Facebook may be one of the hottest online properties at the moment, but not everything it touches is turning to gold it seems. Reports out detail how large shopping businesses such as Gap and Game Stop have cancelled their Facebook shopping pages, less than a year after they were launched.

We know Facebook as the place to socialise, to keep track of events and to learn the happenings of our many ‘Friends’. But they are keen for us to look at it as a hub for shopping as well, which would prove to be a massive financial windfall for the company should they succeed. Things, however, are not going well.

Rise and Fall

A number of ‘big brands’ launched Facebook shopping front ends to a fanfare a year or so ago. Amongst the biggest were The Gap and Game Stop, two huge offline brands who also have their own online stores. They saw Facebook shops as a chance to get people shopping ‘where they live’ so to speak.

Already these brands had a presence on Facebook, with millions of people ‘liking’ their pages, allowing them to interact. So being able to use these channels to drive traffic to a store front without ever leaving Facebook would seem like a natural fit. After all people hang out at shopping malls and buy, so online they hang out at Facebook – they would be buying there too.

However things didn’t go according to plan. Whilst they may have access to millions through their pages, and millions more via advertising channels within Facebook, it seems that these store fronts were far from a success.

Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru put it best by saying that far from trying to sell to people hanging out at a shopping mall, it was more akin to ‘trying to sell to people hanging out in a bar’. It seems that with so much focus on interaction and socialising, people are not in a buying mood when they are on Facbook.

Of course that is not to say that big brands are suddenly flooding away from Facebook, far from it in fact. All maintain and actively grow their fans lists or ‘likes’, and many still pay good money for advertising to people via the Facebook advertising program. It’s just that, for now, brands are shelving plans to have store fronts on Facebook until someone can create a model that actually works.

For now Facebook is likely to continue to be another advertising channel for gaining new customers, increasing brand recognition, and promoting special offers. But with such a huge customer base no doubt brands will continue to experiment with different sales models online, so don’t count out a return of the Facebook store front just yet.

Until then it seems that the good money is in the driving of traffic to fan pages to get the all important likes. After which messages from that channel appear in peoples time lines, allowing promotional opportunities, such as a Straight Talk promo code, to appear, which gets people taking advantage of them, and sharing with their friends, increasing word of mouth.

It sounds really strange, but for Christmas this year, our kids wanted to make Daddy a Cheerios ornament because that’s the only thing that he’ll ever eat in the mornings! He’s been that way ever since I met him in college and I think he’s about Cheerios like how other people are about their coffee. If he doesn’t start his day with a bowl of Cheerios, he just isn’t himself.

Our kids definitely notice that and even eat Cheerios just because he does! But instead of them just gluing some Cheerios to a piece of paper, I told them that we should come up with a really good ornament for him. I went looking online to find an idea for that when I came across the website Get.WildBlue.com and decided to order one of the internet packages from it.

I found this one really great Cheerios ornament idea that requires you use a see-through glass ball ornament and pour Cheerios into it. I thought that would fit in really nicely with the tree and my husband got a real kick out of it.

Gold for thousands of years had great value, and with the development of civilization, appreciated its usefulness in the monetary system. According to conservative and libertarian economics the presence of gold (or other rare and tamper-proof material) is not purely utilitarian dimension, since the time of gold coins were replaced by banknotes out by electronic money. Gold has real value as collateral for paper money. The major advantages of such a role of gold among conservatives:

- No authority can not be gold or by political pressure to change its course. This is to ensure the stability of an economy based on security in gold.

- For thousands of years the supply is constant (about 1-2% per year), shaped factors. Represented at that time ordering and stabilizing factor in the economy.

- It is durable, almost indestructible and acceptable in every age and place of the form of capital.

In trade, the basic unit of Troy ounces of gold is (jeweler), or 31.1035 grams. The name comes not from Troy Troy, but from the town of Troyes in the north-eastern France, in medieval times an important trading center. The gold price fixed five largest institutions including coin gold bullion trading. Currently these are: Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Société Générale.

Payment history shows the history of how you paid your bills either on time or late but unfortunately does not show if your bills were paid before the due date. Amounts owed shows the total amount of credit you have available. If your balance is near the credit limit this may lower your credit score. The length of history indicates how long you have had credit. If your credit history is 2 years or less could lower your credit score. New credit indicates how many times you have applied for new credit. If you open two many new accounts in a short period of time this may lower your credit score. The types of credit used indicate the types of accounts you have such as revolving or installment accounts. Revolving accounts are usually credit cards and installment accounts are usually mortgages, auto loans, etc.

The FICO credit score model ranges from 300-850 with 850 being an excellent score and 300 being the worst score. The higher the credit score the lower the interest rate you will receive for a loan or line of credit. Having a good credit score can save you thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan or line of credit. A good credit score is generally in the range of 660-749 but may vary from lender to lender.

My credit score is also analyzed by creditors, such as banks and credit card companies. Just try to imagine that you need to get a loan to start My own business, with a low or bad credit score, I have a lesser chance of getting that loan approved or I may get it approved but with high interest rates.

The same thing goes when you apply for a credit card. Credit card companies or banks that issue credit cards will first take a look at your credit score before they can get your application approved. A high credit score means that you have a greater chance of getting the best credit card deals with a lot of features and also with low interest rates for your every purchase using a certain credit card.

Even if you are applying for a mortgage, a car loan and other kinds of loans, your credit score will play a very important role in it. This is why it is very important for you to have a high credit score and maintain it that way or increase it.

First of all, you have to understand what a credit score actually is. A credit score will be a three digit number from 300 to 850. This number will represent a calculation of the likelihood of whether you will pay their bills or not. This means that if you have a high credit score, creditors will be sure that you a better credit risk than someone with a low credit score. In the United States, FICO (or Fair Isaac Corporation) is the best-known credit score model in the country. They calculate your credit score using a formula developed by FICO. The system is used primarily by credit industries and consumer banking industries all across the country.