Archive for October, 2008

It’s the biggest sign yet that social networking and indeed the internet has come of age. Social sites like Facebook and MySpace have overtaken porn sites in popularity online. Finally, we’re using the internet like we’re supposed to – for communication and information-sharing. While social networking sites are sort of anti-social, at least it’s about relationships with real people, rather than fantasies.

Trampoline, a new search engine, is making its business to search for individuals as well as documents. The UK company, Trampoline Systems, says that searching for individuals is as important as searching for documents. And that the role social contacts and networks play is a crucial piece in the jigsaw for more intuitive search results. Charles Armstrong, chief executive, told The Financial Times: “When you are dealing with a project that requires a particular knowledge, you look for the person with the knowledge, not a document.” He says that Trampoline’s search engine is the first to analyse not just the content of documents but the professional networks of those connected to the documents.

Blogging is dead, while newer services like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook are the future of online social discourse, according to Wired magazine. “The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge,” writes Paul Boutin. He adds that micro-blogging services like Twitter, media-sharing websites like Flickr and social networks like Facebook make blogging seem, “so 2004.” Twitter, which restricts messages, known as “tweets”, to just 140 characters, encourages a brevity that makes a refreshing change to some rambling blog posts. However, Blogger, one of the most popular online blogging platforms, enjoyed almost three times the amount of traffic that Twitter did between August and October this year, according to Hitwise.

As Google grapples with how to turn the wild success of YouTube into actual profit, it has turned to mind reading. It has paid a US company, NeuroFocus, which specialises in neuromarketing, to analyse the success of its overlay ads, the small boxes that appear over a video. Neuromarketing techniques try to measure how ads affect people subconsciously. NeuroFocus measured the brainwave activity, eye movements and skin response to YouTube’s overlay ads. And the results were apparently all good, deep down viewers react well, which is obviously why Google is telling us all about it.

Google is accepting gamble ads in its search results in the UK, for the first time anywhere in the world. This follows a self-imposed ban four years ago, when US Congress cracked down on the gambling industry. Experts suggest the search engine could generate more than £100m in revenues from these rule changes. Nielsen figures show that casino, lottery group and bookmakers are collectively the third largest advertisers in online display ads, both in terms of number of campaigns and share of spending. They are third behind car manufacturers and mobile phone operators.

The Queen visited Google in London last week. The London headquarters are located on Buckingham Palace Road, just a short stroll from the palace. Her Majesty, who was honoured with a Google Doodle, is apparently a fan of YouTube and likes emailing her grandsons.

A new report from Forrester has exposed the British consumer as a ‘spectator’ on the web, which means we’re more likely to have a lower level of active participation compared to other nations. On the other side of the globe, people in countries such as South Korea, Japan and urban China are more likely to create, engage and interact with the web, rather than just watch from the sidelines.

The Government is considering launching a super database to monitor internet traffic on social networking sites as well as email, mobile phone calls. The Telegraph reports that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said new laws were need to let security services keep track of potential terrorists who use social networks, gaming sites and online messaging to plot attacks free from detection. She said the government was not looking to extend its powers to monitor the content of the messages. Smith insisted there would be safeguards on how the information was used including a new watchdog to monitor the storage of information.

MySpace has launched a new advertising system targeted at small businesses, in an attempt to regain the number one spot for social networking. The MyAds system allows anybody to buy advertising space on the social network. Using tools developed by MySpace engineers, advertisers can target banner ads at specific groups of users depending on their gender, age, location and interests. MySpace is hoping the new service will appeal to the 20m small businesses in the US, and plans to roll it out to other markets, including the UK, later this year.

Google defied the economic downturn delivering a strong set of profits in its third quarter results, following strict cost-cutting and strong advertising revenue. Google’s focus on highly targeted online adverts appears to be better suited for weathering a slowdown in consumer spending, analysts argued. Its revenue climbed to $5.54bn (£3.2bn) from $4.23bn a year ago. The Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, described the current economic predicament as “uncharted territory”. “What we have concluded is that we are going to keep doing our thing,” Schmidt said. “There is no change in the plan at Google. We’ll ride this thing out.”