These pre-roll ads are run around TV shows and clips on their site.

To begin with they have tied up with their existing partners Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, ITN and Discovery Networks as reported in ‘The Guardian’.

The broadcasters who accept this scheme will be eligible for a revenue sharing partnership with YouTube. In the past these partners were earning revenue only from the display ads and in-video format.

Some advertisers such as Nissan, Renault, Warner Brothers, Match.com and Activision have already tied up with YouTube for this service, and Channel 4 was the first among them to run the pre-roll ads to promote the comedy ‘The Hangover’. The pre-roll ads will be run for 15 to 30 seconds, and will be run on a CPM basis.

According to Suveer Kothari, Head of YouTube U.K. YouTube has been trying to maintain a balance between the demands of their users who want free but entertaining and professional content on the web, against the demands of premium content owners, who obviously want to monetize their content on the one hand, and the demands of their advertisers who want more premium content to showcase their TV creative against on the other hand.

He believes this service will help them to attain that balance.

In fact a few months ago Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt had even said that “mobile Search revenues will overtake those on the PC within a few years”.

Google hopes that PC and mobile searches will soon become identical, and to facilitate that they have already incorporated some new features into their search engine.

It is now possible for users to conduct searches on PC’s as well as on mobiles with improved search results, which are restricted to specific time periods such as month or year. The page summaries now available are also more detailed than they used to be and the introduction of the Wonder Wheel has further improved the result quality by providing related queries.

It is also possible to coordinate searches across various platforms like mobile phones, notebooks and set top boxes etc. with the availability of better developer tools and user interfaces.

According to a recent study carried out by Google and researchers at Stanford University, searches conducted on the latest smart phones are more akin to searches conducted on PC’s than to those on the older generation of mobile phones. The average length of a smart phone query is now nearly three words, while that on an ordinary phone is only 2.5 words.

According to Google different types of handsets require different search interfaces to operate, and that of the smart phones is now looking similar tot hat of the PC’s and users of smart phones would be able to avail of more personalized features for their search operations.

A significant step is the launch of Yahoo! Buzz in India, and the simultaneous release of upgrades to the service.

Yahoo! has probably chosen India as its launch pad for the improved Buzz service in the international market because it is fairly similar to Digg, which is quite popular there. In India the focus of Yahoo! Buzz will obviously be stories related to India. They have initially tied up to work with a few select Indian publishers and may open doors to others later.

The new Yahoo! Buzz feature is called Buzz Updates. Buzz Updates will show its signed in users, the comments and votes which have been posted by their friends. Another feature of Buzz Updates is to suggest a headline and a description when a user submits a URL.

While Yahoo! Buzz is similar to Digg, the latter is certainly more lively and entertaining, but Yahoo! Buzz is also quite popular on the social media circuit.

According to Business Insider news, Yahoo! is also trying to make it big on the social networking scene.

CTO Ari Balogh said a few days ago, that “Yahoo! is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a big player in social networking and revamp its family of products”. It is also an appropriate time to buy according to him, as values have fallen from what they were 6-9 months ago.

Yahoo! also intends to put in some new products by this fall, which will provide users with a unified experience across all Yahoo! sites and thus help it to grow.

In the meantime, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft are in talks to partner with each other on search, while Yahoo! is also trying to improve its own search capabilities.

Bartz and Ballmer are also encouraging their engineering and product development staff to create better mobile products. They plant to introduce features to unite a user’s personal settings for all Yahoo! products on mobile phone and PCs.

Considering the fact that Vodafone already has a subscriber base of 289 million, which is spread out in different corners of the world, this new project will be a huge undertaking.

A series of new network APIs will provide access to the billing system as well as information about customer location.

There are 3 main services being provided:

1. Access to global customer base – this will allow developers to develop an application only once and it will be made to all Vodafone users all over the world.
2. Billing – New services will allow customers to pay for various services which they use through heir prepaid or postpaid mobile phone accounts, instead of having to use their credit cards, thus ensuring their safety.
3. Location – Developers will be provided with certain capabilities which will give them location awareness, thus allowing them to create more innovative services and applications. Vodafone will however, allow its customers to decide and control how their personal information is to be accessed and used.

This project was conceived following the formation of the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), which Vodafone established with China Mobile and Softbank.

Following the continued fall in voice to voice and data transport revenues, there has been a lot of speculation regarding the future prospects of the mobile operators business. The introduction of these new services could well be seen as a step in the right direction to improve the revenue generating possibilities for mobile operators.

According to CEO of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao, this step could kill two birds with one stone, as it will allow third parties to develop attractive new services, while billing and supporting customers through their network capabilities all over the world. This will help operators to make more money, while providing users with new and innovative services that they want.

Vodafone will release these API’s through the JIL in summer.

Google Suggest is a drop down menu that provides a list of query suggestions when a user starts typing in a query. The feature was added to the search engine’s home page last August and is now being updated.

To begin with, links are being added to Google Suggest. If a search query appears to be navigational, that site will appear in the drop down menu itself, thus saving the users time when he conducts the search operation.

Another new feature is the addition of Sponsored Links or ads among the search suggestions. Such related ads will now appear directly in the search suggestion box. The ads will be marked ‘Sponsored Link’ and will be on a coloured background to differentiate them.

Thirdly, when a user who is on a particular results page starts another search, he will receive certain search suggestions which will be related to the previous search which he has carried out.

The last feature to be added to Google Suggest is a personalization of suggestions. This means that when a user signs in to his Google account and if his computer has ‘Web History’ on the ‘Enabled’ mode, search suggestions will be sent to him by Google, based on his past searches. Google has found that users who are signed in often repeat their searches. In fact the figure for repeat searches is as high as 25%. Users have however been provided with an option labeled ‘Remove’ which they can use if they do not want a past search to show up in future.

The final change being made on Google Suggest is the deletion of the number of searches that have been conducted for a given query, as Google feels that this data has been of no use to their users.

The newly formed alliance will be capable of providing search services to China telecom’s wireless subscribers across the entire country, of which about 33 million are CDMA subscribers while about 43 million are PHS subscribers.

Users will be able to receive solutions to almost any query sent by SMS, SIM card, OTA application, or menu operations which are preloaded on certain new handsets.

The search providers will give almost instantaneous answers to questions related to a variety of topics ranging from the latest news and weather to education or knowledge and business directories.

The service will initially be available only in the important markets of the country, but by the second half of 2009 the service will be accessible all over the country.

According to reports from Analysys International, mInfo is the clear market leader for search solutions in China. They are also on the final selection list along with Baidu as search partners for Unicom, which is the other major mobile service provider in China.

mInfo had also been chosen by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic games as the official search providers for the games.

In the meantime mInfo’s competitor Baidu has announced that they will be providing search services to the 3G subscribers of China Telecom, as they have formed a partnership with China Telecom’s directory information service which is known as Best Tone.

Facebook joined the OpenID Foundation Board last February, and since then they have been learning about how OpenId works, so that they can form a long term relationship with the developer community, which has common goals.

In order to provide their users with a secure and sustainable framework from which to operate, they have already made some moves so that their users can shift to the OpenId format smoothly.

At present Facebook with its 200 million users is the largest site to be a part of the OpenId community and is expected to provide a big boost to OpenId.

Facebook will have to ensure that they provide a simple to use and yet secure system to their customers. As a positive step towards doing so, they hosted the OpenId User Experience Summit to share what they have learnt while developing the Facebook Connect authentication system.

As part of their efforts to protect user security they have set up a design to let users know that they will be providing their details to Facebook and not to some unknown site which could easily misuse the data. The full page redirect login process has been converted to a pop-up in consultation with the OpenId community to streamline the user experience.

Users will be able to use their college and workplace identities on the OpenId format. They will be able to register on Facebook through their Gmail account or other OpenId account which supports automatic login, thus making it quicker and easier to find ones friends. They will also be able to accounts such as MySpace, Yahoo! and Gmail etc. through Facebook. This effort will also allow users who have several accounts and passwords to use their accounts more easily.

It has been found that first time users who register with OpenId are more likely to become active members of Facebook.

For technical details users can go to ‘Developer Wiki’.

This new facility has been integrated with the Google Product Search for mobiles. This service could be especially useful to find out details of certain products, study product reviews and compare prices with other similar products. This service can be very useful when the shopper is actually in the store and needs to make a quick decision on whether or not to buy a particular product.

At present this is a free service.

In order to use this facility, a user first has to download the app on his handset. To do so, he goes to Google.com on his handset and accesses Google Product Search on the homepage. He then goes to a tab titled ‘more’ and selects ‘Shopping’. He can then click on the ‘Scan Barcode’ button to install the latest version of the barcode scanner app.

Once the app is installed, he can easily use his phone to scan various products, by going to Product Search and using the ‘Scan Barcode’ button. When the app opens, there is a red line, which must be centered over the UPC (Universal Product Code) and the phone camera should be held steadily over it. Once the barcode is read, the user will receive a Google Product Search Results page, on his handset.

This barcode system is currently useful for products like books, videos, electronics, movies etc, and Google is already in the process of adding barcodes of more products.

If the barcode scan is unsuccessful, users can always proceed by typing in the search term or product name as usual.

This facility has only been introduced in the U.S. and U.K. on Android powered handsets and is similar to iPhone’s Snaptell.

Marissa Mayer Google’s VP of Search and User Experience said that Google Search Options is an attempt to organize universal search results – including news, blogs, images and videos.

This options panel appears on the left hand side of the search results page. Apart from the content drilling which was possible on Google Search, this panel allows users to sort the results by their time frame. i.e. whether they have just been received, or came in the previous day, previous week etc.

Google has also introduced the Wonder Wheel, where the search topic is placed in a light blue circle and related words surround it. The results appear to the right of the wonder wheel, and the wonder wheel also contains similar Timeline features.

Although the new options panel looks very plain and simple, as it is blue letters on a white background, a lot of thought process has obviously gone into its designing to enable users to have clarity and ease of use so that they can save time and still find exactly what they are looking for.

Google undertook a lot of eye-tracking and usability studies to ensure that each term is located in such a way that the user finds it easily and feels totally at home with this new panel right from the start.

The study reveals that 55% of women make use of blogs in some manner or other such as posting comments, publishing articles, reading articles ands so on, while about 53% of women make use of social networks.

Interestingly, however, it was found that most of the women who use social networks, (75% of them) do so only as a means of communication, to keep in touch with family and friends, rather than as a way of collecting any kind of information.

On the other hand, blogs are used by women mainly as a source of information or advice regarding the purchase of some product etc.

Thus it seems that most women use different aspects of the web for their personal lives and for other business like decisions.

Since women are believed to be responsible for almost 85% of purchasing decisions in the U.S. this information is something which advertisers and marketers should take note of.

Also about one third of the women surveyed prefer to remain with one single social network, and surprisingly only about 20% of women were found to use Twitter, while the women who blog also use other forms of social media.

Apparently, women are now using traditional forms of media less than before. 30% are watching less TV, 31% are using the radio less, 36% are reading fewer magazines and 39% are reading fewer newspapers.

This change in habits is significant as at least 45% of women said they made purchase decisions of certain articles after reading about them on blogs.

Female bloggers are also in the habit of sharing their good and bad purchase experiences on blogs, hence sales persons and advertisers would do well to pay attention to their women customers.

Read the full 2009 Women in Social Media Report
(1.9MB pdf)

Adam Hupp, an engineer at Facebook said, “Live updating for the stream was one of the most common requests received for the home page.”

Giving in to this popular demand by its users, Facebook has decided to introduce live update streams. Accordingly, the number of new posts that have been shared since the home page was uploaded is displayed at the top of the page just below the Publisher box. Users will no longer require to constantly refresh the home page to see if there are any new messages.

Facebook has trumped Twitter by introducing live updates - something that numerous Twitter users have asked for already.

This feature is being rolled out gradually, so that some of Facebook’s 200 million users will receive this service sooner than others.

Those who have a very large friend network, however, need not worry about this new feature turning their homepage into a fast-moving ticker. The updates will not be directly displayed - only the number of updates since the last page load will appear at the top of the feed, as shown above. The user can click on the update notification to view those updates.

A new chat segmentation system has been launched for users with many friends. It allows users to chat with selected friends and appear offline to others. The segmentation is done via friends lists assignments.

Amongst other new improvements made by Facebook on the home page, is the availability of better filters and highlights, placement of friend requests back at the top of the right-hand column and a better system to manage the friend list.

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook also announced the creation of new Open Stream APIs, which will enable developers to integrate the Facebook stream outside of Facebook.com.

The indexing function by Twitter Search will be on a much smaller scale than Google Search, but should be very interesting, as it will be a true real-time search engine.

Twitter search is still in the process of figuring out the best way to grade or filter the search results. In other words, they want to make sure that the most reliable and authentic results get a higher ranking.

Jayaram says that tweets should be graded by a reputation ranking system, so that the more credible and informative tweets are placed at the top, as compared to the tweets that are less informative or have been sent by relatively unknown sources.

To achieve this, Twitter will have to change the credibility ranking of Twitter users, depending on the subject that is being discussed.

Follower counts of each Twitter user may be considered, but should certainly not be the only criteria for a high ranking - notching up large numbers of followers is no indication of reliability, as is evident from the fact that Ashton Kutcher obtained 1 million followers before CNN did.

Sifter

Mixxers vote for these ads by grading them from 1 to 5. They also provide private qualitative feedback on the subject. Mixx then compiles the data received, according to gender, age group, and top interests of the voters, and provides this information to the marketers without revealing private information about the users.

The highest rated ads will be displayed at various appropriate places on Mixx.

This could be a mutually beneficial scheme for all concerned. Advertisers will benefit from it, as they will get feedback to predict the overall performance of their ads.

Mixx will earn money through this programme, as advertisers will be charged $8,000 to display their banners, designs and videos to top Mixxers and get feedback.

Top ranked Mixx users will be encouraged to vote on Sifter, as they will earn even more Karma points by doing so, and could win special gifts such as $25 iTunes vouchers for voting.

Mixx CEO Chris McGill says only elite voters who have a minimum of 500 Karma points, have been active on the site for two weeks and have displayed no bad behaviour will be allowed to vote, to ensure genuine results.

He says the sifter will help advertisers by giving them feedback on the possible performance of their creatives within a week and also allowing them to target their audience demographically, thus helping to make optimum use of the money they spend.

While Mixx intends to continue keeping their site clean, instead of having ads floating all over the site, this new platform will allow them to earn money, thus keeping their investors happy.

Interested users can find Sifter marked in blue on the main navigation menu on Mixx. One of the ad creative sets featured on Sifter came from Terminator Salvation, as seen below:

Google continues to top the list, growing in value from $86 billion last year to $100 billion in 2009, which represents a growth of 16%. Google is followed by rival, Microsoft, which climbed up one position from last year with a current value of $76.2 billion - also up 8% over last year.

Yahoo! has fallen from number 62 last year to number 81 this year, and its value has also fallen, from $11.5 billion to $7.9 billion.

Other technology brands in the top 10 are IBM at number 4 with a value of $66.6 billion, Apple is at number 6 and is valued at $63.1 billion. China Mobile is placed at number 7, with a value of $61.2 billion, and Vodafone, which is a new entrant in the top 10 list, is at number 9, with a value of $53.7 billion.

Mobile operators have seen brand value rise, for the most part. O2 and AT&T have especially benefited from the launch of the iPhone, both seeing double-digit rises in brand value. The top 10 mobile operators by brand value are:

Among the non-technology-based companies, General Electric (GE) has taken quite a beating, as the brand’s value has fallen from the number two position last year, to number 8 this year.

Ten of the companies in the top 25 list are from the technology sector. Further down the list is Amazon at number 26, AT&T at number 28, Cisco at number 30 and eBay at number 54.

Quite surprisingly, the value of some of the brands has gone up substantially this year, in spite of the effects of the worldwide recession, which only goes to show that good companies can do well even in tough times.

In the UK, brand value for some of the brands in the list has fallen. Marks & Spencers, in particular, has seen a 48% fall in brand value over the past year.

The 10 most valuable brands in the UK are as follows:

A recent study conducted by Nielsen Online has shown that only about 40% of newly registered users return to the site in the next month. In other words, about 60% of new users desert Twitter just one month after joining it, in spite of the number of celebrities flocking to the site.

Such low retention rates could present problems for the long term growth potential of the site, because the number of new users joining the site is bound to reduce after a certain time. The new user growth rate would not remain anywhere near the current 100% after the initial growth spurt has died down.

It may still be too early to make such predictions regarding the growth of Twitter. Comparisons are bound to be made between Twitter and the popular social networks MySpace and Facebook.

A comparative study of the three reveals that in their early stages, MySpace and Facebook had retention rates almost double of what Twitter is enjoying at present.

Source: Nielsen Wire

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim argued that the findings by Nielsen were not be accurate, as they may not have taken into consideration the fact that many Twitter users switch from the Web interface to one of the several third-party applications.

To correct this error, Nielsen then added over 30 web sites and applications affiliated to Twitter, including Twitstat, Hootsuite, TweetDeck and TwitBin. Their findings were reconfirmed - retention rates even with these sites was almost as low as it was for Twitter.com.

Source: Nielsen Wire

This new technology ‘keeps track of’ the websites that users visit, if their ISP has signed up with this service.

Feedback: The representative says, “Phorm does not view or store the sites users visit. Phorm uses technology that has been built from the ground up to avoid any information that might identify a customer personally. Phorm’s system stands out from other online advertising systems in that it does not store your browsing history, IP address, or any personally identifiable information. The unique design of Phorm’s technology ensures that consumer privacy is protected and that, even under compulsion, no personally-identifying data or detailed browsing data can be retroactively provided to anyone.”

While it is a good thing that Phorm does not, at present, identify users individually, that does not change the fact that it tracks user activity, which many would consider to be spying.

But this is being done without the express consent of the users. BT admitted to using this technology without asking for its users’ consent initially. The BT trial, called Webwise, ended in 2008.

Feedback: According to them, “Phorm offers a clear consumer choice. Before any ISP launches Phorm’s service they will evaluate several different approaches to opt in and opt out and decide what best suits their customers. Whatever the format, users will be provided with clear details on what the service offers, and how it works, so that they can make an informed choice as to whether to participate. The most recent BT trial was conducted on a completely opt in basis.”

Tracking user interests helps the service provider to serve better targeted and more relevant ads to the customer in future, thus keeping the customer happy and helping the service provider to generate more revenue.

Phorm’s service is not very different from Google’s own ad and organic search results delivery service. Google can track a lot more sensitive information, including content not found directly through a Google search. However, Google is a much loved brand and hence gets away with a lot more “evil”.

According to the BBC, the UK Home Office has been accused of ‘colluding’ with Phorm.

A spate of messages have been exchanged between the Home Office and Phorm since August 2007, in which Phorm asked the Home Office if they have no objection to this technology, while the Home Office asked for more information about it, ostensibly to better understand public safety considerations and legal obligations. They have denied giving any advice to Phorm about possible criminal liability.

Baroness Sue Miller, Liberal Democrat Spokeswoman on Home Affairs however, says, the Home Office was interested in this technology to help with their agenda of counter terrorism.

Phorm’s Chief Executive, Kent Ertugrul however, says, the Home Office has only given an ‘informed opinion’ on the matter.

In the meantime, the BBC reports that the European Commission has started legal action against Britain, for allowing the use of this technology, following complaints about this service being used on BT, without user consent.

Feedback: Their spokesperson points out, “Phorm’s technology can be operated in a manner that is legally compliant with UK legislation and relevant EU directives. This has been confirmed by BERR and by the UK regulatory authorities. Consistent with UK and EU legislation, and in anticipation of any changes that may be made to the law in the future, our system offers unmissable notice and clear and persistent choice to consumers, a choice that is head and shoulders above current internet standards. The EU Commission announced infringement proceedings against the UK Government concerning the alleged failure of UK legislation to conform in certain respects with EU e-privacy and personal data protection rules. This is a matter for the Commission and the UK Government to discuss.”

The results of this matter, of course, remain to be seen.

British officials had said, last year, that Phorm conformed to European data laws. As can be seen in their feedback above, Phorm says its technology is “fully compliant with U.K. legislation and relevant E.U. directives.”

EU’s Telecom Commissioner, Viviane Reding however said, “Britain needs to change its laws to ensure proper sanctions to enforce E.U. confidentiality rules.”

If the UK does not voluntarily do so, Reding could take matters to the European Court of Justice, which would then have the final say in the matter.

Several individuals and organisations that advocate user privacy have approved of the European Commission taking an active interest in the matter.

To tell their side of the story, Phorm has created a website that attempts to rebuild its reputation, demistify the technology and clarify rumours that are currently being spread against the company.

Stop Phoul Play

Now that it has been confirmed that terrorist organisations and other unscrupulous groups are using the latest technologies to communicate and organise their actions, it has become essential for law enforcers to keep track of the various communications methods which these people may employ.

Earlier, plans had been afoot to create a database, on a government run computer system, for all communication taking place via email, phone calls, social networks etc. This plan has, however, been shelved, as it was seen as being too invasive, apart from the cost and other practical difficulties in setting it up.

Communications service providers will be required to store only the contacts people make, and not the content. They will, however, have to record some third-party data or information that is partly based overseas. The proposed system will not record personal information such as the messages or photos which are posted.

Information stored by the communications firms will be accessible by authorities such as the police and MI5 when required. They will require top level authorisation from a public body to do so.

Home Secretary, Ms. Jacqui Smith said to the BBC, “Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers, paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime.”

The project is estimated to cost about 2 billion pounds, and while the Liberal Democrats are pleased that there will be no centralised database, many still feel that a careful balance will have to be maintained between investigative powers and the right to privacy. Some even believe that this project is a colossal waste of time and public money.

Reports from Forrester predict a high rate of growth for all the online sectors, but growth rates will be especially high for mobile advertising and social network advertising.

The overall growth for the online sector is expected to be a respectable 17% in the six year span from 2008 to 2014. However, the rate of growth for the mobile advertising industry is expected to be much higher, at about 27% per year, and for social network advertising, the growth is expected to be at an explosive rate of 34% per year compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Actual figures are likely to go from the current $716 million to $3.1 billion during the six-year period ending in 2014. The overall interactive marketing spend in the U.S. is expected to just double, from $25.5 billion to $55 billion during the same period.

Forrester Research Vice President and Research Director, Christine Overby said, “Marketers don’t need to start revolutions in order to innovate, they need to solve problems”. She further says, “Social technologies allow for accessible innovation where the risks and costs are not as high, but the return is significant”.

Vine will only be available on Windows PCs for now and may be offered on Macs and mobile phones later. Vine could be a great tool for keeping in touch and spreading information among family and friends and also in communities.

Microsoft Vine

This new service is essentially a personalised messaging and alert system that can be especially useful in times of disaster and crises.

The Vine application must be downloaded and is then available as a widget on the desktop. It shows a map of the user’s friends’ and contacts’ locations, and will also indicate their status. Users can send and receive alerts and reports on the computer or as text messages on their mobile phones.

Unlike Twitter, Microsoft Vine will have a basic service available for free and a premium service that can be accessed by paying a subscription fee. This will make it seem a bit more official to government officials and executives. Microsoft hope to market the service to disaster management officials for receiving and sending information.

Hillman Mitchell, an emergency management coordinator in the Seattle metro area said in an interview with the Seattle Times, “I think, long- term, this is probably going to be a very valuable tool to help people keep connected.”

Emergency management professionals are already trying to use Twitter and Facebook during crises, but these services offer only limited streams of text and important messages can easily get diluted by unofficial, rumour-driven user input.

Users can already download and print an emergency contact card from the Vine website.

Microsoft Vine emergency card

Tammy Savage of Microsoft thought of building this product after the confusion caused by Hurricane Katrina. She expects Vine to be useful at such times. One wonders, however, if electricity and mobile networks would remain functional during a period of flooding.

It is not yet clear what the cost of this service will be per user, but if it becomes popular, Microsoft could earn significant revenues by charging a nominal subscription fee.

While Vine appears to be similar to other communications services, Microsoft will offer government agencies a direct means of communication with the public during important events and disasters. It also collects information from 20,000 news sources.

Vine could eventually turn out to be big competition for the likes of Twitter and Facebook, especially in times of an emergency, when people want facts rather than wild rumours.

Microsoft has released Vine in limited beta within the Seattle metro area. Current users can invite their friends and family to join them on the beta test by printing a postcard from the Vine site.

Users who StumbleUpon a new page and like it click the thumbs up button on the toolbar to vote for that page. If the page has not been Stumbled previously, a submission box comes up.

Submission to StumbleUpon used to be a bit cumbersome, as users had to enter a title, an optional review, select a topic, provide tags and then indicate whether the site contained adult content.

Now submission to StumbleUpon involves merely clicking on the thumbs up button and then indicating whether or not the web page is suitable for viewing in the office.

Old v New StumbleUpon Discovery Page

A second tab allows users to submit an optional review, similar to the fashion of the old submission interface. As seen in the screenshots above and below, the website now provides all users a count of the number of pages they have helped StumbleUpon discover and share with other users.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, StumbleUpon seems to thrive on growing stealthily. They recently crossed the 7 million user mark, making them bigger than Twitter at the time. Twitter has, of course, since then sky-rocketed in popularity due to the celebrity obsession with the platform.

The new submission system, though, will definitely prompt more user submissions and therefore help StumbleUpon grow and provide more content to its current and new users.

YouTube RealTime shows up as a bar on the bottom of all pages on the site for users who are logged in and participating in the beta test. Not only can participating users see which of their friends are online, but they can also see which videos those friends are watching, and what they think about the videos, based on the comments posted by those friends.

Screenshot of RalTime toolbar showing friends’ video views

The first button on the toolbar indicates that RealTime sharing is activated. The service can be turned off so that users share only videos they wish to. Adjacent to this is a button that is enabled when the user watches a video. Clicking on the button shows a list of other users viewing the same video.

An ‘Online Friends’ button shows a list of friends currently logged into YouTube. The last button, a little bell with a number beside it

During the closed testing period each user can invite up to 25 online friends to try RealTime and share their viewing experiences. While this limits the number of users who can trial the service, it is gradually expanding, as each invitee is given 25 invites to distribute further. Google had used a similar trial invitation system when Gmail was first launched.

A lot of YouTube users go to the site without any specific video in mind. They could be particularly interested in finding out what their friends are viewing and then sharing these videos with other friends. The added video views could generate more ad revenue for YouTube and its advertisers.

This is not the only change coming to YouTube. The video sharing site recently unveiled two new sections featuring full-length movies and TV shows and a limited number of users are also trialling a new channel layout.

Sample new channel layout on YouTube

Earlier games on twitter have required users to answer various questions or solve mathematical problems in less than 140 characters. There has, however, not been much of self-promotion or leveraging done through these games so far.

Terminator Salvation from Sony Pictures, which is due to be released on May 21, has now launched a game on Twitter, called Resistance2018. To play this game, Twitter users have to help out in the fight between Skynet and the Terminators, and they will be awarded points for each successful move they make.

Needless to say, if the game catches the fancy of the public it would be a great promotional move for the movie.

To play the game users have to follow Terminator Salvation on their relatively bland Twitter page:

@resistance2018

Users must then log in with their Twitter ID on 2018blog.com and look out for Tweets from@resistance2018. When they receive a tweet, they have to reply through @replies with hash tags to @resistance2018 or RT through the blog. Twitter will then send them direct messages with updates on points earned. The higher the number of points a user scores, the more chance he has of joining special squadrons.

Playing this game will entail a certain degree of engagement and concentration from the user, unlike previous Twitter games that could be played quite casually.

This is certainly a new means for advertisers and marketers to promote their products in the future, rather than the passive and traditional method of displaying banner ads, and when successful, it will hold the user’s attention completely.

This could also turn out to be a novel way for Twitter to generate some revenue, though Pamela Godwin-Austen, the spokesperson for Sony has denied that there has been any monetary transaction between the companies.

The Mobile Search Benchmark is a means of ranking mobile search providers, with regards to five different criteria. They are, discoverability, readiness, availability, response time and consistency for a search operation carried out through a mobile handset.

Only the larger, better-known search providers have been considered for this survey. The selection was based on comScore’s Expanded Search Query Report published in July 2008.

Nine companies were selected for this survey: Yahoo!, Amazon, Ask, Google, AOL, Craigslist, eBay, MySpace and MSN. Facebook was not included in this survey, as their mobile web applications did not meet the technical requirements of this study.

To ensure a uniform playing field for all participants, a predetermined task was set out, with a fixed set of steps to be used while performing the search operation on each participating provider. One had to first navigate to the home page of the mobile web site, type a search query, and then click on ‘search’. The search results page would then be displayed and would show the search result obtained for that specific query, which were then graded.

According to the study, Yahoo! has currently been ranked the best site for mobile search operations. The provider rankings within individual categories were as follows:

Discoverability

Ability of a consumer to discover the location of a company’s mobile site on the Web.

1. Google
   MySpace
   Yahoo!
2. AOL
   eBay
   MSN
3. Amazon
4. Ask
5. Craigslist

Readiness

Ability of the mobile web site to be rendered on popular mobile devices.

1. Ask
   eBay
   Yahoo!
2. Amazon
   AOL
   Craigslist
   Google
   MSN
3. MySpace

Availability

Percentage of successful transactions out of the total number of transaction attempts.

1. Google
2. Amazon
3. Craigslist
4. eBay
5. Yahoo!
6. MySpace
7. AOL
8. Ask
9. MSN

Response Time

Time required to download each page in an entire multi-step transaction.

1. Amazon
2. Google
3. Craigslist
4. Ask
5. Yahoo!
6. AOL
7. MySpace
8. MSN
9. eBay

Consistency

Standard deviation of the response time of completed transactions

1. Amazon
2. Craigslist
3. Google
4. Ask
5. Yahoo!
6. AOL
7. MySpace
8. eBay
9. MSN

Overall Ranking

1. Yahoo!
2. Google
   Amazon
   Ask
3. AOL
   Craigslist
   eBay
4. MySpace
5. MSN

The research also measured performance of mobile sites in other industry verticals. AirTran was found to be the highest ranked mobile airline site and Bank of America was ranked top for mobile banking.

Overall, though, the results indicated that mobile websites are 30% less efficient than traditional Internet sites.

Facebook redesigned the user homepage earlier this year, and these changes have not been very well received by their users. A lot of users think the new design tries to mimic Twitter too much and ends up being quite confusing, making it difficult to find anything.

While it is quite understandable that some flaws in the new design could upset users, it does seem rather extreme that they should decide to turn up on the streets in large numbers and protest against this change.

That, however, seems to be exactly what happened in Paris this week. Demonstrators collected at the Arche de la Defense, with banners to protest against the redesign of the Facebook user homepage.

Blogger Alex Herwijnen, happened to be at the site at that time. He took some pictures of the event and sent them to TechCrunch, who then reported the event.

A number of French Facebook Groups have been created to protest against the new design, the most popular of which boasts over 32,000 members since the 13th of March. Surprisingly though, there has been no other news of these demonstrations in the media. There was also no news of any related groups or events.

Ning, the Silicon Valley based company that allows people to build their own social networks, had its beta launch in 2005 and full launch just about two years ago, in 2007. Last week, they attained the status of having one million user-built networks, up from half a million networks last October.

Only about 200,000 (one-fifth) of these networks are currently active. Of the 22 million registered users, only about 6.1 million users are believed to be active.

Even though Ning took the decision to shut down almost 20% of their pages in December 2008, as they contained adult or pornographic material, CEO Gina Bianchini told CNet News that they made up their lost clientele by February 2009.

Networks created by Ning users are based on any subject that the users are concerned about. The 20% of social networks that are currently active on the site receive almost 2.5 million bits of content every day, including images and comments, and over 1,000 new networks are created every day.

The company has tried to remain innovative and up-to-date with technology by adding new features, such as a ‘persistent chat’ feature, as is found on Facebook and providing a directory of social applications for network creators. They have also revamped their home page recently.

In the initial stages of their existence, Ning had three separate sites for videos, photos and groups but they have all been merged into a single entity now. According to estimates last year, the company was valued at $500 million, which has probably gone up now that they have grown past a million networks. Their revenue of about $10 million comes through paid accounts, advertising and premium features.

Filters on Google AdWords are equating the word ‘gay’ with obscenity. Because of this, an ad by poplar Gay news magazine, BGay.com containing the term ‘gay’ could not be uploaded as it failed to meet their editorial guidelines.

The advertiser concerned received a message saying “Gay – Unacceptable Content”. Adding insult to injury, a further message goes on to say “We’ve detected that your ad may contain words often associated with pornography. Google policy prohibits the advertisement of pornography unless it involves consenting adults. Related content is not permitted on the website or as ad text or keywords.”

AdWords editorial policies seem to suggest that the word ‘Gay’ relates to non-consensual sex or sex with minors, which is certainly out of line, and their homosexual clients are bound to be extremely upset with this.

A campaign called ‘Amazon.fail’ was launched on Twitter after this incident came to light. Eventually, Amazon issued a statement saying that due to an error in their system, sexual orientation had been classified as adult content and hence the gay titles had been erroneously deleted. They even promised to restore the titles at the earliest.

Google’s pro-gay stance on California’s proposition 8 has shown them to be very politically correct and mindful of equal rights for everyone. While this is an automatic error caused due to the way their keyword suggestion and association algorithms work, they would do well to set the record straight by correcting this immediately, and also resetting their filters, before they are subjected to a PR nightmare similar to what Amazon is currently facing.

Over the past few months a number of celebrities including Stephen Fry, Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and Barack Obama, to name only a few, and mainstream media companies such as CNN, BBC, The New York Times and many others have joined Twitter and are trying to out-do each other by collecting the most followers.

A few months ago, Stephen Fry and Barack Obama’s PR team led the most popular Twitter accounts, with a couple of hundred thousand followers each. Until yesterday, no single user account on Twitter had crossed the magical figure of one million followers.

The three hottest contenders for the million-follower mark were Ashton Kutcher, CNN and Britney Spears. The race actually started off when Ashton Kutcher announced, through a video, that he intended to beat the popular news channel CNN and be the first to have one million followers on Twitter.

Kutcher had started out on Twitter in a very modest way, but later he was joined by his equally famous wife Demi Moore and that really helped to generate a huge fan following. He also posted photographs of her bending down in her underwear on popular Twitter photo-sharing site, Twitpic, which brought a lot of public attention to his Twitter account.

Ashton has now succeeded in being the first to have a million followers on Twitter, and to celebrate his victory he has announced that he will donate $100,000 to the ‘Malaria No More’ fund, to help fight the rampantly prevalent disease in Africa.

While this gesture is definitely commendable, it seems quite silly that celebrities and the media are trying to beat each other at this game of winning more and more followers on the network. Other celebrities and media publications will reach that target soon enough, and each of them will probably make it sound like they have created history.

Twitter does not seem to mind. In fact, they were reported to have created a special position in the company to cater to their celebrity users.

This obsession with celebrities could destroy the original essence of the site, which had been started by a group of computer geeks, to keep in touch with each other.

Today, Oprah Winfrey posted her first tweet ever, and she already has 100,000 followers, more than double what the most popular geeks acheived after 3 years of using the service! Ellen DeGeneres posted her first Tweet only last month, and is already close to having a million followers.

With Twitter quickly turning into the average person’s hotline to the stars, the number of spam accounts is bound to rise. If the company does not handle its growth and the growth of associated spam on the service appropriately, the original users that helped bring up the service could leave and find greener social media pastures very quickly.

tapMatch

Companies can now advertise their products on this service by bidding on keywords and categories. The ads will then be displayed on mobile web pages and above mobile search results.

Jumptap claim that the service uses technology to relay ads very selectively, so that advertisers do not waste their money.

The service allows advertisers to target ads to certain handset models such as the Blackberry and iPhone. Google AdWords mobile ads do not currently provide device targeting. Like Google, other targeting options such as location, mobile carrier and language are also be available on tapMatch.

In the past pay per click mobile ad services have not been able to target audiences too well, in spite of the personal nature of the medium. TapMatch will allow advertisers to select their target audience by building client profiles through various sources such as search queries, context and previous click-through history of the client. Accordingly only appropriate and relevant ads will be shown to the mobile user.

Additional levels of audience demographic targeting present in the ad delivery system are expected to produce high levels of user engagement, which should eventually translate to high a conversion rate for advertisers.

Signing up for tapMatch is easy. Advertisers who are used to Google AdWords will find the process of signing up and setting up campaigns to be remarkably similar.

Pricing of these ads will be auctioned just as it is for Google AdWords. Advertisers will be required to pay only if the user carries out one of the click actions the service offers, which include:

• Sending users to a website
• Displaying an SMS landing page that includes a title, 250 character description, an image and instruction to text something to a short number
• Capturing an email address via a landing page that includes a title, 250 character description, an image and a text box with a button to capture user email addresses
• Showing a phone number on a landing page with a title, 250 character description and an image - this would have worked better as a pay per call action
• Delivering a 250 character marketing message along with a title and image.

In theory, all these features seem very interesting. However, reality might show that tapMatch has a long way to go before it provides serious competition to the likes of Google, mainly due to the higher volume of mobile users that default to the search giant even for their mobile search needs.

mobile.accuracast.com

Given the recent growth in mobile Internet usage, a number of businesses are now looking to tap into this growth. This new sub-domain allows business owners and marketing professionals to order simple, straight-forward, sleek mobile websites that suit their requirements.

tools.accuracast.com

Our four main tools - the Search Ranking tool, PPC Cost Estimator tool, Monthly Ranking Report and International Search tool - all now have a new home in this sub-domain.

AccuraCast France

The French section of our site has now been moved to its own dedicated .fr domain, and has a slightly different design from the English website. Warning: The website is written only in French (of course!)

AccuraCast India

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Middle East will now be served from our Indian office. The Indian site is markedly different from the UK and French sites, and so are the service bundles we offer in the sub-continent. Please note that the service bundles offered on this site are not available to European and North American customers.

AccuraCast Mobile

Unlike the mobile sub-domain, AccuraCast Mobile is a lone-standing mobile site that provides a quick introduction to our business and our services, in a mobile-friendly format. This is just a (relatively) static, information site targeting our mobile audience. It is also one of the best ways to view the Search Daily News headlines from your mobile phone.

SEO-London.info

Perhaps the least obviously related site, SEO-London.info was launched last year to cater to small businesses and start-ups. The site provides bare-bones SEO and PPC services for companies with extremely limited budgets - sort of like a no-frills SEO / PPC agency.

As always, I welcome any comments and feedback from our regular readers, clients and visitors to the site. You can either drop a note in the comment box below, or tweet me directly @AccuraCast on Twitter.

Best wishes,
Farhad Divecha

Magpie is a pay-per-tweet service through which brands can pay individuals and companies to promote their products.

Nothing wrong with that. What many Twitter users find objectionable, though, is the fact that well known and established companies like Kodak, Adobe, Skype and Apple are paying consumers to advocate their products, or in other words, say something good about the company or its product in their Twitter stream, without actually disclosing that they’ve been paid to do so.

The obvious question such a system raises is, how much of this “appreciation” is genuine?

A lot of people would certainly be tempted to earn a few quid by endorsing a product, even if they have not actually used it, or worse still, they are not entirely happy with.

Magpie works on a keyword-bidding system. When the advertiser’s keyword matches the words used in a tweet, the advertiser can bid on it. The highest bidder will get to tap into that twitter user’s account to promote their products. Advertisers have the choice of bidding on a daily basis or on a cost-per-thousand impressions basis.

Users with more contacts earn more money through the Magpie system. An additional 30% commission is paid to Twitter users on the transaction fee for each new advertiser that signs up to advertising on the stream for a whole year.

According to ReadWriteWeb, most of these companies might not be directly involved in buying these tweets. It is more likely that their outside agents are doing so. The end result, however, remains the same in the eyes of the consumer.

Such false advertising will hurt these companies more than helping them, as people will start to doubt the integrity of their services and products.

Examples of sponsored tweets from Apple, Skype via Magpie

Now, when a user clicks on an image, the top bar, which used to look very similar to the Google Image Search preview bar, will instead show a sleek interface on a grey background.

The new preview bar provides a much larger preview of the original image, in addition to smaller thumbnails of 7 other image search results and 5 thumbnails linking to other popular related searches, as shown below.

The old image search page only provided a thumbnail-sized image, accompanied by the name and details regarding the size of the image, in the preview pane.

A search box with search assistance is included in the new preview page, to enable users to quickly search for more images without having to go back to the search results page.

While the addition of the search box is the same as on Google’s updated image search, the image type and colour recognition functionality now provided by Google is not present on Yahoo! Image Search. The latter, however, has a nifty “Recent Images” feature that shows up on certain search terms, and does not include ads with image search results.

These changes certainly make the preview page look good and will likely prompt more searches via the presence of the search box on the preview page, it might, once again, not be quite enough for Yahoo! to score over Google in anything other than SERP aesthetics.

Where it comes to quality of image search results, when tested over a numbers of random, widely varying search queries, Yahoo! does seem to be slightly better than Google at bringing up relevant results. Though Google finds more in terms of quantity, many of Google’s image results are not relevant.

Digg has now launched a new product called the ‘DiggBar’, which appears at the top of the browser whenever users click on any story on Digg. The DiggBar is portable to any website, making social news sharing much easier, but ways to exploit it are already cropping up.

The quasi-toolbar provides a lot of facilities to make it easier to Digg content. The DiggBar allows users to Digg content directly on a site, instead of having to move back and forth repeatedly, between the destination site and the Digg submission page.

Screenshot of DiggBar above a story on BBC.co.uk.

In order to view the DiggBar, users need to merely type “http://dig.com/” before the webpage address. A short URL will be created for that page and theDiggBar will appear at the top, framing the page.

Users can share interesting stories, via email, Twitter and Facebook, easily through the DiggBar. They can also see the top comment, the latest comment and the most controversial comment posted for the story on Digg, while still on the story page.

The DiggBar also shows the number of Diggs, pageviews for the page, related stories, and other stories from the same site on Digg.

Much like the StumbleUpon bar, the DiggBar includes a ‘Random’ button that brings up a random Digg story for users to browse and rate.

Users of the Twitter desktop application ‘Twhirl’ can expect an update, which will allow them to use Digg as their default short URL service.

While all of this is largely positive news for the once darling of social media, the DiggBar is already being exploited by some. As Michael Gray points out, the DiggBar frames a page and assigns it a Digg.com URL, which can be exploited for SEO benefit by unscrupulous affiliate publishers.

According to the Google AdSense blog, the AdSense video unit, which enables publishers to show YouTube content and ads on their pages, on a revenue sharing basis, has not performed as well as it was expected to do, and Google will discontinue the service at the end of this month.

Publishers who wish to continue publishing video content from YouTube can do so directly through YouTube.com, but they will not earn any revenue for this.

Video ads will remain functional and will continue to appear on AdSense-enabled pages of publishers who enable the the image ads option.

Google will continue to accept ads from registered publishers until the end of this month (April). New publishers will no longer be able to incorporate video units on their sites.

While Google says they are taking this step to better focus on other opportunities, to help their publishers earn better, it seems suspiciously like yet another move to beat the recession.

Only last month Search Engine Round Table had pointed out that AdSense publishers were upset and complained on two separate AdSense forum threads that their sites were generating very little revenue from AdSense video units. Some of the comments posted on the AdSense forum were:

“My revenue is down more than 50%. There were people who were expecting to earn $200 in January and instead earned $80. I was expecting $1000-$2000 and earned a little over $80.”

“I had $67 in Content Host earnings (63,600 views/1000 clicks) and only $17 in YouTube earnings… sheesh”

One reason for this poor performance could be the current economy. Another could be the fact that it is difficult to target ads consistently based on videos.

It is relevant to note that Google is struggling to monetise YouTube, and this could be the first sign that Google is accepting the fact that it might never be as successful with video advertising as it is with search.

Portable Contacts Official Site

Through Portable Contacts, users can easily access contact lists of their friends, across multiple websites. The system uses the same data format as is used in the OpenSocial REST protocol. However, in this case, all his other data remains private, because the authentication mechanism, ‘OAuth’, allows access to only certain parts of the user’s data - in this case the contacts list.

In order to use Portable Contacts, webmasters must register their domains and get an OAuth key. Once that is done, they can start testing the system through Plaxo’s Portable Contacts.

For almost a year now, the idea of data portability has been discussed, and most sites want to ensure their user privacy and security is protected. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have already made APIs available to developers, but each of them is unique and proprietary.

Now seems like the right time to provide a common open spec that can be used by everyone to systematise and simplify the procedure.

Apart from providing this secure and common access system, Portable Contacts aims to lay down well specified authentication and access rules, provide standard libraries that are compatible with all sites and make the entire procedure as simple as possible for users.

Once all the websites accept this standardized system of Portable Contacts, users will be able to have much larger lists of contacts, as they will be able to access the contact lists of their friends safely from any website, and that should make social networking a lot more fun.

It seems likely that Google would be interested in buying Twitter, as Twitter is a very valuable asset in the emeerging field of real-time search. It can provide a great real-time database of information, as reported by over 7 million potential sources - the current estimated number of Twitter users.

Several users are now making use of Twitter to discuss various issues like brands, customer care, feedback and the news. This database of information can easily be mined to pull current news and can be monetised with ads.

While there is no official word on the price being discussed between the two companies, it is certainly expected to be well over $250 million, which was the figure arrived at during the latest valuation of Twitter.

Twitter had recently turned down an offer of half a billion dollars from Facebook. That amount was to have been paid mainly in Facebook stock, which is not publicly listed, and was deemd to be overvalued. Google, on the other hand, would pay in cash or its publicly listed stock, which is certainly a better option.

Founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams have also dealt with Google earlier, when they sold Blogger to the search engine.

It is also possible that Google may receive some competition from Microsoft, who may also show an interest in the acquisition.

According to reports from All Things Digital, however, the two companies are merely discussing potential product tie-ups, such as Google building a real-time search engine, and not a possible takeover.

The possibility of a potential acquisition is exciting, but most Twitter users might not be thrilled about Google acquiring the service, especially given Google’s recent spate of failures with services such as Dodgeball and Jaiku.

A new project called ExecTweets, was launched last week in conjunction with Federated Media and Microsoft. Twitter has introduced an ad unit to promote this upcoming program. Since then, similar ad units have been spotted promoting other products and services from Twitter itself and from third-party advertisers.

ExecTweets will pool in Tweets from various big-shots and top executives of industry, and then republish them for the general public. The service could be of great interest to a lot of people who want to know the personal opinions of top executives on a wide range of issues ranging from business to personal matters.

While there are rumors that businesses would pay Twitter to feature their Tweets prominently on the network, there is no confirmation of this.Back in February, Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone had told Marketing Magazine, “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.”

Federated Media, on the other hand, has suggested that they would like to put in place a revenue-sharing deal with Twitter.

The ExecTweet list currently includes such prominent names as Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Werner Vogels and Evan Williams among others. Exec Tweets will allow users to vote on the Tweets and the Tweets will then be ranked accordingly.

Twitter is definitely trying to monetise itself now, a year ahead of their planned intent to start earning revenue. This should not be too difficult as various organisations are promoting Twitter to stay in touch with employees as well as for customer service. Twitter has now hired a product manager to oversee the development of these commercial accounts, but they have not yet set a date for their launch.

According to YouTube, the Chinese Government has not contacted them or given any reason for the ban. YouTube, and parent company, Google, are trying to have the service restored.

Without either denying or admitting to the blockage of the site, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “Chinese Government has taken up management of the network according to the laws.”

Blocking of Foreign websites in China is nothing new. The government often blocks any content which they feel is inappropriate or objectionable.

Last year, they had blocked YouTube, for showing videos of the anti-government Tibetan demonstrations in an attempt to prevent the public from knowing about the protests.

The current block, coincides with the release of a video by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, which shows the ill-treatment of the Tibetan protestors by the Chinese authorities during the demonstrations which occurred last year.

Another site, Blip.tv which also posted the said video has also been blocked.

By blocking foreign sites the Chinese government, hopes to be able to lure the Chinese public away from them and towards local websites such as Tudou.com because it is much easier to control the content shown on these sites.

China, is however not the only country to ban YouTube. It has been banned off and on in various countries, such as Thailand, Turkey, Pakistan etc. whenever the governments there disapprove of any content.

Michael Steib, Director of TV ads, for Google said, “the company is working on a technology that allows advertisers to buy ads across Google TV which sells on-air commercials, YouTube and video on other websites, through the same interface.”

Presently, Google is trying out this technology called ‘Google TV Ads Online’ with only a small group of selected advertisers.

If things go well the service may be launched in a few months.

Given the current financial situation, Google no doubt hopes that this new service will lure big brands to spend money on both the platforms, by making the process simpler. However, Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube’s Director of Product Management says, “it is also part of Google’s bigger vision of tying together various platforms to make it easier for advertisers to manage and measure their spending across traditional and online media.”

YouTube will however have to use the ads only during longer videos, such as TV shows or movies, as users will not like to watch long ads during short videos. It may also not be appropriate to run certain TV ads along with online videos, and Google will have to put in a lot of effort to achieve optimum results.

At present Google has only signed full length content deals with a few companies like CBS Corp.

Eventually Google may also be able to sell ads on Internet Delivered TV. YouTube is already having such a deal with Apple TV.

In the meantime Google is expected to layoff a further 200 staff members, which means, they probably expect the recession to continue for some time.

If this virtual currency is combined with Facebook, it could open up the possibility of a new business model which would have a large scope. If this happens, the internet would cease to be dependent on credit cards for the various transactions occuring.

Facebook has already got some experience with virtual currency, thanks to their app Acebucks. However this was not an official Facebook currency, and hence could not be used for buying and selling of items on the net.

If they do launch an official currency, it could be used across any Facebook application for financial transactions.

If a user buys the currency from Facebook, he does not need to use his credit card, every time he makes an online purchase. The purchase can be made at a single click of the mouse, thus making it easier to conduct various online transactions. The nominal transaction fees being generated from each such purchase would end up providing good revenue to Facebook.

If this currency is then combined with Facebook Connect, the scope would grow manifold. It would then be possible for users to connect to any site they desire, make their purchases their and the money could simply be deducted from the facebook account f the user. Donations can also be made in this manner.

Paypal, which has a similar format, has not really turned into a very big success so far. One of PayPal’s co-founders, Peter Thiel, had expected PayPal to replace the dollar and be able to move money around the globe easily.

Peter Thiel happens to be on the board of Facebook and his experience in this field, could help Facebook to succeed where PayPal has failed.

Gareth Davis of Facebook said at GamesBeat conference in San Francisco, that Facebook was considering this step, but it would have to be done carefully.

Obviously, the most important thing to remember here is that Facebook will have to take appropriate steps to guard against frauds and scams.

On the other hand this currency would allow millions of users to buy items online, without giving out their credit card information.

Users can make a one-click purchase, of the currency, in multiples of $10 or 20 and can then spend even as low as 25 cents at a time. A single credit card transaction for such small amounts is not viable as the developer will have to spend more money than he would earn out of such a transaction.

A recent survey conducted by O2, reveals that increasingly small and medium sized businesses are turning to Twitter to save on marketing costs, while still being able to stay in touch with clients and suppliers and as a means to recruit new staff. Twitter is also being used to improve business profile and communicate with a large market for free. Some businesses are also using Twitter to monitor their rivals.

While over 700,000 businesses are using Twitter, 6,000 of them have been found to use Twitter daily, and an estimated 3 million tweets are being sent daily by them.

During the survey of 500 businesses having less than 20 staff members, it was found that about 17% are using Twitter and over a fourth of them have signed up in the last one month itself.

About 16% of those surveyed claimed to have saved about 5,000 pounds, while nearly one third of them claimed to have saved 1,000 pounds.

According to Simon Devonshire, head of small business marketing at O2, Twitter is a good example of how new technology is helping out in the time of recession.

It was found that Twitter was being used more than other sites like LinkedIn or Facebook and its popularity is expected to increase further.

This service will be available in 21 countries and will let users perform basic banking operations such as money transfers, through their mobile phones.

MTN money Transfer, which has just been launched in Uganda, is the first such service there. Initially the service will be very simple, but later on it may be upgraded depending on the market needs.

Head of MTN’s mobile money development, Dare Okoudjou, said, “a lot of people do not have formal access and financial services, whereas they do have a mobile telephone or are living with someone who does have access to a mobile handset.”

MTN has signed a $9.7 million deal with South African mobile payment firm Fundamo, to set up these services. This service will enable people to move real money between the mobile accounts through their handsets. Users who enroll for the service will have an account created for them, through which they can carry out basic financial transactions. The account will be set up for free, but each transaction will be charged at a nominal rate.

Four other similar schemes have already been launched elsewhere in Africa, one of which is backed by The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation. They are investing $12.5 million in this service.

In February 2009, Monitise set up a service with E-Fulusi Africa to set up a mobile banking system in East Africa.

Standard Chartered and Citibank are also setting up a service called Zap, which will be accessible to more than a 100 million Africans.

Earlier this month, Mi-Pay and Isys started a scheme in Sudan, which will be a sort of testing ground for person to person banking, in that region and may be extended to 22 nations in Africa and the Middle East.

The first such scheme M-Pesa system Kenya is making banks compete with mobile operators, and has garnered over 4 million subscribers since its inception in March 2007.

The mobile operators certainly expect to lure more customers to themselves, through such schemes.

In unrelated cases, defence lawyers have appealed against the judgments delivered, claiming that jurors had passed comments on these cases, through popular networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, before the judgment had been delivered, thus biasing the minds of people.

In the first case which was tried in Philadelphia, Democratic State Senator Vincent Fumo, had been found guilty on charges of corruption. His lawyers, however have found grounds to appeal against the judgment, because one of the jurors, Eric Wuest, commented on Facebook regarding the case.

One of his comments said, “expect a big announcement on Monday.” The defence called for his ouster from the case, but he defended himself, saying that they were ‘his private musings.’ The judge, ruled in his favour and allowed him to continue on the jury.

In the second case tried in Arkansas, Stoam Holdings, a building materials company, had been asked by the judge to pay $12.6 million to its investors. Russell Wright of Stoam Holdings, has however appealed against the ruling because one of the jurors, Jonathan Powell, sent out messages through Twitter saying, “Nobody buy Stoam. It’s bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to exist, now that their wallet is 12 million lighter.”

This statement has allowed defence lawyers to argue that Powell was ‘predisposed toward giving a verdict that would impress his audience.’

A while ago, lawyers in Kansas, had also been concerned about reporters sending out Tweets from the courtroom, as they could influence jurors. But U.S. District Judge, J.Thomas marten, disallowed the argument, claiming that jurors are always instructed to avoid media coverage.

These cases have opened up a Pandora’s box regarding the use of technology in relation to the jury system prevailing in the U.S. While some feel that the court system is not equipped to deal with the complexities arising from the advent of new technology, others feel that online comments should be treated in the same manner as the spoken word.

In order to achieve this they will shortly be launching free software, which will enable users to keep tabs on their electricity consumption and improve its efficiency.

In February this year, Google had announced that they would use their software skills to launch a program which would show home energy consumption in real time on the user’s computer or telephone, in an effort to reduce green house gas emissions.

Director for Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, Google, Dan Reicher told Reuters that they were already having discussions with various utility companies in the U.S. Europe and Asia, and the product would be made available to the general public shortly. However no specific date has been announced for the launch as yet.

He further says, “When I began getting information about my own home, I discovered that I had a 35 year electric motor running for my heating system. That was using huge amount of electricity. I did not realize that’s the change I need to make in my home.”

It is very likely that such awareness will help others to save substantial amounts of electricity as well.

In the meantime, the software known as PowerMeter or ‘smart’ meter is already being installed in some parts of Australia by the government owned electricity provider EnergyAustralia. This meter will charge higher rates during peak periods and lower rates at other times, thus allowing families to switch to non-peak hours for the usage of certain gadgets, and save on electric bills.

According to studies conducted by Google access to home energy consumption is expected to save between 5 to 15% on monthly electric bills.

The tool that is being developed will be open sourced.

The 3 new features are as follows.

Demographic Targeting: Advertisers will now be able to select their target audience, based on age groups as well as gender separation. They can accordingly set higher bids for their target audience, while paying lower rates for others. Considering the wide spread user base which Yahoo! has, it would certainly help advertisers save some money, if they pay a lower rate for the non-target audience.

Ad Scheduling: Depending on the time of the day, or the days of the week, when the advertiser expects to receive a better response from his target audience, or the timings of his business, an advertiser can decide to run his ads at certain times, and on certain days. This ad schedule can be set according to the users time zone or according to the advertisers time zone. A similar feature was available in the past, and was known as dayparting.

Enhanced ZIP-level geo-targeting: The geo-targeting facility provided by Yahoo! Search Marketing, has been further updated compared to the beta ZIP- level targeting which was available earlier. Advertisers will now be able to mix and match geo-targeting settings at different levels, within a given ad campaign or ad group. The newly introduced dynamic mapping features will allow advertisers to select individual ZIP-codes and ZIP-codes surrounding them.

All of the above features will be available on both Sponsored Search and Content Match.

Considering the current financial meltdown, it would be good for advertisers to have these options with which to reach the maximum possible target audience with the minimal possible expenditure.

Adobe SEO Technology Center

Sites built with Adobe Flash technology have remained largely invisible on search engine results until mid-2008, when Google and Yahoo! announced the ability to crawl and index text within Flash files after Adobe agreed to cooperate with the search engines.

The technology centre will help developers to build Flash applications that will be more search friendly in the future. The site describes difficulties that SEOs face and explains simple ways to deal with them.

So far, the SEO Technology Center has five articles: search optimization techniques for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), an SEO checklist, information about enhanced search indexing of SWF content, and guides to the Adobe Flash Player version checking protocol, detecting Flash Player versions and embedding SWF files.

Adobe has also informed that at present it would be more practical to offer HTML representation of content while the work on improving Flash technology is still in progress. Webmasters can use additional text, build static (HTML) version of their site or include content in a <noscript> tag.

It is hoped that the creation of this SEO Technology Center for Flash will help small and medium businesses in particular, as they often do not have highly specialised personnel to deal with these problems. However, the damage may already have been done, and Flash technology, as we know it, will probably never recover to be considered an equally viable alternative to HTML for website SEO.

JaikuEngine will enable users at the individual, group and organisation levels to run their own micro blogging services through the Google App Engine. Although Google will stop developing the Jaiku code base, Google volunteers will continue to offer support. The JaikuEngine will also provide support to open standard authentication, which Twitter is already using. This will thus allow the creation of a freely available open source micro-blogging service.

JaikuEngine on Google Code

Since the time Google acquired Jaiku in October 2007, for an estimated $12 million, they have been see-sawing between shutting down the service almost immediately and then trying to restart it last August. Now the uncertainty is over and it is finally being handed over to the open source community.

Google surely hopes to be able to compete with the current darling of the social media spotlight, Twitter, by opening up its own micro-blogging service so that the open source community can mould it as they see fit.

Initial user and developer reactions have been mixed. Users seem to think that the loss of international SMS functionality would leave Jaiku with almost no desirable features to draw users away from Twitter. Developers, though, seem more upbeat about the opportunity to take micro-blogging to the next level.

From a business point of view, the acquisition of Twitter definitely looks like one of Google’s many recently admitted failures (think Dodgeball, Audio Ads, Google Video)

Jaiku co-founder, Jyri Engestrom, believes “it’s time to break out and distribute micro-blogs… There should be lots of platforms, and they should talk to each other.”

Data collected by Hitwise during the month of February 2009 shows that the maximum downstream visits from Twitter went to Google (5.20% of downstream traffic share) followed closely by visits to Facebook (5.11%). Twitpic (3.43%), MySpace (3.19%) and Twitter Search (1.98%) followed at 3rd, 4th and 5th places respectively.

Next in line were Yahoo! Mail (1.91%), YouTube (1.88%), Twitter Support (1.80%), Gmail (1.79%) and Yahoo! (1.29%) in order of downstream traffic share.

The high percentage of traffic driven to search engines could be due to users searching for details on topics of interest that they read about on Twitter. For example, when a user sees a number of Tweets about an event, the first impulse would most likely be to go to a search engine like Google to find out more about it.

Further analysis of the categories of post-Twitter visits shows that 40% of users went across to computer and internet sites such as social networks, search engines and email services.

Entertainment sites such as those related to photography and multimedia are visited by less than 20% of users, while less than 10% of users go from Twitter to lifestyle sites such as blogs, personal websites or news and media sites.

Far more users were found to go to social networks and entertainment sites from Twitter than they do from search engines, other social networks and email services.

On the other hand, fewer people go from Twitter to search engines, email services, business and finance sites and shopping and classified sites than they do from search engines, social networks and email services.

These details seem to indicate that Twitter is used like most social networks are, and while Twitter can be effectively used by content owners to distribute their content, it might not be the best channel to drive new business.

Google Voice users will be able to get transcripts of their voice applications as well as archive and search all SMS text messages that they have sent or received. Users will also be able to make free domestic calls and low cost international calls and use the Google Directory assistance service GOOG-411.

Google Voice

To begin with, Google Voice will only be available to current users of GrandCentral.

GrandCentral already provides many interesting facilities to its users, such as a single number that can call up to 6 lines, allowing users to be contacted via a single number that forwards calls to all the possible numbers they can possibly be reached on, including a home, mobile and office number; a central voicemail inbox that can be accessed online and the ability to screen calls by listening to voicemail while it is being recorded.

Voice transcription is done by a computer. The results are not yet perfect, as can be seen in the demo video below, but it is good enough to allow users to recognise the name of the caller and the gist of the message. Apart from the audio recording the message is also sent to the users email and phone via text message.

One can also make conference calls with up to 4 callers, through Google Voice. The caller just dials a Google number and the conference call owner adds them to the call.

At present, the voicemail service is free and international calls are as low as 2 cents per minute to call the U.K. Craig walker, Senior Product Manager for Google says, “Google doesn’t have a current plan to monetise the service. The mission is to make Google users happy.”

This new facility from Google is certainly going to give competition to Skype. It could also be perceived as a threat by a number of traditional and mobile telecommunications companies, and will at least prompt some providers to offer more add-on services for free.

GrandCentral users are already being sent instructions about how they can use Google Voice. Others interested in this service can send their email address to Google and they will be notified when the service is made widely available.

As the name of this feature clearly suggests, ads will now be delivered to users depending on the interests of the user.

User interest will be judged based on Google’s previous interactions with the user. This will not be limited only to direct interaction with Google Search and Google Software but will also extend to tracking sites that the user visits frequently.

Each users will be segmented under one or more categories, based on the web pages visited. Users will be able to view, edit or opt out of the interest categories through the Ads Preference Manager (shown below), which is available on most AdSense ad containers.

AdSense account holders will not need to change their ad code but they will need to make some changes to the privacy policy of their website in order to use this new facility. Google requires AdSense publishers to make all necessary changes to the privacy policy need to be completed before the 8th of April 2009. Publishers will have to make these changes in accordance with the laws of the country they operate from.

Google has made a point of addressing privacy issues that will definitely arise as a result of this announcement. They say they will continue to use user information in accordance with their privacy policy, i.e. they will not use the information to identify the user personally or display ads based on personal or sensitive information unless the user has opted in.

Opting out of the Interest-based Advertising service is not as obvious as Google makes it out to be. This could turn into a point of contention with privacy advocates.

Publishers will obviously benefit from this service as they will be able to better suit their website by increasing the value for advertisers. If the beta test phase of this service goes well, it will be expanded to others later in the year.

Microsoft adCenter Analytics was designed with the intention of providing website owners with detailed reports of the activity of their users and also to let them track the performance of their advertisements.

While the service has been closed with immediate effect to new customers, it will continue to be available to existing users till the 31st of December 2009. On that date, all hosted services, data collection and technical support will cease. Those who wish to save any historical data have been advised to download reports through the export feature before that date.

The Microsoft adCenter Analytics team claims that the aim of undertaking this project was to fulfil the needs of small and medium size self-service customers, and to evolve a strategy for web analytics. They claim to have achieved this objective. Their blog states, “It enabled us to most confidently determine that we can be of most value to advertisers and publishers by offering a tailored solution that meets more specialized needs.”

The adCenter Analytics blog will now be called ‘Insights and Analysis’ and it will focus on research and best practices helping online marketers navigate better and improve market optimisation.

Strangely, Microsoft has suggested some alternative analytics services that their clients can now turn to, and the list includes Google and Yahoo!