Social Media, Digital Marketing & PR Agency

Privacy and regulation are dominant this week – maybe not quite as exciting as shiny new product launches, but hugely more important.

Take this piece of news from Google, for example: they are going to merge data from across their platforms (YouTube, Google+ . Gmail, Google Maps, Google search  and Android mobile) into a single profile that can be used to alter the person’s search results and target them with advertising and services Google are saying that they do have measures in place to help individuals ‘opt out’, although they couldn’t specific and frankly, from a business perceptive it doesn’t actually make much sense to make it easy to do so. This has interesting repercussions for businesses marketing online -watch this space for a more comprehensive look at that.

It has also been reported this week that in the future businesses would be able to charge more for products that people have liked on social media  Would you charge your fans more for something they have liked, or is this a crazy idea?

Still on Google and the way they are skewing search results to favour logged in Google+ users, the engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have come with a browser add-on ‘Don’t be evil’, which shows what the original organic Google search should look like. Interesting how much the search results are being skewed and it’s bound to have huge repercussions for SEO and digital marketing going forward – lots more to come on this story we think.

McDonalds have been all over the press this week for their Twitter fail when a hash tag on a jolly promotional campaign backfired and was hijacked by disgruntled customers moaning about all manner of customer service issues.  Also, a barrister lost his job for tweeting insults about professional rivals and an MP learned his lesson by leaving his Twitter account logged in, only for an intern (and you know what we think about Twitter and interns) to make a series of inappropriate tweets.

Hardly a week goes by without Apple in the headlines and this week is no exception as they announced better than expected profits and are now officially the world’s largest company.  Sadly Nokia couldn’t post good results, in fact they reported a €954m fourth-quarter loss and a 31% decline in sales – however, they are positive that they can turn things around with new products this year.  And after the catastrophic Blackberry outage last year, RIM has given into shareholder pressure and appointed a new CEO who thinks he can restore confidence and prosperity.

The good news for all smart phone manufacturers is that the web economy in the G20 countries is due to double in 2016 to a whopping to £2.7 trillion.  In Google’s survey, the noted that 200 million new people per year are logging onto the internet, but the majority of those will do so from a mobile device, not a computer with a fixed line.  You have been warned!

Meanwhile in privacy issues the EU have said that people have ‘the right to be ‘forgotten’ if they should wish and Facebook and others (including all internet and company databases) will have to delete data that they hold if someone requests it, while over in the States the FBI plans to monitor social media channels for suspicious goings on.

And after the uproar last week about the proposed SOPA and PIPA bills, that have been dropped (probably), along comes ACTA which some reckon could be even more dangerous.  And Twitter has said that they have the technology to selectively censor tweets, country-by-country which is causing concern in some quarters, especially as Twitter has been so instrumental in helping ‘the people’ in world events like the Arab Spring.

And in the week that the Facebook’s timeline has become mandatory, our friends over at Mashable have put together a lovely gallery of the best Timeline covers. Enjoy!

Have a good weekend.

This week has to be the busiest week ever for big tech stories, you know the ones, the ones that make it into other sections of newspapers or even into the main headlines, so without further ado, here we go.

The proposed internet privacy/piracy Bills, Sopa and Pipa, that are under discussion in the US have caused the digital world to rise up in strong protest, with the most visible signs being Wikipedia being taken offline and Google blacking out its logo.  Countless other companies and individuals have registered their disgust to the legislation, which if made into law, would change the internet for ever.  The action certainly seems to have had a great effect with President Obama and US senators back-trackingon support for it. But until this issue is resolved, then the digital world vows to keep fighting.  And as a reminder that the US authorities are getting serious with copyright infringements online, it has shut Megaupload.com, a major internet content hosting website, and charged its founders and several employees.  ”Mega Conspiracy” (as they have been dubbed) has been accused of ‘robbing’ $500 million from copyright holders and generating over $175 million in proceeds from subscriptions and advertising.  Drawing the line between piracy and censorship seems to be as controversial as ever and this one will run and run.

Over with Apple, they held the much anticipated launch yesterday of iBooks 2.0, the app which promises to change text books for ever and in the process make a significant impact on education.  This has to be one of the exciting announcements that Apple has made in a while and we can’t wait to see how it will actually start to be used.

After all the hullaballoo last week about Google incorporating Google+ into its search algorithm (although how many people are actually using it frequently is still a point of discussion), there has been a slew of Google news this week – some good and some not so good. Despite being named the best place to work in America by Fortune magazine and making more than $10bn in the final quarter of 2011, the results failed to impress analysts who had been expecting more from the search giant. The shares tumbled in hours after trading, finally losing 10% of their value in total.

However, Google are still a company very much at the forefront of digital, and they have now incorporated train times into its Google maps (how brilliant is that!) and launched a film festival on YouTube (Google Inc.-owned). This will play out online and will send ten finalists to the Venice Film Festival with Scott Free Productions, run by Ridley and Tony Scott, involved in the judging.  Nice one Google!

And the folk over at Facebook haven’t been sitting on their laurels either with the announcement of sixty new apps for Timeline – so now virtually every facet of your life – music, cooking, cars, film etc etc – can be shared with your friends.

One sad bit of news this week is that Kodak has filed for bankruptcy.  The iconic photographic brand really failed to get to grips with the onslaught of digital and has paid the ultimate price. A little bit of history in the making and some lessons to be learnt.

And in other news , Communist Party officials in China are being equipped with a super-dooper pad computer housed in a luxury leather case and costing a whopping 9,999 yuan (£1,000), which is twice the price of Apple’s most expensive iPad – still I guess that they can afford it…perhaps we should simply console ourselves with the rather fab gadget Raspberry Pi, which went on sale this week at a rather more affordable $25.

Retail figures just out show that online sales soared in the run-up to Christmas (no surprise there then)  and to finish, IBM has unveiled the world’s smallest map: The map measures a miniscule 22 by 11 micrometers or put another way, 1,000 maps would fit on just one grain of salt.  Amazing stuff but more excitingly, this huge jump forward in Nano  technology will make its way into all kinds of digital applications in the not too distant future.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Well here we are in 2012 and this week is dominated by two huge stories.  Let’s kick–off with Google and their announcement this week that they will be incorporating ‘social search’ into their search algorithm, which critics say, would place information from Google+ above more relevant links.  This is something that we suspected that Google had in mind all along when it launched Google+ so we are not particularly surprised.  Twitter is (understandably) spitting feathers and the mighty Google’s excuse that their search doesn’t recognise the @ symbol is a bit feeble.  Already official complaints are beginning to fly amid claims that it is unfair and could breach privacy rights of Google+.  This is very much a ‘live’ story, so we will be covering this in a separate blog post next week as more of the story unfolds.

The other big news this week is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which has seen all eyes turned to Las Vegas to catch up with the hundreds of new launches.  Our lucky tech journo pals who actually get to go there, have been doing sterling work by giving the edited highlights from this massive show.   There have been new phones, pads, laptops – you name it, it was at CES.   There was even a  Swiss army knife with a built-in flash drive!

One notable absentee from CES (as usual) is Apple, who seem to generate attention 24/7 with new products and just other things, like sneak unofficial reviews of the iPad 3 which may or not be true and near riots in China as the iPhone 4S is launched. Most importantly, Apple has announced (officially) that there will be ‘an education announcement’ in New York next week which is rumoured to be about them entering the digital textbook market – more news on this next week.

MySpace (remember them?) are still limping along, although recent figures show how they are shedding users at an incredible rate, and we are still waiting for the Justin Timberlake effect.  Exactly what is he going to do with it?

Tesco make a rare appearance in the digital news after posting poor Christmas results and having a whopping £4 billion wiped off its share value – this has resulted in many predicting that the modern shopper, armed with the internet and their smart phone, will no longer slavishly trudge to the massive supermarket for the weekly shop, and that we are beginning to adopt new shopping habits.  These include a diverse mix of online supermarket  shopping, targeted buying of special offers, niche goods from small suppliers (online and high street) and a good dollop of Freecycle inspired recycling.  This is another story that we will be following as the year unfolds.

And to finish, there are some lovely new iPad apps to look at including an online version of the Lonely Planet magazine with lots of extra photography so if you are planning your escape from the cold and grey, then this will be a good place to start.  See you next week.