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?

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.

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 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.

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.

A study conducted by KPMG has shown that while users are not very keen to pay for streaming TV shows, about 64% of U.K. users do not mind having to pay for streaming movies.

The percentage of users willing to pay is also likely to increase as more streaming services now become available, thereby increasing choice and eventually lowering prices due to competition.

The awareness of online streaming services is also growing rapidly according to the BBC. The popularity of these online streaming services, though, is growing at the cost of the popularity of other traditional media channels such as reading and watching TV.

In fact, it has been found that the reading of newspapers, magazines and even books, online is growing at a very rapid rate. The use of these online services is growing not only for desktop users but also among users of mobiles and tablets.

At the same time, however, online piracy continues to proliferate and is turning into a major issue involving international sting operations by the FBI as with the arrest of Kim Dotcom, the founder of the file sharing site Megaupload in New Zealand last week.

The U.S. Congress is also trying to pass new, more stringent legislation against online piracy in the form of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but this is being vehemently opposed by various sections including Facebook and Google, who feel that this would amount to censorship. Wikipedia had even undertaken a total online blackout for 24 hours to protest against the proposed legislation.

Such dramatic news from the USA is also likely to influence consumers in the UK to subscribe to movie streaming services in order to avoid persecution for downloading or streaming copyrighted content illegaly.

The report, released by online marketing company, Efficient Frontier, states that during Q4 of 2011 search spend continued to increase in both the U.S. and U.K.

Increase in search spend in the UK by quarter. Source: Efficient Frontier

Retail spend in the U.S. grew by 18% year-on-year and 40% quarter-on-quarter, indicating that the spend increases substantially during the last quarter of the year. Retail growth in the UK was not as good, and this was reflected in the search spend too, which grew by just 10% year-on-year in the country.

Although Google accounted for 80% share of spend in Q4, Yahoo! and Bing clicks were found to be 14% more valuable and showed 9% higher return on investment than Google. The click-share of Google has, however, gone up by 2.5%.

Search CPCs dropped by 5% overall, mainly due to an increase in mobile advertising and better ad delivery.

Mobile ad spend now accounts for 7-8% of all ad spend compared to just 2% a year ago. Of this, tablets account for 50% of the share. Google drives 96% of mobile search ads while Yahoo! and Bing have just 4% share of the market.

In 2012, mobile search spend is expected to account for 16-22% of all paid clicks as users gradually shift from desktops to mobiles. For the same reason, search CPCs are also expected to fall by 4%.

Projected mobile search spend forecast by the end of 2012. Source: Efficient Frontier

Facebook accounted for 2.7% of biddable online spend in Q4, as marketers now spend a larger amount on social networks. Yahoo! and Bing are set to increase their ad inventory, while Facebook is expected to reach 5% of all online ad spend in 2012. Other social networks, such as Google+ and LinkedIn are also set to grow further and deliver more ad impressions.

A study recently conducted by ecommerce firm Baynote, has found that only 90 people out of the 1,032 individuals surveyed in the United States were in any way influenced by retailers’ pages on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Of this, 59% said that they bought products directly from the retailer’s own website.

In fact, 80% of those surveyed said that the social networks had no influence whatsoever on their buying habits. They claimed that recommendations made by social networks had no bearing on their purchase decisions.

Search and email were the dominant drivers of promotions and recommendations. While 93% of those surveyed used the Internet to research products, 91% rated recommendations from search engines as relevant and 63% found search engine promotions useful.

It was also found that tablets were becoming increasingly popular for browsing through the goods available online, as the relatively larger screen of the tablet as compared to the mobile makes browsing more convenient.

93% of these people also confirmed that they use tablets only as a means to browse the availability of products and then they buy the product directly from a store.

2011 U.S. online holiday shopping experience. Source: Baynote

While this study might alarm some readers, the core findings are not that surprising. Social media remains a great branding channel and should not be perceived as a venue to hard-sell products.

To begin with, Microsoft adCenter will start providing paid search results to Yahoo! sites in France, Ireland and the U.K.

Ranked second and third most popular search providers in the UK, Yahoo! and Microsoft hope to be able to achieve this in the first trimester of 2012. Advertisers and marketers will accordingly be informed about actions they can take with regards to their adCenter accounts and budgets.

Testing of the paid search results is expected to begin by mid January itself, but will be limited to a small percentage of Yahoo! traffic. Marketers have been advised to closely monitor their campaigns and prepare to increase their budgets, especially if the budget is currently depleted more than 80% daily.

Location targeting capabilities of adCenter are also being improved in order to help advertisers reach a more relevant audience, with new language and location targeting options. This will help European advertisers to reach users in various locations where the same language is spoken. They will also be able to decide which location they wish to target via choices ranging from a bundle of countries to individual cities. They will also be able to apply bid-boosting to focus their spending more effectively.

Testing and adjustments will continue until the second quarter of the year, by which time, Microsoft and Yahoo! are likely to be ready for a full-scale roll out of these services.

According to Juniper’s forecast, the total end-user mobile games revenue will reach $18.3 billion by 2016.

The revenue that is expected to be generated has been broken up into various categories to get a better idea of the capacity of revenue generation. The categories are downloads to tablets, downloads to smartphones, downloads to feature phones in-game purchases on smart phones and in-game purchases on tablets.

Total mobile end-user games revenues predicted for 2016. Source: Juniper Research

Downloads to smartphones, are likely to have the lion’s share of the revenue generated, followed by downloads to tablets and in-game purchases on smartphones, both of which are expected to have nearly equal share of the revenue.

In contrast, the revenue generated from downloads to feature phones and in-game purchases on tablets will be much smaller.

Currently, in-game purchases, which are a small fraction of the revenue generated, account for about $2.1 billion worldwide, and are expected to reach $4.8 billion by 2016.

Nearly 1 in every 5 minutes (20%) of the time spent online was for social networking in the month of October 2011. Further, this activity is indulged by 82% of the world’s online population.

Social networking has grown in popularity over the past few years, and has provided a new way for people to build more contacts, as well as making it easier for people to remain in touch with their existing friends and family who may be spread out across the globe.

The Rise of the Global Social Networking Audience
Source: comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide, March 2007 – October 2011

One of the major factors fueling the continued growth of social networks is the increased use of the Web through mobile phones, which help people to communicate even when they are on the go or in regions where they cannot access a wired connection.

Only five years ago, in March 2007, social networking was used by less than 500 million people, while email was the primary online activity, with 528.7 million users. By October 2011, the graph has changed drastically and social networking now accounts for 1,179.4 million users while email has only 916.8 million users. The social network graph continues to grow parallel to the growth of Internet usage.

Worldwide Regional Popularity

Asia-Pacific regional users constitute one-third of the world’s social networking population. However, Latin America accounts for the largest amount of time spent on social networks.

Percentage of Online Population Using Social Networking around the World
Source: comScore Media Metrix, October 2011

Another interesting finding of the report is that women are more social across the globe.

Facebook is of course the most popular social network, and has 55% penetration. Three-fourths of the time spent on social networks is on Facebook, and one in seven minutes spent online are on Facebook. Google+ is a fast growing social network, and it is the only network to have signed up 25 million new users in less than one month.

Inevitably, micro-blogging has also gained in popularity. Twitter is, of course, the most popular micro-blogging site – in October 2011, it was used by about 10% of Internet users worldwide.

Interestingly, these social networks are growing in popularity across all age groups. In fact, males and those above 55 years of age are the fastest growing group.

Revenue Lagging Growth

Social networks deliver the most online display ad impressions, but they do not generate the largest revenue. 25% of ads are displayed on social networks but they generate only 15% of the revenue.

U.K. Social Statististics

Snapshot of social networking in the United Kingdom
Source: comScore Media Metrix

While 290 million individual Americans (or 114.7 million American homes) own a television set. In contrast, the number of people online in the USA is only 211 million, the number of users above 13 years of age accessing the mobile Web is 116 million.

Interestingly, the number of individuals working on a laptop or desktop computer is about 192 million, while the number of consumers with a mobile phone is 232 million. Through these stats, one could infer that almost 20 million users access the Internet exclusively via a mobile device and the scope of growth for mobile Internet access far exceeds that for the wired Internet.

288 million users watch traditional TV while 143 watch it through the internet. 111 million users use time-shifted TV and 30 million users watch TV on their mobiles. While traditional television viewership is still higher than mobile ownership, this number could fall over time.

Having multiple TV connections in a home is growing increasingly common, with over 35.9 US homes having four or more TV sets, 28.3 million having 3 sets each, 32.7 million having 2 sets each and only 17.7 million having just one TV set.

57% of mobile users have feature phones while 43% have smart phones. This means that only 43% of the current US mobile user base is able to substitute mobile TV for traditional viewing. Android remains the most popular smartphone operating system with 43% of the market share followed by the iPhone with 28% and RIM Blackberry having 18%.

Users in the over-65 years age group watch the most amount of TV averaging 46 hours and 16 minutes per week, while those in the 12 to 17 years category watch the least with an average of only 22 hours and 24 minutes per week.

Among mobile video users, YouTube is the most popular channel followed by FOX and ABC. The Facebook and Twitter apps are more common among women, while Google+ is more popular among men for some reason.

On a worldwide scale, it was found that while devices such as HD TV, 3D TV, Internet-connected TV, smartphones and tablets are already quite popular, a substantial number of other consumers are still at the stage of planning to get these devices in the near future. So, the market for different forms of electronic devices continues to be very exciting, and can be expected to grow still further.

The last CEO, Carol Bartz, had been asked to go by chairman Roy Bostock quite unceremoniously last September, and CFO Tim Morse was named as Interim CEO of the beleaguered company.

Yahoo! has now announced that they have found a suitable candidate in Scott Thompson, to lead the company. He has been the president of online payments firm, Paypal, which is a subsidiary of eBay.

Mr. Thompson has a tough task ahead of him, to say the least. He will not only have to focus on rebuilding the core business of Yahoo! but he will also have to carry out a strategic review of what new investments to make and existing business lines to dispose off.

According to Stuart Miles of technology blogsite Pocket-lint, Thompson will have to decide on whether they should concentrate on product innovation or content creation.

Yahoo! was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang in January 1994 and was incorporated in March 1995. The company had a great run for the first decade or so. It was around 2005, with the rapid growth of Google that their troubles started. In 2008 they had to lay-off several employees, but when Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to take over the company at $33 per share, they refused the offer, saying that they were being under-valued.

However, the company has never fully recovered from that set back, and the share price continues to hover around $15 ever since. Will Scott Thomson change Yahoo!’s fortunes?

A tweet sent out by Experian Hitwise says that Google has seen a growth in their membership last month, that has more than doubled the number of users they had in the previous month.

According to Hitwise, Google+ had more than 49 million visits in the U.S. itself in that month, which is a 55% increase in traffic compared to the month before.

Google+ share of visits to all categories. Source: Experian Hitwise

Analyst Paul Allen, who is the founder of Ancestry.com, has estimated that Google+ now has over 62 million users, and, of this, 25% of users have signed up in December itself.

While these figures are insignificant compared to the membership that Facebook has (over 800 million) the growth rate itself is significant. In fact, Facebook could not cross the 60 million mark until four years after it was launched.

According to Paul Allen, over 625,000 members are signing up every day. Part of this growth is definitely due to the fact that over 700,000 Android devices are being sold every day, and Google+ is integrated into many of these devices, making it easier for users to sign on.

The holiday season, TV commercials and celebrity endorsements may have further contributed to the growth.

Google has refused to confirm or deny the numbers.

It is being further estimated that at this rate, Google + will cross the 400 million mark by the end of this year.

Facebook’s Messenger app, which is still in the trial stage, allows users to access the social network without opening a browser or while browsing other sites on the Web at the same time.

Users can chat with their Facebook friends, receive status updates and friend request notifications and view the news ticker.

The app only supports Windows 7 at present. Once the app has been set up, a user can log in by right-clicking the Facebook icon in the Windows system tray and selecting Log in.

Once logged in, the user pretty much remains permanently logged into Facebook unless they expressly choose to log out, which isn’t as easy to do. There’s no log out option in the main app window. In order to log out, you right click the Facebook icon and select Log out. Using this option will completely log the user out of Messenger as well as Facebook.

While this strategy of keeping users logged in by keeping the log out mechanism out of regular sight might seem cheeky, it doesn’t end there. The app allows users to ‘Exit’ and close the Messenger app but still remain logged in to Facebook. This keeps users logged in even if they log off the machine for when they log back into the PC.

Much like Windows Messenger, users of this service can also use the ‘x’ button at the top right hand corner, to close the side bar but still continue getting notifications and view chats.

While the app allows users to chat or message individuals, it is so far not possible to chat with a group of friends. As far as user privacy is concerned, the same settings that are applicable to Facebook will be applicable on the app.

According to this report, the list is similar to the one they had released last year. However, there has been a significant increase in the number of unique visitors to most of the top sites.

It is no surprise that search, social networking and video remain at the top of the reasons for mobile browsing with Google, Facebook and YouTube scoring the top three rankings respectively.

The world’s 10 most popular mobile websites are:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. youtube.com
4. vkontakte.ru
5. odnoklassniki.ru
6. yandex.ru
7. wikipedia.org
8. my.opera.com
9. yahoo.com
10. twitter.com

The report has compared the findings between November 2011 and November 2010. Apart from seeing rapid growth in Asia, Opera Mini has also found a substantial increase in mobile Web usage in Latin America, Africa and South East Asia.

Over the last year or so tablet devices have been growing in popularity. A study conducted by Google found that 65% of users that have tablet devices use them for at least one hour a day. It was also found that these devices are used mostly for personal and fun purposes such as checking email, shopping, gaming and other such leisure activities.

91% of the time spent on tablet devices is for personal activities as opposed to desktops, which are used for work related activities and mobiles, which are carried everywhere and used mainly for local search and other related activities. As a result of this, the tablet devices are used mostly in the evening or night and are not usually carried everywhere.

In order to make the most of this growing popularity of tablet devices, Google also studied how users interact with ads on the tablets. The study showed that users expect the advertisements on tablets to be more interactive and interesting than ads shown on desktops and mobile phones.

Naturally, this is an opportunity Google won’t miss, as they are continuously trying to find new ways to woo big brands and win over more advertising money from traditional media via formats such as online video. The new ad formats introduce by Google are for search and display advertising on tablet devices and have a heavy emphasis on video and rich media.

Rich Media Designs for Mobile are basically rich media ad templates with in-built interactivity. This will make it easy for advertisers to create rich media ads for tablets by porting creative used on other display ad campaigns.

Google Media Ads for tablet search. Image courtesy of Google

On the search side, Google will take advantage of the interactive touch-screen of tablets test video ad placement directly onto the search results page. Google had tried similar video advertising on desktop search results pages in the past, but that experiment never took off from beta.

Media Ads, which will show on Google search pages on tablet devices, though, are more likely to succeed as tablet users are much more open to interactivity and the entertainment aspect of such a device and on the format will help advertisers to engage users in new ways as tablet devices continue to gain n popularity in the days to come.

The Prince in question Alwaleed bin Talal is a majority share holder of the company Kingdom Holding through which the investment in Twitter has been made. This holding now gives the Prince a strategic stake in the network, which means that he owns more than 3% of the shares.

As a result of this investment Twitter will now have a valuation in excess of $10 Billion.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has recently been voted as the richest Arab businessman by the magazine ‘Arabian Business’. He is also the largest individual investor in Citigroup Inc. and also holds a stake in News Corp. He has also invested in Apple and General Motors.

This infusion of $300 million will enable Twitter to go ahead with their plans of a redesign in order to make the network faster and simpler. This should also attract more advertisers to the site.

While Twitter has confirmed the investment, they have not given any further details so far.

Twitter had also received $800 million in August from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner who has also invested in Facebook. At that time twitter had a valuation of $8 billion.

Considering the fact hat Twitter had played a significant role in the Arab Spring protests earlier this year, it may seem quite surprising that an Arab Prince has decided to invest in it. It could however be attributed to his good business acumen.

The site, called so.cl (To be pronounced as “social”), is meant to help students to share interesting discoveries related to their curriculum with each other.

so.cl

At present, the site is restricted to a handful of universities such as the University of Washington, Syracuse University, New York University and a few other schools. Others who may be interested in this project can express an interest in the project by signing on using their Facebook id or emailing microsoft.

The site looks like a combination of features from Facebook and Google+. It will have a combination of search, web browsing and social networking features.

Bing powers the search function of so.cl. Users can create ‘rich posts’ by finding interesting images and links on the web, and using So.cl’s montage function to assemble them automatically into a cool visual. They can also share videos with friends or any users via ‘video parties’. Although the name sounds like a video party is a variation of a Google+ Hangout, it is actually just a simple way to search, and quickly assemble a list of movies to view together with friends.

Example of a video party in So.cl

So.cl was developed by Microsoft FUSE Labs. The project has been described as “an experimental research project focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.”

The logic behind the launch of this site for students is the belief that many students would be interested in the same kind of information. Such a social network would make it easier for students even from distant places to share their information with each other.

Microsoft has clarified that this site is not meant to replace any existing social network such as Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. In fact users have to sign in through their Facebook account in order to access this new social network.

Lopez narrowly beat another comeback queen, Mariah Carey, into second place and Take That into third to be named the “World’s Greatest Musical Comeback Act” in a study of online searches since 2004.

The first global ranking of the world’s “Greatest Musical Comeback Act” comes from analysing over one billion online searches via Google by AccuraCast, a leading digital search agency.

The study also shows that, above all, the death of a musical star is by far the biggest driver of online music searches. Searches for Amy Winehouse after her death equalled those for Jennifer Lopez’s comeback and searches for Michael Jackson almost quadrupled those for Lopez.

So what constitutes a big comeback? According to Farhad Divecha, AccuraCast’s Managing Director, “It is when a previously well-known act registers a low starting search index which subsequently goes through the roof for a sustained period of time. We have been careful to include acts that have had true comebacks not just more or less successful periods in their careers. Using figures from Google we have been able to analyse rises and falls in popularity and produce a unique league table”.

The Jennifer Lopez comeback began in early 2011 when she released the single “On the Floor” which achieved worldwide success and gave Lopez her first top ten on the Billboard chart since 2003. Combined with her stint as a judge on TV hit “American Idol”, Jennifer’s comeback is still happening.

Mariah Carey’s singing career was believed to be over in 2002 after poor reviews for her last two albums. She came back with the critically acclaimed album, “The Emancipation of Mimi” and has rarely looked back since.

Take That had split up in 1996 and after almost ten years apart re-formed as a foursome to release, “Beautiful World”, which would sell over 3 million copies. Their musical comeback continued when Robbie Williams completed the original line-up and another album and a record breaking tour followed.

In the U.S, Lopez and Carey saw off comeback competition from Ricky Martin, New Kids On The Block and ex-Beach Boy now soloist Brian Wilson.

The U.K. top five after Take That featured Blur, The Spice Girls, Rage Against The Machine and Take That ‘leader’, Gary Barlow.

“The UK results feature more bands than the U.S”, adds Divecha, “They also show the importance of sustaining a comeback. The Spice Girls reunion was just that and Rage Against The Machine saw incredible interest around a Christmas record before immediately falling back to previous low levels.

“Gary Barlow is interesting. His comeback is via Take That but also due in part to his X Factor appearances. His score is increasing but unlikely to ever get close to the Take That total.

USA’S 5 GREATEST MUSICAL COMEBACKS

UK’S 5 GREATEST MUSICAL COMEBACKS

According to the official post on the Facebook Developer blog, they arrived at this decision because it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain these pages. These app profile pages are automatically generated and similar in appearance to the Facebook pages, but they do differ in features such as Insights, APIs and distribution channels.

Angry Birds Facebook app profile page is empty but still exists to support the app

While all apps have a Facebook profile, most of them do not use this page. This has increasingly become the case as more and more businesses choose to have custom Facebook tabs and welcome pages, which require an app to be created but whose profile page should ideally remain hidden to avoid confusing users.

A banner indicating that these pages are soon to be deleted will now be displayed to admins at the top of their App Profile Pages.

If an admin has an eligible Facebook Page – that is, a Page matching the app name and of the Product/App category – the Likes can be transferred to that page. Once the Likes have been transferred the page administrators will be able continue to publish updates to users from the Facebook page. However, the content of the App Profile Pages will not be transferred. The contents such as photos, posts, insights, will have to be manually downloaded and then uploaded again. All this will have to be done before using the “migrate” button. Once the ‘migrate’ button has been clicked, all data on that page will be deleted.

The migration process can take upto seven days, and it may be several hours thereafter before any activity is seen on the page. If no action is taken before the first of February, the app profile page will be deleted and all its traffic will then be directed to the app.

Facebook will also remove all related graph API object connections on the 1st of March 2012.

New apps will no longer automatically get an app profile page. They will have to create a Facebook page and will be presented the option to do so easily during the app creation process.

The new version of StumbleUpon will make it easier for users to discover content on the Internet. This is the first time in almost a decade that StumbleUpon has gone in for major changes to their site.

StumbleUpon’s homepage now has a new design as well as anew logo. The earlier blue and green logo has been replaced by this orange and white one.

An Explore / search box on the top right hand corner of the homepage allows users to type a search term or select one from the drop-down menu that appears when typing to discover content related to that topic. These “Channels”, which are now emphasized a lot more on the new homepage allow users to focus on subjects of their interest rather than randomly stumbling across the web.

Redesigned StumbleUpon homepage listing Channels of interest

User profile pages have also been overhauled completely. The new profile layout once again focuses on content discovery, making it easier for visitors to a profile to view and stumble web pages that the user liked. Following users and making new connections is also a lot easier now with the new profile layout.

StumbleUpon user profile

One of the most important updates, though, is the change to the Stumble bar. The toolbar, which can be used with most modern browsers, is still the most popular way for users of the site to discover new content. It contains the same features as before along with a more obvious marker highlighting “Sponsored” stumbles via the Paid Discovery advertising platform, thereby making it easier for users to differentiate sponsored sites from organically referred content.

One of the main reasons for this redesign is the huge growth that StumbleUpon has witnessed on mobile. They have seen a growth of 800% year on year and they wish to give their users a better experience that is reflected across all platforms.

Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon’s CEO, told Fast Company, “We’re doing a complete re-launch of the site, and a lot of it is inspired by our mobile experience”.

StumbleUpon continues to remain the dark horse of social media. The site doubled its user numbers since 2010 to cross 20 million users in October 2011 and is still counted as one of the largest referrers of social traffic in the USA, in spite of its user base being a fraction of that of Facebook.

The very first thing users will notice about the Facebook app is that it looks and functions a lot more like the website. Notifications are immediately visible and layers are used to provide instant views of friend requests, messages and notifications.

Facebook’s old Android app was notoriously slow, had multiple screens each of which took long to load even for simple functions and did not have a very intuitive interface. Even something as fundamental as viewing pictures and commenting on them was hidden and required users to know exactly where to touch to show the comment option.

It is now much quicker and easier for users to share photos, and messages as well as to navigate. According to a post on the Facebook blog, with this new app, photos and albums will be twice as fast as before. It will also be easier for users to edit their captions and view comments, both of which were tricky features to use in the old app.

Messages and notifications will now be placed at the top of the page, so users will be able to access them and respond tot hem without leaving the page.

Similarly, a new menu button on the top left corner of the app drops down a menu that enables users to access their news feeds, groups, games and apps with a single click, instead of having to leave the news stream and then go to the main menu.

These new features are for Android 1.8 and require Android 1.5 or later versions. The app continues to be available for free on the Android Market and still does not feature any Facebook ads.

Mobile Ads En Route?

Given that over 350 million active users (43% of Facebook’s total user base) currently access Facebook through their mobile devices, the platform is extremely important for the social network. It is no wonder then, that they would strive to make the user experience as good as it is on desktops.

It will also be no surprise when they do start monetising the medium and launch a mobile advertising service.

It is quite well known that any and all information once posted on Facebook is stored by the website for ever. The information could be concerning a user’s location, sexuality, political beliefs, religious beliefs or any thing else. Even if a user deletes content, it still remains in Facebook’s database indefinitely.

This information is then passed on to marketers and advertisers who wish to advertise to a highly targeted audience. The user is not even aware that this information has been stored and later passed on to others. In fact, Facebook’s advertising policy specifically forbid advertisers from making their ads seem too personalised lest this alert regular users to the degree of personal information the system actually shares with advertisers.

According to a report in the Telepgraph, the European Commission is planning to introduce a new directive that would actually ban targeted advertising on Facebook. This would be much harsher than the current FTC directive that’s just been imposed on the network.

A spokesman for the UK Information Commissioner says, “Facebook should ensure that any data it collects should be used in the manner that its users expect. If personal data is being passed on to a third party or used for targeted advertising then this should be made clear to the user when they sign up to the site and reinforced when users are invited to use an application.”

Facebook has, however, argued that they do not pass on specific information about users but only generalised information. This argument does not seem to have found favour with the FTC or the users, as it is very easy for the marketers to locate the person or persons concerned with the information that is made available to them.

The FTC has now ruled that Facebook can no longer pass on any of this information on to advertisers, unless the users specifically give their consent to do so. In other words, Facebook will have to change their policy from the current opt-out policy to an opt-in facility.

If Facebook fail to do so, they will have to face legal action or pay a huge fine.

It remains to be seen how Facebook will deal with the situation, as it could mean a big loss to them financially. This may even delay their plans of going on to the Wall Street Stock Exchange next year.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook has made mistakes with regards to user privacy, in the past, but he also pointed out that they have been learning from these mistakes and correcting them.

One of the most important messages that the FTC has passed on is regarding standardization of the practice of opt-in. So far most social networks have been following the reverse practice of opt-out.

According to the opt-out practice, companies can approach all clients who have not opted-out of a particular feature. Now they will be allowed to approach only those users who have specifically opted-in for that feature.

Media analysts have remarked that this rule is not likely to adversely affect marketers as most users opt-in for all features any way.

The network will also have to be more transparent in letting users know, who can see their information.

Mark Zuckerberg says that in spite of the fact that they have made mistakes in this regard, they are very particular about this issue. He says, “Facebook has always been committed to being transparent about the information you have stored with us – and we have led the internet in building tools to give people the ability to see and control what they share.”

He has clarified that Facebook has already set right, over the last couple of years, some of the complaints that the FTC has asked them to deal with.

Facebook has also appointed two new corporate officers to make sure that user privacy is protected more thoroughly.

In effect, it looks as though Facebook wants to appear to follow the FTC suggestions not only in letter but also in spirit. It is also likely that these suggestions of the FTC will have to be followed by all other social networks as well.

Google highlights three important aspects that currently characterise the Web scenario:

1. The number of online users are growing
2. The number of mobile phone subscribers will double in a few years
3. The amount of digital information exchanged worldwide is destined to see a huge growth too.

During the event, Google representatives spoke in detail about these 3 aspects, and how developing countries are reacting to changes.

The UK is believed to benefit from this growth. The Internet contributes to 7% of the UK’s GDP, with a growth of over 10% each year (this, of course pales in comparison to Chinese growth levels, which are massive!)

The Internet levels the playing field, representing a great benefit for SMEs, which can now effectively compete with big players.

Google+ In The Ad Ecosystem

Presenters at the even went to pains to point out that Google+ is not just a platform. It is a project. Their mission is to organise information and make it more accessible. Google+’s 40 million users help make this mission more personal.

Google+ is also aimed at engaging people with brands, through the set up of a Google+ profile. Once people add your business to their circle, you can also add them to any circle and segment your audience.

Intel directly asks which circle you belong to, so as to target the right campaign to the right consumers.

The 1+ button was confirmed to affect ranking. The extent of the effect remains unknown as Google employees continue to dodge direct questions about it.

AdWords Express

Made for businesses that are not yet ready for Adwords – 40% of small businesses do not have a website – AdWords Express is simple to set-up and easy to manage.

Google are keen to drive adoption of the new system. They even offered to reward a credit of ₤250 to all agencies that bring in five new clients to AdWords Express by the end of the year.

The benefits of AdWords Express are as follows:

• Targeted – specific to the area where the business operates
• Simple – no need to create /manage campaigns
• Measurable
• Eligibility – no need to have a website

Tips and tricks for Insights:

Let’s assume that faster is better – Google Instant saves a lot of time in the long term.

In Google Images you can drop images into the search box to give similar related results on search.

Google Insights for Search – You can find the most searched terms in a certain period in a specific location. Also you can analyse the evolution of a specific KW during a concrete period.

Ad Planner gives you insights about the audience that uses a specific website, so you can target your audience accurately.

Mobile On the Rise

The Smartphone and mobile markets are growing fast. Mobile is transforming the retail market. This is because user reviews have a huge impact on customer decisions and behaviour.

• It’s a good practice to set a mobile-only campaign, as it provides better click-through rates and easier tracking.
• Ads with phone numbers included get an average 6% to 8% higher CTR!
• Mobile is local – More than 1 in 3 searches in mobile are local.
• It is advisable that for mobile campaigns keywords should be shorter.
• Top spots matter more on mobiles than they do on desktops
• Another good practice is to set location extensions. One should also be mindful of the huge power of CTC and site links.
• The audience spends only 5% of their online time on Search. Display is growing a lot and will be growing even faster.

4 top tips for mobile advertising:

1. Prioritise re-marketing and keyword contextual advertising
2. Run both display and text format
3. Use exclusions to control efficiency
4. Frequency cap & ad scheduling

Tips and tricks for measurement:

The 3 Be’s

1. Be found
2. Be engaging
3. Be accountable

You definitely need to have goals to measure against.

Mobile sites / apps are a huge opportunity that most small businesses are losing.

1 second delay in page load causes a 7% loss of conversions, 11% fewer page views and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Improving Ad Campaign Performance

Page Speed Online – pagespeed.googlelabs.com – check there for audit & suggestions.

Real-time (Beta) – New on Analytics

Flow visualization – user path graph – New on Analytics

Tips and tricks for driving conversions:

• Enhanced CPC
• Conversions Optimizer
• Focus on optimising conversions
• Use automated rules

Knol, Google Wave, Renewable Energy cheaper than Coal (RE<C), Google Friend Connect, Google Gears, Google Search Timeline and Google Bookmarks Lists will be shut down permanently over the next three months.

The products didn’t quite take off as Google had hoped and are therefore being shut down, in Google’s own words, with the aim “to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience.”

A lot of the engineering resources at Google seem to be redirected towards making Plus a hit. A host of new features are seemingly added to the new social network each month. One of these new features is an advanced search option, allowing users to filter search results by author and to browse through the currently trending topics at that point in time.

Similar to Twitter, the trending topics on Google+ show users what are the most popular topics at the moment, and allow them to dive into conversations related tot hose topics.

Google+ search along with trending topics

Now, when a user carries out a search, the trending topics will be displayed in a column on the right side of the page. Users click on any of the trending topics to conduct a search for that topic, which again is very similar to the functionality in Twitter.

Users can also narrow down the search results by using the filters provided at the top of the page, to narrow the content by type – everything, Google+ posts, people and pages or Sparks – and the content source – everyone, circles or self. At present, these tools are available only after a search has been conducted. However, it has been reported by The Next Web that users are asking for the trends results to be added to the main page on Google+.

Another interesting feature that has been spotted recently is the integration of Google+ with Google Places. A number of local searches now show the listing accompanied by the profile image that has been pulled from Google+. When users click on this logo, they are taken to a Google search results page that lists the Google+ Page and provides the user the option to directly add that Page directly to their Circles.

Google+ profiles featured in Google Places search results

This is yet another service that the search giant has integrated with Google+. Even though the network has been criticized for its lack of activity, the developers seems to be determined to make it succeed by placing it in front of users of all other Google services till they eventually wear down and decide to use it!

It has been found that the following of a candidate on Twitter, can give a very good idea about how he will eventually fare.

When the number of Twitter followers of a candidate gains momentum, it has been found that his poll results follow suit. On the other hand, when the number of Twitter followers falls or stops gaining ground, his poll results are also negatively affected.

This trend had been predicted a while ago by Zach Green, CEO of Twitter election research 140elect. Now he has proven his theory based on the performance of the candidates.

He says that Newt Gingrich got a lot of new followers after he announced his candidacy on May 11 and then again after a good debate performance on September 7. At the same time his overall standing in the polls has also improved.

In comparison, Rick Perry received a boost following the announcement of his candidacy on August 13, but he has lost ground since then, in the polls. Concurrently it was found that a lot of people on Twitter have been mocking him rather than following him.

Other candidates such as Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann have followed similar trends. When the number of their followers rises, they also make good gains in the polls, but when the number of followers falls, they lose ground.

Herman Cain too has lost Twitter followers as well as poll points following allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him.

Do these signals indicate that Twitter will be able to accurately predict the results of the GOP poll results? Or is it just a coincidence?

Last week, Facebook spokesperson, Annie Ta said, “Starting on Monday, we are continuing to slowly roll out Sponsored Stories in [the] ticker across Facebook. Sponsored Stories help people see more relevant marketing on Facebook and they can be twice as engaging as ads on Facebook.”

Facebook launched the Sponsored Stories feature in January this year and the ticker was launched in August. The ticker is placed on the top right of the Facebook homepage.

Sponsored Stories are similar to the Promoted Tweets on Twitter. They show an ad relevant to a status update posted by a user. The Sponsored Story will then be relayed to the contacts of that user, making the target audience feel that they are seeing an ad that has been endorsed by one of their friends and is connected to the status update.

Even though the ticker has received a lukewarm response at best, Facebook says that Sponsored Stories are twice as engaging as normal advertisements. Statistics from Nielsen also indicate that such ads are more likely to be remembered. Our own advertising has also found that click-through rates and connection rates on Sponsored Stories are consistently higher than on regular Facebook ads.

According to documentation on Facebook, the Ticker only displays information to others who are already able to see elsewhere on Facebook. Page Like, App Share and App Used Sponsored Stories are eligible to appear in ticker for others to see, but only if they could have already seen them in News Feed.

It will be a while before advertisers can decide whether end users like the idea of Sponsored Stories running in the ticker, or whether they will consider it to be more of a nuisance.

Google will synchronise the music to a Google Music library in such a way that the playlist will remain the same on all devices, be it a laptop, mobile phone or tablet. Each user will be able to store upto 20,000 songs for free, but they will have to be manually uploaded.

Music can also be purchased from a music store in the Android Market. Over 13 million tracks from the big music companies like Sony, EMI and Universal will be available to buy, in addition to tracks from several independent labels.

Google Music on an Android mobile

Individual artists who have the necessary permissions will also be able to upload their music and build their own artist page through the artist hub interface.

This service will obviously compete with Apple’s iTunes. The cost of each track on Google Music will be the same as that on iTunes, ranging between $0.69 and $1.29. However, the cloud computing service by Google will be free, whereas Apple charges $25 for it.

While Google may not generate a lot of revenue through this service, it will help them build customer loyalty to Android-based mobile phones. Once a user has purchased music from a particular service like Apple or Google, they are unlikely to switch to another device.

The service will provide some music for free everyday, and those tracks will be displayed in the music library. Amazon also offers free tracks daily, but the service is rather complicated.

Google Music has already been integrated into Google+ and that will make it more popular as it can now be shared with friends. Social aspects of Google Music could be the main driver of its success, as it could potentially out-shine popular services such as Spotify and Last.fm primarily due to its larger user base.

Reviews of the service are lukewarm. A lot of the criticism focuses on the fact that the service has been released 8 years later than iTunes. The service also requires users to upload each and every song they wish to store and can create problems when users upload old iTunes tracks that had DRM encryption.

The biggest plus points in favour of Google Music are the price – free! – and the true portability of the service – it can be played on any device, incuding iPhones and iPads.

Most industry experts, though, recognise the Google Music service for what it is – a suitable replacement for the iTunes eco-system for Android devices and a means to complete and tether the Android user experience.

The study was conducted across six countries – Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. The most important reason for this surge in usage of the internet is the increasing accessibility to broadband networks through Wi-Fi services, smartphones and other gadgets such as tablets, in addition to the continuing proliferation of traditional PCs in the region.

Users in Singapore were found to use the Internet the most among these countries, averaging about 25 hours per week. Among the other countries surveyed, Indonesians use the Internet the least, clocking an average of just 14 hours per week.

Time spent online in Southeast Asia

While PCs (desktops as well as laptops) continue to be used, devices such as smartphones and tablets are starting to cut into their market share. In Indonesia, 78% of users have got Internet-capable mobile phones as compared to just 29 percent who owned notebook computers or 31 percent with desktops.

While communicating through email is the most popular activity in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand, users in Vietnam and Indonesia were more interested in accessing the news. Social networks are also becoming quite popular in this region and expectedly Facebook is the dominant network here too. YouTube is also among the top 5 sites visited in these countries.

Consumers in the region are also taking an interest in communicating with various brands online and often use the Internet to make decisions before purchasing any item. They also tend to post their own reviews later.

However, online advertising is still not a very popular medium of communication in this region. However, with the increasing use of the Internet, online marketers should concentrate on this region as it can only be good for them in the long run.

Melanie Ingrey, Nielsen’s research director for the APMEA region says, “Online activity is only going to increase in the years ahead as more consumers obtain smartphones, and 3G and broadband access become more common and affordable.”

Marketing professionals and retailers are now putting a lot more effort into their mobile marketing campaigns. This is obviously because they have realised that mobile marketing is starting to pay rich dividends.

Analysts at Juniper have found that the latest techniques and tools available for mobile marketing are cost effective and at the same time they influence the shopper very positively. The availability of Near Field Communication technique for marketing and other tools such as mobile coupons have also improved the scope of mobile marketing to a large extent.

Mobile retail marketing comprises largely of mobile coupons, which dominate the market with over 50% share and are likely to grow to 75% of the total market by 2012, mobile smart posters, which currently account for less than 1% of the total market and mobile advertising, which will account for the rest.

Due to these and other developments, the mobile retail sector is set to grow up to $15 billion worldwide by 2012. This is an increase of 50% over and above the figures for 2011. The easy availability of gadgets such as smartphones and tablets will greatly contributed to this growth. An earlier report had predicted that revenue from the mobile NFC market would reach $50 billion by 2014.

Technological developments have proven to be good for both the retailer as well as the shopper. While retailers now have more ways of reaching their target audience, the shopper is also equipped with more access to information about the products available as well as the pricing, allowing them to take the right decision when purchasing a product.

Growth of mobile retail spend is faster in North America and Western Europe than in the Far East and China. The mobile retail opportunity, split among the 8 key regions globally in 2012 is as follows:

Horowitz emphasized the use of Circles to easily segment audiences when communicating brand / product / corporate messages and the Hangout feature, which allows brands to host face-to-face video sessions with customers. Both of these are features that would appeal to large businesses.

The real power of Google+Pages, though, lies in their ability to influence search engine rankings for a brand or product name. This alone is reason enough for all business owners to want to ensure that they do have a presence on the otherwise placid network. This is also Google’s only ace in an otherwise extremely weak deck.

A number of bloggers have labelled the new feature a rush job or a Facebook / Twitter rip-off. What they overlook is the fact that unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google+ can integrate with a number of even more useful services, not least of which is Google Search and YouTube, to change the way brands can reach their target audience.

Global telecom technology and service provider, Ericsson has predicted in its latest Traffic and Market Data Report that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions will rise to an absurd-sounding 5 billion+ by 2016.

Though the number of such mobile broadband subscriptions was earlier expected to cross 1 billion by the end of this year, it is now being estimated that there will be about 900 million such subscriptions by the end of the year. The growth forecasts for 2016 are built on an expected year-on-year growth rate of 60%.

Mobile data traffic is likely to double this year. This is mainly due to the proliferation and availability of new devices such as smartphones and tablets. Smartphone traffic alone is expected to triple this year.

According to the report, users living on less than 1% of the earth’s land area (urban regions with over 1,000 people per square kilometer), will generate around 60% of this traffic. Video consumption on mobile devices is likely to be the main driver of this growth.

Ericsson also expects that the traffic generated by these advanced smartphones will rise 12-fold, and roughly equal mobile PC generated traffic by 2016.

Predicted growth of mobile data consumption (in PetaBytes)

The Offers app is free, of course, and users will be notified about all the offers available. Users will be able to make purchases within a few clicks and they will even be able to redeem the offers without the use of any paper forms, from certain selected outlets.

The app is based on four different screens.

• A “Featured” screen that’s the deal of the day.
• A daily deal notifier, which alerts you about the deals that are available.
• An archive screen, which shows the deals that the user has made use of or saved, as well as the deals that have expired.
• A screen for redeeming offers without printing them.

While the success of Groupon has led to the proliferation of several websites providing such deals, it is very likely that an app like this from Google will be more welcomed by users. The timing for the launch of this app is also commendable as it has come just at the time, when people would start their shopping for the upcoming holiday season.

Groupon already has a fairly successful Android app, with over 1 million downloads and an average rating of 4.6 stars out of 5. Google’s new Offers app has less than 50,000 downloads to date, with an average rating of 3.6 and quite a high percentage of pretty poor ratings

If Google expects to steal any market share from Groupon, it is obvious that they will have to do a lot more than just release a mobile app – for starters by getting more offers in all major US cities!

As with any major change to the search results pages, this update has been rolled out after extensive tests. Google has been running tests on this project for some time now, and has come to a final decision in this regard.

Ads at the bottom of the SERPs

The decision to include ads at the bottom of the search results pages has been based on the fact that they find the performance of ads at the bottom of the page to be better than the performance of ads that run alongside the search results.

This improved performance is probably due to the fact that users scan a search results page from the top downwards and not from side to side. Hence, when they reach the bottom of the page, they automatically see the ads displayed at the bottom. On the other hand, it is very likely that they might miss the ads that happen to be on the side of the results page, partly because they are not directly in the page scan path and partly due to acquired “banner blindness”.

Organic results at the bottom of the page have been known to typically have higher clickthrough rates than ads in the second-last position. These results will now more than likely get fewer clicks, with such traffic instead flowing to the ads at the bottom of the page.

When ads are displayed at the bottom of the page, it increases the potential advertising space, making it possible to place more ads on page one, rather than when the ads are placed only above and alongside the search results. This too could have a major bearing on the overall performance of ad campaigns, as many users may scan only the first page of results.

During the third quarter of the year, brands allocated 20% more on paid search campaigns, but many of them received a lower net ROI from search, according to a study by Efficient Frontier.

This should come as no surprise as the uptake of mobile search has increased dramatically over the past few years, and the corresponding consumption of media and search via these Internet-connected devices is bound to increase.

A graph charting the interest over time in ‘mobile video’ illustrates how the consumption of media on smartphones and tablet devices has grown steadily in the past couple of years. Advertisers are naturally going to follow suit.

Trend in volume of searches for ‘mobile video’ from 2008 to date

Mobile ad spend is likely to amount to between 7-10% of all ad spend by the end of this year. Tablets account for 77% of this amount, showing that they have become a very important part of this market.

Over the course of the last 12 months, mobile search spend increased from 0.5% to 4.2%, representing a 740% year-on-year growth in the market. For retail advertisers in the USA, mobile spend currently represents 7% of search spend and tablets represent 60% of all mobile impressions and clicks.

The study, based on data from AdMarvel Open Audience Network, uses information collected from users of the Opera Mini mobile web browser. It compares the habits of Android users with the habits of iPhone users, Windows Phone users, Blackberry users as well as users of other feature phones.

It was found that Windows Phone users were the most likely to visit email and communications sites – even more than Blackberry users. This would go on to suggest that similar to Blackberry device, Windows Phones were popular with the business community. These users were also most frequent visitors to news & information, politics and business & finance sites.

Users of the Android OS were likely to be the most educated. This suggestion is based on the fact that Android users are the largest group in the Education category, which includes websites for universities and general education.

iPhone users were found to be least likely to view music, video and media sites, whereas Android users were most likely to visit sites in that category.

It was also seen that Android users are the least likely to visit social networks from their browser – presumably preferring to use free apps to access the social networks.

Percentage of users exceeding the average use

In February of this year, Facebook acquired Beluga, a group messaging service.  They have now fully integrated it with Facebook Messages. The app is very similar to Beluga as well as to Facebook Messages.

The app has been available to users through Apple’s App Store as well as through the Android Market. However, it didn’t get as much traction as Facebook would have probably liked, which is why they’ve now started displaying alert messages at the top of the News Feed in the Facebook Android app, prompting users to download the Messaging app.

When users opens the Facebook Messenger app they see a list of recent Facebook messages. When they create a new message, they can send it to their contacts or Facebook friends. If a message is sent to a user when the app is not open the recipient will receive a notification via their handset. Messages can be sent to all Facebook contacts via Facebook Messages, while other contacts from the phone book can be reached via SMS if their mobile number is verified on Facebook.

Facebook Messenger allows users to directly and quickly contact their friends on the phone, irrespective of their location. The messages are delivered instantly and it is also possible to make plans and carry out group conversations at once.

Google+ Messenger provides very similar functionality, which might be why Facebook is now pushing its own messenger app to Android users more aggressively.

While Facebook Messenger has crept into the #1 spot in the App marketplace this week and is showing a distinct bump in download volumes – since the time it was launched – it is still far behind the likes of WhatsApp Messenger, which has clocked over 10 million downloads.

StumbleUpon has added a new feature called ‘Interest Optimisation’ to their Paid discovery feature. This feature will help to improve the effectiveness of ad campaigns by reaching a larger target audience.

Interest Optimisation has been applicable to auto-targeted campaigns for some time. It will now be available on manually targeted campaigns as well. Even manually targeted ad campaigns will now be served to a wider variety of categories, which happen to be similar to the ones selected by the advertiser.

For example, if a particular campaign were primarily targeted to the ‘mutual funds’ category, with the use of Interest Optimisation ads from that campaign could also be served to the ‘investing’, ‘financial planning’ and ‘taxation’ categories, thus helping to reach a larger audience.

Advertisers who wish to exert greater control over their campaigns might not wish to make use of this feature. They can easily opt out of it by making sure that while using the manual format they click on the option that says “Strictly limit my campaign to only the topics selected below.”

In order to find out how the campaign is performing after using this new feature, the advertiser can access the Advanced Reports interface in the StumbleUpon ads system.

Back in 2004, when Google and online shopping started growing, the trend started becoming visible. Since then, the volume of searches for ‘costumes’ around the Halloween period have spiked higher and higher, year upon year.

Comparative volume of searches for ‘Costume’ in 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011

A walk down the English High Street today reflects the growing popularity of what was once considered to be a solely American “festival”. Similarly, the number of children and adults dressing up on Halloween day is also growing steadily.

If the numbers to date are anything to go by, 2011 seems on its way to become the biggest ever day for online fancy dress retailers in the UK. Considering the corresponding search volume in October 2010, this means that over11 million searches for ‘costumes’ will be carried out in the UK during the month of October 2011 alone.

Spikes in search volumes around this period aren’t limited to regular Web search. Image searches spike even more sharply in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of October and product searches also get bumped up a good bit from the last week of September till the 3rd week of October.

As more retailers rush to capitalise on the opportunity, costs per click also spike during the same time. Recognised brands, retailers with guaranteed delivery and those with popular costumes in stock are the most likely winners in such a situation.

Reports from Asian technology blog, Penn Olson state that for the past 5 days, Gmail services are being affected on Android handsets. The Android Market has also been intermittently inaccessible during the same period.

While the Gmail website is working as normal in China, both the Gmail app for Android and the Android Market have completely stopped working in the country. The website Blocked In China confirms that the Android Market is inaccessible on both Android devices and via the wired Web.

Android Market shows as “Blocked” in China

Gmail was the battleground where Google’s exit from China was decided. It comes as no surprise, then, that the service should also be blocked on mobile phones. What is surprising is the fact that it took Chinese authorities so long to make this decision.

Google Plus, on the other hand, was blocked hardly a week after it was launched in China, and remains that way since.

If the sequence of events repeat themselves, Google might find itself exiting the Chinese Mobile market as well, which could be yet another major blow to the company’s East Asian operations.

Designated administrators of company profiles on LinkedIn will now be able to post updates of no more than 500 characters. This will have to be done through the ‘Overview’ tab on the company’s profile page.

Posting status updates on LinkedIn

Updates will appear in the news feeds of users who follow that particular company. The followers will then be able to not only comment on the update, but they will also be able to ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ the update with their friends directly from the company page. This feature is exactly the same as that on Facebook Pages.

Facebook Pages allow companies to also share videos and images and ask their fans questions. The LinkedIn feature is limited to plain text updates and links, which is quite in keeping with the more formal, business orientation of the network.

Companies will be able to share breaking news, employee moves and available job opportunities with their followers in a more professional manner on LinkedIn. Followers of the company will be kept up to date with all the information about the companies they are interested in.

For quite some time now there has been a demand from several companies to allow this kind of instant interaction between the company and its followers. Ryan Roslansky, director of product management at LinkedIn says, “Nearly half of our members follow over 2 million Company Pages on LinkedIn. This is a great way to build engagement with customers, potential employees and prospects alike.”

The popular social network is now in the process of releasing a new advertising format, which will help them to attract more clients, and in effect earn more money.

Building on the fact that Facebook is a social network, ads in the new format will expand when a user’s friend has ‘Liked’ it. When this ad appears in front of a user whose friend has liked it, the ad will expand to allow the user to comment on it and also see other related comments on the ad.

Unlike regular sponsored stories, the expandable ads allow users to comment and interact with an ad unit just as they would any other post that a friend ‘Likes’ or shares. This makes the ad seem much less like an ad, and much more like any other piece of content – image or video – that gets shared on Facebook.

The theory behind this new ad format is the fact that just like movies, restaurants and books, an ad is more likely to be appreciated by a person whose friend has already approved of it.

At present, expandable ads are not available to all advertisers. This ad unit is due to be announced at Advertising Week in New York.

The store is known as ‘Chromezone’ and is actually a mini-store within a popular electronics retail store. It is a 285 square foot outlet, based inside the PC World store on Tottenham Court Road in Central London.

Chromezone store in London. Image courtesy of T3

Quite surprisingly, the opening of the store was a rather quiet affair. In complete contrast to the hugely publicised opening of the first Apple store.

The store will sell Google’s Chromebook laptops and a few accessories, such as headphones. It will be operational for a short duration of time only; until just after Christmas.

Google plans to open more stores shortly. The next one is scheduled to open on the 7th of October in Essex. Other stores will also be opened worldwide in the run up to Christmas.

This is Google’s first attempt at opening a store. Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing at Google UK, said “We found anecdotally that when people tried the device and played with it, that made a huge difference to their understanding of what the Chromebook is all about. People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices. We want to see whether people understand what this device is all about and monitor their reaction when they try it out.”

While Google may never go down the route of Apple and open dedicated stores to sell hardware, this is definitely an interesting new direction for the company. Perhaps they’ve learnt a lesson or two from their previous failed attempts to sell the Nexus One online and have decided that old-fashioned retail might yet be the best way to sell new hardware.

The study takes into consideration various devices such as tablets, e-readers, and other portable connected devices. The study concentrated on user demographics, features of the devices being used and shipment details. Retailing strategies being used by the manufacturers and marketers as well as pricing tactics were also studied.

Mobiles, smartphones and tablets are expected to be the fastest growing devices in the near future. This assessment has been further strengthened by the recent announcement from Microsoft stating that their Windows 8 OS will be orientated towards mobiles and tablets. Microsoft have also said that their Office suite will add to the attraction of tablets within the enterprise space.

Analysts at Juniper estimate that the number of tablet devices being shipped out will touch 253 million by 2016. This is a huge jump compared to the number of such devices expected to ship this year, which is just around 55.2 million.

Juniper’s numbers match other forecasts by Gartner and DisplaySearch quite closely. Numbers for this year were forecast to be around 50 million, but have now been revised up a bit, which further reinforces these steep growth expectations.

It is also believed that by 2016, more than half the number of tablet devices will have Wi-Fi as well as cellular connections. At present, most of these devices only include Wi-Fi connectivity.

Currently, customers are required to have separate connections for their mobile phones and for the tablet. This situation is expected to change in due course and could also influence the growth in usage of tablets.

This new feature makes sharing what one does on the web, a lot easier than it was – so much so, that in some cases sharing could become automatic. In the past, a user had to ‘Like’ something in order to share it with others.

Now users just have to click ‘Add to Timeline’ once on any app or website. Thereafter, every article the user reads is automatically published, unless the user remembers to actively turn off the auto-share feature.

While this simplifies the process of sharing things, it is also possible that a user might leaves this feature on and forget about it. If that were to happen, all activity on that website could gets shared with others.

Automatic sharing of a one’s online activity could easily lead to embarrassing situations where friends and family suddenly start seeing updates about views of certain not-safe-for-work articles or photos that one would not normally want to be publicised.

Auto-sharing music listened to on Spotify

This new auto-sharing feature is called Gestures. The concept is not entirely new on the web. The Huffington Post and Washington Post Social Reader have similar features. Once a user joins these sites, every article read is automatically published, unless the user remembers to actively turn off the auto-share feature.

However, considering the fact that Facebook is far more popular than the Huffington Post or the Washington Post Social reader, the possibility for doing damage to someone’s reputation is considerably higher.

This is not actually a violation of user privacy as the controls lie in the hands of the user at all times. Users must be careful to remember to switch off the auto-share feature, once they have finished sharing whatever it is they wanted to share with their friends.

According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, this is a way of ‘telling the story of your life’ as it relies heavily on sharing everything you’ve done. The new Timeline is similar to a regular Facebook wall, but it dates back to the earliest details added online by you.

Delicious was part of the Yahoo! network and used to be one of the most popular sites in its category. In December last year, there was news that Yahoo! intended to shut down the website.

Following this, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who had earlier developed and then sold YouTube, decided to buy it over from Yahoo! Delicious was taken over as part of their new company called Avos, which they had formed in April 2011.

Both Hurley and Chen had been thinking about the fact that there is always a flood of information on the Internet, and it is very difficult for users to go through all of it and reach the information that they are really looking for. With the revamp of Delicious, they hope to be able to simplify this process for users.

The new Delicious is supposedly a place where users can see the most recent links shared around topical events. On the homepage, users will now see browseable “stacks”, which are collections of images, videos or links to a particular topic.

Stack on Delicious about the TV programme, Merlin

Speaking about the newly launched site, Chad Hurley sa, “We want to simplify things visually, mainstream the product and make it easier for people to understand what they’re doing.” If this idea catches on, Delicious could soon become far more popular than it ever was in the past.

However, the first mover advantage that Delicious once had is no longer the case. Sites like Facebook and Google+ already have far more viewers and are extremely popular for social sharing. StumbleUpon has steadily grown in popularity as a social discovery tool.

Since the demise of Delicious a number of bookmarking sites have stepped in, but none have become quite as popular. While the organisation of information that the new service offers is great, conceptually, the new owners of Delicious might find that their absence from the market has cost them dearly and that they’ve missed the boat to become a social media powerhouse.

During working hours, in the day time, users mostly use desktop computers. In contrast to this, tablet devices such as the iPad and Android Tab, which are also becoming quite popular, are used mostly in the late evening or night time.

Smartphones and other mobile phones are used at a fairly steady pace throughout the day. This means that people make use of mobiles when they are at work, at home and also when they are traveling to and from home or work.

Percentage of day’s queries by hour from tablet, mobile and desktops

What is most striking about this finding is the fact that even though tablets are portable devices, just like smartphones, they are used mostly in the leisure and comfort of one’s home, while it is the mobile phone that gets used at work as well as on the go.

These findings are especially useful to advertisers, who may be wondering which screen is the most effective when trying to reach a target audience at a particular time of the day.

The most logical inference is that all the screens are important, as each one fulfills a particular requirement, and is used at a different time for a different purpose. Hence, it would be best for advertisers to make use of all the types of screens in order to reach the maximum possible number of users and create maximum brand awareness. That said, different messaging could be used when targeting each device type, while keeping in mind the typical time of day when such a device is likely to be used.