Industry News

Demystifying The Cloud

At the science museum today with Dedipower to learn more about cloud servers.

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Facebook Launches New Mobile Site with No Data Fees

In order to enhance Facebooks international reach it has just launched a new mobile services to provide FREE connection to its online services from mobile phones. The new website 0.facebook.com will be available in 45 countries through 50 + mobile network operators. The new killer feature is USE IT FOR FREE regardeless of your mobile data plan. Operators such as T-Mobile, Digicel, Vodafone, and MTN all support the new Facebook initiative.

Because of its partnership with mobile carriers, there are a fewsnags . First, 0.Facebook.com is only available to people on networks and countries that support it. Here is a list. You won’t find the U.S., the UK, Japan, China, Germany or any other nations with strong wireless data networks on the list. This mobile site is built for nations where wireless data is far more expensive to acquire.

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Facebook has 132 billion more iimpressions than Yahoo

Facebook accounted for over 16 percent of all ads served to U.S. users during the first quarter of 2010, making it the largest online display ad publisher in the country, according to data from comScore.

The online measurement firm estimates the social network displayed 176 billion impressions during the first three months of the year. 

Facebook’s ad impressions have therefore grown by 52 percent versus Q4 2009, when it served around 115 billion impressions. In the same period impressions on Yahoo sites dropped from 140 billion to 132 billion, and impressions on Microsoft, Fox Interactive Media, and AOL properties also dipped, quarter-over-quarter.

Year-over-year, Facebook apparently served 100 billion more impressions in Q1 2010 than it did during Q1 2009, when it offered up just 70 billion. Andrew Lipsman, senior director, industry analysis at comScore attributed the growth to increased use of the social network more widely. “We’ve seen increases in the number of visitors to the site, and also increased intensity of use which results in more pageviews,” he said. “The increase in pageviews has been pretty consistent with the increase in ad impressions,” he continued.

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Twitter Business Centre

Twitter had started to test a new range of features to a selected few users that they are labeling the “Twitter Business Centre”. The new elements are believed to be on a CRM theme (customer relation management) to help businesses engage with their users more efficiently.  

The features are to be rolled once tested in the near future. 

The changes include the ability for businesses to add a “verified account” badge to their profile, and to customize the contents of their profile page. In addition, multiple users will be able to tweet via business accounts. 

Potentially the most important alteration, however, is the ability for business users or brands to receive direct messages from any of their followers, regardless of whether or not the account is following the user in return.

Businesses will now be able to deal with customer issues and complaints directly and privately with users, as well as collect data and feedback through the channel.

You will also be able to label your business as a brand, large company, small and local business or individual or group. 

The small or local option suggests, in theory, that some kind of location-based functionality or differentiation may be introduced.

So far there is no indication More >

Interacting with brands increases on Twitter

Twitter users are more likely than members of other social networks to interact with brands and are less averse to advertising, according to a report from Edison Research.

The report, Twitter Usage in America 2010, paints a nuanced portrait of a social network that has exploded in recognition while lagging in actual users. It also contains some surprising demographic insights into the Twitter population. The study surveyed 1,753 Americans age 12 and over via telephone interviews in February 2010.

According to the report, 51 percent of Twitter users said they follow at least one brand on a social network. That number drops to just 16 percent for users of all social networks. Forty two percent of Twitter users said they use it to learn about products or services, and 41 percent said they use it to provide opinions about them. Twenty eight percent use Twitter to look for sales or discounts, 21 percent use it to purchase products or services, and 19 percent use it to seek customer support.

But what may really grab the attention of marketers on Twitter – and Twitter itself – is what the report found about attitudes toward advertising. Fifty percent said that their use of Twitter would More >

Measuring Effects Of Social Networking

Brad Bishop explains in the social networking made easy seminar that you should track and analyse your campaign efforts to do more of what works and change what doesn’t.

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Areatrade Explain Benefits Of Social Networking

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Great 401 – error page example

Just updating my social networks whilst waiting fory takeaway and got this great 401 error page.
Nice huh.

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Google Changes

It seems all the testing from Google is finally over and the latest edition to Google Search is being rolled out to the public. The main changes youwill notice is the simplified logo and the left navigation that appears once a new search is made. They have removed the shadow and the TM symbol at the end.

The search results have also been cleaned as you can see below. The traditional blue box has been removed and the underlining of URL’s. This left-hand navigation you see above will appear only once a search is made. The top links list the types of searches you can make, such as image search, shopping search and books search – pretty normal.

What you may not realize at first glance is that this is a dynamic sidebar; Google has designed it to change based on the type of search you’re making. If you’re looking for breaking news, Blog and News search is more likely to pop up, while if you search for clothes or shoes, Shopping Search is likely to appear in the list.

Below that section are the query related search tools —  this section is dynamic and changes based on the type of More >