Asia

Ad holding company WPP Group is beginning the new year with preparations to lay off of thousands at its global agencies, Guardian reported. The decision was made during budget meetings held during the last two months. The units that have staffing costs greater than 60 percent of revenue. But the cuts at the global company will not be spread evenly. Reductions will be heavily felt in North America and Western Europe, places that have been hit hard by the advertising slump.

No, Twitter may not get acquired anytime soon, but its clones certainly are: now Korean search and online gaming giant Naver has acquired Me2Day, a microblogging service, Web 2.0 Asia reports. The deal is valued at about $2 million (2.2 billion KRW).

Back in 2003, Voom, the brainstorm of Cablevision's Charles Dolan, was the future of HD—at least on paper: a dedicated HD satellite service that would be far ahead of cable operators and other satellite providers. When that didn't pan out, Voom became a programming service with 15 HD networks. Now, five years, hundreds of millions of dollars and very few customers later, Rainbow Media Holdings has admitted defeat and will shut down the service in the U.S.

WPP's JWT has poached Omnicom Group vet David Eastman to be the global head of its digital practice. Reporting to CEO Bob Jeffrey, Eastman will oversee the digital management teams, lead strategic development and work to integrate all JWT's digital assets worldwide.

This isn't too much to do with business media other than the fact that everybody I know in the industry in Asia travels like demons and we all have carbon footprints that would make a yeti look dainty. There is increasing discussion, particularly within the events industry, about how we can address the challenges to business travel posed by the twin threats of economic downturn and increased environmental concerns.

As Yahoo's 1,500 or so layoffs are happening today (see the layoffs BB site SAI for wall-to-wall coverage), more such reductions may be coming soon, the company warns.

—Hearst, MTVN (NYSE: VIA) partner to launch virtual Seventeen : Seventeen magazine has launched a special issue within Virtual MTV, MTVN's group of virtual worlds (including Virtual Hills and The Virtual Real World).

iCrossing has partnered with China-based search engine marketing agency Beijing Gridsum Technology Co., Ltd. to manage and develop international search marketing campaigns for global brands in Asian markets.
Working with Gridsum, iCrossing will now have access to in-country search capabilities in Asia, where the search market is expected to grow by $1.9 billion by 2011, according to iResearch.

Three gaming related deals in Asia: