February, the second-straight month of job losses.
HOME ELECTRONICS SALES DECLINING
SAN FRANCISCO — The tough real-estate market isn't just affecting home sales — it's also prompting consumers to buy fewer TVs, digital cameras and other electronics.
Sacramento; Phoenix; Tampa, Fla.; and Detroit were the metropolitan areas with the biggest drops in consumer-electronics spending in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with the previous year, says a study out today from researcher NPD. The study examined retail sales in the 40 largest urban areas in the nation.
Those cities also were among the top 10 major markets for declines in housing prices, says the National Association of Realtors. Sacramento posted the biggest drop in both electronics sales and housing prices.
AMERIPRISE LINKS WITH MASTERCARD
NEW YORK — Asset manager Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. is pairing up with MasterCard Inc. to become a credit card lender for the first time, the two companies plan-ned to announce today.
For Ameriprise, whose more than 2 million clients are mostly wealthy, underwriting looks fairly low-risk. Meanwhile, the benefits are luring and retaining customers through rewards programs, said Abu Arif, vice president and general manager of payments and deposits for Ameriprise Bank.
And for MasterCard, the advantage is gaining market share in the affluent segment.
COUNTRYWIDE PROBE REPORTED
LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities are investigating Countrywide Financial Corp. for securities fraud, according to media reports.
The FBI is in the early stages of an inquiry into whether company officials misrepresented its financial position and the quality of its mortgage loans, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing law enforcement officials and finance executives with knowledge of the development.
The Justice Department is involved in the inquiry into the nation's largest mortgage lender, The New York Times said.
"We are not aware of any such investigation," Countrywide spokeswoman Susan Martin told the Times.
FBI spokesman Richard Kol-ko would not confirm that an investigation had begun.
