Rakuten News

Japan's Nikkei share average is likely to tread in a range on Tuesday, as investors eye a worsening euro zone crisis and a fall in European stocks on a plan by Spain to bail out a troubled bank with sovereign debt.

Rakuten, Inc. , Japan's top e-commerce company, today announced plans to launch an Internet shopping mall in Malaysia, Rakuten Online Shopping .

Pinterest quickly climbed the charts to become the third biggest social network, and these strengths are not lost on the investment community, with a handful of investors shelling out $100 million to the content-sharing service last week.

Pinterest, an image-based social network, raised $100 million in a financing round that values the company at about $1.5 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

On Thursday, the same day Mark Zuckerberg's company announced it had raised $16 billion in the biggest IPO by a technology company, Japanese e-commerce company announced it is leading a group to invest $100 million in rival Pinterest.

While English has long been the de facto language of international business, more multinational companies are now mandating that employees communicate only in English.

Rakuten, the Tokyo-based parent company of ebook vendor Kobo, is leading an investment round in the image-based social media website Pinterest, a move that could allow Kobo to expand its array of applications geared to "social reading." Daily book trade headlines and breaking publishing news by email - just 3 a month.

The IPO could generate as much as $18.4 billion for the Menlo Park company and its early private investors.

After receiving a $100 million investment from Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten, the " next Facebook ," got a valuation 50 percent bigger than the already unbelievable price of Instagram .

PanARMENIAN.Net - Rakuten, the largest e-commerce site in Japan, is expected to be the lead investor in the much-contested next round of funding for Silicon Valley's hottest start-up, Pinterest .

There's been considerable speculation that social media sensation Pinterest is preparing to raise additional funding as it marches towards dominating a massive new vertical on the web.

Rakuten LinkShare today announced significant growth throughout its performance marketing networks around the world in the first quarter of 2012 with strong network sales in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

The Nikkei average is expected to tread in a range on Friday ahead of China's industrial output and inflation data, which will give further clues to the health of the world's second largest economy, Japan's largest export market.

Rakuten Inc. President Hiroshi Mikitani on Thursday rued the number of missteps that is forcing the company to close its Chinese virtual mall at month's end.

I got it: Fighters outfielders Yoshio Itoi and Daikan Yoh go after a fly ball on Wednesday at Sapporo Dome.

HONG KONG: Asian stock markets climbed yesterday after strong manufacturing data from the US and China boosted optimism over the state of the world's two biggest economies.