Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, was given a new facade last week. The change however, is not just visual, but functional as well. With this new design Microsoft hopes to be able to better incorporate social into their search engine. Not too long ago, Google introduced search plus your world, in an attempt to make their organic search results more social, on the back of Google+. Bing’s new design uses a three-column format to give their users a more social search experience. Bing redesigned for social search On the extreme left is the improved web results column, which provides regular organic search results. The second column is a ‘Snapshots’ column. As the name suggests, this column offers the most relevant information related to the user’s search. It also provides integration with services like OpenTable to allow users to actually take the required actions. The third column is a social sidebar, which includes recommendations by friends and experts related to the user’s search. Bing director Stefan Weitz spoke to Fast Company recently and said that the change was in response to their need to “reinvent search.” Bing hopes to be able to use the data available on the net to create apps that will provide instant answers to users so that they won’t have to click through to a Web page to the find the information they require. The idea of incorporating the social column on the results page is that users would generally rely on the opinion of their friends far more than they would rely on the opinion of unknown people or on abstract search results. Ultimately the target that Microsoft has in mind for the new redesign is obviously to increase their search market share by making a dent in Google’s monopoly. As of now, Microsoft has accumulated losses of about $6 billion since the launch of Bing about three years ago. The Facebook Factor Incidentally, it is the owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who can be credited with helping to create the new Bing design, as he told the developers working on this project “Don’t try to do social by building social on the side. Build it into the experience.” Bing’s close ties with Facebook will work strongly in their favour in this case. Unlike Google+, which is still a fledgling, relatively unimportant social network in spite of its claimed high volume of users, Facebook is a truly social network and using the social aspects of Facebook to power Bing gives the new social search engine a lot more credibility than Google plus your world. Users in the United States were invited to try the new Bing interface yesterday. Let us know what you think of it – will this new feature make you leave Google and start using Bing? www.bing.com/new

In a move that might not come as a shock to most industry observers, Yahoo! has fired yet another CEO. Scott Thompson, who was appointed CEO only in January, has been fired after his résumé was found to be “misleading”. With this, Yahoo! has achieved the reputation of having had four full time CEO’s in less than five years. Ross Levinsohn has been appointed as the interim CEO. He was earlier overseeing Yahoo’s media and advertising services. Yahoo! has been having financial problems since 2008 when they refused a takeover bid by Microsoft. The company had appointed Scott Thompson to take care of their troubles. However, a disgruntled stock holder and activist hedge fund manager, Daniel Loeb, recently found that Thompson never received a computer science degree from Stonehill College as was listed in his biodata. He exposed the fabrication in a May 3 letter to Yahoo!’s board. After initially trying to protect the CEO, by claiming the whole issue was “an inadvertent error”, Yahoo! set up a special committee to investigate the facts. Thompson tried to pass-off the error as having been made by Chicago headhunting firm, Heidrick & Struggles. Heidrick & Struggles have denied any wrong doing on their part. “This allegation is verifiably not true and we have notified Yahoo! to that effect”, CEO Kevin Kelly wrote to employees. Five Yahoo! board members, including chairperson Roy Bostock and four other directors who were to step down after the company’s annual meeting, will also be resigning immediately. Loeb, who has a 5.8% stake in Yahoo! will now occupy three of Yahoo’s vacated board seats along with his allies, former MTV Networks executive Michael Wolf and turnaround specialist Harry Wilson. Thompson told Loeb in late March, he wasn’t qualified to be on Yahoo!’s board. This had upset Loeb who then found out about the inconsistencies in Thompson’s résumé. Alfred Amoroso, a veteran technology executive who has been on the board for just three months will now chair the board. The newly reconstituted board hopes to be able to tide over the crisis that Yahoo! has been going through. If the beleaguered tech giant wasn’t having enough trouble, the new issues have reduced the company to a joke in certain circles. Many tend to forget that in spite of all the public issues faced by Yahoo! the company still drives a tremendous amount of traffic and revenue. However, they’ve fallen foul of the investors and seem to be digging themselves a grave they’re unlikely to ever crawl out of.

Facebook’s frantic quest to monetize everything it possibly can before the IPO is leading to some interesting and some downright surprising product announcements. The latest is a ‘Pay To Promote Post’ scheme that they introduced last week. The new scheme is being tried out currently in New Zealand. New Zealand-based news magazine, Stuff, first reported this new service when it was discovered by one of the users in Whangarei. The user first thought that this was just another Facebook-based con doing the rounds. However, a spokesperson of Facebook later confirmed that this was a genuine service that was in the trial stages. “We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.” the spokesperson for Facebook further said that a number of new ways of highlighting certain posts were being tried out and this was one of them. The highest charge for highlighting a post has been pegged at £1.25 ($2) while others cost 25p or 50p. Payments can be made through credit card or PayPal. The spokesperson also clarified that ways to highlight certain posts for free were also being tested. He however did not clarify how long the tests would go on, and whether they were likely to be tried out in other regions. Facebook is due to float an IPO shortly and has been trying various ways to increase their revenue generating capacity. Additionally, the social network has also seen a slow-down in growth in recent months, and this could be one of the ways they hope to be able to make up for the slow-down. Facebook claims that this new facility could be beneficial to users when they want to publicise a particular post. Many argue that small businesses or certain charitable organisations might use the service but they find it difficult to see how it would be helpful to the average user of the social network. Competing with eBay What these critics don’t realise is that individual users do sell and buy goods in an open market – after all, that is what built eBay into the e-commerce powerhouse it is today. Facebook could use the same idea as eBay, except here individual users could buy and sell goods from a trusted network rather than absolute strangers, potentially making it a very strong source of competition for the online auction site in the future. Only time will tell how popular this new feature will become and whether Facebook has the ability to turn their social network into a trusted commerce network, which will in turn dictate how much money Facebook will actually be able to generate through it.

Facebook has just announced that they will be launching an ‘App Center’ to enable their users to find social web, desktop and mobile apps. The stated reason behind the launch of this app center is to help users to find “the best apps” that their friends enjoy using. Facebook will sell social applications through the App Center. It is obviously a very smart move as it will allow their over 900 million users to buy the apps through Facebook. The Facebook App Center. Image courtesy of Facebook Developers are also being encouraged to create new paid-for apps solely for Facebook. Those who develop apps solely for Facebook will have to share 30% of the price with Facebook. Facebook engineer Aaron Brady says, “For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga,” An app detail page will describe to users how a particular app is unique and let them install it before going to it. Facebook will employ parameters such as user ratings and engagement, to decide whether or not a particular app will be listed in the App Center. A new app ratings metric in Insights, will be installed to help developers to monitor their users’ feedback. Apps will have a star rating based on Facebook’s social graph similar to Apple’s App Store. Apps that have a high rating will be prominently displayed on the App Center, while apps with poor ratings will not be listed. The App Center will be rolled out to users over the next few weeks. The launch of the App Center by Facebook just before their IPO seems like a smart move, allowing them to show investors that even though mobile is a risky area for them, they are proactively working on ways to earn money from the medium.

Google+ has just launched their service ‘Hangouts On Air’ for all users. This service had been launched in beta last September, for a few users, but is now being rolled out for all users. Now, users will be able to broadcast their own hangout sessions in real-time. The broadcast will be available to users all over the world. Google+ Hangouts On Air To activate this service the user will have to select the “Enable Hangouts On Air” button. By enabling this function, the user will be able to broadcast his hangout via his or her Google+ stream, on a website or even directly on a YouTube channel. This is a chance for ordinary users to go on air before a global audience. While hangouts are generally accessible on iPhones as well as Android phones, the ‘Hangouts on Air’ feature is so far available only on desktops. Among the programmes that will be aired via this service in the future are a Hangout hosted by Cadbury UK on 11th May as well as one hosted by Jamie Oliver on Food Revolution Day, which takes place on 19th May. It may take a little time for all users to have access to this feature as Google has just started rolling it out for general use.

Amid allegations of censoring content on the social network, Facebook has clarified that their spam filters might prevent certain text from being posted and this could easily be misconstrued as a form of censorship – and be turned into a storm in a teacup by some bloggers. Robert Scoble, a popular tech blogger and Facebook user, recently found that a comment he wanted to post on the social networking site seemed to be censored. Scoble tried to comment on a post by someone he didn’t know personally. Instead of seeing the comment below the original post, he received a message informing him that his comment could not be posted as it was “irrelevant or inappropriate”. This seemed surprising as the comment was related to the original post and Scoble claims it was in no way unfit for publication. Facebook comment censorship or bruised egos? Facebook’s error message was misinterpreted by Scoble to imply that the social network had taken upon itself the task of analysing and censoring comments. In spite of this being quite contrary to Facebook’s stated policies, Scoble couldn’t perceive that his comments could ever be perceived as spam, so he automatically assumed that Facebook was censoring his text. It is known that users have the right to inform Facebook about inappropriate messages and comments by flagging them. Facebook then takes the necessary action to block such posts. If it is found that a particular user’s messages are repeatedly inappropriate, that user can be blocked from the site altogether. However, this particular post did not fall into that category. On enquiry it was found that it was not so much the blocking of the comment, but the wording of the message that created confusion. Facebook has clarified that the comment was blocked due to some features in their algorithm, which is used to block spammers. They are in the process of trying to find out what exactly in the controversial comment caused the spam blocker to get triggered. The official statement from Facebook on this issue is, “To protect the millions of people who connect and share on Facebook every day, we have automated systems that work in the background to maintain a trusted environment and protect our users from bad actors who often use links to spread spam and malware. These systems are so effective that most people who use Facebook will never encounter spam. They’re not perfect, though, and in rare instances they make mistakes. This comment was mistakenly blocked as spammy, and we have already started to make adjustments to our classifier. We look forward to learning from rare cases such as these to make sure we don’t repeat the same mistake in the future.”

The Google Search Engine is all set to offer a new price comparison facility. Last March, Google bought BeatThat Quote for £37.7m. Its managing director John Paleomylites was made Google product management director and has overseen the launch of this new search product. This service will initially provide comparisons for UK credit cards, and current and savings accounts. Further products are expected to be added in due course. Credit cards compared on Google Search results Paleomylites has said, “We are introducing a new-look comparison unit with enhanced transparency, using BeatThat Quote.com expertise and Google technology. The enhanced service is easier to use for consumers and will provide higher-quality traffic for advertisers.” When a user wants to know more about a product or ad, he has to click on the ad. He is then shown a table detailing all the relevant services as well as their individual benefits and features. This will help financiers to generate more traffic as well increase the rate of conversion. This service is in some ways similar to Google Advisor which was launched last year. This service provides a comparison of various financial products available in the market. An advanced search page allows users to filter results by offers, rewards, networks and fee structures. Google credit card comparison advanced search options

While the Internet continues to grow in usage, the number of desktop computers in use is not growing at the same rate. This finding was based on a survey conducted by Opera to study the demographics of mobile browsers. The global study surveyed over 34,000 users. The study compared how users in different countries prefer to use Opera Mini or Opera Mobile, as the case may be. One of the most interesting facts found was that in some countries, about 50% of new users connect directly to a mobile device and have never used a traditional desktop computer. Mobile-only Internet connections by country. Source: Opera Software 56% of Opera users connect to the Internet directly through their mobiles, while 43% of users on other browsers do the same. Users of Opera were also found to be much more likely to buy music or games via the Internet than users of other browsers. These findings are not really surprising. Industry experts had long predicted that users in developing countries were likely to jump straight to mobile Internet usage as many rural areas in these countries lacked landline connectivity but could be serviced by mobile networks. Even in developing countries, young Internet users are found to favour mobile connections and could contribute further to driving the disparity between new mobile and desktop connections.

Cloud storage is the latest “big thing” on the Internet, especially now that both internet giants, Google and Microsoft are battling with each other to get the largest share of this emerging market. Google’s cloud storage service is called ‘Drive’, while Microsoft has named their cloud storage service ‘Sky Drive’.   Both services allow users easy access to all their stored data across all the devices that they use, be it a desktop, a mobile phone or a tablet computer. To do this, the user has to download the feature to all his computers. He can then easily create, share and collaborate all his information from any of the connected devices. Both GDrive and Sky Drive have some pros and cons and only time will tell which of the two is really more useful than the other. It is easier to store data on Google’s cloud storage system because of the ease with which Google Docs operates. It is possible to store data in various formats including Microsoft Word. On the other hand, Microsoft’s SkyDrive operates with Web Office which is a little more cluttered, and it also allows storage only in Office format. Loading data on Google Docs is also faster than on Web Office. Google Drive also has better search features compared to SkyDrive and also offers video previews, making it easier to select which video one wants to download. Google’s service also offers users a larger variety of paid storage options ranging from 25 gigabytes for $2.49 per month to 16 terabytes for $800 a month. On the other hand, Sky Drive offers 7GB of free storage capacity, which is better than the 5 GB free storage offered by Google. Moreover, Microsoft is offering 25 GB free to existing users who upgrade to the new service. SkyDrive offers fewer paid storage options, but the service is cheaper with an offer of 50 GB extra for $25 per year or a maximum of 100 GB at $50 year. 100GB is generally thought to be more than enough for most regular users. SkyDrive gives better remote access to users via SkyDrive.com. Editing a document is also easier on Microsoft’s cloud storage system than it is on Google’s Drive. Industry opinion currently seems to favour Microsoft’s offering. However, individual users might go for Google simply because the brand has greater leverage than Microsoft and they trust Google more. That said, businesses might prefer Microsoft’s offering because of its seamless integration with Microsoft Office, which is still the leading productivity app for enterprise.

Speculation is rife about the possibility that Microsoft could sell their search engine, Bing, to Facebook. Discussions about this possibility originated after a report on CNBC mentioned the possibility of Microsoft swapping Bing in exchange for shares of Facebook, following the announcement of the Facebook IPO. Rick Sherlund, who is an analyst with Nomura is in favour of such a deal as he feels it would be a win-win situation for both parties concerned. He further explains that while Facebook is looking to improve their search capabilities, Microsoft is losing money on Bing. The amount of loss is estimated to be $2.5 billion a year. Facebook, which is already using Bing to power their search results, could improve their search feature further if they had full control over Bing. On the other hand, Microsoft could continue to make money through search and display ads in the form of TAC [traffic acquisition costs]. Also if Facebook is able to improve their search results, they would give more competition to Google , which itself is good news for Microsoft. Facebook’s huge user base makes it more capable of improving their search facilities and is thus better equipped to compete with Google, especially where it comes to social search. As far as the valuation of Bing goes, it is estimated that Microsoft would probably be able to get between 1% to 2% of the Facebook IPO valuation, which is estimated to be between $75 billion to $100 billion.

Google launched the ‘Trusted Stores’ programme about six months ago to help shoppers identify trusted online retailers. They are now testing this service as a means of indicating quality on search results by including the ‘Trusted Stores’ badge on paid search ads. The Trusted Stores programme was introduced with the intention of giving users the confidence to spend money online. When users buy a product from a ‘Trusted Store’ they can contact Google in case they have any problem with the product and the online store concerned does not attend to it satisfactorily. Buyers from Trusted Stores are also offered the option of getting their money back, if they are not satisfied with the product or service rendered. This money-back guarantee comes in the form of a $1,000 ‘Consumer Protection’ guarantee. To qualify as a ‘Trusted Store’ the online retailer must have a good record for on-time shipping as well as reliable and timely customer service. A ‘Trusted Store’ badge will appear on the retailer’s website and customers will be able to see the store’s grades with regards to on-time shipping as well as customer service. In order to avail of the free Purchase Protection service, the customer must opt in for the same. Having opted for the Purchase Protection the customer must first contact the store itself in case of any problem. If the problem is not solved satisfactorily, the customer can then contact Google, who will contact the store. If the problem is still not solved, the customer is eligible to get their money back. Internet Retailer recently found the ‘Trusted Stores’ badge being tested on live search results to indicate the quality and reliability of the advertiser. It is initially being tested with about a dozen participants. Trusted Store badge on AdWords ad If this new embellishment to search ads is rolled out, it could serve as a great advantage to trusted well established online retailers with extensive customer service resources. However, smaller retailers and new online stores could find themselves severely disadvantaged by this new service as it could take them time to earn the badge.

As the usage of social media continues to grow at a sometimes alarming rate, it is taking over more and more areas of ones life. One of the areas that is recently being heavily influenced by social media is the health care sector. Studies now reveal that more and more people now trust social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube to provide them with information about health-related issues. Would you trust medical advice doled out on a social network? A study conducted by PwC Health Research Institute in the USA has found that one-third of users in the U.S. would trust the health related information made available to them on a social networking site. The information could range from research and the sharing of symptoms, to opinions about doctors and the effectiveness of various therapies available. About 90% of those surveyed in the 18 – 24 year age group said that they would trust the medical information shared by others on social networks. 80% of users in this age group also said that they would be willing to share personal medical information through these social networks. Those in the older age group of 45 – 65 years, however, were found to be less likely to share their information or trust information available through the social networks. Only about 45% of this age group felt that social networks were trustworthy in medical matters. The survey, which was conducted across 1,060 people in the USA this February, found that 45% of people would let information gained through social media affect their decision to take a second opinion. 34% of them said that this information woud help them to take a particular medication. Users generally agreed that they would trust information given by doctors, but only 42% would trust information given by insurers and only 37% would trust information given by pharmaceutical companies. Different Attitudes Only about 2 years ago, in 2010, medical information passed on through social websites had been run down as being from the ‘Wild West’, but now it is being accepted more and more, showing a change in public attitude towards social media and even the Internet as a whole. Attitudes towards healthcare in the UK and rest of Europe are quite different to that in the States. For one, it’s free for citizens of the UK and most European countries to visit a GP. Healthcare costs in the USA, on the other hand, are high enough to scare off some people and make them resort to seeking medical advice online. Moreover, advertising medicines and medical services on TV and other media is quite common in the USA but completely absent in the UK and Europe. This could result in people in the US being more receptive towards medical advice from an online medium than users on this side of the Atlantic.

A study of the shopping habits of users has found that consumers in the U.K. are more likely to spend money on mobile shopping than those in the U.S.A. The study, conducted by RichRelevance has found that mobile accounts in the U.K. account for 9.1% of all e-commerce sales, compared with 4.6% in the U.S. The study was conducted between the 1st of January and the 25th of March 2012, and was based on more than 1.1 billion shopping sessions in the U.K. and the U.S. In the month of March, mobile accounted for 9.1% of all UK e-commerce sales, while that figure was only 8.2% during Christmas 2011, which is traditionally regarded as the  peak shopping season. The average value of purchases through mobiles was £109.68, while it was only £100.05 on desktops during the same month. Among all mobile devices used to carry out a transaction, the iPad had the highest market share with 82% of mobile spend. Purchases on iPhones averaged £135.63 compared to £119 on other mobile devices, £111.41 on the iPad and only £107.70 on desktop in the U.K. In contrast, the average order value in the U.S. was $158 on iPads, $105 on other mobile devices and $104 on the iPhone. Conversion rates, however, were the highest on desktops at 3.6%, compared with 2.9% for iPads, 1.2% for iPhones and only1% for other devices. It was also found that those using the iPad had the longest shopping sessions, with an average of 9.89 page views per session, compared to 8.86 pages on desktop, 5.16 pages on other mobile devices and 4.34 pages on iPhones. Interestingly the iPad’s shopping sessions over weekends are at 10%, but during the week they are only 8.2%. It was also found that peak shopping occurs on Wednesday and Sunday and at 4pm, 8pm and 10pm, indicating that people conduct this activity mostly during their leisure hours. Even though mobile shopping in the U.K. is growing faster than in the U.S.A, the numbers on both sides of the Atlantic are no longer insignificant. Mobile shopping is growing in both regions. The question on top of all marketers’ minds should be “is our site ready for mobile?”

Apple has several games in their app store that can be downloaded for free, but have add-ons that have to be paid for. This is causing a major problem for a number of parents, who have now decided to sue Apple in this regard. While it is true that the original game is downloaded for free, the add-ons can be quite expensive, and can cost upto ₤70 each. It is also true that the progress of the game without these add-ons can be painfully slow. It has been found that 65% of revenue generated in the App store comes from “freemium” games. When children play these games, they are possibly tempted by offers displayed within the game to use the credit card details of their parents in order to upgrade or purchase additional features. When such apps are downloaded by children who get lured into purchasing these add-on features, it is the parents who end up getting quite a shock when they have to make the payment for the purchase. A group of parents has gone ahead and filed a suit against Apple saying that it is very easy for children to download these apps without authorisation from the parents. Apple requires credit card details to be filled in once and future purchases can be made with just a password. Apple had asked for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that it is possible to disable the in-app purchasing feature. US District Judge Edward Davila has however turned down their plea, as the games are addictive in nature and parents are often not aware of the child’s antecedents until it is too late. While it is possible for parents to get a refund, it is an extremely tedious process, and Apple would do well to put in more controls, by which children cannot easily misuse the credit card or password in the first place.

If the anti-counterfeiting and copyright-bolstering treaty ACTA is passed by the European Union it could have major negative effects on the Internet. However, it now seems unlikely that the European Union will pass this treaty. 20 members of the European Union have already decided to agree to the terms of the treaty. However, the final say remains in the hands of the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in Brussels. The guiding “rapporteur” for the treaty David Martin MEP, has already advised, fellow members of the European Parliament to reject the terms of the treaty. In his written recommendations he says, “The intended benefits of this international agreement are far outweighed by the potential threats to civil liberties. Given the vagueness of certain aspects of the text and the uncertainty over its interpretation, the European Parliament cannot guarantee adequate protection for citizens’ rights in the future under ACTA.” If Europe does indeed reject ACTA, the 20 members who have agreed to its terms will also have to back out. This will then leave the U.S. along with a few other countries such as Australia, Canada, South Korea and Japan to fight for the treaty. David Martin says that one of the main reasons why this treaty should be rejected is the secrecy that governments can adopt while dealing with this clause. In 2010, ACTA had been rejected because of its three-strike clause, that allowed persistent file-sharers and copyright infringers to be forced off the web after three warnings. David Martin has further said that “Fear and rumour about ACTA still remain. There is a belief that ACTA will alter the nature of the internet by putting legal pressure on Internet Service Providers to police their service.” He does however clarify that even if ACTA is rejected, the commission will be proposing new directives and legislation to this end, and they have already started work in this direction.

Google has just started to roll out a freshly redesigned page for Google+. This page will have new features that will improve the user experience. Google Senior VP Vic Gundotra has said on his Google+ page “We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.” Since Google+ is now tied up with other Google services such as Gmail, YouTube, Docs and others, Google+ has reached the 170 million users level. However, it is not exactly known how many of these users are active. Larry Page says, “Well over 100 million users are active on Google+” The new page has a new customizable navigation bar on the left hand side. This allows users to drag and drop apps to arrange them in whatever order suits them best. Apps that are not likely to be used often can be hidden behind the ‘More’ panel. The redesign also provides for bigger photos and videos. An ‘Activity Drawer’ highlights members of the community and trending topics. A new Hangouts page shows Hangouts that are happening in that circle. Users can also access public hangouts. An ‘Explore’ page can be accessed from the left hand navigation bar that allows users to access fresh content, when there is no news from friends. Since the roll out has just been started, it will be a few days before all users across the world have access to this new redesign.

The photo-sharing site Pinterest has reportedly been growing in popularity. According to recent reports it is now the third most popular social site in America. While Facebook and Twitter of course continue to be the two most popular social networks, by a very large margin, Pinterest has overtaken other popular sites like LinkedIn and Tumblr. As reported in the daily Mail, Pinterest had 104,415,903 unique visits last month alone. The site which was launched in March 2010 has made good progress in the two years that it has been in existence. Experian reports that there has been a 50% rise in traffic between January and February 2012. Interestingly Pinterest has a very clear demographic set up with 60% of users being female. Techcrunch reports that in February, 97% of the one million likes that Pinterest received on Facebook came from women. Agewise, 55% of users are between 25 and 44 years old. Experian has also reported that in Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah and Missouri Pinterest is actually more popular than Facebook and Twitter. Politicians are already making use of the site to reach out to the public, with President Barack Obama setting up an account for the commander-in-chief and Republican Front runner Mitt Romney’s wife Ann, also has a Pinterest page. Retailers should keep the growing popularity of the social site in mind, while allocating budget spend for their campaigns.

With barely a few weeks to go before the launch of the Facebook IPO, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is going all out to improve the features of his social network. It has just been announced that Facebook has bought mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion. In the initial stages Instagram was only compatible with Apple’s iPhones. However, they have recently launched an app that is also compatible with Android phones. While the iOS version already had about 30 million users, the launch of the Android compatible app has given them a further jump in numbers. On the first day itself they received 1 million downloads, and 5 million in the first 6 days. Facebook has only recently started distributing ads through mobiles and the acquisition of Instagram should help them to improve the user experience. In effect it will also help them to better monetize their mobile site. Mark Zuckerberg has announced on his Facebook page that the Instagram brand will be retained as it is. “Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.” While some analysts feel that this move to buy Instagram is with a view to corner its user base, Gartner analyst Ray Valdes says that it is more likely to be a move to keep it away from the hands of their rivals. Both Zuckerberg as well as Instagram chief executive Kevin Systrom, have said that users will be able to continue sharing photos on sites other than Facebook, and Facebook users will be able to ‘not share’ their Instagrams if they so desire.

According to a recent interview on Bloomberg Television both Google and Microsoft are currently losing money in the mobile sector of their business. Roger McNamee a technology investor and co-founder of Elevation Partners in Menlo Park, California was recently interviewed by Margaret Brennan for Bloomberg Television. According to his analysis Apple Inc. is the only company that is making a profit on their mobile business at present. McNamee says that both Google and Microsoft are losing a lot of money just trying to keep up with Apple. His view is that “In order for other companies to compete with Apple’s iPad and iPhone, they have to go outside of the application model and use the HTML5 programming language to “create a new Web.” Elevation Partners is an investor in Facebook. McNamee says that Facebook is also losing money as far as mobile is concerned. However, Facebook has a slight advantage over the other websites as several websites sign on new users through Facebook, and these users will eventually gravitate towards mobile. He also believes that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the best entrepreneur, even better than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Of course he feels that the losses on mobile are only a temporary situation. He says “I don’t think these guys are going to roll over and let Apple own things forever.”

The Yahoo! Bing search alliance which has been trying to catch up with the Google search engine has shown a substantial growth in the first quarter of 2012. IgnitionOne, a leading digital marketing solutions firm has just released these figures. According to these results the Yahoo! Bing alliance has shown an increase of 46.4% increase in US search advertising spend in the first quarter of the year. This growth is more than double the growth that had been seen by both Yahoo! and Bing during the first quarters of 2010 as well as of 2011. In comparison Google has shown a growth of only 26.6% growth YoY. It is an established fact that search spend during the first quarter of a year sees a dip after the spike during the holiday season. In spite of this Yahoo! Bing managed a growth of 14.3% increase in spend while Google posted a drop of 5.4% during the same period. This growth seen by the Yahoo! Bing combine is the best since they started their alliance and could well be attributed to their recent push for increased utilization of broad match keywords. This system of utilization leads to increased competition between marketers, which is of course good for the search engine. The U.K. markets are following a similar trend, with the Yahoo! Bing alliance posting a growth of 6% during the period. In the U.S. the Yahoo! Bing alliance has a share of 21.2%, while in the U.K. it holds only 4% of the market share. During the same period, mobile search activity has also seen a growth, resulting in 12.3% of total search advertising spend, during the first three months of the year. Tablet devices accounted for 67.4% of total mobile search advertising budgets for the quarter, thus proving that tablets are being adopted at a phenomenal rate.

Facebook and Google have been trying to outdo each other at their own game, for a while now. According to the latest reports on this issue, it is believed that Facebook is trying to improve their search functionality in the hope that this will lure away more users from Google towards Facebook. This report has of course come through unnamed sources, and one of these sources is a former employee of Google according to ‘Business Week’.  The said employee of Google is Lars Rasmussen and he is believed to be leading a team of 24 people who are set to revamp the way in which Facebook search operates. While Google is way ahead of all others including Facebook as far as their search market share is concerned, Facebook hopes to be able to make use of the various apps at their disposal to chip away at Google’s market share slowly but steadily. Google on their part are trying to integrate their social feature Google+ with their search engine. The main problem that Facebook is currently facing in this endeavour, is the fact that the privacy settings of users allow them to integrate only those results that a user has set for public viewing. On the other hand the problem Google has to deal with is the fact that their social site, Google Plus is certainly not as popular as Facebook is. Only time will tell which of the two sites will eventually reign supreme in this game of one upmanship.

Google has decided to do their bit to encourage entrepreneurs to start new online-based businesses. They have set up a new facility called ‘Campus London’ to help the growth of new technologies and allied businesses. This facility has been set up in the East of London, in a neighbourhood known as ‘Tech City’. Campus London is a seven storey building that will provide space for those who wish to innovate and develop new internet based technologies. The U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. George Osborne MP has officially launched the Campus. He later took a round of the premises and found that innovators ranging from fashion trend setting websites to London leisure guides were already making use of this facility. On day one itself, the place was 90% occupied with over 100 people on site and a further 4500 who have signed up for a visit online. Google has started this facility in collaboration with Central Working, Tech Hub, Seedcamp and Springboard. Apart from providing a good workspace for the new entrepreneurs Campus London will also offer a good environment from which to set up the business as also host daily events, run a regular speaker series, alongside lectures and programming, Local Google teams will also provide training to the entrepreneurs. Services like a café, co-working space and high speed Wi-fi capability are already available to visitors on the site. Google hopes to be able to encourage interaction between people from various fields such as investors, developers, designers, lawyers, accountants and others thus leading to the development of new businesses and further enhancing the economy.

As the world continues to get better connected, due to the availability of smartphones and other mobile devices such as tablets, it is important for advertisers to realise that consumers tend to interact more and more with various brands and ads on their mobile devices. This assumption has been confirmed by studies in the USA that show that in January 2011 mobile devices accounted for only 5.3% of all clicks on Google. In contrast, just 12 months later in December 2011 mobile devices accounted for 12% of all clicks on Google. This increase of 132% is substantial to say the least. Comparing the share of clicks on device by region. Source: Marin Software The good news is that ad spend on mobiles has kept pace with this increase and has gone up from 3.4% to 8.7% during the same period. This is an increase of 156%. It is being predicted that mobile devices will account for 25% of all paid-search clicks on Google by December 2012, and at the same time ad spend on mobiles will account for 23% of Google’s paid-search spend. Comparing the share of ad spend on device by region. Source: Marin Software This sudden rise in mobile paid search as well as mobile ad-spend can be attributed to the unprecedented increase in adoption of smartphones and other devices such as tablets. It is being estimated based on current figures that the number of smartphones in use globally will touch 1 billion between December 2012 and June 2013. When increasing the ad-spend on mobile devices, advertisers will have to keep in mind the fact that while the cost per click on mobile devices and on tablet devices is less than on desktop computers, the conversion rates are considerably lower on mobiles than on desktops and tablets. Though tablets are not yet as common as desktops and Internet-connected mobile devices they are growing in popularity and are providing the best overall return on ad spend. Advertisers should keep this fact in mind while planning their ad budgets in future.

Pinterest, the hot new social media site on the block, has recently faced problems with regard to copyright infringement. In an attempt to sort out these issues, they have updated some of the terms on their website. About a month ago, Flickr decided to block users from sharing certain images on Pinterest. They have created a no-pin code for images on their site. Whenever a person tries to pin an image from their site onto Pinterest they get a message saying, “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!” A representative of Flickr confirmed that they are using this code for all “non-public/non-safe page as well as when a user has disabled sharing of their Flickr account.” Flickr’s strategy is, however, only partly effective as those who wish find a way to get around this restriction can do so quite easily. All they need to do is to download the image and then upload it on Pinterest as their own. Surrounding the very same issue, Pinterest account owners also became aware that they could be opening themselves up to litigation if they pinned copyrighted images that subsequently started being monetised by Pinterest. Now, in an attempt to address the issue of copyright infringement and avoid getting into legal tangles, Pinterest has updated some of the terms used on their site. Earlier, Pinterest’s Terms of Service indicated that they had the right to sell any material posted on their site. Now they claim they never really intended to sell any such material and so they have updated their terms and conditions document and deleted this clause from it. All Pinterest users received an email this week informing them about the updated terms of the service. The website has also updated the Acceptable Use Policy to ensure that any material that encourages self harm or self abuse is not allowed. It has also become simpler for anyone to report copyright or trademark infringement on the network. Pinterest has also clarified that they do not automatically own the material that is posted on their site. However, they do have broad rights to use any material posted there. It is important for users to remember that they should only post material that hey legally own on Pinterest and not just copy something that belongs to another person or company without receiving permission to do so.

Following the announcement of their IPO, Facebook has been busy trying to monetise their website, in every way they can. They recently introduced ads within social games on the network and now they’re making this facility widely available. The ad service, called New Payer Promotions, was first launched in February to help developers generate revenue through the users who play their games. Players making a first time purchase on Facebook with their credit card or PayPal account will be shown such an offer. The offers will be sponsored by Facebook. Early results indicate that about 20% of those who purchase such offers return for more within a month. That is a good sign, as it predicts that the feature is very likely to be popular among users. Developers will now be able to place offers in their games by making use of a new unit called DealSpot. This unit will be seen only by those users who are eligible for it. In other words, only those who have never purchased such an offer before will see it. Those who have made such a purchase in the past will not be shown the offer again. An eligible user will see an in-game icon that promotes the offer. When the customer clicks on the icon, the offer overlay is seen. By paying $1, the gamer will be offered Facebook credits worth $1 and an additional $4 worth of the developer’s in-app currency. New payer promotion on Facebook Developers who already have DealSpot running in their games can make use of the New Payer Promotion directly. Developers who do not already have DealSpot running should load it. Facebook recommends that developers offer in-app currency in order to make the most of this feature. If a developer does not have an in-app currency, the user will be able to redeem the $4 in Facebook Credits.

Yahoo! has undergone several changes in the last few years to tide over the rough patch that they are going through. They have recently added some new features to their search platform. The scientific team at Yahoo! has been working on providing a new technology to the search engine. They are aiming to be able to provide answers to queries on their search engine, rather than just providing links. This new technology will allow the search engine to anticipate the requirements of the user, who is conducting a search operation. The new algorithm will help the engine to find out what it is the user is really interested in. This will be done by continuously monitoring how that user engages with the search results provided. The system will keep updating itself to provide the most relevant search results. Results that were at the top of the page in the morning may be pushed lower down later in the day, and results that held a lower position may be shifted upwards, depending on user behaviour and what content is most relevant. For now, these changes have been introduced only for queries related to news and movies. They intend to introduce similar innovations for other categories such as shopping, local, travel and mobile searches in future. Yahoo! search for ‘Whitney Houstons coroner’ includes News results While this is indeed a good move, it has come very late in the day. Search giant Google introduced similar features on their search engine almost three years ago. In March 2009, Ori Allon from Google had said, “We’re deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search,” At that time itself, Google had changed from traditional keyword searches to ‘semantic search’, which goes beyond just matching keywords, to actually understanding the meaning of a sentence or a combination of words. Later that very year, in December, they started integrating News search results into the organic Web search results pages. Considering this fact, one wonders how much the new innovations at Yahoo! will be able to help the beleaguered company.

The Internet has become an integral part of the lives of many, and in turn it has started generating large revenues. It has been found that the U.K. is the Most prolific generator of revenue through the Internet. A study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group has revealed that of all the G20 nations, U.K. ranks first as far as generating part of the GDP through the Internet is concerned. The study reveals that in 2010 internet based businesses contributed ₤121 billion to the U.K. economy, which is 8.3% of the GDP. In contrast the average contribution by internet based businesses in other developed countries was 5.3%. This amount was higher than the amount generated by other more traditional industries such as construction and education. The impact of the Internet on the economy is also set to go up further in due course. It has been estimated that by online sales in the U.K. would account for 25% of all shopping in the country. U.K. would be followed by Germany at 11.7%. The internet actually contributes an even larger but unmeasured share tot eh economy as it has been found that a further 11.5% of shopping in the U.K. is researched online before being bought offline. This information reinforces the belief that providing education regarding the World Wide Web can only be a good thing for the future of the country.

Google is not satisfied with just being the largest search engine in the market. It is believed that they intend to improve their search engine by introducing some new features in the near future. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is likely to make some changes in the way their search engine processes and answers queries over the next few months. These changes are expected to affect the websites that depend largely on the Google search engine. The changes will also help them to serve more advertisements thus increasing their revenue. While the ‘keyword’ search system will continue, Google is planning to introduce a “Semantic Search” feature. This means that the search engine will actually try to understand the meaning of the keyword being used, and thus offer more relevant answers. Amit Singhal, a top search executive at Google has said that Google has amassed a very large database over the last two years. The engine will now try to coordinate and associate different words with each other. For example, the word Google could be associated with its owners Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Singhal says that the search engine will now function more like “how humans understand the world.” He also says that while the changes will start in the next few months the entire process will be long drawn out, and will enter the “next generation of search.” It is hoped that this new search system will provide more value based answers than it has done in the past. In this respect they hope to be able to keep up with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Some experts believe that this move will help Google to keep up with the fast-evolving social networking scene where the prominent players already have a huge database. Others are a bit more sceptical, saying that Google already does this to quite a large extent so not much will change. It is not yet known how these changes will affect the advertisements being served on the search engine. However, it may be assumed that once the engine better understand s what a user is looking for, they will be able to serve more relevant ads. Google has often updated their search algorithms in the past. Recently, they have begun to provide answers to users based on their activity on Google Plus. This new update will be based on their acquisition of Metaweb Technologies, which has a database of 12 million entities including books, movies, celebrities and other data. It remains to be seen how effective these changes really are. After all, Bing has been using similar semantic technology but has failed to really make a dent in Google’s market share.

Those who invented applications like geo-tagging and timeline for the various social media services available to us surely never intended that these features should endanger the lives of people. However, more and more people are now becoming aware of the fact that these services can pose considerable danger if the information conveyed by them ends up in the hands of the wrong people. A case in point is the feature of geotagging, which is commonly used when uploading photographs on Facebook and checking in on Foursquare. When a simple photograph taken on a smartphone is posted on a social networking site, it gives out a lot of information, including the location of the person. Add to this the fact that some people have huge “friend” circles on sites like Facebook. Often the user may not even have met many of these “friends” and may be unknowingly letting out information about himself or his family to the wrong people, who could misuse it. A real life example of how this happens was illustrated in 2007 when four US Army helicopters were destroyed in Iraq after geotagged photos were posted on the Internet. Facebook will soon introduce the Timeline feature worldwide. This feature will also make it possible for enemy forces to figure out the location and route to be taken by allied armed forces, thus endangering their mission. Most of these applications allow users to decide who should or should not see their photos and other information. It is of extreme importance that a user decides wisely, who should be allowed into their inner circles and have access to information about them and their families. Staff Sgt. Dale Sweetnam, of the Online and Social Media Division of the US Army says, “A good rule of thumb when using location-based social networking applications is do not become friends with someone if you haven’t met them in person.” This warning could apply equally well to civilians as well. As technology continues to advance and make life easier, it also adds some unforeseen dangers to one’s life.

Streaming TV shows to mobile devices is growing in popularity and seems to be likely to emerge as the dominant mode of consumption of video content on the medium. While this might spell the gradual end of broadcast mobile TV, overall Mobile TV revenues are set to reach $8.9 billion by 2016. As technology continues to advance, people increasingly want better facilities. The same applies to watching TV programmes. Consumers are no longer content to watch shows as and when they are broadcast. They want to watch video when it is convenient for them, and that includes watching when they are on the go. This change in attitude amongst the people is what is giving a boost to new services such as mobile TV and Video On Demand. Services such as Hulu and Netflix that allow users to stream shows, are growing in popularity. The easy availability of WiFi services is leading more and more people watching shows of their choice on mobiles or tablet devices, when they are on the move, or waiting for an appointment. A report recently published by Juniper finds that while mobile TV was watched by very few people in 2011, that number is set to grow in the years to come. Mobile TV revenues are set to reach $8.9 billion by 2016. While tablets accounted for only 2% of mobile TV revenues in 2011, that figure is likely to jump to 10% by 2016. This growth will be largely because of continued integration of mobile TV services with pay-TV packages. Digital Video Recording services such as TiVo and Sky + are already allowing users to timeshift their favourite programmes and this trend which is most popular in the USA is likely to increase in the coming years.

Measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing and allocating sufficient resources to it were identified as the biggest challenges facing marketers in 2012. Results of a study conducted in December 2012 by social marketing software provider, Awareness Inc. have recently been released in a paper titled ‘The State Of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment And Biggest Social Marketing Challenges In 2012′ The survey, answered by 320 marketers from various industries and with varied levels of experience in social marketing, highlights how professionals can improve their social marketing skills and reach out to a larger audience in order to maximise their ROI. In 2012, there will be an increased presence of businesses across social marketing platforms, according to the report. Content publishing is predicted to happen at a higher frequency and social marketing management and monitoring will receive more attention. Among the major challenges that marketers continue to face are the generation of sufficient resources – 77% of respondents identified this is a challenge – followed by the ability to accurately measure the return on investment generated by their marketing campaigns – 58% of respondents consider this to be a challenge. Apart from popular social sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, marketers are also trying to make use of other resources such as blogs, forums and YouTube. Mobile is also recognised as a growing area for investment. It has been found that those who are new to social marketing do not give much importance to the availability of appropriate tools and methods, but those who already run social campaigns pay more heed to the availability of the right tools and methods to reach out to the target audience. Emphasis on Measurement & Monitoring 78% of those surveyed have reported that they monitor social media channels to check how often their brand is being mentioned, while 62% monitor industry conversations for the same purpose. Most of those who have not concentrated on this activity in the previous year, plan to do so this year. While it is difficult to actually measure the ROI of a campaign, it is necessary, in order to decide the future allocation of budgets. A majority of marketers used the number of new fans and followers as an indicator of their reach. Others used the amount of traffic generated from social channels to Web properties as an indicator of success. Engagement, brand mention across social platforms and social conversations are other ways used to measure the ROI. Marketers with limited budgets were found to focus on increasing presence across social media platforms, while those with larger budgets, concentrate more on social media monitoring and management. In effect, irrespective of whether a company is experienced with social media marketing or is a new comer to this platform, and irrespective of the budget available, all those surveyed said they will continue to focus on social media marketing in the coming year.

It is being widely speculated that Google is working on launching a new product that would rival Apple’s Siri, which is available on the iPhone 4S. This product is likely to be called ‘Google Assistant’. Google Assistant will be voice-controlled, just like Siri, but is expected to be more goal oriented. While Google has not yet made any official announcement about the product, sources at TechCrunch reveal that Google has been working on this product for a long time. It is believed that Google will keep control of this service at all levels, unlike Siri, which refers to third-party information sources for certain user requests. Google’s Android team is said to be working on this project. The project is currently supposed to be at the stage where they have to convert all information into a language that the computer will understand. Sources claim that Google Assistant will be more of a “Do Engine” rather than a service that focuses on just the search. Google is expected to launch this product in the last quarter of the year. Recent versions of Android already have a pretty strong voice-based range of services, which include voice-to-text input, voice search and basic voice activated commands such as “call”, “send text”, “navigate to”, “go to” [a website] and [show a] “map of”. Android’s existing range of voice-activated controls don’t quite match up to the breadth of Apple’s Siri. Furthermore, if Google wishes to make the same range of controls available on interfaces other than mobile, such as tablet and TV, it would need to drastically increase the range of commands it can accept. This is especially important if rumours of an imminent Apple TV launch are true.

Facebook has announced that they will soon launch a range of new services including a facility to allow advertisers to place ads on mobiles and in their main homepage news feed. This will be the first time that ads will be seen in the main content section of the popular social network or on their mobile service. Facebook Premium Experts had predicted this would happen when Facebook kick-started the process of filing their IPO. Mobile was identified as a point of risk and this new service is a step towards mitigating that risk and  generating as much revenue as possible. The new service is called Premium. Premium ads will be seen in the news feed of a user if for instance, a friend has ‘Liked’ the ad. In other words, only social ads in the form of sponsored stories will initially be placed in the main news feed. Facebook Premium illustration. Image courtesy of Facebook. Advertisers will be able to start using Premium in April. The announcement was made during a marketing conference held in the auditorium of Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday. This is the first time that the mobile version of Facebook and its apps will be used as a source for revenue generation. However, Facebook will have to be careful with the way in which they offer this service as they will have to safeguard the user’s privacy while at the same time allowing advertisers to reach their target audience. Reach Generator Until now, marketers were allowed to use Facebook Pages as a free marketing tool. Premium ads will only appear in the news feed and the Facebook algorithm will determine whether or not an ad will appear in a particular user’s news feed. Reach Generator takes news feed ads a step further. The service allows advertisers to pay Facebook on an ongoing basis, as opposed to a CPC or CPM basis, to sponsor one page post every day, and guarantees a 75% reach of the page’s fanbase over a month-long period. The service is always on and advertisers don’t need to do anything other than generate interesting content once a day within less than 90 characters for their fans. Facebook guarantees that brands will reach a large percentage of their audience and estimates that the volume of engagement with the brand will double. Unlike Premium Facebook advertising, the Reach Generator service will only be available to a limited group of qualifying advertisers. At present, qualification requirements have not been released, but are likely to consider advertiser budget and fan volumes. Pages with Timeline All Facebook Pages will be moved to the Timeline format, just like personal profiles, by 30 March 2012. The new format will allow pages to show richer content, create a history for the brand and engage directly with Fans via Likes, comments, shares and now even via direct messages. One of the biggest criticisms of the timeline format for brand pages, however, is that it eliminates custom landing pages for brands, which were a very commonly used tool by most marketers. From April, users will always be taken to the main Facebook Page Wall and page  owners will not have the option to redirect users to any other tab. Moreover, the cover image on the new profiles is not allowed to call out user actions such as Liking the page nor include any sales or contact information. AccuraCast’s Facebook Page updated to timeline format Level Playing Field? In some ways, the new changes level the playing field for all advertisers and page owners. Brands will no longer be able to create doorway pages pushing users to Like the page. However, brands with deeper pockets will be able to pay their way for higher engagement. Sponsored stories and social ads have shown better results on Facebook since they were launched. Now, these ads will become the norm, making the user experience better. However, ads will now show up in the main news feed, which is Facebook’s prime property. This alone is very likely to cause a severe backlash as users will most definitely protest the invasion of their personal feed by ads. Here too, brands with more resources will be able to post a lot more to the news feed and those who relied on the free promotion of news feed stories are likely to be quickly left out.

Mobile data consumption and average mobile page views jump up by 6.0% over the weekends in the UK. However, the number of unique users actually falls. A recent report on the state of the mobile Web, released by Opera Software, has revealed that different countries have different patterns, as far as surfing the mobile Web is concerned. Unique Users Users in two-thirds of the countries surveyed surf the mobile Web more actively on weekdays, while users in the remaining countries are more active on weekends. The countries that have more unique mobile Web users on weekends are led by Egypt followed by Iran, Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania. In Egypt, there is a 7.6% increases in the number of unique users during weekends. On the other hand, the leaders as far as weekday usage go are Romania, Belarus, Moldova, the United States and Poland in that order. In these countries there are more users surfing the Internet from a mobile device during weekdays. Page Views An interesting point to be noted is that a drop in the number of users, does not necessarily mean a drop in the number of pages viewed. A case in point is the country of Georgia, where there is a drop in the number of users during weekends, but they top the list for growth in pages viewed during the weekend. In the United Kingdom too, the number of unique users accessing the Web from a mobile device drops by 1.6% over the weekends. However, this smaller number of users consumer a much larger amount of data and register many more page views on average, resulting in a net 6% increase in the number of page views and a 6% increase in data consumption too. Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software says, “The trends in this edition show that users in different countries do behave differently on the mobile Web. Their reasons to be a ‘weekend surfer’ or a ‘weekday surfer’ may vary, but the statistics remain very consistent throughout the measured period.” While some countries show more than 10% increase between weekdays to weekends, others show a decrease. Interestingly, the increase in page views from weekday to weekend is almost consistently greater than the decrease after the weekend.

25 Million UK consumers are estimated to own smartphone devices, accounting for 51% of the total mobile market and nearly 10 percent of all Internet traffic. A new report by comScore provides details about the current trends in usage of mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices across the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada.. The report indicates that mobiles have done exceedingly well in 2011. Not only has the usage of smartphones increased substantially, but also tablet devices are becoming increasingly popular. This trend is expected to continue through 2012, according to Mark Donovan, comScore Senior Vice President of Mobile. He says, “As mobile channels present a more personal, social, and ubiquitous experience to consumers, advertisers and publishers have an opportunity to better engage target audiences, given an understanding of how to connect and leverage the unique characteristics of these emerging platforms.” 56.6% of UK users access the mobile Web. This is the highest in the West, but is far behind in comparison to Japan, where over 76% of mobile users access the Web. 42% of users in U.S.A. and 40-50% of users in the 4 main EU countries use smartphones to access the mobile Web. Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iOS are the leaders in most markets, with Android leading with nearly 50% market share. However, Apple’s iPhone is clearly the most popular single device across all markets. Mobile apps are being increasingly used to access information on subjects like health, retail, auctions and electronic payments. Shopping behaviour is also being affected as more shoppers use mobile devices to research a product, while they are actually in a store. In Europe, 38.2 of the total mobile audience accessed mobile media via applications, up 10.1 percentage points, while 38.1 percent used their browser, up 9.2 points. Smartphones continue to be increasingly used to access social networks. Almost half of the smartphone owners surveyed in the report use their mobile to access social networks everyday. About half of these users also read posts from brands, organisations, and events. Tablets are rapidly gaining in importance. While mobile phones took about 7 years to reach the 40 million mark in the USA, tablets have reached the same level in less than 2 years. Nearly 15% of mobile users had tablets by the end of 2011. A lot of the recent growth in the market is fuelled by Android devices. Rise of Tablets in the U.S.A. among unique mobile users in aged 13+ For marketers and brand owners, this means a further diversification of the media they need to target, but it also brings with it the possibility of richer, better advertising options, as we’ve already seen through Google’s recent launch of tablet-specific ad formats.

How Facebook decides what content is to be published and what is to be banned has intrigued many users. Some light has now been shed on this issue. A document in this regard has been leaked to Gawker by oDesk, a company to which some of this business is outsourced by Facebook. The document shows that there are fairly strict guidelines about what is permissible and what is not, although these guidelines can also be quite confusing. Facebook abuse standard violations document leaked to Gawker Media It has been found that gory images such as those showing deep wounds or crushed limbs are allowed. Of course, these images of crushed limbs or such should not include a view of any internal organs. On the other hand, pictures showing nipples, including of breast feeding mothers are not allowed. Any form of sexual activity is also banned even if the sexual parts are covered. In contrast, foreplay even between same sex individuals is allowed, though Facebook has historically displayed a degree of bias against gay and lesbian themed images. There is some confusion with regards to material regarding drugs. It is alright to show a picture of a person using marijuana but it is not acceptable to show a drunk or unconscious person. Guns are not mentioned in this document. While Facebook doesn’t allow advertisers to promote firearms or weapons, neither the content policy document nor the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities provide any indication about whether Facebook condones or disallows promotion of guns and weapons organically by users. While Facebook monitors some of the sensitive material itself, some of their content moderation work is outsourced. This is understandable, considering the amount of material that is uploaded on Facebook by their 840 million+ users. On the other hand, how they maintain the privacy of their users when they outsource this material is debatable. Even though Facebook says that they do not part with user information, a disgruntled employee of the outsourcing company, Amine Derkaoui, says he was able to link content to users’ identities. This only means that users should be careful not to upload material that they would rather not have others see, even for private viewing.

Facebook has just launched a new service that will verify the accounts of celebrities. With this new feature Facebook will verify the identity of their high profile account holders. Those who wish to have their accounts verified will have to contact Facebook with some form of official identification in order to prove their identity. Facebook will provide some display name options to the users, once their identity has been verified by them. The users will also have the option of prominently displaying an optional name such as a nickname or a maiden name, if they so desire. This will make it easier for other users to find and follow the accounts of celebrities such as film stars, journalists, politicians and the like. It will be less likely that they would follow some impostor or another person with the same name. Facebook competitors Twitter and Google+ already have similar features running, wherein they authenticate the accounts of celebrities that other users may wish to follow. However, the system came under fire a while ago, when Twitter verified a fake account as being that of Wendi Deng, the wife of Rupert Murdoch. Facebook has a far larger user base than Twitter and it will be that much more difficult for them to ensure that they do not make similar errors. Another advantage of this new feature will be the fact that some celebrities who are better known by their pseudonyms will be able to use their stage name without violating Facebook’s original policy of letting users use only their birth names. For instance, not many people are expected to know who Stefani Germanotta is, but her pseudonym Lady Gaga would be recognised instantly.

Google has recently been accused by Microsoft of circumventing their privacy settings and tracking users of Internet Explorer. The whole controversy first started when a Stanford University graduate student, Jonathan Mayer, said that Google was bypassing the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser and tracking users on iPhones and Macs. Soon thereafter, Microsoft followed with similar allegations. Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, has said that “Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.” According to him, Microsoft has already contacted Google and asked them to stop tracking users of IE and other browsers, in writing. He has also advised users to use The Internet Explorer 9, in order to protect their privacy. He says, “By default, IE blocks third-party cookies unless the site presents a P3P Compact Policy Statement indicating how the site will use the cookie and that the site’s use does not include tracking the user. Google’s P3P policy causes Internet Explorer to accept Google’s cookies even though the policy does not state Google’s intent.” Google has of course, countered the allegations by saying that the P3P policy used by Microsoft is outdated since it was started in 2002, and therefore is not practical to follow. They have also cited a report of 2010, which shows that over 11,000 web sites were not issuing valid P3P policies.

Not even disguising search in the form of entertainment is enough to drive a sufficient flow of visitors to Bing. It has just been announced that Club Bing will soon be shut down. Club Bing is a group of online word games that had been launched by Microsoft in April 2007. It was called Live Search Club previously. When players completed games on Club Bing, they would earn tickets that could later be exchanged for products from Microsoft. The games had initially helped Bing to increase its market share from 8.4% in May 2007 to 13.2% in June that year. However, it now seems like the Club has either served its purpose to launch the Bing search engine or is not continuing to drive visitors to the service and hence the decision to shut it down. The Club will be shut down on the 31st of May this year. The games will continue to be played until the 15th of May, and users will be allowed to redeem their prizes until the 31st of the month. Thereafter, the club will shut down, and any left over coupons will obviously lapse. Club Bing is to be replaced by a service called msnNOW.  

Google is trying to improve their search results, as far as medical diagnosis is concerned. And this has a few people very concerned. Now, when a user searches for a symptom or a group of symptoms, Google’s organic search results will show a list of possible causes for those symptoms. In other words, Google will offer a differential diagnosis for a given set of symptoms. To explain how the system will function, Google has given the example of a search being conducted for right sided abdominal pain, in a blog post. While this is being done with a view to help users, one needs to make sure that the search does not end up causing more confusion. It is very likely that a user conducting a search for some symptoms, may consider the symptom to arise from a relatively minor problem, which may have been placed higher on the search results page. The user may thus neglect taking prompt expert advice, and delay taking treatment and further aggravating a potentially serious illness. On the other hand, some users may consider themselves to be suffering from a major and dangerous illness, and unnecessarily stress themselves over what may eventually turn out to be a minor matter. Google has clarified that the results will be algorithmically presented. The results have not been provided by a medical doctor, who is qualified to make a judgement about the actual diagnosis taking into account several points such as clinical findings and the results of various investigations. While the effort being made by Google is noteworthy, users must remember to use this only as a broad guideline and not as a replacement for an expert opinion. After all ‘little knowledge is dangerous’.

According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, Google is preparing to enter another frontier of the Internet. It is believed that the search giant is in the process of launching a cloud computing service along the lines of Dropbox. This service will enable users to store their data in the cloud and they can then retrieve it at will from any internet connected device. The service will be called Drive – along the lines of GDrive. Material that can be stored on this new service will include not only documents, as is the case with GDrive, but also photos and videos. This feature will be especially useful for sharing large files. Google will offer a certain amount of storage space to users for free, but those wishing to have larger storage space will have to pay for it. The company is already equipped to store large volumes of data, so the introduction of this service should be the natural next step. This service is expected to be compatible with Android devices, and may complement Google’s other services such as Google Docs and Google+. The service may also link to Google Music and help users to share the music they like with their friends. Dropbox, which is similar in concept to Drive, was launched in 2007 and is doing extremely well. They already have about 50 million users, and provide 2GB of storage for free. Google has so far refrained from making any official comment about the new service.

comScore has released the search share figures for the month of January 2012 for the U.S. market. According to their analysis, Bing has now taken a lead over Yahoo! in the search share. While Google continues to hold the number one spot in this market, with a share of 66.2%, Bing now holds the second position with a 15.2% market share, and is followed by Yahoo! with a 14.1% market share. Google and Bing have shown a marginal growth over the previous month by 0.3 and 0.1% respectively. Yahoo! has seen a fall of 0.4% in market share. These figures are valid for the Explicit Core Search. Numbers for Total Core Search are slightly different. In this category, Google continues to hold the first slot with a 66.2% market share, but Yahoo! is second with a 16.0% market share and is followed by Bing with a 13.8% market share. In both categories, Ask Network and AOL Inc. hold the fourth and fifth places respectively.

2011 may have been a big year in terms of online searches for the deaths of famous people, but Michael Jackson’s demise in 2009 is still the ‘Death That Most Shocked the Net’ reveals a new study. Searches for news of Jackson’s departure were double those of Osama bin Laden who was narrowly ahead of Amy Winehouse (both of whom died last year) in a study of online searches since 2004. The first global ranking of the world’s “Deaths That Shocked the Net” comes from analysing one billion online searches via Google by AccuraCast, a leading U.K. digital search agency. Deaths that Shocked the Internet – infographic 2011 had 5 big deaths in terms of search with Osama bin Laden, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Taylor and Muammar Gaddafi all featuring in the top ten of most searched for deaths of all time. Only 4 other years made it in the study – 2010 for Alexander McQueen, 2009 with Michael Jackson and Brittany Murphy, 2008 for Heath Ledger and 2006 with Saddam Hussein. The study shows that the average age of the top ten most searched for deaths is 50 years and 4 months. Amy Winehouse was the youngest on the list at 27 years of age with Elizabeth Taylor the oldest at seventy nine years of age. The top ten contains 5 entertainers (3 film stars, 2 singers), 2 political leaders, 1 fashion designer, 1 terrorist and 1 technology pioneer – Steve Jobs. Violent death is the most common cause of death in the top ten search list with 4 in this category – Bin Laden (shot), Saddam Hussein (hanged), Muammar Gaddafi (shot) and Alexander McQueen (suicide). Homicide was found to have killed Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs died due to illness while drugs and alcohol accounted for Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse respectively. Brittany Murphy’s death was judged as accidental while Elizabeth Taylor was the one person who died a natural death. According to Farhad Divecha, AccuraCast Managing Director, “Our study shows that, above all, death is the biggest driver of all Internet search activity especially just after it has occurred. Using figures from Google we have been able to analyse rises and falls in search to produce a unique league table”. Ranking of the 10 most shocking deaths

One of the potential risks Facebook cited in their IPO filing was the adoption of mobile. While everybody is extremely eager to know how the Facebook IPO will fare, Facebook is already preparing to please its future shareholders, by eliminating this risk and starting to test a mobile ad service in the near future. About half of the 850 million users of Facebook access the network through their mobile phones. This has naturally made them want to start monetising this medium – by introducing Facebook Mobile ads. It is believed that they may introduce this feature next month itself, so that it would be functional before they go public, which is expected to happen in May. It is actually quite surprising that Facebook has not already started to monetise mobile. It is very likely that future investors would question the reasoning behind this failure to make use of the opportunity to monetise what is one of the most popular apps. Advertiser Challenges Generating good mobile ads is a rather tricky task, compared to advertising on desktop computers, as the screen space available is much less. Also, users are likely to be interested only in relevant ads when they are on the go. Ads would need to be short and catchy. The use of graphics would also be tricky as image sizes are likely to be smaller in mobile ads. Business Benefits Businesses are likely to jump at the opportunity to grow their mobile user base and make use of sponsored stories to get more brand recognition and potential business via trusted referrals. Similarly, localised ads on mobile could see tremendous uptake by local businesses such as restaurants, hotels and stores. The Biggest Risk – Users The biggest challenge for Facebook, though, will be to lure more users to their mobile site and apps via better location features and to keep these users happy without getting them upset about too much advertising in such an intimate medium – especially in the wake of the IPO announcement that has made so many acutely aware of Facebook’s billions.

As most major social networks continue to grow in popularity, the amount of referral traffic being generated by them also grows. According to reports from several sites referral traffic from social networks is growing steadily. So which network sends the most traffic? Turns out that according to Shareaholic, Facebook is the number one source of referral traffic with 25.6% of the market share in December and 26.4% of the market share in January. Other sites such as StumbleUpon, Google and Twitter also contribute to the numbers. Social Network Percentage of Total Referral Traffic (Jan 2012) Facebook 26.40% StumbleUpon 5.07% Google 3.62% Twitter 3.61% Pinterest 3.60% YouTube 1.05% Reddit 0.83% Google Plus 0.22% LinkedIn 0.20% MySpace 0.01% Newcomer Pinterest is generating a good amount of referral traffic. According to a report from Shareaholic, this site is generating more traffic than sites like Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube put together. In December, Pinterest had 2.5% of the market share while in January they contributed 3.6% of the referrals. This growth is especially impressive when you consider that in July last year they sent only a miniscular 0.17% of referrals. StumbleUpon, which holds the second position for referral traffic had 6.5% of the market share in December, but has fallen to 5.07% in January. Facebook and StumbleUpon’s relatively large share of traffic referrals has been corroborated by reports from StatCounter in the past. Although Google Plus contributes a very small amount of the total share of referrals – just 0.22% – other Google sites such as Google news, Google Images and Gmail continue to be major sources of traffic.

Facebook has finally filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What will this mean for the users of the world’s most popular social network? The company, which was private so far, was rather secretive about their financial dealings. Most of these details will now have to be made public, as they will be answerable to their shareholders. Facebook has filed for an IPO worth $5 billion. This means that they hope to be able to raise that amount of money from the sale of their shares. However, they have not yet clarified how many shares they will be selling and what the price of each share will be. Analysts are speculating that the total valuation of the company is around $75 to $100 billion. It is also too early to know exactly how Facebook will utilise the money generated from the IPO. Speculations are rife that among other things they may choose to buy over Zynga the manufacturer of the popular social game FarmVille. Rumours about Facebook manufacturing their own mobile phone are also doing the rounds. Additionally, it is certain that the IPO will help the local economy of Silicon Valley where their headquarters are situated. The cash generated from the IPO will also help Facebook to steal a chunk of Google’s display ad revenue as advertisers reallocate budgets to the place where most users are. None of these possibilities matter too much to Facebook’s end users though. Their experience and loyalty to the network should theoretically remain the same. Going Public Changes Companies Whatever Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO may say, once the company goes public, they will be answerable to their shareholders and they will have to change the way some things are done. For one, there is bound to be a push to monetise the network further and further. While a lot of this growth could come from international expansion and uptake of their advertising services, analysts will expect to see growth in the US and Europe as well. In-Stream and Mobile Ads Growth and monetisation will mean the need to sell more advertising. While the right-hand column on Facebook already contain a lot of ads, the news feed has remained relatively free of advertising. This is likely to change with the introduction of sponsored stories in the ticker in the near future, and surely will result in the placement of ads within or at the top of the main news feed eventually. Mobile is another area that is currently free of advertising, but is also very likely to start seeing the infusion of ads. What other changes do you expect to see once Facebook goes public?

For a long time it was believed that users are less likely to make expensive purchases from their mobiles than from their desktop computers. This belief has been shown to be wrong. According to reports from Dell Inc. the value of purchases made by people through their mobile phones has now exceeded the average order value of purchases being made by users online. Dell Inc. launched their complete mobile store applications for Android devices and iPhones some time ago and they have found that the average amount being spent on purchases through mobile is 25% higher than it is for online purchases. The fastest selling item, the Inspiron 15R laptop is the most popular model for both mobile as well as online sales. This laptop ranges in price from $550 to $800, showing that users are not unwilling to make high value purchases from their mobile phones. Brandon McGee, Director of Global Mobile at Dell says, “From a download and revenue perspective, the Android app is performing extremely well and reaching its goals. The iPhone app is performing twice as well as Android.” In order to further strengthen mobile online sales, Dell suggests that in order to develop a successful mobile commerce site entrepreneurs should offer a secure site with prominently displayed lock icons on check out buttons, have a clean and easy to use interface that contains all technical and other specifications about the product being sold and also includes user reviews and provide tools to help users select products, such as the Compare feature and the Shop Assist tool used by Dell. Promoting the mobile commerce site on popular networks such as Facebook, Twitter and on third party blogs and even via email has proved to be very helpful to Dell. Success levels of these apps have been high enough to warrant Dell to invest in tablet apps, which are likely to be launched soon in order to further enhance their mobile commerce offering.

While it has been discussed for a long time that Facebook will go public, it now looks as though that is finally about to happen. According to a report in the BBC, Facebook will file papers for the IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday. The company will be valued between $75 billion to $100 billion. They hope to be able to raise about $10 billion through the public offering. If they manage to achieve this target it could be one of the largest share offerings to take place on Wall Street, making Facebook one of the largest companies in the world, by market capitalization. Google had raised $1.9 billion through their public offering in 2004. It is being suggested that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will be involved with this public issue. Most of Facebook’s monetization occurs through advertising and is believed to be around $5 billion. Since Facebook is a private company so far, they have not been required to publish their accounts. Ironically, the upcoming IPO has made the executives at Facebook extremely conscious about their own privacy. Web Pro News has reported that before a recent news conference, attending journalists were initially asked to sign a non-disclosure contract. It is a different matter that the contract was eventually called off when they objected about such a contract infringing their right to free speech and code of journalism. Facebook has not yet made an official announcement, but the indications are all there that this announcement will happen, and the possibility of such an announcement has got the press and investors very excited. Possibly the worst kept secret in the industry at present, this IPO filing could be what the U.S. economy and stock markets need. However, a lot of analysts and investors are also worried that such an ambitious floatation could flop just like the recent IPOs from Groupon and Zynga.

Google announced this week that they will be discarding 60 of their privacy policies and replacing them with one common privacy policy, covering multiple products and features of Google. While this might seem a good move for users, it’s not quite as innocent a move as it may seem. Google has stated that they are doing this because they wish to create a “beautiful, simple and intuitive experience” for their users. In effect, the new policy will make it possible to share information provided by a user on one Google product across all other Google products and features. This includes Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, Google Plus and others. A major stumbling block of this new policy is the fact that users will not have the option to disagree with the policy if they wish to continue using any of these Google services. Consumer Objections Users have voiced their discontent via comments and votes on the YouTube video introducing the new, unified privacy policy. The major bone of contention for users seems to be that information from any one Google service will now be accessible to a host of other services. Regular consumers are not blind to the fact that Google makes its money from advertising. They also accept that in order to advertise on all of its services, Google does need to be able to pull information from one service and use it elsewhere. What they dislike is the idea that Google is mixing the concept of privacy in a closed system such as GMail with that on an open network such as Google+ or YouTube. Official Investigations Triggered Not surprisingly, the announcement has not gone down too well with certain groups. Gary Davis, the Data Protection Commissioner in Dublin, where Google’s European headquarters are based, has said that their office would be “further assessing the implications of the changes now that they are launched to users”. He also said that “Google has a responsibility to ensure that any such changes are made abundantly clear to users”. Greg Jones from the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office said, “Failure to inform users about changes may not only lead to a loss of trust in the company, but could also mean that they are failing to comply” with U.K. law. Exceptions to this new policy will be Google Books, Google Chrome and Google Wallet. These sites will continue to retain their own privacy policy.This exception is due to legal reasons. The new policy will come into effect from the 1st of March 2012.

A recent study has found that online search ads drive not only online sales but offline sales as well. The study was conducted by cross-channel analytics provider, RevTrax, over a period of two years between August 2009 and August 2011 across hundreds of merchant outlets and covered millions of transactions. The process followed was quite simple. When a paid search ad was displayed to a consumer, it led to a printable or mobile landing page that had a coupon with a unique barcode. The consumer could redeem this coupon by going to a physical store. The barcode on the coupon could be used to track the search activity that led to the engagement of the consumer, finally leading to redemption of the coupon. This system made use of direct marketing to record and analyse the effect of variables on the sale of goods. It was found that for every $1 generated online by the ad, the retailer recorded a sale of about $6 offline (in store purchases). This indicates that retailers would be wise to concentrate on paid search ads as they also increase offline sales. On average, a click on a paid search ad generated approximately $15 of in-store revenue, with some merchants seeing as much as $28 of in-store revenue. Approximately 9% of clicks on a paid search ad generated an in-store sale. While these findings were true for large businesses with several physical stores, smaller businesses would have to test the effectiveness of this system further. It is also true that large retailers can afford to lose margins as a marketing expense and then make up for the losses through increased market share. Online retailers who do not come up with interesting coupons are likely to lose out on market share, as coupons become more popular among online customers. This is a great opportunity for marketers of various offline services such as restaurants and theaters to concentrate on online ads to improve their market share.