Digital moves this week from Google, Renren.com, Baidu and more

Expedia appointed Aegis Media's Carat as its media agency for Southeast Asia. Carat will now be responsible for boosting the impact of its marketing and branding strategies and ensuring Expedia maximises the reach of its media investment across key markets.

Renren.com appointed JWT Beijing to provide brand strategy and integrated communications services for the social networking site and group buying site Nuomi.com. The business was previously with Saatchi & Saatchi Beijing, and JWT and Renren will now also collaborate on developing marketing and e-commerce solutions for the social networking service platform.

Baidu partnered with online television company Huashu Media Internet to bring search options to the country's TV screens. In a report by Reuters, Baidu and Hashu will jointly develop digital products and business models. 

Kaixin001.com appointed Bates 141 Shanghai and Maxus Beijing for its first brand image campaign. It is set to roll out later in the year with the aim of emphasising the connections of 'friends whom you really care for' and to highlight that it is more than an online game. 

Isobar appointed Arvind Sethumadhavan as practice leader on social and ROI analytics for Asia-Pacific, effective from 1 August. He was previously CEO at JamiQ, a social media intelligence provider, where he collaborated with Asian marketers to adopt social media marketing best practices. 

LAB Malaysia appointed Andrew Yong as group executive director, responsible for providing in-depth strategic brand insights to existing clients, while expanding the agency’s client portfolio to encompass more brands.

Singapore boutique marketing agency Platzner has partnered with web engineering firm District 3 Asia. The combined entity will be known as 'D3/Platzner - digital media partners' and provide client service and support in Singapore with development and design sourced from Vietnam and the US.

Google will retire its Picasa and Blogger brand names to streamline identification of its social media offerings. The networks will be relaunched as ‘Google photos’ and ‘Google blogs’ over the next four to six weeks, and follows the rebranding of its Grand Central acquisition to become Google Voice.

Aegis Media Group acquired full service Japanese digital agency Filefix. Established four years ago, the company’s client portfolio includes Japan Airlines, Panasonic, and Casio.

Indonesian telecom firm Telkomsel’s ringback tone (RBT) advertising service on mobile phones has attracted over 137,000 subscribers since it was test-released two months ago. The service is in the form of an audio ad that replaces the dial tone when someone places a call to a mobile phone.

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, has joined forces with Microsoft to provide English-language search results. The service is expected to roll out later this year in its efforts to address as many as 10 million English searches per day Baidu receives.

Dentsu and Millmo, a mobile entertainment firm, released Rota2u, a content delivery platform for tablets and smartphones, as well as Media2u which is a music and video delivery application for Android phones.