A new study finds the top-performing 1% of young companies account for roughly 40% of the new jobs created annually. Here are ideas for encouraging more

The $18 billion HIRE Act offers companies a tax break for hiring the unemployed

Automatic Data Processing CEO Gary Butler says companies with 50 employees or fewer have been increasing their use of ADP's payroll services

PayPal Inc., the payment processor owned by EBay Inc., plans to introduce a cheaper way for businesses to handle online transactions that are less than $10, a company executive said.

To understand what motivates your top performers and improve how you manage them, consider veteran salesman Jeff Schmitt's advice

The aging amusement park used to run itself. When it started to tank, its co-owners had to make fixes to both location and operations

It's not the institutional environment, taxes, or ease of hiring. To explain the country's astronomical entrepreneurship rates, Scott Shane digs into the data

It can be a powerful weapon in any company's strategic planning arsenal. But it can also backfire. Steve McKee offers five essentials to consider

iPhone apps that will help you get through conference season. For the small business owner or entrepreneur, springtime often equates to conference season. From booking flights and accommodations, to finding out what's going on in the local area, there are plenty of apps that will ease your stress, Mashable reports. For the procrastinating businessperson, Priceline's Hotel Negotiator app is free, and will allow you to find last-minute hotel deals within a radius of your current location. Also free of cost, the Free Wi-Fi Finder app will use your location to find local spots that offer free Wi-Fi access, with the ability to filter results by types of location, such as cafes and hotels. Another great freebie app is beamME pro, which allows you to e-mail, text or tweet all of your contact information instantly - perfect for staying connected with fellow conference-goers, especially if you neglected to bring enough business cards. Online ads that adjust to you. We've written before about the slightly creepy but cool trend in online advertising that is behavioral targeting, which allows websites to display ads to customers who, for instance, abandon their shopping carts. Now, Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times looks at something new: a start-up that allows companies to buy and customize online advertisements in a matter of milliseconds. The company, AppNexus, uses information collected about a given web user's purchasing and search history to make real-time decisions about which ads will perform best. Clifford reports that eBay is trying the system out, and that it's returning three times as much money as it costs. "Previously eBay had to buy a block of ads from a network or exchange, and when someone it recognized showed up, they could partially customize the ad," she writes. "Now, customers are offered one by one, and eBay--using AppNexus's automated system--only bids on the ones it thinks are worthwhile." Did Mark Zuckerberg commit a felony? Last week, Business Insider broke the story (supported by more than a dozen sources) that early in Facebook's history, Mark Zuckerberg, then a 19-year-old Harvard student, used Facebook members's information to break into their private e-mail accounts, hack a competitor's site, and alter users profiles. Now, BI has interviewed privacy lawyers who say those actions from 2004 could be considered felonies under state and Federal law. It's a troubling development for a company that has access to the private data of some 400 million people. How to advertise green products legally. It's no secret that making your product a little more green can also add some green to your profits. But it's important to make environmentally claims legally. The Federal Trade Commission has already gone after Kmart, Tender Corp., and Dyna-E international for making false claims of "biodegradability." There have also been class-action law suites against companies like S.C. Johnson & Son, which added its own "Greenlist" seal to its Windex products that misled consumers into believing that a third party had certified the product independently. The FTC has a guide for the use of environmental marketing claims. An updated version is expected later this year, but in the meantime smart marketers should follow these tips from Advertising Age to avoid dishonest labeling. Foursquare grows by leaps and bounds. Foursquare, the location-based social network/game just celebrated it's first birthday and it has been experiencing wild growth for the occasion. The site surpassed its own record of 275,000 check-ins in a day. TechCrunch contextualizes this milestone, explaining that the company had 1.2 million check-ins in a week just a month ago and half as many a month before that. Both Foursquare and it's top competitor, Gowalla, are gearing up for SXSW and TechCrunch writes that "both are absolutely on fire right now and could go nuclear this weekend." So stop procrastinating and get your business on Foursquare. Homes of the next big things. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal and VentureSource teamed up to identify the top 50 venture-backed companies with the best chance to become "the next big thing"--a list that included HomeAway, Fusion-io, and Etsy. This morning, The Journal took a look at where these companies are located. Not surprisingly, just about half call Silicon Valley home. But New York City was well-represented, too.

The proposed StartUp Visa Act would open the door to foreign entrepreneurs who create jobs

Unprecedented growth, good salaries, and the ability to make an impact faster make Asia the new promised land for B-school grads

The appetizer approach to raising funds. Mark Suster proposes the rule of hors d'oeuvres to decide how much money your company should raise. The idea is that it's bad form to take the entire hors d'oeuvres tray, but it's probably a good idea to take two servings (in case the tray doesn't come around for awhile). In other words, if an investor offers you more money than you think you need, but still at reasonable terms, take the extra money. "I know you think you're going to do a bigger round later at a higher price but the problem is that if someone offers you [extra money] now it's guaranteed," he writes. "That same extra [money] might prove very difficult to get one year from now if something fundamentally changes in the market, your company isn't getting traction as quickly as expected or your competition makes a lot of noise in the market." A handy social media cheat sheet. Our friends over at Fast Company have a quick and dirty cheat sheet that breaks down the value of different social networking sites for communicating with customers, getting brand exposure, boosting site traffic, and helping your SEO. For a more detailed guide, see how you can use social netowrking sites to drive your business. Ex-assistant to Yahoo's CEO disses her old company when she moves onto Twitter. Kristen Cordle, who tweets at GGateGirl, has shrewdly ascended the corporate ladder, moving from program manager at Logitech to assistant to Yahoo's Carol Bartz to assistant to Twitter CEO Evan Williams, according to Valleywag. But as soon as Cordle fully transitioned to Twitter, the veiled insults started. First with a tweet about Twitter having the most outstanding company culture she'd experienced ("#goodpeople") and then maligning Twitter rival Facebook. We're keeping it in mind for next year's list of the op 10 Most Awkward Social Media Moments. Competition for group buying heats up. GroupOn, the Chicago start-up that helps local businesses find new customers by offering discounts to groups, is very hot right now. The company raised $30 million from venture capital firms in December and, according to TechCrunch, is projecting $100 million in gross sales for this year. GroupOn is so hot, in fact, that it's spawning lots of well-funded competition. VentureBeat reports that LivingSocial, a a Washington, DC group buying start-up, just raised $25 million. VentureBeat notes that part of the attraction of group buying for investors is that it's easy to turn a profit--most group buying companies simply take a cut of sales--and because there's "room for niche-focused competitors. (Think Groupon for moms or LivingSocial for athletes.)" Have you been neglecting your company's Twitter account? You're not alone. According to Mashable, a recent study found that only 21 percent of Twitter accounts are active. Thirty-four percent of Twitter users haven't even made one tweet, and 73 percent have tweeted fewer than 10 times. The rapid growth of the micro-blogging site has also slowed: in April of 2009 the site grew 20 percent, but in December of the same year it only grew .34 percent. The Future of Mobile? Superphones. By 2013, the installed base of smartphones and superphones will exceed the installed base of PCs and web-browsing will become fully mobile. So predicts ex-RealNetworks chairman Rob Glaser, in his first speech since stepping down. GigaOm lists the five big opportunities that Glaser says will emerge from this new tech landscape, including "digital persistence" (the idea that all content will be available everywhere at any point in time), access to content across devices, and improving the discovery process. New apps from the Google Apps Marketplace you should try. Google has caused quite a stir among cloud-computing enthusiasts with the announcement of their new app store, which allows software developers to sell their Google Apps-integrated web tools to other businesses. To help users get the most of the search giant's new offering, Mashable has suggested a few of the best apps available so far, such as Intuit Online Payroll, which allows employees to retrieve their paychecks from Google Calender and help with e-filing taxes, and Aviary, a nifty graphics editor that helps create business cards and slide presentations. "We're only scratching the surface in terms of what the Google Apps Marketplace can potentially offer users, as well as developers and other providers," the post says. "But just looking at some of the apps and integrations that already exist, we have to say, this is exciting." Is it possible to teach entrepreneurship? In the past we've written about whether entrepreneurship is in a person's genes but a new article on ">CNN Money attacks the question from another angle: can entrepreneurship be taught? More specifically how good of a job are we doing of teaching it in schools. While the number of colleges and universities with entrepreneurship programs has increased tenfold in the last three decades, a study published by the Kauffman Foundation earlier this year found that that explosion has resulted in "no appreciable impact on entrepreneurial activity in the United States." Still, the next generation of entrepreneurs is honing their skills one way or another. More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr. Friend us on Facebook. Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000.

Happy Birthday Craigslist. The schlubby classified ad site, which managed to blow up the newspaper business by behaving decidedly unbusinesslike, was founded nearly 15 years ago, according to a blog post from the site's eponymous founder Craig Newmark. He digs up what he calls "the earliest archaeological find" from the site's early days. It's a message directing users of the Well, an early social network, to Newmark's new home page. "My focus, on this page, is on events around San Francisco that involve arts and technology, privacy rights, local writers and artists, and any other item that strikes my fancy," he wrote. "The approach is as minimalist as I could make." PSFK, which flags the post, puts it in perspective, "From that simple start, today the site serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 37th place overall among web sites worldwide and 11th place overall among web sites in the United States." When is it okay to check your cellphone? If you're having dinner with your spouse and your phone buzzes with a text, do you reach for it? If you reach for it, do you text back? In Farhad Manjoo's house, that would be verboten (at least not without asking permission). In fact, one shouldn't text at all when having a face-to-face conversation, according to Slate's attempt to set the ground rules for cell phone use. On Twitter last week, young technophiles like the New York Times's Nick Bilton argued the opposite. When Bilton's lunching with his boss he leaves his phone alone, but around other tech-savvy people his own age, he texts without compunction. We're hoping the bit about his wife texting him to get his attention during dinner was a joke. Google begins selling business software. Apple's iPhone App Store has created a billion dollar opportunity for small businesses that develop applications and games for the popular gadget. Now Google is trying to pull off the same trick for business software, which could be great news for business-to-business companies in need of customers. TechCrunch reports on the release of the Google Apps Marketplace, which allows companies to sell web-based business software that integrates with programs like Gmail and Google Docs. The app strategy will undoubtedly improve Google's already impressive (and free) software offering. But it could also be an opportunity for entrepreneurs. "For...small startup developers, it means instant access to more users than they can likely imagine," TechCrunch writes. "It also potentially means something more important: money." How to handle employee turnover. Entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Mark Suster posted on his blog, Both Sides of the Table, about how the difficulty of moving from one job to the next. On A VC, Fred Wilson responds by breaking down the issue from every side: the employee, the current employer, and the future employer. One recommendation: If a key employee leaves suddenly, it's worth exercising some patience before bringing an outsider onboard. In that scenario, a "battlefield promotion" might be the best option. Charting the Facebook economy. We've written in the past about the dangers of building your business on someone else's platform. But many companies, undeterred by that risk--and attracted by the prospect of hundreds of millions of potential customers--have built business models that rely heavily on Facebook. The Guardian takes a stab at estimating the size of the Facebook economy, figuring that among a slew of companies such as Playfish, Zynga, and Plancast, the social network's broader economy is easily worth several billion dollars. The article asks "whether [Facebook is] a viable ecosystem, a bubble or a house of cards." How to simplify your phone system. Can't get an invitation to Google Voice, the free service that transcribes voicemails and rings multiple numbers? (Read more about Google Voice here.) A start-up called Phonebooth.com is attempting to pick up the slack, Mashable reports. The website is now offering Phonebooth OnDemand, which is a full-featured phone service that will set you back $20 a month per user. The no-cost version, which is called Phonebooth Free and is aimed at small businesses, will give you a local number with up to five extensions, call-forwarding to multiple sources, and voicemail with transcription. More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle. Follow us on Twitter. And on Tumblr. Friend us on Facebook.

Last March we profiled 26 ventures hatched by the newly unemployed. Amid signs of economic recovery, we check in with each of them

Hey internet entrepreneurs, celebrities are encroaching on your market. Thanks to flexible technology and an abundance of developers, web start-ups are practically the new must-have accessory for Hollywood types, reports Business Insider. Check out their list of the 10 companies to watch. There are the A-listers like Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Media and Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie. But did you know that Ludacris and Will.i.am have social networks? Or that Peter Gabriel came up with a Pandora-killer and Kim Kardashian launched the Netflix of footwear? Big numbers from Tumblr. We've periodically sung the praises of blogging start-up Tumblr, which boasts slick technology and an entrepreneurial prodigy of a founder. Today, via Mashable, Tumblr announced some serious traffic growth: 1 billion pageviews and 15,000 new users joining everyday. Meanwhile, Mashable reports that Tumblr, which has operated thus far without a business model, "plans to launch a two revenue generating features next month." Advice for first time CEOs. Bijan Salehizadeh deals with a lot of neophytes but he doesn't mind (via peHUB). "In consumer Internet companies, first time CEOs are the norm - perhaps even encouraged and preferred," says the general partner at Highland Capital Partners. He has two nuggets of advice for greenhorn CEOs: 1) Share bad news with your board and investors early and 2) always be planning for contingencies. "The 'what if' exercise is incredibly valuable and tells me that a CEO is thinking extremely strategically and not afraid to admit that things sometimes do take longer." Another acquisition for giant vacation rental company. When HomeAway raised an astounding $250 million in a single venture funding round back in 2008, CEO Brian Sharples told Inc.: "There are going to be some great opportunities [for acquisitions] the next couple of years." Now, TechCrunch reports that HomeAway has bought the publisher of AlugueTemporada.com.br, Brazil's best known vacation rental site. This is at least the third acquisition the company has made since its last funding round and the first outside of North America and Europe. How not to kill your start-up. ReadWriteWeb has put together a list of core principles entrepreneurs should internalize in order to keep their start-ups from biting the big one. One thing the post says to dodge is the tendency to become caught up in the allure of modern technology. "Consider other sources of competitive power than just technological sophistication, such as superior customer experience or service, exclusive distribution partnerships, or other market-based advantages." The most provocative, and perhaps, pertinent piece of advice? "Remember that sometimes start-ups need to be killed, for their own good -- or yours, at least." Apps for TV have yet to catch on It is estimated that by the end of 2010, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs. And in 2009, Yahoo! announced that Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio televisions would come with its Connected TV software, which is open to all developers. However, unlike the Apple App store, which had more than 3,000 programs just two months after its debut and more than 140,000 by 2010, apps for TV haven't taken off. Only 35 full-featured apps are available on the Yahoo! service. BusinessWeek reports one reason apps for TV have yet to take off is that the approval process for television apps is more difficult than for their online counterparts. After Yahoo! approves the App, each individual TV maker must also approve the app. Some TVs cannot run certain types of code, and TV makers are reluctant to take on the risk of being blamed for an app that disappoints. Selling your business? A lawyer can help. Over at the New York Times' You're the Boss blog, lawyer Harry Styron offers pointers on selling a business and when to get a lawyer involved (hint: not until the decision has been made to sell, ideally not out of necessity). Especially for family run businesses, Styron says, "if the decision to sell is a result of a key family member having died or become ill or if the prospect of selling the business means some family member is going to lose a good job or a good income, the decision to sell was made too late." Now all you need to know is whether your lawyer should specialize in entrepreneurship. How to cope with changes at the workplace. From budget cuts, to massive layoffs, to new management techniques, there are plenty of reasons why changes at the office can stress out employees. A recent survey conducted by Right Management, a career management consulting firm, shows that 31 percent of employees have trouble adapting to changes in the workplace, Boston.com reports. The Boston.com team has also come up with five tips on how to deal with change in the workplace, which include taking time to get to know a new boss in order to develop a good working relationship, staying on top of the latest skills that employers expect when seeking out job candidates in your field, and having an open flow of communication with your manager if you feel too bogged down by your workload. More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr. Friend us on Facebook. Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000.

Interim executives fill managerial roles. To get the most out of them, companies must find the right match and acknowledge internal problems

One year after profiling new business ventures started by the recently unemployed, we check to see where they are now