Tips to Help You Cope at Christmas time (prevent depression and anxiety)

Christmas time for many is a season to be jolly, but for many others Christmas time can lead to episodes of depression and anxiety.

One of the leading causes of depression at Christmas time is loneliness.

People at risk of loneliness include the elderly, those who have had recent relationship breakdowns, parents estranged from their children, those who have recently relocated to a new city, those who have lost loved one recently or whose anniversary falls around Christmas, and those who do not have family and friends around them.

Tips to manage loneliness:

1. Make it known before Christmas Day that you do not have any plans for Christmas and make sure you accept any offers that are given to share Christmas with someone
2. Attend your local community centre and see if there are any events scheduled for Christmas Day
3. If you are spending some of the holiday period alone, ensure to keep yourself busy and treat yourself to something special
4. Contact your loved ones via phone, social media, or skype regularly
5. Volunteer your time and services at a local charity in the days leading up to Christmas, as this is traditionally a very busy time for charities
6. Keep your activities levels up through exercise and get out of the home as regularly as you can
7. Do something different and take up a new hobby
8. Find positive ways to remember your loved ones – remember the good times that you had with your loved ones and do something that you used to enjoy (such as attending a restaurant that you used to go to together, and give them a toast)
9. Get in touch with people you care about who you have lost touch with.  Step out if your comfort and pick up the phone or write a letter

Christmas is a time for families, but many families have internal conflicts and this can lead to problems at Christmas time.

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Qld Government recommends changes to workers compensation – How this impacts Workers in Queensland.

Even with new research showing that *83% of Queenslanders support the right of workers to bring legal claims for injuries in unsafe workplaces, and 73% believing workers should be able to claim for minor injuries as well, the Qld government today have moved to change the WorkCover scheme, which could include capping common law payouts and scrapping insurance protections for workers during commutes and lunch breaks.

It’s not good news for workers because it means that some people injured at work through no fault of their own, in some cases quite seriously, will have no entitlement to fair compensation. If they can’t work they’ll been thrown on to Centrelink benfits and will suffer all the socio economic consequences that often flow from being on a low income.

Some people won’t be able to pay their mortgages, car loans may go unpaid and some people could lose everything, because there is no longer the safety net of a fair workers compensation system.

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Google’s Hummingbird hatches new search

Google has quietly retooled the closely guarded formula running its internet search engine to give better answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by web surfers.

The overhaul came as part of an update called Hummingbird, which Google has gradually rolled out in the past month without disclosing the modifications.

The changes could have a major impact on traffic to websites.

Hummingbird represents the most dramatic alteration to Google’s search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called Caffeine, according to Amit Singhal, a senior vice president for the company.

He estimates the redesign will affect the analysis of about 90 per cent of the search requests that Google gets.

Any reshuffling of Google’s search rankings can have sweeping ramifications because they steer so much of the internet’s traffic.

Google fields about two of out every three search requests in the US and handles an even larger volume in some parts of Europe.

The changes could also drive up the price of Google ads tied to search requests if websites whose rankings are demoted under the new system feel they have to buy the marketing messages to attract traffic.

The search ads and other commercial pitches related to web content account for most of Google’s revenue, which is expected to approach $US60 billion ($A64.42 billion) this year.

Google disclosed the existence of the new search formula on Thursday at an event in the Menlo Park, California, garage where CEO Larry Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin started the company 15 years ago.

Hummingbird is aimed at giving Google’s search engine a better grasp at understanding concepts instead of mere words, Singhal said.

The change was needed, Singhal said, because people have become so reliant on Google that they now routinely enter lengthy questions into the search box instead of just a few words.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Facebook feeds chatter to news outlets

Facebook has begun feeding select news outlets real-time social network chatter about hot topics to weave into story coverage, wading deeper into Twitter territory.

A pair of software tools, Public Feed and Keyword Insights, lets Facebook’s media partners tap into comments posted on the service.

‘Selected news organisations can begin to integrate Facebook conversations into their broadcasts or coverage by displaying public posts of real-time activity about any given topic,’ Facebook’s online operations vice president, Justin Osofsky, said in a blog post.

‘From favourite television shows to sporting events to the latest news; the conversations are happening on Facebook.’

Facebook listed its media partners as Buzzfeed, CNN, NBC’s Today Show, BSkyB, Slate and Mass Relevance.

For a while now, news outlets have turned to globally popular one-to-many messaging service Twitter for real-time insights, opinions, and perspectives for stories.

Osofsky said that Facebook is ‘committed to building features that improve the experience of discovering and participating in conversations about things happening in the world right now, including entertainment, sports, politics and news.’

Only public posts by Facebook members will be streamed to news outlets, according to the California-based social network.

The software tools also allow news outlets to report demographic breakdowns of those discussing topics online, as well as how often specific words have been mentioned.

Osofsky gave the example of NBC’s Today Show being able to ‘include how many people on Facebook talked about a popular subject, where it’s getting the most buzz, whether it’s most popular among males or females, and with which age groups.’

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Facebook linked with unhappiness

Facebook could be spreading unhappiness through society as well as keeping people connected, research has shown.

The number one social networking site is strongly associated with declines in well-being, psychologists claim.

Scientists found the more time people spent on Facebook over a two-week period, the worse they subsequently felt.

In contrast, talking to friends on the phone or meeting them in person led to greater levels of happiness.

‘On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection,’ said study leader Dr Ethan Kross, from the University of Michigan in the US.

‘But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result – it undermines it’.

The researchers recruited 82 young adults, all of whom had smartphones and Facebook accounts.

To assess their personal levels of well-being, participants were sent questions by text message at five random times each day for two weeks.

The ‘experience sampling’ technique is a recognised reliable way of measuring how people think, feel and behave in their day-to-day lives.

Participants were asked how they felt ‘right now’, how worried or lonely they were, and to what extent they had been using Facebook or interacting with other people directly.

Writing in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE, the researchers said higher levels of Facebook use correlated with greater loss of well-being.

Volunteers were also asked to rate their level of life satisfaction at the start and end of the study.

Over the two-week period, satisfaction ratings were found to decline the more people used Facebook.

‘This is a result of critical importance because it goes to the very heart of the influence that social networks may have on people’s lives,’ said University of Michigan neuroscientist and co-author Dr John Jonides.

There was no evidence that people were more likely to log into Facebook when they felt bad, said the researchers.

In addition, loneliness and Facebook both had an independent impact on happiness.

‘It was not the case that Facebook use served as a proxy for feeling bad or lonely,’ said Kross.

Further research is planned to look at the psychological reasons for the negative effect of Facebook on well-being.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Five tips on what to do after you’ve been injured in a car accident

Car accidents are common, and knowing what to do when it happens to you is very important.

We hope the following article will help and assist you in the event you or a member of your family is involved in an accident.

Please read on:

Being involved in a car accident is a very traumatic experience, and it will be very difficult for you to think and act clearly, and quickly. There are a number of things going on around you, and that is why it is very important to have a check list of things to go through to help you cope.

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Rudd admits spam Twitter followers

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has never paid to boost his social media profiles.

But his office acknowledges some of his 1.4 million Twitter followers aren’t genuine.

‘Neither he (Mr Rudd), nor his office, has ever paid to boost the Prime Minister’s Twitter followers, Facebook friends or Facebook likes,’ a spokesman for Mr Rudd told AAP.

‘What spambots choose to do in their own time is a matter for them.’

Spambots are automated programs that create fake social and email accounts to flood users with spam and a number appear to follow Mr Rudd, who is easily one of the most popular Australians on the social media site.

Telltale signs of spambot Twitter accounts include those with little or no personal profile information combined with zero or few tweets and very few followers.

An analysis of Mr Rudd’s followers list shows a number of accounts fitting that description – though it remains unclear what proportion are genuine.

Most famous people on Twitter have spambot followers – and there’s little they can do about it apart from the report the accounts and hope they’re removed.

It comes after Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was bombarded by about 80,000 fake, paid-for followers over the weekend.

‘We are working with Twitter now to remove the fake accounts and investigate who was behind this,’ the Liberal Party wrote on Facebook.

‘The Liberal Party has not purchased or artificially sought to inflate any social media numbers.’

By Monday morning Mr Abbott reached 208,357 followers – up from just over 120,000 two months ago, with most of that increase occurring on Saturday and Sunday.

Shortly after 8.20am (AEST) on Monday, the opposition leader’s numbers plunged to just over 165,000 as the paid-for accounts were removed.

His numbers reached 168,725 by early afternoon.

It’s unclear who paid to boost Mr Abbott’s account.

One hundred thousand Twitter followers can easily be bought anonymously online, with marketing companies offering to supply 100,000 new followers for as little as $274.

Followers can be added at a pre-prescribed rate, such as five per day or one per hour.

Facebook likes’ can also be bought online for similar prices.

Queensland University of Technology’s Associate Professor Axel Bruns said Mr Rudd’s numbers were also boosted by about half a million in 2009 and 2010 when Twitter suggested new users follow him.

‘We actually looked at the follower growth over time and there are periods from mid-2009 to the start of 2010 when Twitter recommended Rudd to people who were signing up in Australia,’ Prof Bruns told AAP.

‘To the point where you almost had to follow him to complete the account set-up process.’

Prof Bruns said it’s unclear if a big, genuine Twitter following translates into increased popularity at the ballot box.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Twitter unimpressed with leaders’ debate

The television networks’ worms were split on who won the leaders’ debate, but the verdict from the blue birds of Twitter was unanimous: they were not impressed.

The commentary on social media was that the debate was boring, the leaders were evasive and the rhetoric was more of the same.

John Collins tweeted that the handshake was the most interesting bit.

Jeff Neale tweeted he didn’t think the leaders moved anybody from entrenched positions.

‘Only item to excite ppl was Rudd’s SSM commitment,’ he said of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s announcement Labor would move to legalise same-sex marriage with a conscience vote.

Twitter traffic peaked at 1,952 tweets per minute during the same-sex marriage discussion.

The announcement was largely greeted positively on social media.

Rauri Jayne wrote ‘KRudd, You just got my vote with that statement.’

But others questioned why Labor was waiting until after the election to move on the issue.

‘I just don’t think I can trust Labor on delivering marriage equality; you just played politics with it for too long,’ Stephen B Sander wrote.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott came under criticism for ducking the issue.

Many were unimpressed by his reference to his sister Christine Forster, including actress Magda Szubanski, who came out as gay last year.

She wrote she wished he would ‘stop trotting out his gay sister every time he is asked a direct question’ on marriage equality.

When it was over, Mr Abbott took to Twitter to say he was pleased with the debate.

‘If you want a new way, you’ve got to choose a new government,’ he wrote.

Mr Rudd also tweeted post-debate, but he did not comment on the outcome, preferring to reiterate there would be legislation for marriage equality with a full conscience vote.

‘I believe this is the right thing to do,’ he wrote.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Segways, the Law and You

Yes folks the news is official, it is now legal for Segways to be used on footpaths across Queensland and reports are that tour operators and members of the general public are already planning to ride them on public footpaths.

Reaction from pedestrians is understandably mixed, most did not care when they were displayed at Currumbin last week, some enjoyed the spectacle but others seem distressed and annoyed that they had to move out of the way.

The Segways take up a large chunk of the path, but with legislation restricting them to 12km/h and mechanisms in place for them to slow down, they may not be as terrorising as some people think.

Surfers Paradise councillor Lex Bell was still adamant about their danger, having received feedback from the community they were dangerous and riders could "sneak up" on pedestrians.

"I see it as a sad day for pedestrians because they have yet another quietly moving object to contend with on their walks," Cr Bell said.

"I’ve received a lot of feedback from elderly people who are personally concerned about Segways for themselves, but also for children."

In the US, a toddler in Honolulu was left with bruising and red welts after being run over on the sidewalk by a careless Segway rider and a Connecticut jury awarded a man $10 million after he tumbled from a Segway and suffered brain damage in 2009.

Queensland is the first Australian state to approve the vehicles which are used in many European countries and the majority of American states.

Transport Minister Scott Emerson defended his approval amid claims he ignored a string of safety warnings.

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Facebook allows posts on other websites

Facebook has begun letting people share social network posts at blogs or other spots on the internet.

An Embedded Posts feature being tested out at CNN, Huffington Post, Bleacher Report, PEOPLE and Mashable websites lets Facebook members broadcast posts in real-time to broader online audiences.

‘We are beginning to roll out Embedded Posts to make it possible for people to bring the most compelling, timely public posts from Facebook to the rest of the web,’ Facebook software engineers Dave Capra and Ray He said in a blog post on Wednesday.

‘When embedded, posts can include pictures, videos, hashtags and other content,’ they continued.

‘People can also like and share the post directly from the embed.’

Facebook posts that people allow to be shared publicly can be fired off to blogs or selected outside websites, with the list of venues to grow quickly, according to the engineers.

Examples given by Facebook included an official British Monarchy Page publishing a picture of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their newborn son.

‘Every day, public figures, journalists and millions of regular people share their thoughts on what’s happening around the world on Facebook publicly,’ Capra and He said.

‘Many journalists post detailed commentary about world events from their Facebook timeline.’

The Twitter-style feature is being added as California-based Facebook works to expand its presence on the internet and its appeal to members increasingly accessing the internet on the go with smartphones or tablets.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Car Accidents and Black Boxes

Today many modern cars have onboard computers that record data about speed, air bag deployment or failures, braking and other mechanical functions. This information can sometimes help to determine the cause of a car accident.

Police can establish for example how fast a car was travelling at the time of impact from recording devices onboard the vehicle. These recording devices are much like the black boxes everybody has heard about in aeroplanes.

Data recording devices, or black boxes, in both your car and in the car at fault, are one of the many tools experts can use as evidence to help determine fault for a car accident.

Nearly every car being manufactured right now comes with a little added bonus by way of a tiny recording device nestled under the centre console. And if you’re looking to keep your driving habits under wraps, you might want to start worrying.

As many as 96 percent of the cars mass-produced in 2013 include event data recorders, or EDRs, yet the existence of these small “black box” surveillance devices are rarely known among the automobile drivers whose data is being collected with every quick turn of the steering wheel.

This following story from the USA indicates how these will affect court cases in the future, and this includes Australia:

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Facebook rolling out new search tool

Users who may have grown frustrated with Facebook’s rudimentary search feature are getting an updated version designed to make it easier to find people, places and photos on the site.

Facebook unveiled its social search tool in January, but only made it available to a small fraction of its 1.1 billion users, as its engineers continued to tweak and test it.

Over the next few weeks, starting on Monday, the company is rolling out the social search tool, called ‘Graph Search,’ to everyone whose language is set to US English.

Unlike searches on Google, which are good for finding specific things like roasted kale recipes or Mizuno running shoes, Facebook’s tool is most useful in unearthing information about your social circles.

Graph Search lets you find friends who live in San Francisco who are vegan, friends of friends who live near you and like hiking, photos of your boyfriend taken before you met him in 2010. nearby restaurants that your friends like – and so on.

But soon after Facebook launched the tool, the internet had a field day with less innocuous and more embarrassing queries, showing just how much information people reveal about themselves on the site, intentionally or not. Care to find out which brand of condoms your friends prefer? Graph Search might tell you.

A blog called actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com posted a collection of searches ranging from ‘married people who like prostitutes’ to ‘current employers of people who like racism.’ Both yielded more than 100 people.

While it is possible that some of those Facebook users are fully aware that what they’ve shared is easily searchable, it is likely that some are not. It’s easy to click ‘like’ on a page and forget about it, and it’s even easier to assume that no one will search through your photos from party days years ago.

To avoid any unpleasantness, Facebook plans to notify users to check ‘who can see my stuff’ under their privacy settings.

‘The goal is to avoid bad surprises,’ said Nicky Jackson Colaco, privacy and safety manager at Facebook.

But there are advantages.

It’s easier, for example, to find a long-lost classmate with a common name, or to find common interests with friends of friends.

As Google has shown, it’s a lucrative business. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Google will take nearly 42 per cent of all US digital ad spending this year, well above Facebook’s share of less than 7 per cent.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Fairfax ‘ignored internet at own peril’

Ignoring the internet was the biggest mistake media company Fairfax made, Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull says.

Mr Turnbull was commenting at the launch of Fairfax: The Rise and Fall, on the same day that Fairfax news websites introduced a paywall.

He said the company once had total domination in the classifieds market.

But it allowed start-up websites like Seek.com.au and Realestate.com.au to take over market share.

‘That really was the shocking mistake,’ said Mr Turnbull, who was once a financial adviser and large shareholder in Fairfax.

But the opposition communications spokesman said that despite the company’s failures, he was optimistic about journalism at Fairfax.

‘One thing that we know is that the great writers of Fairfax have more readers than they have ever had in their careers,’ he said.

‘There are more eyeballs than ever reading that content.

‘The fundamental change is how to monetise it.

‘Perhaps have less focus on international and national issues and more focus in the cities in which they operate.

‘That is an area in which they will not be competing with the ABC or, let alone, The New York Time or The Guardian.’

The book’s author, Coleen Ryan, a former Fairfax editor, said the company’s financial downfall could also be attributed to decades of infighting in the Fairfax family, the revenge of politicians and the conniving of rival media moguls Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch.

The book also blames divided board factions and personal ambitions and incompetence.

Fairfax on Tuesday launched a metered paywall model offering 30 free articles a month across its web and mobile sites before readers are asked to pay.

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Mobile Phone Texting and Social Media Increase The Risk Of A Car Accident

The number of car accidents caused by either mobile phone usage, either texting or talking on a mobile phone whilst driving, or social networking long into the night have been a major factor in  a majority of car accidents increasing the number of personal injury compensation Claims.  

Some of these facts include young drivers with an addiction to electronic socialising, who are increasingly at risk of being injured in a car accident caused by driver fatigue.

There is an increasing number of teenagers who have been involved in car accidents because they’re so tired from staying up all night using their electronic devices.

According to authorities, people under the age of 30 account for nearly two thirds of accidents involving sleepy drivers.

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Facebook to introduce clickable hashtags

Social networking site Facebook has announced plans to introduce clickable hashtags for users.

The tool is already widely used on other media, such as micro-blogging site Twitter, so users can find out what others are discussing.

Facebook users have long adopted the hashtag, often using it as an addition to comments and status updates.

But they will now be able to click on the hashtagged words as a search term and view a feed of discussions relating to that topic.

In a post for the company, Facebook’s Greg Lindley said: ‘To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about.

‘To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics.

‘As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.’

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Apple unveils iTunes Radio service

Apple has unveiled its hotly anticipated iTunes Radio Service, as the iconic maker of the iPhone moved to challenge streaming music operators such as Pandora and Spotify.

The free internet radio service features over 200 stations ‘and an incredible catalogue of music from the iTunes Store’, Apple said in a statement as it opened its annual developers conference in San Francisco on Monday.

The ad-supported free music service is set to launch later this year and ‘offers music fans access to thousands of new songs every week, as well as serving up exclusive music from new and popular artists before you hear them anywhere else’, an Apple statement said.

The service will be integrated with Apple’s personal voice-assistant software program Siri, so users will be able to find out ‘Who plays that song?’ or ask the program to ‘Play more like this.’

‘iTunes Radio is an incredible way to listen to personalised radio stations which have been created just for you,’ said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services.

‘It’s the music you love most and the music you’re going to love, and you can easily buy it from the iTunes Store with just one click.’

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Google tells businesses to ‘chill-out’

Google has urged Australian and New Zealand companies to copy its famously chilled-out working practices, saying it makes for happy, creative employees and better business.

Google’s Australian headquarters in harbourside Sydney is a den of zen: an Aladdin’s cave of cool where you’ll sooner see a flying pig than a business suit, and the furnishings are soft enough to make a wolverine purr.

Want a nap halfway through the day? Sure, sit in the nearest sleep pod and have 40 winks.

Sick of hearing your colleague wittering on about his baby’s first burp?

No worries, tuck yourself away in one of the cocoon-like work pods.

Or head to the games room – where you can play pool, table tennis or the guitar.

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Social Media and Personal Injury Compensation Claims

Social media is great for sharing information with family and friends, but a growing trend that a lot of us don’t realise is that whatever you post on the internet via your social media network is accessible by anyone who wants to research you.  

As an example, how many times have you posted a holiday photo on Facebook or tweeted about what you did on the weekend on Twitter? Chances are these photos, videos and written posts found on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are seen by more than just your friends.

More and more insurance companies and investigators are using social media to keep tabs on people making compensation claims. Even if your profile is marked “private” or you only sent that email to a few people, online records can cause major headaches for your personal injury claim.

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Facebook revamps policy guidelines

Facebook has announced it is updating its policies on ‘harmful and hateful’ content after a campaign complaining it was allowing jokes and other offensive comments about rape and domestic abuse.

Facebook vice president of global public policy Marne Levine said the social network would ‘complete our review and update the guidelines’ around hate speech and seek comments from legal experts, women’s organisations and other groups ‘that have historically faced discrimination.’

‘In recent days, it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate,’ Levine’s statement said Tuesday.

‘In some cases, content is not being removed as quickly as we want. In other cases, content that should be removed has not been or has been evaluated using outdated criteria… We need to do better — and we will.’

Facebook announced the change a week after a campaign organised by the activist group Women, Action The Media, which claimed the social network ‘has long allowed content endorsing violence against women.’

‘They claim that these pages fall under the ‘humour’ part of their guidelines, or are expressions of ‘free speech,” the group said in launching the campaign.

After the Facebook announcement, the organisation hailed the action.

‘We are reaching an international tipping point in attitudes towards rape and violence against women,’ said Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of the group.

‘We hope that this effort stands as a testament to the power of collaborative action.’

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Twitter tightens security after breaches

Twitter says it is stepping up security measures for the popular messaging service, following a series of high-profile breaches by hackers hitting media organisations and others.

Twitter said it would implement a new login verification system, ‘a form of two-factor authentication’ which is ‘a second check to make sure it’s really you’ when a user signs in.

‘Of course, even with this new security option turned on, it’s still important for you to use a strong password and follow the rest of our advice for keeping your account secure,’ said Jim O’Leary of Twitter Product Security.

Some recent attacks took over Twitter feeds and delivered fake tweets using the accounts of Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, Financial Times and other news organisations.

Last month, hackers spooked markets after breaking into AP Twitter account and falsely reporting President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House.

Twitter said the new system would be an option for users, allowing them to require a verification code for each sign-in.

‘You’ll need a confirmed email address and a verified phone number. After a quick test to confirm that your phone can receive messages from Twitter, you’re ready to go,’ O’Leary said.

The security system will send a text message to the user’s mobile phone with a verification code that would be entered for the login.

The Syrian Electronic Army, which appears to be aligned with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, has claimed credit for hacking AFP, AP and other news organisations.

Earlier this month, the Twitter feed of satirical US news website The Onion was also taken over by the Syrian group aiming to inject its own sardonic spin on the deadly conflict.

The Onion posted details of how its feed was hijacked, describing how emails were sent to some employees in a phishing spoof to gain access to passwords.

Twitter said in February it was hit by a ‘sophisticated’ cyber attack and that the passwords of about 250,000 users were stolen.

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Social media to boost $4b tourism market

Queensland’s Hamilton Island has announced a valuable tie-up with Asian social media giant QQ.com as part of a plan to dramatically increase the number of Chinese visiting Australia.

Chinese visitors pumped $4.2 billion into the Australian economy in 2012, with tourist numbers from the rising superpower increasing 16 per cent to a record 625,000.

China is now Australia’s second largest inbound tourism market by volume, behind New Zealand and ranked number one by dollar value.

But experts say those numbers can grow much further, with Tourism Australia (TA) forecasting up to one million Chinese visitors every year by 2020.

It is now our most valuable inbound tourism market – and fastest growing, a TA spokesman said.

In a bid to boost its own market share, Hamilton Island has launched a new partnership with Asian internet giant Tencent, whose microblog site QQ.com is viewed as the Chinese version of Twitter and has an estimated 800 million active users.

China probably has more social media users than Facebook has worldwide – with China’s social media market nearly at one billion users, Hamilton Island’s Sophie Baker said.

Social media has become a modern-day postcard; a way to share your travel experiences instantly with friends, family and followers around the globe.

As well as setting up its own presence on QQ.com, Hamilton Island is staging its second Instameet event on May 17-19, with Chinese supermodel Li Ya Hong among those invited to take and share pictures of the Whitsundays attraction.

The island’s first Instameet event, in November, saw users of the photography app Instagram from America and Australia sharing pictures of Hamilton Island with an estimated eight million people around the world.

Next week’s Instameet can be followed on hamilton island or viewed on the hashtags #hamiltonisland and #return2paradise.

The island currently attracts about 2000 Chinese visitors annually but hopes to boost that number by at least 50 per cent every year.

Meanwhile, Chinese actor and pop star Ekin Cheng will visit NSW and QLD later this month.

Ekin and other Asian celebrities are filming a travel documentary made by commercial network TVB Hong Kong.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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QR Code Scanning Isn’t Just A Young Person’s Activity

QR code scanning – once the domain of the younger crowd – is becoming more evenly distributed across various age groups, according to [download page] data released by ScanBuy. The company, which says it processed a new high of 6.7 million scans via ScanLife in March, reveals that 57% of mobile barcode scanners were aged 35 and older in Q1, up from just 41% a year earlier. In particular, the 45-54 (18% share, from 12%) and 55 and older (14%, from 9%) groups represent rapidly growing proportions of scanners.

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During that yearlong period, the biggest drop came from the 25-34 crowd. In Q1 2013, that age bracket constituted 35% of mobile barcode scanners, but that’s now down to 25%.

While QR code scanners seem to be getting older on average (a trend first noted here), their gender split hasn’t changed that significantly. In Q1, 65% of scanners were male, which is slightly (but not drastically) down from 68% in Q1 2012. In terms of operating systems, Android remains the leader at 57% share, up from 53% a year earlier, while iOS’ share has dipped 2% points to 41%.

The study also shows that QR code scanning tends to be popular throughout the week, with 14% share of scans occurring each day from Tuesday through Friday during Q1. Scanning volume did go up slightly on the weekend (16% on Saturday; 15% on Sunday) before dipping on Monday (13% share). Scanning volume also tended to rise after lunchtime and see sustained levels of activity until the primetime hours.

Other Findings:

• The most scanned QR code campaigns in Q1 connected users to product information, social media, and mobile commerce.
• The top industries, in terms of scanning activity, were retail, food and beverage, and wireless.

Source: www.marketingcharts.com

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Social Media Statistics Australia – April 2013

Another month has flown by and it is now time to report our Australian Social Media statistics for April 2013.

As I have mentioned in the past, social media growth in Australia has slowed right up. The larger networks are now reaching saturation point and not growing like we saw in 2010 and 2011.

In Australia both Facebook and LinkedIn are happy to speak with members of the press about Australian user numbers. For some reason Twitter has never been so willing.

Last month I got a response from the official Twitter Australia, Twitter account – in regards to a question I have long been asking them: How many Australian’s are on Twitter?

This is a strange reply as Twitter have commented many times to the media about the US user numbers.

April 2013 stats:

(Please note the numbers below are the number of Unique Australian Visitors to the site over April).

1. Facebook – 11,489,380 Australian users/accounts (down approx 220).
2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs (steady)
3. Blogspot – 3,000,000 (down 200,000)
4. WordPress.com – 2,900,000 (steady)
5. Tumblr – 2,800,000 (up 200,000)
6. LinkedIn – 2,700,000 ( down 57,000)
7. Twitter – 2,167,849 Active Australian Users (see calculation below)
8. Instagram – 1,083,924 Active Australian Users (see calculation below)
9. Flickr – 860,000 (up 10,000)
10. TripAdvisor – 830,000
11. Pinterest – 630,000 (down 10,000)
12. MySpace – 300,000 (steady)
13. Yelp – 220,000 (steady)
14. Reddit – 180,000 (up 10,000)
15. Google Plus – approx 100,000 (my estimation *revised*)
16. StumbleUpon – 95,000 (steady)
17. Foursquare – 51,000 (steady)
18. Digg – 33,000 (steady)
19. Delicious – 31,000 (steady)

(more…)

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Australians suffer from Facebook fatigue

It appears Aussies are starting to suffer from ‘Facebook fatigue’, according to new data from a social media monitor.

The data, collected by social media monitoring firm Social Bakers, shows around 115,000 less people have logged on each month since the beginning of 2013 – with almost 400,000 users walking away from Facebook since December.

‘When Facebook was starting up they got a lot of people on and it was very novel, but the novelty has worn off a little bit, so now people are scaling back use,’ Social media marketing expert at the Queensland University of Technology Business School, Professor Larry Neale, told News Limited.

And it’s not just Down Under – in recent years, millions of users in the US and Europe also started deactivating their accounts.

A spokesperson for Facebook Australia disputed the figures, News Limited reports.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Aussies social media use ‘in decline’

The amount of time Australians spend on social media sites is declining, according to new research involving three million internet users.

Interest in sites like Facebook and Twitter grew rapidly in Australia from 2010.

But new data shows time spent on these sites via fixed-line internet connections fell in 2012, with average users now spending 14 minutes out of every hour online using social networks, compared to 16 minutes per hour in 2011.

Similar falls were recorded in the US and UK, according to broader research by information services firm Experian, involving another 22 million internet subscribers.

‘The online landscape is constantly changing and it could be that we’re starting to see social networking sites reaching their peak,’ said Experian manager Matt Glasner.

(more…)

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Twitter to mine people’s tweets

Twitter has began to allow ads to be targeted at users based on the words written in ‘tweets’ and messages forwarded to followers at the popular social network.

Previously, contents of Twitter messages relied on algorithms that pool the interests of users to send them potentially relevant ads in the form of tweets ‘promoted’ at the top of feeds.

Twitter produce manager Nipoon Malhotra said the new feature would allow ‘advertisers to reach users based on the keywords in their recent tweets and the tweets with which users recently engaged.’

Malhotra gave the example of a concert venue being able to target local music lovers with tweets promoting upcoming shows by bands they have raved about in messages at Twitter.

‘Users won’t see any difference in their use of Twitter; we’re not showing ads more frequently in timelines, and users can still dismiss promoted tweets they don’t find relevant,’ Malhotra said in a blog post.

Twitter is expected to earn $US582.8 million ($A563.55 million) globally in ad revenue this year and nearly $US1 billion next year, according to industry tracker eMarketer.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Twitter music app expected to launch

Buzz has continued to build about the social media giant Twitter’s launching of a new music app.

Key ‘influencers’ have already been given a sneak preview of the software ahead of a public roll-out, expected within days.

Tech site AllThingsD said the music service, originally mooted for a Friday launch, was expected to be launched on the weekend at the Coachella music festival at Indio, California.

Early on Saturday, Wiz Khalifa, who has nearly 10 million follows, tweeted: ‘Man this new Twitter music app is insane!’

On Thursday Ryan Seacrest wrote: ‘Playing with twitter’s new music app (yes it’s real!)..’

He added: ‘Lovin the app … shows what artists are trending, also has up and coming artists …’

The speculation surrounding the launch comes after Twitter confirmed it had acquired the emerging music software firm We Are Hunted.

The San Francisco-based music firm was launched in 2007 in Australia, and allows its users to follow emerging music trends and artists.

Its software continuously updates lists of top music around the world.

Neither company indicated their plans, but the We Are Hunted site strongly hinted the deal means Twitter will be launching a long-rumoured music application.

‘There’s no question that Twitter and music go well together,’ a statement posted on the wearehunted.com site said.

The new music app is believed to rank music based on personalised trends and trigger points, including what Twitter accounts are followed.

The AllThingsD report said users will be able to listen to clips of music from inside the app, using third-party services and watch music videos from Vevo, which is operated by Universal Music and Sony.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Top reasons for small business failure: Study

Small and medium-size businesses are most likely to fail because of an inability to manage costs or anticipate rising costs, according to a survey of more than 1000 Australian owners of SMEs.

The survey, published yesterday by accounting software provider CCH and global information services group Wolters Kluwer, revealed SMEs see inexperienced management, a bad business model and lack of access to capital as other key reasons for small business failure.

Of those surveyed, 61% of SME operators said small businesses failed because of an inability to manage costs, 50% said inexperienced management, 50% said poorly designed business models or no business plan, 49% said insufficient capital, 37% said poor or insufficient marketing, and 35% said insufficient time managing the books.

Respondents were able to pick multiple reasons for failure and only 26% identified failure to seek professional advice as a key reason for failure, while 70% trusted their "gut instinct" over any professional advice.

(more…)

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Coalition says NBN will be cheaper and better

The federal coalition will deliver a faster, better, cheaper national broadband network (NBN) to all Australians if it wins government, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.

Whether for good or ill, these job seekers made a strong first impression

Mr Abbott launched the coalition’s broadband policy in Sydney on Tuesday with communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull.

"We believe in a national broadband network," Mr Abbott told reporters.
"We will deliver a better NBN."

Mr Abbott said if the coalition won government this year, users would be able to access a minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second (mps) by the end of its first term.

If it won a second term, the minimum speed would increase to 50mps for the vast majority of households.

While 25mps is about five times better than Australians get now, it’s still well down on the average 100mps being promised by Labor.

But Mr Abbott said rolling out fibre optic cable to the node – or street corner – rather than all the way to the home or business as Labor would do, would be cheaper.

"We will build fibre to the node and that eliminates two thirds of the cost," Mr Abbott said.

"So we will be able to do this for under $30 billion, compared to the over $90 billion it will cost the National Broadband Network (under Labor)."

Mr Abbott also announced plans for three inquiries, including a commercial review to be completed within 60 days of the coalition winning office into how quickly the NBN builder can meet coalition objectives.

There would also an audit into Labor’s NBN "mess" and an independent study into Australia’s broadband future needs, which would include a cost benefit analysis.

Under the coalition’s plan, the NBN rollout would be completed by the end of 2019, instead of the current deadline of 2021.

Priority would be given to areas with the poorest broadband services today.

The coalition also says basic broadband plans will "always" be more affordable.

It projects prices would be $24 cheaper per month by 2021 than Labor’s projected NBN prices.

But in areas where there was very strong need for high broadband speeds – such as business centres, educational centres, hospitals and new housing estates – there would be fibre-to-the-premise services.

Mr Abbott also said the coalition planned to sell the network to the private sector once it was ready.

Mr Turnbull said the government shouldn’t be building the NBN, when everywhere else such projects were being created by the private sector.

But he acknowledged that if the coalition won government it would inherit network builder NBN Co and would have to work with it.

He said the government had wasted billion of dollars that could not be recovered, but the coalition would save money.

The coalition says its plan will cost $29.5 billion.

Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

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Facebook Moves Into The Mobile World

Facebook unveiled a software suite overnight which stakes out a "home" on Android smartphones as it steps up its challenge to Apple and Google in the booming mobile market.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the new software weaves the social network into the home screen of HTC and Samsung phones powered by the latest versions of Android to focus experiences on "people and not apps."

"We’re not building a phone and we’re not building an operating system, but we are building something that’s a lot deeper than an app," Zuckerberg told a gathering at the company’s headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Facebook called the new software "a new way to turn your Android phone into a great, living, social phone."

The software, which allows users to see Facebook’s "Cover Feed" when they turn on their phones, will be available for download from Google’s online Play shop in the United States starting April 12, Zuckerberg said.

A version should be available in Europe in coming months, according to Facebook, which said it is in the process of tailoring "Home" for tablet computers.

(more…)

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EU countries take action against Google

Google’s new privacy policy is under legal attack from regulators in its largest European markets, who want the company to overhaul practices they say let it create a data goldmine at the expense of unwitting users.

Led by the French, organisations in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy agreed Tuesday on the joint action, with the ultimate possibility of imposing fines or restrictions on operations across the entire 27-country European Union.

Last year the company merged 60 separate privacy policies from around the world into one universal procedure. The European organisations complain that the new policy doesn’t allow users to figure out which information is kept, how it is combined by Google services, or how long the company retains it.

(more…)

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Google street views Japan nuclear zone

Google Street View is giving the world a rare glimpse into one of Japan’s eerie ghost towns, created when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami sparked a nuclear disaster that has left the area uninhabitable.

The technology pieces together digital images captured by Google’s fleet of camera-equipped vehicles and allows viewers to take virtual tours of locations around the world.

Now it’s taking people inside Japan’s nuclear no-go zone, to the city of Namie, whose 21 thousand residents haven’t been able to return to live since they fled the radiation spewing from the Fukushima nuclear power plant two years ago.

Street View was started in 2007, and now provides images from more than three thousand cities across 48 countries, as well as parts of the Arctic and Antarctica.

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Social networking spend slows in marketing budgets: Survey

A new survey shows marketing budgets will grow by 1% in 2013, following growth of 3.4% last year, while the growth of social networking and Web 2.0 is less pronounced than in 2011.

The 2013 Senior Marketer Monitor, conducted by the Australian Marketing Institute and Colmar Brunton, is based on a survey of 259 senior marketing professionals in Australia.

The aim of the study is to understand senior marketer sentiment, priorities, perspectives and challenges in the current marketing environment.

Marketing budgets will grow by only 1% in 2013, the report reveals, following growth of 3.4% last year.

A third (34%) of the marketers surveyed expect their marketing budget to increase in 2013, with these organisations anticipating an average increase of 16%, while 38% expect their budget to stay the same.

Meanwhile, 28% of marketers expect a decrease in 2013, and for these they anticipate an average decrease of 16%.

Nearly half of organisations with zero to 100 employees expect to increase marketing budgets this year, according to the report, with these smaller organisations more positive than mid-sized and larger organisations.

“Most organisation types and most industry sectors are reducing marketing budgets in 2013, with only smaller organisations, professional services and not-for-profit[s] growing budgets,” it said.

Organisations with zero to 100 employees will grow their budgets by 6% in 2013, while those with 101 to 1,000 employees will reduce their budgets by 1.7%.

There is also a great deal of variation at an industry level when it comes to the outlook for marketing budgets, the report said.

The media and communications (13%) and manufacturing (19%) industries have the lowest proportion of organisations increasing budgets in 2013, while professional services has one of the highest (45%).

The top marketing priorities include measures to increase sales, maximising efficiency of marketing expenditure, and focusing on more profitable market segments.

“Overall, there was slightly more emphasis on increasing sales and less focus on efficiency and brand-building compared with previous years,” the report said.

According to the report, there have also been shifts in the communication channels used by marketers.

“The use of social networking and Web 2.0 as a communication channel continues to grow, but the growth in this channel is less pronounced than in 2011,” it said.

“The popularity of viral marketing has decreased somewhat with less intending to use this channel more, compared with previous years.”

In 2011, 77% of the marketers surveyed used social networking and Web 2.0 applications. Last year, that figure fell to 66%.

Similarly, 32% of marketers used viral marketing in 2011, compared to 23% in 2012.

It’s worth noting marketers’ use of all communication channels has decreased, suggesting they have become less important to businesses in the current economic climate.

The use of online advertising fell from 64% in 2011 to 56% in 2012, while only 34% of marketers engaged in public relations last year, compared to 47% in 2011.

The use of direct marketing fell from 48% in 2011 to 38% in 2012, while mobile and SMS fell to 30% last year, down from 46% in 2011.

This article first appeared on StartupSmart.

Story by Michelle Hammond Story source: www.smartcompany.com.au

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Many reasons Aust pays more for digital

Big music labels, steep freight costs and import taxes are being blamed for the higher prices Australians pay for everything from software to songs.

Global technology giants Apple, Microsoft and Adobe copped a caning on Friday at a federal parliamentary inquiry for slugging Australians up to 80 per cent more than people in other countries for their products.

The tech giants offered a range of explanations but failed to impress, with more than one MP branding their responses ‘evasive’.

Microsoft Australia managing director Pip Marlow said it was the global software giant’s right to charge what it thought the market would bear for its products.

‘We don’t operate on a single global price because we don’t believe every market is the same,’ she told the committee in Canberra.

‘We believe we are competing lawfully to win our customers’ business every day.’

But committee deputy chairman, Nationals MP Paul Neville, accused Microsoft of charging what it could ‘get away with in any particular market’.

‘You haven’t offered us any cogent reason other than your company policy why you are charging more in Australia,’ he said.

A recent study by consumer group Choice of 200 hardware and software products found Australians paid on average 50 per cent more than overseas customers.

Apple vice president for Australia, New Zealand and South Asia Tony King said what Australians paid to download digital songs, films and TV shows was determined by arrangements with the music labels, TV networks and movie studios.

Those content owners had different charges for content distributed in different countries.

‘The cards, so to speak, are in the hands of the folks who own the content,’ Mr King said.

Mr King said Apple was more than aware Australians were angry about it.

‘We are hearing comments in Australia that, frankly, make us uncomfortable,’ he said.

Mr King said exchange rates, local freight costs, import duties and local sales taxes also influenced the prices for computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

Adobe’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Paul Robson, said Australians were blocked from accessing the software company’s US website – where prices are lower – to offer a more ‘personalised experience’.

Allowing Australians to buy the cheaper, although identical, product from Adobe’s US website would have an impact on global corporations’ willingness to invest in this country, run local operations and employ staff, he said.

Both Adobe and Microsoft talked up the use of cloud computing products, saying they offered more similar pricing between Australian and US customers.

The three technology giants were all called to appear before the committee after refusing to give evidence voluntarily.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Twitter celebrates its seventh birthday

Some people can’t stand it, others can’t live without it.

Twitter turned seven on Thursday and with more than 200 million active users, the social media platform has no shortage of friends to celebrate with.

It’s come a long way since March 21, 2006, when web developer and Twitter creator Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet: ‘just setting up my twttr’ (twttr was the platform’s early name).

Now roughly 4600 tweets are sent every second.

(more…)

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Google Maps adds view from Mt Everest

Google has added views from some of the world’s tallest mountains to its popular online map service.

Armchair explorers were invited to take virtual adventures with members of Google’s Street View team to Aconcagua in South America, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe and Mt Everest base camp in Nepal.

‘Whether you’re scoping out the mountain for your next big adventure or exploring it from the comfort and warmth of your home, we hope you enjoy these views from the top of the world,’ Google adventurer Dan Fredinburg said in a blog poston Monday.

‘With Google Maps, you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face.’

The mountains climbed by the Street View team were among peaks referred to as the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on the Earth’s continents.

‘Googlers’ who made the ascents took the pictures with tripod-mounted digital camera equipped with a fisheye lens to capture 360-degree views.

Street View teams have cycled, driven and walked through cities and towns around the globe capturing images to add to online maps, letting people see what it might be like to stand at a spot they are curious about.

Google has added images from a Nunavut community in the Canadian Arctic and a portion of the Amazon in Brazil.

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Facebook to use Twitter hashtag

Facebook is preparing to take on Twitter by adopting the messaging service’s iconic hashtag symbol, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Users of the globally popular one-to-many messaging service Twitter use # or pound symbols as a hashtag to indicate subjects in tweets.

The style is such an entrenched part of the Twitter language that the San Francisco-based company added a hashtag search feature to make it easy for users to find messages focused on themes or happenings of interest.

For example, people firing off messages at Twitter about a hurricane might use the hashtag #storm.

The Journal cited unnamed sources as saying Facebook is incorporating hashtags into the social network in a move that would let members organise comments and posts by topic.

The report said Facebook is testing use of the symbol but that the feature was not likely to be introduced imminently.

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Facebook feed becomes personal newspaper

Facebook has started transforming the stream of updates from friends at home pages into a ‘personalised newspaper’ with news ranging from the personal to the global.

The News Feed on home pages at the leading social network has been revamped to get rid of clutter and present ‘bright, beautiful’ stories whether they are insights from friends or trending news of the day.

‘I think there is a special place in the world for this sort of personalised newspaper,’ Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in introducing the overhauled News Feed.

‘It should have a front page and top news section or let you drill down into any topic you want.’

Facebook began rolling out the new News Feed ‘very slowly’ at its website reached by desktop or laptop and planned to begin adding it to its smartphone and tablet applications in the coming weeks.

Each News Feed will automatically be tuned to the interests of individual Facebook users, according to technical lead Chris Struhar.

Pictures in the feed will be gleaned from posts by friends or online pages people have indicated they ‘like’.

If a Facebook user follows pages from CNN or other professional media organisations, top shared or trending stories are displayed.

Music or film lovers should see News Feeds touting fresh developments regarding bands, stars, movies, songs or other related subjects.

Struhar told AFP ‘we hope you get all you need’ without having to leave Facebook.

While the amount of content shared at Facebook has soared, the amount of time people have to spend at the social network remains limited, inspiring the drive to more efficiently connect people with news they most care about.

‘Of course we all want to share with our friends, but we want updates from our favourite publications, artist, world leaders and more,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘This is the evolving face of News Feed.’

News Feed will give more prominence to major stories being shared by friends in the social network; trends at third-party applications such as Pinterest or Instagram, and weave in important personal bits such as a cousin with a new job.

‘When I wake up in the morning and see all my friends are sharing the exact same news story or video, I know it must be something big,’ said Facebook director of design Julie Zhuo.

‘You get a richer, simpler, more beautiful News Feed focused on the things you care about, what your friends are saying, and what is trending.’

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Cyber attacks more targeted: Aust survey

One in five major Australian businesses suffered a cyber attack in the past year, with attacks becoming more coordinated and targeted, a government survey shows.

With the most serious attacks involving malicious software and theft or breach of confidential information, essential service industries are starting to invest more heavily in tighter cyber security.

The 2012 Cyber Crime and Security Survey, set to be launched in Melbourne on Monday by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, also found that one third of attacks involved the theft of notebook and tablet computers or mobile devices.

‘Cyber attacks have shifted from being indiscriminate and random to being more coordinated and targeted for financial gain,’ Mr Dreyfus said in a statement before the launch.

‘Most attacks occur from outside the business, although it appears internal risks are also significant.’

One business reported the theft of 15 years’ worth of critical data.

The survey found that energy, defence, communications, banking, finance and water organisations are now investing more heavily in cyber security.

The survey was commissioned by the federal government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT).

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Facebook is following you

Facebook will soon be the new Big Brother, after the completion of a smartphone app to track user’s locations.

While Facebook already has the right to know who you are, what you’re doing, or what you’re searching, it has been announced that a smartphone app to track your whereabouts at any given moment is scheduled to be released in March, according to Fairfax.

Although the app is intended to help users find nearby friends, it will continue to run on your phone even if the program isn’t in use, which is said to help Facebook in their marketing and advertising tactics for individual users.

The development of the track app will in turn change Facebook users’ choice to post location updates or keep them secret – a feature option already available.

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eBay CEO says web privacy clashes coming

Internet companies will soon have to find a way to protect user privacy to avert a ‘clash’ which could lead to increased government regulation, eBay chief executive John Donahoe says.

‘There’s going to be, at some point in the next few years, a trigger point,’ Donahoe told a New York breakfast meeting organised by The Wall Street Journal, noting the need for ‘a national dialogue about what is acceptable or not’.

Donahoe said it would be best for the industry to take ‘proactive’ steps to avoid a backlash.

‘It’s going to be necessary for us to have some national dialogue on privacy, so we don’t have a clash point and they over regulate and slow down innovation,’ he said.

He said eBay’s business model does not revolve around monetising data but that this has become a greater concern for web companies.

‘We won’t share your information with anyone else, but I think there are huge opportunities to use data, to customise the experience, to personalise the experience, and if you choose to share with others, it can make the experience even better,’ he added.

Donahoe said users of eBay should know that ‘there’s no absolute guarantee of privacy’ for illegal activity and that ‘we can’t stop a court order’.

‘We comply with the laws of the lands we operate in and we don’t operate in lands where we wouldn’t feel good about the laws,’ he added.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Us Regulator Drops Charges Against Google Monopoly

After a 20-month probe, US regulators have announced they will not charge Google over its internet search practices.

Rivals accused the internet giant of producing biased search results and abusing its market dominance to thwart competitors.

The Federal Trade Commission said it lacked a legal basis to bring a monopoly abuse case against the company, but found that Google had misused its broad patents on mobile phone technology.

In an attempt to protect competition for US consumers, the Commission ordered Google to make that mobile phone technology available to its rivals.

In a voluntary settlement, Google also agreed to change its "most troubling" search and advertising practices.

These changes included agreeing to no longer "scrape" competitors’ content to make it look like it came from Google and using contractual restrictions to stop small businesses from advertising with rival search engines.

Source: ABC News, AFP

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13 Social Stats to Take to Heart in 2013

The New Year is almost upon us and with it brings time for word of mouth practitioners to reflect on what new opportunities lie ahead. The world of digital and social has arguably opened more doors for marketers and communicators than any other media in recent history. This Thursday we’ll be joining WOMMA for a Twitter#WOMMAchat talking about 2012 trends, favorite moments and “must-know” statsto keep top of mind going into the new year.

We hope you’ll join us at 11am CST for a lively discussion, but in the meantime, there are some key stats and trends worth reading that speak to or highlight strategic opportunities for social brands. They range from consumer preferences to brand activity, but each illuminate different proof points on the power of social. And their implications can help anyone looking to wrap up 2013 strategic planning.

The rise of social as an interactive avenue between brands and consumers.
Social customers are active and increasingly willing and ready to socially interact with brands. From Likes and Retweets to Shares and Clicks to websites, brands are finding social customers can be highly engaged when brand activity resonates with them. Because of this, brands are expanding internal resources to better interact.

1.  By EOY more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies will “actively engage” customers with Facebook marketing – up 20 percent from 4th Q 2011 (Source: Gartner).

2.  Brands are receiving 1,985,000 interactions across all social channels each quarter (Source: Spredfast Social Engagement Index Report)

3.   On average, brands are engaging at least 29 employees internally to activate their social presence(s) (Source: Spredfast Social Engagement Index Report).

4.  17 percent of customers have used social in past year to get customer service response (American Express 2012 customer barometer).

5.  Page views in social are 94 percent higher when they contain an image or visual element (Source: Brafton).

Social has the ability to convert.
Brands are increasingly viewing social as not only an avenue for marketing and word of mouth, but more data is showing that social can and does increase Sales.

6.  34 percent of marketers have generated leads using Twitter (source: Digital Buzz Blog)

7.  Pinterest referrals spend 70 percent more money than visitors referred from non-social channels (source: Search Engine Journal).

8. LinkedIn was found to be 277 percent more effective at lead generation than any other social network (Source: Hubspot).

Social = Word of Mouth.
Organic sharing, recommendations, and user activity is spurring natural word of mouth for brands across social networks.

9. 69 percent of follows on Twitter are suggested by friends (source: Web Analytics World).

10. During SXSW this year, the brands sponsoring the event potentially reached 33,154,224 people via Twitter. (Source:MediaPost & Adrants)

Embracing preferences of social consumers.
Data around social users is helping brands to learn and validate the hyper-active nature of their target audiences across social channels.

11.  23 percent of Facebook’s users check their account 5 or more times daily (source: Socialnomics).

12.  80 percent of social media users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook (source:Business2Community).

13.  38 percent of consumers report that discounts and money saving vouchers are most important to them when following a brand in social, with information about new Products and Sales being a close second at 36% (Pitney Bowes study).

Story by Jordan Viator, Story source: www.socialmediatoday.com

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Microsoft Windows Issue with My Computer Scam

I’ve just got off the phone with an Indian speaking call centre claiming to be the Technical Department of Windows, who were informing me that we had an issue with our version of windows and it needed to be fixed. I thought this very interesting, particularly that our computers here in the office were sending error log reports back to Microsoft and they were being kind enough to ring me to fix it for me.

For the record the name of the person calling was initially Jessica from South Sydney and left the following phone number, 1973 200 6677, after this call we hung up and they then rang back, this time with a male caller .

Well first up, this is a total scam, please do not fall for this type of call, Microsoft do not call you to advise of a problem, nor is there any problem with our operating system. The caller could not tell me when I asked what version of windows we running, he did however, get quite annoyed with me for being so up front and actually asking him what version of Windows our computers were using.

Do not under any circumstances give them any information about your computer or operating system, do not provide any details of your computer, and do not go to any web site link they give you nor type in any so called “job Code” or any other code.

Please do not even entertain these scammers, they are not genuine and are out to cause you trouble.

Just hang up straight away. Be Warned.

More information on this can be found on this link

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Fake product reviews and sites next in line for ACCC crackdown

One area of Internet marketing we constantly get asked about by our clients is negative reviews of their products on review forum sites. As these sites tend to have a high organic  search result in Google they often rank higher or just below the company themselves, and if the review is negative and there are a few of them from disgruntled customers, it can affect not only the On Line reputation of the company but also sales.

We are often asked to remove these from the search results, and of course that is easier said than done. The best form of defence is not to have the bad reviews there in the first place, but lets ask a question, how many of them are actually genuine reviews?

Are you asked for a proof of purchase before your review is accepted? do you check the email addresses or user names of the people writing the review?

I know of one client where the negative reviews, which resulted in a poor star rank, was actually caused by a competitor leaving bad reviews under assumed names, this is really a form of commercial sabotage.

So where is the policing of these reviews? in the more traditional media, an editor will first audit the review and then decide on wether to publish. That process is given lip service with the forum sites, and as long as you don’t defame the company your review seems to be freely published.

I’ve never been contacted by any review site either before or after a review has been published, to ascertain the genuineness of my review, even to find out if I’d ever actually used the service or product, the assumption is I have.

As a frequent traveller, I will often look at customer reviews of hotels or resorts to make decisions on wether I’ll use them for accommodation or travel, and often have changed my selection based on other peoples reviews. But how do you really know they’ve actually been there?

Of recent times, I’ve become very suspicious of reviews and now research more thoroughly before making my choice.

It’s about time that the ACCC is now looking into this, it has the ability to impact on small business in a big way, it’s hard enough for small business to compete for clients in the current economy, and the last thing they need is this impacting on their business. 

If you are interested in the actual story, I’ve included it below for you to read:           

“Businesses have been put on notice after the competition watchdog warned it will be cracking down on fake product reviews and online voucher rip-offs in the new year.

Following a spate of complaints about businesses taking advantage of customers or other companies, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has changed its focus.

While it will continue to scrutinise door-to-door selling – which led to fines of $1 million this year – a number of other issues have come to the fore.

According to ACCC chairman Rod Sims, fake online reviews have emerged as an issue as reviews become increasingly popular among consumers.

"Companies [are] either making [them] up themselves or getting other people to make up positive reviews," Sims told News.com.au.

"Sometimes Blind Freddy can see what’s going on, but sometimes they are more subtle."

The ACCC will also investigate group buying – which attracts around 140 complaints every month – and will continue to scrutinise companies that dodge consumer guarantees.

It will also maintain its special carbon tax taskforce, although Sims admitted carbon tax complaints "have slowed to four or five a day".

The announcement comes one week after the ACCC released a free app to provide consumers with instant advice while they are out shopping.

According to ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard, the app will "help to take the worry out of Christmas shopping".

"Simple disputes over returns, refunds or replacements often leave shoppers confused about their rights," Rickard said in a statement.

"The app answers commonly asked questions about refunds, returns, warranties, and lay-bys, such as ‘What do I do if a product is faulty?’ and ‘What happens if I don’t have a receipt?’.

"The app will allow consumers to store photographs of receipts as proof of purchase on their smartphone or tablet at the point of sale.

"Keeping your proof of purchase and checking the store’s returns policy if you have simply changed your mind can be important."

Rickard pointed out the Australian Consumer Law provides stronger protections against faulty products, often allowing for repairs, replacements or refunds outside of a manufacturer’s or retailer’s warranty period.

"If products don’t work as promised or don’t work at all, you have rights as a consumer regardless of whether you bought it online, in a shop, full price or on sale," she said.

"The app explains the steps to take when enforcing these consumer rights."

The app also has a "My items" feature, which allows consumers to set reminders for when lay-bys are due, and the expiry date for warranties and gift vouchers.

It also explains common labelling terms like "Made in Australia".”

This article first appeared on StartupSmart.

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Ransomware – How to Avoid Your Computer Being Infected

Ransomware or in other words having your computer hacked and held to ransom by cybercriminals is on the rise, especially if you are in a small business and your computer security protocols are not up to date or non existent. We’ve seen a number of businesses targeted over the last few months as it is an easy and effective way of getting your hard earned cash, and it can be done from thousands of miles away, even in another continent.

What is Ransomware? According to Symantec, it’s a type of malware best described as an online extortion racket. Malware locks or disables your PC in some way and then demands payment in the form of a “fine” to render your PC usable again. Like most scams, the ransomware message claims to come from a legitimate organization, such as the government or a public corporation, to try to convince victims that they did something wrong to incur the fine.

But paying the fine does nothing since the initial malware remains on the PC and must still be manually removed.

This scam has risen in popularity over the past several years, but 2012 witnessed an increase in both the number and variety of ransomware campaigns, Symantec said in its report. That growth is due largely to a upsurge in the number of worldwide criminal gangs using this scheme to make a buck.

I’ve personally had a number of emails sent to me that are obvious fishing emails, including emails from brands such as Qantas, Jetstar and Facebook and even one from Microsoft. They are not genuine of course, but attempts to get me to click on a link in the body of the email or download an attachment. They look very real and convincing, and it is only when you stop and think about the content, that you realise it is an attempt to hack into your computer network.

The virus can be loaded onto your computer or network from several areas, emails are one, surfing the web and visiting sites that contain malware is another, quite often you will get to these sites from social media or shopping networks that you are browsing, also web sites that indicate your computer or software programs such as Adobe flash player or PDF Viewer are out of date, and offering links to download the current version are all scams to get you to download the malware. The other way this virus gets into your system is via file sharing sites, the Trojan is hidden in the files and when downloaded and installed your system is compromised.

One of the weaknesses in ransomware though, is once you know what to look for it’s fairly easy to spot and avoid.  Briefing all staff that operate your computers or networks on what to look for is a good start, and I’ve compiled a list below that will help protect your computer and network from being infected, after all, prevention is better than cure, and there are some simple rules to follow that will stop these cyber crims in there tracks.

1. Make sure you install and keep updated the latest in anti virus and an anti malware software. Brands such a Norton, Kaspersky and McAfee are all excellent anti virus tools. I use Norton on my work computers and it constantly updates itself every 30 minutes, it always is up to date and has protected our network many times from intrusions and malware.

2. Make sure your computer is set to automatically download software updates from Microsoft. These contain security updates and malware removal tools. If your computer is not set to download and install these make sure you set it after reading this article.

3. Back up your computer every night and create restore points so that your computer can be reset to a time prior to being infected. Also where possible store the back up in a different location so that it remains unaffected.

4. Avoid downloading or using file sharing sites, they are breeding grounds for all sorts of computer virus’s.

5. Never download or click on an attachment in an email. Even if you know and trust the sender, make sure the attachment is clean by scanning it first with your virus software. Some cyber criminals will hijack contact address books and send phishing emails to all addresses in that data base. So beware.

6. Be very careful about emails you receive  from Facebook and other social network sites requesting friend requests and offering special deals. These notifications can look genuine, so check them out thoroughly. Do not have a policy of clicking every link you get from these sites. Always check and recheck. If it looks suspicious, delete it immediately.

7. Use safe browsing techniques when searching on the web. Never click on a download link from a site that tells you your software is out of date or computer is at risk. Only download new versions from the developers sites. 

8. Avoid clicking on banners or links on web sites that you are not familiar with.

If you feel your computer may have been compromised, there are several anti MalWare programs you can use to check your system, programs such as Norton Power Eraser or Microsoft Security Essentials. They will tell you wether your computer has been infected and instructions on how to remove the infection.

Of course if your computer is locked and you cannot access it, you need to contact a computer specialist who will advise you on wether the ransomware can be removed and what steps you’ll need to take. That’s for another article.

Don’t make paying the ransom your first step!!!

Remember prevention is better than a cure.

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Facebook Pages: Usage Patterns

Facebook Pages (popularly known as ‘Fan Pages’) are a starting point for businesses wanting to connect to millions of potential and existing customers on Facebook. A Page allows brands to disseminate marketing and service information fast and lets customers interact directly with stake holders.

Pages are also an important component of Facebook’s own revenue model[i] as 89% of Facebook’s total revenues come from brands advertising on the platform and Facebook attracts brands through Pages.

The past six months have been significant for Facebook Page owners. In the run up to its IPO and subsequently too, Facebook released a host of features such as the Timeline view, Offers, post scheduling and targeting, post-level promotions, group promotions, redesigned ad network, FB exchange etc to make Pages more attractive to businesses. The six month period has also seen a conscious effort by Facebook, and the social media industry in general, to raise awareness about Pages as potent social marketing properties.

Pages attract business users to Facebook and lead the social network’s efforts to earn advertising revenues. However, this study of 5.7 million Facebook Pages shows that business users are still struggling to adapt to Facebook as an engagement opportunity.

The study updates the findings of a similar research conducted by Recommend.ly in March 2012.

The current study discovered low levels of active Pages, fall in average number of posts and a huge drop in engagement rates since March. Page owners clearly need to do more to make Facebook work for them.
The study also found that the share of visual content on Pages has increased after the introduction of Timeline view for Pages. Also, it is found that Pages selecting specific category names such as ‘Spa’ or ‘Restaurant’ tend to be more focused and get better engagement from fans, compared to Pages choosing generic sounding category names such as ‘Local Business’.

Key Findings

• About 2 out 3 Facebook Pages are inactive in some way:
  • 63.9 per cent Pages have no cover photo
  • 70.1 per cent Pages make 0 posts a month
  • 83.4 per cent Pages never participated in conversations
  • 50 per cent Pages have less than 300 fans

• Pages are found to be making lesser posts in October 2012 compared to March 2012. Average number of Page posts fell by 19 per cent since March.

• Engagement Rates of Page posts across categories have fallen since March by an average of 40 per cent

• 50-60 per cent of content on Pages is now visual content (photos or videos) compared to just 15-20 per cent in March

To read the full report please click here http://blog.recommend.ly/facebook-pages-usage-patterns/

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Copy and Paste Drives Sharing

Copied content indicates what really engages—and what drives users off-site

Social sharing buttons may be sexier, but according to research from user engagement platform Tynt, copy and paste is the sharing method of choice 82% of the time.

The service, which offers a way for content publishers to track sharing behavior through embedded code that indicates referrals and includes site URLs when content is pasted elsewhere, reported that in October 2012, 2% of all page views across its network involved a copy and paste.

Just over half of the content copied was then shared. This could be in an email, an instant message or another social channel. In addition, about one-quarter of copy-and-pastes resulted in a search—that is, a word or phrase from the content being viewed was copied into a search bar to look for more information on the topic.

For users, copying and pasting to share content holds obvious appeal: It’s almost frictionless, and it allows the sharer to choose exactly what to pass on to a friend or social network.

“You probably have a lot of friends sharing the same article,” Tynt general manager Greg Levitt said. “But when you can specifically call out a personalized, relevant aspect, it makes the story your own.”

On the search side of the equation, copy-and-paste analytics give publishers information about what content is actually driving users away from their sites.

Tynt also reported that while the vast majority of copied-and-pasted content is text, 12% of copied content was images.

Publishers know based on other types of sharing which pages are driving social engagement—but not necessarily why. When they can dig into the specific phrases and passages of text that readers want to pass on, it gives them a deeper window into what content users are really engaging with.

Story Source: www.emarketer.com

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The Top 10 tech trends for 2012

(CNN) — From the continuing rise of tablet devices to the daily-deals craze and the return of the Internet IPO, 2011 has been a transformative year for technology.

The pace of change has become blisteringly fast, with traditional industries — bookstores, video-rental chains, newspapers — crumbling more quickly than we could have imagined.

Predicting what will happen in 2012, therefore, is a shot in the dark: A year is virtually a lifetime in the digital era. And yet we can at least make a guess at what will happen in the early part of next year simply by looking at the trends that are shaping the latter half of this year.

Here’s my best estimate of some of the innovation we’ll see in 2012:

Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable.com.

1. Touch computing

New input methods will be the dominant trend of 2012. Tablet computers such as the iPad might seem like a nice alternative to desktop and laptop computers, but I believe they’re more than that: They’re replacements. Just as the command line (remember that?) gave way to graphical user interfaces, so the mouse will be superseded by touchscreens.

The signs are obvious: Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion, the latest desktop operating systems, borrow heavy from their mobile counterparts. These new interfaces essentially impose a touchscreen-inspired interface over the traditional desktop environment.

Over time, this half-step will become a whole one, and mobile operating systems will dominate. The transition won’t be complete by the end of 2012, but we’ll be much further down the path, and using computer mice much less often.

2. Social gestures

In the social media realm, social gestures appear to be the leading trend of 2012. Launched by Facebook in September, this so-called "frictionless sharing" functionality removes the need to click a button to share media with your friends. Instead, everything you listen to, read or watch is automatically posted to your profile once you approve the relevant app.

If you’ve seen apps such as Spotify or Social Reader in your Facebook news feed, you’re already aware of these features.

The trend makes sense for social networks: With 800 million people already on Facebook, its growth is bound to slow. But if sharing becomes automatic, the volume of content on Facebook will grow at an accelerated pace. There’s a big problem, however: Users may be "creeped out" by all this automated sharing of their Web activity and grow suspicious of the apps using it.

3. NFC and mobile payments

Google Wallet, Google’s mobile-payment system, may become more widespread in 2012.

Next year is likely to be the year when mobile payments blossom. While we’ve seen a great deal of innovation in mobile payments technology this year — including the success of Square’s iPhone dongle, allowing anyone to accept credit card payments — 2012 is the year of NFC.

What’s that, you ask? Near Field Communication essentially lets you replace your credit cards with your phone: Wave an NFC-enabled phone near the credit card reader in a store (or taxi cab), and the money is deducted from your account.

By 2013, 1 in 5 cellphones are expected to be NFC-equipped. Early contenders include Google Wallet, Visa Wallet, Serve (by American Express) and ISIS.

4. Beyond the iPad

If touch computing is the future, then the iPad is surely king. And yet the iPad came up against serious competition in the latter part of 2011: As I wrote previously, I expect the new Amazon Kindle Fire to outsell the iPad in 2012. Why? Simply put, the iPad costs $499 while the Fire costs $199.

Amazon’s advantages don’t stop at the price point, however: The company owns an entire content store of movies, e-books, TV shows and other media. With tablet devices, the hardware is somewhat important but the content available for the device is absolutely critical: With plenty of media available for the Fire right away, it’s an appealing proposition.

Why does one device constitute an entire trend? Well, as a true competitor to the iPad emerges, content producers, distributors and even app developers may have an entirely new platform on which to push their wares. (And yes, the Kindle Fire does indeed run Google’s Android operating system, but Amazon’s version is so unlike other Android tablets that neither users nor app developers will perceive it as "yet another Android device" — it’s a whole new platform.)

5. TV Everywhere

So you thought you’d be able to watch all your favorite shows online and get rid of your cable subscription for good? Not so fast!

The cable companies have a cunning plan: They’ll let you watch live TV, plus on-demand movies and TV shows, on your connected devices if you keep your cable subscription. Dish Network, Time Warner and Comcast are among those offering the service.

TV Everywhere has been buzzed about since 2010, of course, and could be a dud — but the rise of tablet devices would seem to create increased demand for a "TV in your hands."

6. Voice control

Here’s another trend that’s got a moderate chance of taking off in 2012: Voice control.

Siri, the voice-control feature in the iPhone 4S, may spread to other devices.

The novelty of Siri on the iPhone 4S — which allows you to send texts, create reminders, search the Web and much more using just your voice — may be the start of a new trend in voice controlled devices.

Surely voice control has been around for years? Yes, but it wasn’t very accurate.

Siri and its ilk define a new era in which we talk, and our devices understand — often on the first attempt. Other device makers will likely follow suit. What’s more, Apple may use voice control to replace the TV remote.

7. Spatial gestures

Other input methods are gaining traction too: Microsoft’s Kinect, for instance, has given rise to interfaces that use spatial gestures. Just like in "Minority Report," your devices can be controlled simply by waving your hands in the air.

Thanks to the many innovators who have hacked Kinect to work with other platforms, we may see more devices using this input method next year.

8. Second-screen experiences

"Second-screen experiences" is a buzz-phase among TV and movie execs these days. It refers to apps (mainly on the iPad) that listen to the audio output of your TV and display content related to the show or movie you’re watching. The chances are that you already use your tablet computer or phone while watching TV, so there’s ample opportunity to make the viewing experience a more interactive one.

Disney already has second-screen apps for movies such as "The Lion King" and "Bambi," while multiple TV networks have similar offerings: We can expect many, many more to be released in 2012.

9. Flexible screens

Personally, I just can’t wait for flexible screens: These awesome new bendable interfaces will let you zoom in, zoom out and scroll around a page simply by twisting your phone or tablet.

Nokia and Samsung have both hinted they may release phones with bendable displays in 2012. The really exciting stuff, however — like paper-thin devices that roll up to fit in your pocket — is still years away.

10. HTML5

Can I squeeze in one more trend? It’s HTML5 — the fifth iteration of the HTML standard — and it lets developers create richer, more interactive applications than ever.

Why does this matter? As developers tire of building applications for every operating system out there — from Android to iOS to Windows Phone and beyond — HTML5 offers the opportunity to build an app once and have it work everywhere.

The rise of HTML5 is bound to be accelerated by a recent revelation: Adobe is killing off Flash for mobile devices, meaning one of the primary methods of serving videos and rich applications on mobile phones is about to disappear. HTML5 will fill that gap. For us as consumers, that means richer applications and experiences on all our devices.

In short, 2012 is all about new ways to interact with our devices through touch and voice control, new lightweight ways to share content, a revolution in mobile payments and a plethora of rich Web applications — not to mention the hundreds of new innovations that we’ve yet to dream up. I can’t wait.

Story by By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN, story source: www.cnn.com

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Consumers, Marketers Disagree on Effective Ads

Internet users think TV ads are more effective than online placements

Even while marketers have taken strongly to digital advertising, they haven’t abandoned traditional media by any means—TV still takes the largest share of ad dollars in the US, and its percentage of the total isn’t slipping. But with the measurability inherent in online ads, confidence in their efficacy is generally high.

In an October Adobe survey of marketers and consumers, US marketers even rated online ads better than TV ads—though just barely, with 51% saying that they were more effective. But consumers appeared stuck in the past, with about two-thirds claiming TV commercials were more effective.

Consumers also appear to like seeing ads in traditional media better than on newer digital devices. Asked about their preferred venue for ads, 45% said they liked seeing them in their favorite print magazine and 23% on their favorite TV show, compared to just 11% who chose favorite websites, 3% who chose social media and 2% who liked to see ads in digital magazines.

Marketers and the consumers they are trying to reach disagreed on the effectiveness of a wide variety of ad types, according to the survey. Though both groups thought the best ads were those created by professional marketers, nearly half of marketers said this, compared with just 36% of internet users. There was large disagreement about the effectiveness of paid search ads (touted by marketers, played down by web users) and outdoor advertising (the reverse). Internet users were also much more likely to say there were no good or effective ads—positions which marketers were extremely unlikely to hold, for obvious reasons.

So what did consumers like? Nearly three-quarters thought ads should “tell a unique story, not just try to sell,” while about two-thirds said videos and user product reviews were good and that in-store experiences were more important than online ones.

The message for marketers may appear mixed, but it’s not exactly news that consumers don’t love to see advertising—or that they consider information from people they trust better than a hard sell.

Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009480&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4#OcuGwUXYp07WpPqo.99

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Microsoft ditching MSN chat for Skype

Microsoft has announced that its instant message chat tool is to be ‘retired’ in favour of Skype’s messaging service.

The software giant, which bought Skype for $8.5bn (5.3bn) in May 2011, said Windows Live Messenger (WLM) would be turned off by March 2013, although it would remain available in China.

The move comes as Microsoft re-focuses its efforts on the software communications developer.

WLM, originally called MSN Messenger, was launched in 1999. Since then, photo messaging, video calls and games have been added to the basic text messaging package.

In a post on his Skype blog, Tony Bates, president of the Skype Division at Microsoft, wrote: ‘Skype and Messenger are coming together. We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).’

According to Tech Crunch, user numbers have been dwindling over the years.

In 2010, it had 300 million users, falling to 100 million currently, the website reported Microsoft as confirming. Meanwhile, Skype has reached 280 million users, according to Microsoft’s latest earnings report.

News of the changes was confirmed by Skype on Twitter, saying: ‘Messenger and Skype are coming together as one. Update to Skype and your Messenger contacts will be there.’

Mr Bates wrote in his blog: ‘Millions of Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype. By updating to Skype, Messenger users can instant message and video call their Messenger friends.

‘This effort started with the release of Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows a few weeks ago, which allows you to sign into Skype using a Microsoft account. Now Messenger users just need to update to the latest version of Skype, sign in using a Microsoft account, and their Messenger contacts will be there.’

The statement promised Messenger users who update to Skype the following features:

:: Broader device support for all platforms, including iPad and Android tablets.

:: Instant messaging, video calling, and calling landlines and mobiles all in one place.

:: Sharing screens.

:: Video calling on mobile phones.

:: Video calling with Facebook friends.

:: Group video calling.

Mr Bates added the changeover would be carried out over the next few months, and offered ‘information and help along the way’.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Friend your boss at your peril

Thousands of young Australians might have to update their Facebook status from hired to fired, sooner than they’d like.

A survey’s found almost one-third of workers aged between 18 and 25 are friends with their boss on social media, but almost 60 per cent admit they’ve never cleared potentially career-damaging content from their profiles.

Anti-virus company, AVG, says 13 per cent of working Gen Y-ers in Australia admit to posting abusive content about their boss or company after a bad day at work.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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US Internet Ad Revenues Rise to Historic $17 Billion in First Half 2012, Up 14% Over Half-Year 2011

Mobile Increases Almost Two-Fold Year-Over-Year

In the first half of 2012, internet advertising revenues climbed to an all-time high of $17 billion, representing a 14 percent increase year-over-year, according to IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC US. This performance is compared to the landmark $14.9 billion reported for the first six months of 2011.

Also marking a 14 percent year-over-year increase, second quarter internet ad revenues for this year hit $8.7 billion, up from $7.7 billion during the same time period in 2011.

Highlights of the report include:

• Mobile generated significant growth – almost doubling year-over-year – up 95 percent to $1.2 billion in half-year 2012 from $636 million in the comparable 2011 period
• Digital video, a component of display-related advertising, saw an increase of 18 percent year-over-year, bringing in a little over $1 billion in revenue in the first two quarters of 2012 compared to nearly $900 million in the first six months of 2011
• Search revenues in the first half of the year totaled $8.1 billion, up 19 percent from nearly $6.8 billion during the same timeframe in 2011
• Display-related advertising revenues in the first half of the year totaled almost $5.6 billion, accounting for 33 percent of 2012 half-year revenues, up 4 percent from $5.3 billion in the first half of 2011
• Retail advertisers constitute the largest category of internet ad spending for the first half of this year, claiming 20 percent of the total revenues at $3.4 billion, while Automotive brought in $2.2 billion for first-half 2012, marking an uptick to 13 percent versus 11 percent of category spend reported for half-year 2011 at $1.7 billion

“This report establishes that marketers increasingly embrace mobile and digital video, as well as the entire panoply of interactive platforms, to reach consumers in innovative and creative ways," said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “These half-year figures come on the heels of a study from Harvard Business School researchers that points to the ad-supported internet ecosystem as a critical driver of the U.S. economy. Clearly, the digital marketing industry is on a positive trajectory that will propel the entire American business landscape forward.”

“The tremendous growth of mobile advertising revenue over the past year is an indication of the importance of location to advertisers and mobility to consumers,” said David Silverman, a partner at PwC US. “Bringing the power of the internet to mobile devices has opened up a world of possibilities to both consumers and marketers.”

“Solid double-digit growth in a stagnating economy is a significant accomplishment,” said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement, IAB. “There is evidence that CPMs are maintaining, and even increasing, further substantiating the vitality of the internet ad market.”

Story source: www.iab.net

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Most Active Tweeters Also Boast Most Followers

It seems logical, yes. But a new study from Beevolve released in October finds a strong correlation between a Twitter user’s tweet volume and follower count. According to the global study of 36 million Twitter user profiles, users with between 100,001 and 1 million followers boasted the highest average number of tweets, at almost 15,300. The group with the next-largest follower base (10,001 – 100,000) averaged almost 13,000 tweets, while those with the smallest follower count (0-50) averaged 66 tweets.

Of course, correlation does not equal causation, and this is not to suggest that increased tweeting volume necessarily leads to more followers (the Beevolve analysis doesn’t factor in frequency, for example). Still, similar correlations have been found before: in February, a HubSpot analysis showed that increased frequency of blogging correlates with increased customer acquisition.

1 in 4 Twitter Account Holders Do Not Tweet

Some Twitter users might be bringing down the tweet volume average. According to the Beevolve study, 1 in 4 Twitter users are only interested in consuming content, having never actually tweeted anything themselves. [Tweet this]

Overall, women appear to be more active than men, with an average of 610 tweets by female account holders, compared to the 567 average for men.

In terms of follower count, the study finds that more than 4 in 5 account holders have up to 50 followers. In fact, more Twitter users have no followers than have more than 500 followers (6% vs. 3.4%). Those with a large follower count appear to skew the average, though, with the average user having 208 followers.

There is a similar distribution for the number of Twitter users followed, too. Almost three-quarters follow a maximum of 50 users. Twitter users are more likely to follow upwards of 500 users than to follow none at all, though (3.7% vs. 1%).

Other Findings:

• The study finds that on a global basis, 53% of Twitter users are female. Recent analysis from Pingdom revealed more of a female skew within the US, with women accounting for 60% of the US Twitter user base.
• In terms of self-disclosed age distribution, the Beevolve study shows that almost three-quarters of Twitter users around the world say they’re 15-25 years old. This appears to be a huge number – in the US, Pingdom found the average age of a Twitter user to be about 37. The Beevolve results might be skewed by the finding that only 0.45% of Twitter users disclose their age.
• 1 in 2 Twitter users are from the US. The UK sports the next-highest share of users, at 17%.

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The business of buying social

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the social juggernaut of our time decided to move into eCommerce.

Facebook said earlier this week it would partner up with some retailers, including Victoria’s Secret and Fab.com, to start its online commerce program. Basically, people can press the “want” button on Facebook, share that information with their friends, and then actually buy the products after being directed to the retailer’s website.

It’s no big revelation. Earlier this year a developer unveiled a piece of code suggesting Facebook would be doing exactly this, and analysts have seen it coming from a mile away.

(Also, as an aside, it takes more than a few hints from Pinterest, which should be a nice validation for the “other” social network.)

Of course, the move doesn’t just represent an attempt on Facebook’s part to boost its revenue and arrest a falling share price. It also signals a change in how businesses should think about social commerce.

Last week, Forrester released some research showing only 1% of online sales could be attributed to social media.

That’s a very low number. Now, it excludes small business, which would probably see a higher amount of sales, and it also excluded some important variables. But 1% is still a very low number.

Local expert Sam Yip, from research house Telsyte, made a point that contradicted the survey – social networking leads to sales, but not necessarily in a direct way. It builds brand awareness that eventually feeds its way through to your bottom line.

It’s an excellent point, but the main thought here is that social networking doesn’t necessarily convert sales in a direct way.

Facebook’s decision may change that. If you can create a system where people buy products through social networking, then it will lead to more sales, depending on your strategy.

Right now, Facebook’s program is restricted to a few retailers, and it won’t be opening up to small business any time soon, but it makes a key point – managing your ROI on social media is something that will only become more important, not less.

How you do that is up to you, but if you’ve built a prominent social media presence, then you need to start experimenting with sales. Using social media to refer certain products, or offer discounts, isn’t a bad idea if you can determine just how much traffic you’re getting through your Facebook or Twitter presence.

Even asking a question like, “How did you find this product?” at the end of a transaction can give you some key insight.

Facebook’s announcement doesn’t mean much for SMEs – at least, not right now. But it does show that social commerce is going to transform business and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a head-start.

You can follow Patrick Stafford on Twitter @pdstafford. Story by Patrick Stafford, story source: www.smartcompany.com.au

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Vest lets Facebook users hug from afar

A vest developed in Massachusetts Institute of Technology lets Facebook users hug one another no matter how far apart they are.

A Like-A-Hug vest on display on Friday at the website of designer Melissa Kit Chow was touted as "wearable social media" that inflates to embrace wearers whenever Facebook friends "Like" items they post at the social network.

Chow worked with Andy Payne and Phil Seaton in the MIT Media Lab to create the puffy black vests, according to her website.

Like-A-Hug lets hugs "be given via Facebook, bringing us closer together despite physical distance", Chow said in a post describing the vest.

And, provided the sender is also wearing Like-A-Hug, a recipient can return a hug by squeezing their own vest to deflate it.

Chow described herself as a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design who subtly skews everyday interactions with the environment for "a reawakening of a sensorial spacial experience".

Story Source: www.ninemsn.com.au

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PM’s Facebook discussion turns nasty

A Facebook QA with Prime Minister Julia Gillard has attracted sexist and hateful comments, with her office having to censor the comments.

Ms Gillard took to the social networking site on Monday to talk about her education policies.

But the discourse turned ugly, with one man calling the prime minister a slut.

Another man asked how her father was. John Gillard died last month.

‘Get my dinner ready’ posted another man, while one asked if her ‘pubes’ were as ‘radiant, shiny and glorious’ as his own.

A number of other Facebook users labelled her the worst prime minister and criticised her voice, with one saying her voice and demeanour were like nails on a blackboard.

Others jumped to Ms Gillard’s defence, one posting that ‘nothing any of these sexest (sic), Hateful, disrespectful, unaustralian idiots can get to you!’

‘You are an inspiration to Australians and the world,’ said another.

And another: ‘Keep up the great work running the nation Julia! You have quite rightly earned the respect you deserve.’

Ms Gillard has an official Facebook fan page, which is maintained by her office.

A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said the site was moderated to remove offensive comments and, like all Facebook sites, comments could only be removed after they had been posted.

‘A handful of comments after the session were offensive and have been removed,’ the spokeswoman said in a statement.

The question and answer session was the first of its kind by a senior politician in Australia.

While in Tasmania last week, Ms Gillard took part in a live question and answer session for a news website, with no levelling of offensive remarks.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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iPad mini launch rumoured for October

The iPad mini may be on sale in November – well in time for Christmas – if the rumours turn out to be true.

The latest gossip surrounding Apple’s hotly anticipated device suggests the launch event will take place on October 17 with the tablet expected to hit the shops two weeks later.

Apple has not confirmed or denied the rumour, but it never reveals information about its products before time.

Nevertheless, the rumours surrounding the iPhone 5 turned out to be largely correct, and it may prove to be the same for the new tablet as well.

According to Forbes, the date of the launch – and the existence of the device – was confirmed by a "major Apple investor" who said he had heard the news from multiple sources.

The expected smaller, cheaper version of the iPad is often referred to as the iPad mini or iPad air, and is usually described as having a 7.85" screen.

The Forbes source said invitations to the launch would be going out on October 10.

Japanese fan site Macatakara suggested the new device would be given a housing made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic.

It said the project was being supervised by Kevin Kenney, Apple’s senior composites engineer, who used to build carbon fibre bicycles for US firm Kestrel.

The iPad mini looks set to go head-to-head with the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7, the first tablet in the Google Nexus series.

British tech site Trusted Reviews said some sources were quoting a price of around 200 – half the price of the entry-level iPad.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, which has a 7" screen, retails for 159 and has dual Wi-Fi.

The iPad mini, in contrast, is predicted to offer 3G as well.

Story Source: www.bigpond.com

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Mobile Ads: Here’s What Works and What Doesn’t

In 2010, Apple Inc. AAPL +0.29% co-founder Steve Jobs proclaimed, "Mobile advertising really sucks." Now, however, the rule book for what works in mobile advertising is slowly being written.

Some of the ingredients to success include ads that play on the unique properties of mobile gadgets, including location, or ads disguised as a game, coupon or information that consumers want, say ad executives and industry observers.

What doesn’t work? The same old Web ads plopped into a smartphone.

Mobile advertising has been touted as the next big thing since Apple’s iPhone debuted in 2007. Yet the promise remained unfulfilled because marketing companies have to navigate consumers’ desires for privacy with the enticements mobile devices offer, such as fresh information about users’ location and spending habits.

Accidental clicks on mobile ads, difficulties buying ads in big quantities, and fuzzy metrics also have kept a lid on mobile ad spending, marketers said.

This year, research firm eMarketer Inc. projects less than 2% of all U.S. marketing spending, or just $2.6 billion, to go toward mobile advertising. Meanwhile, consumers using smartphones and tablets now generate more than 10% of Internet traffic, according to data provider StatCounter Inc.

Story source: www.http://online.wsj.com

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Internet gaming labelled ‘addiction’

The Australian Psychological Society’s submission to a worldwide international manual has called for the inclusion of an addiction to internet gaming.

The inclusion of the new addiction, submitted as "internet-use disorder", has been characterised as any kind of withdrawal symptom – such as expression of distress, frustration, irritability – when sufferers are not allowed to access to technology.

The disorder is being observed in children and teenagers.

Demand from concerned parents has already led to a specialised clinic opening in Sydney’s CBD.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Facebook private message rumour is ‘false’, site says

A rumour that Facebook users’ private messages were appearing on public timelines is false, the firm has said.

Some users, mostly in France, reported that "private messages" sent between 2007-2009 were suddenly public.

However, Facebook told the BBC: "[The] messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages.

Separately, Facebook shares fell up to 11% after an influential journal said the stock is worth just $15.

On the messaging rumour, the social network said: "Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy."

Another source at the company told the BBC that engineers said there was "no way" the two areas of data could get mixed up.

Private material

The source said that "no mechanism" had ever been created that would allow a private message to be published onto a user’s wall or timeline.

Similar rumours surfaced and were investigated in 2011, the source said, but after "extensive investigation" they were proven to be untrue.

Despite Facebook’s statement, many users reported finding what they believed to be old private material.

"There are messages I’ve got on my wall that are most definitely private messages! From 2006 all the way up to 2012," wrote Poppy Dinsey, owner of fashion social network What I Wore Today.

"I’m 100% sure by content and from memory. And also some posts on my wall were clearly beginnings of (private) group [messages]."

Meanwhile, Facebook shares were under pressure after the US financial publication Barron’s said the stock is worth perhaps only $15 a share, well below the $38-a-share flotation price.

On Wall Street, the shares ended down 9.1% to $20.79, having fallen more than 11% earlier in the day.

Barron’s said: "Facebook’s 40% plunge from its initial public offering price of $38 in May has millions of investors asking a single question: Is the stock a buy?

"The short answer is ‘No.’ What are the shares worth? Perhaps only $15," Barron’s said.

Story source: www.bbc.com

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Online Fraud and Identity Theft

Online fraud is a type of cybercrime that uses email, web sites, chat rooms or message boards. There are many different types of online fraud, including phishing and pharming scams, which use forged e-mails and Web sites to trick recipients into giving out personal information such as credit card data, social security numbers, and passwords.

When armed with a little technical advice and common sense, you can prevent online fraud. Symantec recommends following these basic steps to avoid becoming a victim of online fraud:

Do’s

• Consider disabling file sharing on your computer.
• Be careful about opening attachments, especially from unknown senders.
• Familiarize yourself with a Web site’s privacy policy, especially if you are asked to provide confidential and/or personal data.
• Review bank and credit card statements regularly.
• Install and regularly update software firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware solutions. We recommend Norton Internet Security for comprehensive protection.
• Keep your Windows operating system and all your applications updated with the latest security patches.
• Create strong passwords and protect them carefully or consider using password protection software. Norton Internet Security encrypts passwords for secure storage, monitors them for unapproved usage, and notifies you when a Web site offers secure login capabilities.
• Lock your home mailbox.
• Shred bank and credit card statements and other financial data before disposal.
• Check your bank and credit card statements monthly.
• Strong passwords have eight characters or more, and use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.
• Take advantage of your right to a free annual credit report.
• If you think you’ve become a victim of ID theft or cybercrime, report it to the proper authorities immediately. Visit the following websites for more information:
  www.ic3.gov
  www.fraud.org
  www.cybercrime.gov

Don’ts

• Don’t provide personal data to anyone over the phone or in person (for a job or loan application, for example) unless you are certain of the other party’s trustworthiness.
• Don’t ever give out your personal information in response to an email, a web site you’ve come to through an external link, or a pop-up screen that appears on a real Web site. Open a new browser window and type the URL directly into the address bar to ensure the site is legitimate.
• Don’t keep financial data on laptops unless absolutely necessary; laptops are far more likely to be stolen than desktops.

Source: http://uk.norton.com/16-tips-for-avoiding-online-fraud-and-identity-theft/article

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QR Codes Most-Used Mobile Channel For Engaging Customers

1 in 2 company marketers say they are using QR codes to encourage their customers to interact with their brand, per results [download page] from an Econsultancy survey released in June 2012, in partnership with Responsys. QR code usage by these respondents surpasses other mobile channels, including creation of applications (35%), mobile commerce (29%) and mobile optimized emails (29%). Roughly one-quarter are using SMS marketing, while less than 1 in 5 are employing location-based marketing. Just 7% have turned to MMS and 2% to NFC.

Agencies show some different patterns with regards to their clients. 54% say their clients use apps to encourage their customers to interact with their brands, while 49% indicate their clients use QR codes. Agencies are more likely than companies to report client use of mobile optimized emails, SMS, and location-based marketing.

According to a Multichannel Merchant survey also released in June, merchants are integrating QR codes into their marketing strategies at a far greater rate this year than last. 47% of respondents this year said they are using QR codes, a dramatic increase from just 8% a year ago.

Search Most Popular Ad Type

Data from Econsultancy’s “Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2012? indicates that mobile search marketing is the most popular type of mobile advertising used by company marketers, at 35% of respondents, followed by push notifications (29%).

A plurality of agencies also say their clients are engaged in mobile search marketing (42%). Mobile display advertising (banner) is cited by 41% of agencies, compared to one-quarter of companies, with agencies also more likely to indicate their clients’ use of advertising on apps (37% vs. 22%), location-based targeting (30% vs. 22%), and mobile display advertising using video (19% vs. 12%).

Various studies have highlighted the growth of mobile’s share of search marketing budgets of late, with IgnitionOne most recently reporting mobile paid search spend growing 333% year-over-year in Q2, to reach 14% of total US paid search budgets.

Display Ad Engagement Sentiment Mixed

Respondents to the Econsultancy survey do not paint a clear picture when it comes to engagement rates with display advertising via smartphones as opposed to via PCs. Among company respondents, 33% feel that customers are more engaged with display advertising on smartphones than on PCs, while 40% say they are less engaged. Among agencies, 35% feel that engagement is higher on smartphones, compared to 33% who feel that it is lower.

Other Findings:

• 1 in 5 company marketers say they personalize mobile display advertising based on location, while 28% of agencies report their clients’ use of this targeting method.
• Roughly one-quarter of companies are using offline advertising to promote engagement on mobile devices, and a further 17% are planning to do so. Agencies indicate slightly higher levels of offline ad use by their clients: 35% say their clients are using offline advertising to promote engagement on mobiles, and an additional 20% say their clients are planning to do so. According to Google survey results released in February, two-thirds of US smartphone users who say they at least rarely notice advertising have used their device to run a search in response to an ad they have seen offline.

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Aussies face off on social networking

Facebook and other social networking sites are all about putting names to faces, but half of Australians do not want them to use facial recognition technology to get the job done.

A national Newspoll of more than 1200 people found 95 per cent of those surveyed believed it was acceptable for airport officials to use facial recognition software to identify passengers on police watchlists.

Some 92 per cent said police should be able to use the same technology to identify people from CCTV footage or videos shot by the public.

But only 38 per cent trusted Facebook with the technology, and 50 per cent said it would be unacceptable for that site to use facial recognition technology to make it easier to tag users in photos posted online.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Facebook smartphone to be ‘released next year’

Social networking giant Facebook is to launch its own smartphone by next year, reports have suggested.

The New York Times cited unnamed sources, including Facebook employees, suggesting that the network had been hiring several smartphone engineers.

Facebook recently admitted it was struggling to make money out of its growing mobile audience.

The company, which recently floated on the stock market, has also just launched its own mobile app store.

The App Center currently offers links to Facebook-enabled apps within Apple’s iOS and Google Android stores but developers will soon be able to write apps to be placed exclusively in Facebook’s store.

According to the New York Times, Facebook has hired experts who worked on the iPhone and other smartphones.

It quoted a Facebook employee as saying the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was "worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future… Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms".

Mobile money

A Facebook smartphone has reportedly been in the works for some time.

In 2010, Techcrunch reported that Facebook was "secretly" building a smartphone – although this particular project is said to have broken down.

The company’s desire to enter the smartphone market could be a result of increasing pressure to improve the potential of mobile to make money.

In a statement for potential investors ahead of its initial public offering earlier this month, the company admitted it had concerns about more users accessing Facebook through their mobile – a trend which could make it more difficult to sell advertising.

When asked, a spokeswoman for Facebook said the company did not comment on speculation, and referred instead to a written statement.

"Our mobile strategy is simple: we think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social," the statement read.

"We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world."

Story source: www.bbc.co.uk

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ACCC wins appeal against Google

This week the Full Federal Court unanimously upheld the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s appeal filed in October 2011 against Google.

The Full Court declared that Google, by publishing the four advertisements that were the subject of the ACCC’s appeal on result pages of the Google Australia website, engaged in conduct that was misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive, in breach of section 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974*.

The Full Court also ordered it to put in place a consumer law compliance programme and pay the ACCC’s costs of the appeal.

"Google’s conduct involved the use by an advertiser of a competitors name as a keyword triggering an advertisement for the advertiser with a matching headline. As the Full Court said this was likely to mislead or deceive a consumer searching for information on the competitor," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said.

The central issue for determination on appeal was whether the primary judge erred in finding that Google did not “make” the representations contained in the four advertisements that were the subject of the appeal.

"The ACCC brought this appeal because it raises very important issues as to the role of search engine providers as publishers of paid content in the online age," Mr Sims said.

"This is an important outcome because it makes it clear that Google and other search engine providers which use similar technology to Google will be directly accountable for misleading or deceptive paid search results," Mr Sims said.

In upholding the ACCC’s appeal, the Full Court concluded that "here Google created the message which it presents. Google’s search engine calls up and displays the response to the user’s query. It is Google’s technology which creates that which is displayed. Google did not merely repeat or pass on a statement by the advertiser: what is displayed in response to the user’s search query is not the equivalent of Google saying here is a statement by an advertiser which is passed on for what it is worth."

The Full Court also stated that “the enquiry is made of Google and it is Google’s response which is misleading… Although the key words are selected by the advertiser, perhaps with input by Google, what is critical to the process is the triggering of the link by Google using its algorithms.”

Background

Today’s judgment follows an appeal filed by the ACCC in October 2011 against the decision by Justice Nicholas of the Federal Court in relation to certain advertisements appearing on Google’s website.

At first instance, the ACCC alleged that Google had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct by publishing eleven advertisements on Google’s search results page. The headline of each of the advertisements in question comprised a business name, product name or web address of a competitor’s business not sponsored, affiliated or associated with the particular advertiser. When a user clicked the headline of the advertisement, he or she was taken to the advertiser’s website.

The ACCC alleged that the advertisements contained representations that, in summary, by clicking on the headline users would find information as to the competitor’s business.

The primary judge found that although a number of the advertisements were misleading or deceptive, Google had not made those representations. Google merely communicated representations made by the advertiser. As such, Justice Nicholas ruled that Google had not breached the Act.

The ACCC appealed the primary judge’s decision in relation to four of the eleven advertisements pleaded at first instance.

The central issue for determination on appeal was whether the primary judge erred in finding that Google did not “make” the representations contained in the four advertisements the subject of the appeal.

With respect to the four advertisements the subject of the appeal, the primary judge found that if Google had in fact made the representations, it would not have been able to rely on the publisher’s defence (as per section 85(3) of the Act) as Google would have been unable to show that it had no reason to suspect that publication of these advertisements was a breach of the Act.

The appeal was heard on 27 and 28 February 2012 before Keane CJ, Jacobson and Lander JJ. 

Civil pecuniary penalties may be imposed for certain contraventions of the Trade Practices Act and Australian Consumer Law for conduct after 15 April 2010. There are no penalties for a contravention of section 52 of the Trade Practices Act or its equivalent – section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law.

* On 1 January 2011 the Trade Practices Act 1974 was renamed the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

Release # NR 065/12
Issued: 3^rd April 2012

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Small acts add up to big change

This week, thousands of cities across the globe will dim their lights at 8.30pm for an hour, joining in the world’s largest voluntary environmental action: Earth Hour.

Scheduled for the last Saturday of every March – closely coinciding with the equinox to ensure that most cities are in darkness as it rolls out around the Earth.

The growing importance of this global environmental action is reinforced by the unprecedented challenges our planet faces.

Our growing population is consuming at a rate that requires much more than one planet can provide. We are not living sustainably. While our carbon footprint grows, biodiversity is shrinking while our hunger for natural resources expands. Living beyond our planet’s means is putting increased pressure on food security, water security and climate security.

Earth Hour’s growth from 2 million people in Sydney, the city in which it all started, in 2007, to hundreds of millions in more than 5000 cities across more than 130 countries and territories shows that individuals across the globe recognise the challenges our planet is facing.

This year Earth Hour organisers hope to see this initiative grow further, with new countries taking part and landmarks from Las Vegas, Times Square, the Brandenburg Gate and the Eiffel Tower to the Burj Khalifa and even the International Space Station committing to switch off for the planet.

But the real value of Earth Hour does not lie in its sheer scale. The real value is in individual, grassroots actions. When you consider the potential of hundreds of millions of people all making small changes, it gives us hope for the future of our planet.

Earth Hour is about much more than an hour of darkness, it is about people showing their commitment to sustainability and environmental action. It is about individuals moving beyond NGOs, governments and businesses to express their personal commitment to living more sustainably.

So just remember – do your bit this week for the planet and switch off.  For further information have a look at www.earthhour.org

Source: www.smh.com.au

Source: www.yonderr.com.au

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Marketers Say Social Media, Search Are Industry’s Hottest Ad Tools

Social media and search advertising are projected to be the most popular advertising tools this year, each cited by 24% of respondents to a PointRoll survey [pdf] of US marketing professionals, conducted by Kelton Research and released in March 2012. Display advertising followed closely, chosen by 22% of respondents. There was then a significant drop-off to online video (11%), mobile or tablet ads (7%), and mobile or tablet apps (6%). Just 1% chose email, text/SMS, or social gaming. Search advertising is more popular among respondents at director level or above, compared to those in supervisory or managerial positions (30% vs. 19%).

Most Will Increase Spend on Digital Channels

In fact, a majority of respondents are planning to up their spend on a variety of digital channels, a position that traditional channels are not slated to share. Among digital channels, the largest proportion say they will increase their spending on social media marketing or ads (79%), closely followed by those who will increase their budgets for mobile marketing or ads (75%). A comparatively fewer 55% say they will increase spending on search advertising, though this compares favorably to just 7% who will either decrease spending (3%) or not use this tool (4%).

Conversely, out-of-home marketing or ads will get an increase from just 16% of marketing professionals, on par with the proportion who will decrease spending in this area. And while 15% will budget more for traditional marketing or ads, 21% will scale back their budgets. Even so, traditional marketing channels still get a big chunk of budgets: 57% of marketing and advertising executives in organizations with revenues of $10 million or more said that most of their spending in 2011 went to traditional efforts.

Audience Targeting Proves Exciting

Meanwhile, audience targeting (49%) tops the list of industry trends that respondents are excited about, ahead of other movements including cross-screen media (40%), web TV (30%), Facebook marketing (37%), social gaming (22%) and digital out-of-home marketing or ads (19%). Excitement about audience targeting is higher at the directorial level and above than at the supervisory or managerial level (56% vs. 44%).

Some of that excitement may be related to necessity: 17% of respondents said that identifying the right audience has been holding them back from doing their job more successfully. According to March 2012 survey results from Acxiom and Loyalty 360, just 49% of company executives agree that they know who their most loyal customers are, and the best way to reach out to them and get them to engage with their brand. In fact, just 10% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement, while about one-third were neutral and roughly 1 in 5 disagreed.

Marketers Using Numerous Tools and Partners

Data from PointRoll’s “Marketing Tools Study 2012? indicates that 28% of marketing and advertising professionals use at least 7 tools during a single campaign to reach their target market, while 62% use between 3 and 6 tools. To help with their efforts, roughly 3 in 10 respondents call on at least 10 partners to help them during a campaign. Even so, this sometimes has the opposite effect than intended: about one-third say that managing multiple vendors typically prevents them from doing their job better, and 1 in 10 say that working more efficiently with vendors is their biggest goal this year.

Other Findings:

• Marketing professionals would pay a company an average of $107,500 to manage an integrated digital campaign.
• Increasing sales (31%) and ROI (28%) are the goals most commonly cited as marketers’ most important for this year.
• Slightly more than half of respondents say that inefficient ROI tracking and measurement has hindered their success at work.
• Almost all respondents predict they will use online video this year. The most popular formats are in-banner (60%), in-stream (49%) and dynamic or customized video ads (42%).
• Roughly 2 in 5 respondents believe that they are behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing.

About the Data: The PointRoll data is based on a survey of more than 250 marketing professionals from across the US at supervisor level and above, conducted in January 2012.

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Social Shares Drive 1 in 4 Online Shoppers to Purchase

1 in 4 online shoppers, who shop at least quarterly online and login to their Facebook account at least monthly, have made a purchase based on a social recommendation, details Sociable Labs in a March 2012 report. 62% of survey respondents said they had ever read a comment on their Facebook page from a friend talking about a product they purchased, while of those, three-quarters clicked on the product link in their friend’s comment. Once at the retailer’s site, 53% purchased the product they learned about through their friend’s comment. Additionally, these eventual customers are happy to pass along the favour, as 81% identify as sharers themselves.

Other research has also shown the influence of social networks on shoppers: according to a study released in October 2011 by Performics and conducted by ROI Research, among participants who use social networks at least occasionally during the shopping process, recommendations from social networks (58%) are trusted by more than recommendations from shopping sites (57%) and deal sites (53%).

Deal Sharing Top Reason for Product Comments

Meanwhile, among social sharers, who make up 38% of the Sociable Labs respondent sample, the primary motivation for commenting on products is to pass along deals they found with friends so that they can get the same deal, cited by 41%. Roughly one-quarter said they want to share the reasons why they chose the product. However, the comments that make readers most interested in learning more are the ones detailing the reasons why the product was chosen (43%), ahead of ones containing discount offers (41%).

Social Proofing Drives Engagement

Significant opportunities exist for retailers to drive higher engagement through social proofing, suggests the report. In fact, more than 3 in 5 respondents said that they are likely to stay and shop on a website if they are shown their friends’ activities on the site. Additionally, 57% are more likely to make a purchase there if they see a list showing their friends who have made a purchase on the website.

Other Findings:

• The primary concerns respondents give about sharing a product purchase on Facebook are that it is too trivial to share, and that they would not want their friends to think they are pushing a product. In fact, almost three-quarters of respondents said they are more likely to share if it remained on the retail website and was not posted back to their Facebook feed.
• The most common benefit cited for seeing that friends made a purchase on a site is that respondents would know who to ask for an opinion. Roughly one-quarter said they would trust the site more.
• 48% of respondents said that friend comments shared on Facebook are extremely or very helpful when looking for a product to buy, rivaling the proportion who said that about Google search (49%).

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Technology pays off for HarperCollins

New technology has helped the British arm of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing company, HarperCollins, post its highest revenue figures in three years, says a report released in London.

Turnover for the business rose 4.7 per cent to STG254 million ($A389 million) in the year ending June 2011, with the sales of e-books up sevenfold, reported the Evening Standard newspaper.

HarperCollins, which also has accounts in Australia, have attributed the results partly to experimentation with e-books and other media applications which have started ‘to bear fruit’.

While pre-tax profits for the latest cycle halved to STG14 million, the 2010 results were buoyed by a one-off gain following the resolution of a legal dispute with Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien’s estate.

Source: www.bigpond.com

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Facebook to debut on stock market in May

Facebook will make its stock market debut in May with a record-setting initial public offering of shares, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The world’s leading online social network has stopped selling shares on the secondary market in order to get a precise count of investors, the Journal said on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.

Facebook on Tuesday modified its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to warn potential investors that a patent lawsuit against the company by internet pioneer Yahoo! could deliver a significant blow to its business.

‘If an unfavourable outcome were to occur in this litigation, the impact could be material to our business, financial condition, or results of operations,’ Facebook said in amended paperwork submitted to the SEC.

Yahoo! filed suit against Facebook in a US district court in California on March 12, accusing the company of infringing on 10 of its patents in several areas including advertising, privacy and messaging.

In the suit, Yahoo! said that Facebook’s growth ‘has been based in large part on Facebook’s use of Yahoo!’s patented technology.’

Facebook in February filed to go public and could raise as much as $10 billion in the largest flotation ever by an internet company on Wall Street.

The paperwork filed for the initial public offering provided the first glimpse of the financial details of the web giant launched eight years ago by Mark Zuckerberg from his Harvard University dorm room.

Facebook, which is shifting operations to a former Sun Microsystems campus in the California city of Menlo Park, reported net income of $US668 million ($A645 million) last year.

Revenue nearly doubled to $3.7 billion in 2011, with most of it coming from targeted advertising gleaned from personal information shared by the hundreds of millions of users of the platform.

Facebook – the leading social network in all but six countries, notably China and Russia – said it has more than 845 million users including 483 million who log in daily.

Facebook’s value has been estimated at between $75 billion and $100 billion.

Source: www.bigpond.com

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Purchase Recommendations From Blogs Highly Influential to Women

61% of women who are active blog users say they have made a purchase based on a recommendation from a blog, a proportion that rises to 87% among BlogHer network members, according to a March 2012 survey from the company, which polled a sample of women from the general population and a sample from its community. Recommendations from blogs compare favorably to popular social networks: among Facebook users just one-third of the general population sample (and 54% of BlogHer community respondents) report having made a purchase based on a recommendation from the network.

Meanwhile, Pinterest scores higher (47%) than Facebook among general population respondents who use the fast-growing network, but slightly lower among BlogHer community members (53%) who use it. Just 3 in 10 respondents from both groups who are active users of Twitter say they have made a purchase based on a recommendation from the site.

The study also notes that the influence of blogs is consistent across verticals: indeed, results from a BlogHer survey released in January 2012 indicated that general population respondents were 30% more likely to use advice from blogs than information or updates from a social network (69% vs. 53%) to help with a consumer electronics purchase, while BlogHer community respondents were 50% more likely to do so (84% vs. 56%).

Most Trust Info and Advice From Blogs

Meanwhile, according to BlogHer’s “Women and Social Media in 2012? report, blogs’ influence on women’s purchase decisions is likely related to the amount of trust they place in the information and advice they gather from this source. Among BlogHer network respondents that are active users of each of the following media sources, 98% trust the information they receive from blogs, ahead of Facebook (86%), Twitter (85%), and Pinterest (85%). Among general population respondents, blogs and Pinterest (both at 85%) are the most trusted, with Twitter (73%) and Facebook (67%) trailing.

Facebook More a Social Space

Facebook is possibly less trusted as an information source due to women seeing it more as a communal space rather than as an information source. Presented with various categories, general population respondents chose Facebook over blogs for staying up to date with friends and family (87% vs. 20%), having fun (77% vs. 41%), entertainment (69% vs. 50%), and contributing to a community (41% vs. 28%).

By contrast, women said blogs were better suited than Facebook to find out about new products (41% vs. 24%), seek advice and recommendations (39% vs. 35%), get product information (37% vs. 17%), and help make purchase decisions (36% vs. 17%).

Other Findings:

• General population respondents indicated they were more likely to use Pinterest than Twitter to find out about new products (39% vs. 24%), to have fun (58% vs. 47%), and to get product information (26% vs. 18%).
• Daily blog readers from the general population sample were 52.2% more likely than the overall general population sample to say that turning to an online or social media site is the first thing they do when they want to buy something (35% vs. 23%). They were also far less likely to say they do not go online or to social media for a shopping decision (19% vs. 41%). According to a white paper released in January 2012 by Fleishman-Hillard in partnership with Hearst Magazine, more women reported that information found online (40%) was a highly important decision factor to them than their parents (30%), friends (27%), and children (24%). Additionally, information found online was also more significant than information in magazines (17%), newspapers (17%), or on the TV (16%).
• BlogHer network respondents were more likely than the general population sample to use Facebook (94% vs. 84%) and YouTube (75% vs. 62%), and less likely to watch TV (85% vs. 93%).

About the Data: The BlogHer survey fielded two samples online in February 2012. The results are based on the BlogHer network sample of 1,060 women, and the general population sample of 1,011 women. The general population survey was fielded by Vision Critical.

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Social Networks Positively Impact Entertainment Decisions

Social network users are 27.3% more likely to say that the sites are important for making entertainment-related decisions than not (56% vs. 44%), according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR) and Penn Schoen Berland, in March 2012 survey results. And the influence of social networks appears to be overwhelmingly positive: 82% of users say they are more influenced by positive posts than by negative posts when it comes to music, while roughly three-quarters feel that way about TV shows, movies, and video games.

Twitter Members More Focused on Individuals

When examining the habits of social network members, the study finds an interesting divergence between those following individuals, and those following companies and programs. For example, Twitter users are more likely than Facebook users to follow actors and actresses (41% vs. 32%), sports figures (25% vs. 17%), reality TV stars (23% vs. 16%), and journalists and reporters (15% vs. 9%). By contrast, Facebook members are more likely to follow companies and brands (49% vs. 37%), sports teams (30% vs. 22%), TV shows (49% vs. 30%), and movies (43% vs. 25%).

TV Viewers Multitask

Roughly 4 in 5 respondents said they always or sometimes visit Facebook while watching TV, while 41% reported tweeting about the show they are watching. In fact, of those posting about TV shows, roughly three-quarters did so while watching programs live, and 51% said they post while watching to feel connected to others who might be watching. Indeed, according to [download page] survey results released in March 2012 by iModerate Research Technologies, 29% of respondents who engage in social TV do so primarily to advise their network of friends and let them know what is good and what is bad, while 23% do so to be connected with others who have similar TV likes and dislikes. The iModerate survey also found that the most common ways of engaging in social TV are through a Facebook status update (91%), a comment on a friend’s Facebook update (62%), a comment on a show’s Facebook page (41%), and a Twitter status update (38%).

Despite a higher proportion of social networkers saying they visit Facebook than Twitter while watching TV, March data from Trendrr.TV indicates that Twitter dominates social commentary about TV. Examining the share of social activity in February across four key sources (Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue, and Miso), Trendrr found that Twitter held 85% share of the social activity occurring around broadcast TV, at 85%, compared to 7% for Facebook, and 8% for GetGlue. Twitter was less influential on cable, although it remained the leader with 64% of activity, followed by Facebook (23%) and GetGlue (13%).

SocNets Also Influential for Movies

TV is not the only beneficiary of social network activity: 1 in 3 THR survey respondents said they have decided to see a movie in a theater because of something they read on a social networking site. 24% of the Facebook users surveyed said they had posted about a movie they were watching, while 21% of Twitter users had also done so. Social networking activity increases after watching the film, with 72% of respondents saying they had posted about a movie on a social networking site after watching it.

Other Findings:

• 3 in 10 THR survey respondents said they have decided to watch a TV program because of something they read or saw on a social networking site. According to a TV Guide survey released in February 2012, 71% of adults have seen a social media impression about a TV show, while 17% have begun to watch a show because of a social impression.
• THR survey respondents said that cable news (31%) is their primary source of breaking news, ahead of news websites (28%) and social networking sites (19%). Among social network users under 35, 21% said social networking sites are their primary source, a figure that drops to 9% among those over 35. Data from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates that the proportion of digital device users (laptop/desktop, smartphone, or tablet) who turn to Facebook recommendations very often for news ranges from just 6-8%, and that is still far ahead of those who use Twitter recommendations (2-3%).
• 70% of THR survey respondents said they have listened to an artist’s music primarily because of what a friend had posted on a social networking site.
• According to the iModerate Research Technologies survey, 58% of respondents who post 10 times or more per week regarding TV say they watch more live TV since they started engaging in social TV. Those posting only once a week said their viewing is about the same. Similarly, the more time respondents spend using social media each day, the more often they tend to post on social TV.

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Coles Social Media Crime

Coles has become the latest major brand to experience a social media backlash after posing
the statement: ‘In my house it’s a crime not to buy….’ elicited a string of hostile comments
towards the supermarket.

The retail giant published the tweet from its @Coles account at 8.25pm, but by 9.18pm quickly
back tracked claiming the post was a mistake. It said: “It’s a social media crime not to….. finish a sentence
yourself. Sorry guys that post was not meant for twitter!”

However Twitter users quickly vented their grievances towards Coles which has been gaining
ground on arch rival Woolworths of late through a series of aggressive marketing campaigns including
slashing the price of milk and bread as well as offering heavy discounts on meat.

Comments to hit the Coles Twitter in response to the question included from @TaraMacca: "In my house, its a crime not to
buy LOCALLY- and I don’t mean from a @coles supermarket."

@Pollytics said: "Food from markets while Coles exploits mental illness via pokies." While @downsey stormed: "In my house
it’s a crime not to buy…BREAD AND MILK AT PRICES THAT ALLOW PRIMARY PRODUCERS TO SURVIVE.”

Coles joins an increasingly long list of big brands that have found themselves facing a social media storm. Towards the end of
last year Qantas felt the wrath of consumers after launching a promotion using the #QantasLuxury.

What resulted was a string of negative comments about the national carrier’s grounding and safety. Earlier in 2011 Qantas
also landed in hot water for featuring a picture of two Wallabies fans dressed as Radike Samo complete with black face paint
and afro wigs after a launching a competition for fans to dress up as their favourite Wallabies player.

Then just last week a Coca-Cola twitter stunt which asked followers to post one word additions to the previous posters’ comments
went wrong when dozens of offensive and obscene comments were made.

In a similar vein to the #Qantas-Luxury debacle, McDonald’s in the US was bombarded with negative comments after launching the
hashtag #McDStories in order to promote the fast food giants workers and suppliers.

Responses included: “One time I walked into McDonalds and I could smell Type 2 diabetes fl oating in the air and I threw up.”

While another said: “FloppersYF said “I remember when I went to McDonalds. I was in the hospital for a week.”

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Microsoft unveils Windows 8 for testing

Microsoft this week let consumers start trying out its upcoming touch-based Windows 8 operating system, which aims to power a new wave of computer tablets and traditional PCs designed to counter Apple’s big gains in the market through its Macs and iPads.

The test "beta" version of the revamped system was introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the planet’s largest cell phone trade show, and borrows some of the look of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software for Windows 8.

Windows 8 doesn’t have the traditional "Start" menu, and applications are spread across a mosaic of tiles in a design Microsoft calls "Metro" – seen as an attempt by the company as a scramble to preserve its market share. And executives said it powers up on PCs in eight seconds, much faster than the previous version.

The tiles, which resemble road signs, can be navigated with a finger swipe on the screen or with a keyboard and mouse. But those testing out the new operating system won’t be able to try out the finger swiping unless they already have systems enabled for touch use, and the system isn’t expected to make its official debut until September or October.

Microsoft executives in Barcelona showed off how users can use their fingertips to swipe in and out of applications, and tilt upright computer screens to a flat position so they can be used as two-person gaming boards or big drawing tablets. A slim laptop had a hinge allowing it to be turned inside out so it could be used as a tablet instead.

"It’s beautiful, it’s modern, it’s fast, it’s fluid," said Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows division. "Windows 8 is a generational change in the windows operating system."

Microsoft is also opening an Internet "Windows Store" where users can download applications for the operating system, but only if they have Windows 8. Applications are free for those testing out the beta version, but would include both free and paid versions after the operating system is released.

The test version was downloaded by people from more than 70 countries as Microsoft gave its presentation about Windows 8, but the company didn’t immediately disclose the number of downloads. The software can be downloaded at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview.

Apple is also moving features from its iPhone and iPad software over to its Mac software. That trend will be particularly visible in Mountain Lion, the new Mac operating system that’s expected to be released this summer.

Windows 8 will also be the first Microsoft software in a long time besides its cell phone software that will run on non-Intel style processors. The company is developing a version that will run on phone-style chips, such as those used in the iPad.

If Windows 8 is a hit, it could help struggling PC makers, including Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. Besides giving businesses and consumers a reason to consider new PC purchases, Windows 8 is expected to spawn a new breed of hybrid machines that will be part tablet computer and part laptop like the device that Sinofsky demonstrated.

If Windows 8 is a flop, however, it will increase the pressure on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. His 12-year reign has been marred by the company’s troubles adapting to an Internet-driven upheaval. As Microsoft has stumbled, faster-innovating companies such as Apple and Google have elbowed their way into a position to steer the direction of computing for the next decade or two.

Microsoft’s financial performance traditionally improves when it releases a new version of Windows. The last upgrade came in October 2009 when Windows 7 hit the market. The company has sold more than 525 million copies of Windows 7 since then. Part of Window 7’s success stemmed from pent-up demand; the previous version, Vista, was so clunky and buggy that many PC users stuck with the system they already had on their machines or switched to Apple’s technology on Mac computers.

Microsoft shares dipped 13 cents to close at $31.74 Wednesday after the new operating system was introduced. The stock has been hovering around its highest levels since April 2008.

Windows 8 is radically different from its predecessors, with its tiles that provide a glimpse at the activity occurring in applications connected to the Web, such as email.

The system also is expected to enable users to easily back up their pictures, movies, music and other files on a Microsoft storage service called SkyDrive, which will compete against Apple’s iCloud.

Julie Larson-Green, head of "Windows Experience" and responsible for delivering a new operating system that wows the world’s PC users, showed how documents and data can be stored in one device only to appear instantaneously in another.

"It will populate with everything you are used to using right away," she said.

The operating system’s versatility means it can be used to power computer tablets, as well as traditional PCs.

Microsoft badly wants a piece of the tablet market that has been cutting into PC sales since Apple introduced the iPad two years ago.

In the quarter that included the holiday shopping season, Apple shipped 15.4 million iPads, more than doubling the volume from the same time a year earlier. Meanwhile, worldwide personal computer sales dipped slightly, and Microsoft’s revenue in its Windows division declined 6 percent. It marked the fourth time in the past five quarters that Microsoft’s Windows revenue has fallen from the previous year.

Reversing or slowing that trend is critical for Microsoft. It still relies on the PC industry for about 55 percent of its revenue, according to Nomura Equity Research analyst Rick Sherlund.

"The launch of Windows 8 should provide a few years of robust growth and opportunity for Microsoft to reposition itself to better defend its position against challengers," Sherlund wrote in a note after Microsoft reported the latest erosion in its Windows division.

Besides spurring more sales of the new operating system, Windows 8 is likely to drive demand for the next generation of the Office suite, another major moneymaker for Microsoft. In the demonstration in Barcelona, Office looked just like it normally does – but can be opened with a finger swipe.

Windows 8 could inspire more PC makers to design machines that combine the convenience of tablets with the utility of a notebook computer. These devices would be similar to the so-called "ultrabook" computers that offer a Windows-based version of Apple’s lightweight MacBook Air machines.

Once Windows 8 is available, the ultrabook line could be expanded to include machines equipped with a screen that swivels off the keyboard to take advantage of the system’s touch controls and provide a tablet-like experience.

Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

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The Safe Way to Save Data Online

Maybe you’ve seen this error message on your computer: “Oops … the system encountered a problem (#700).” Or this one: “Arrggh! Our tubes are clogged!”. Or, sometimes most distressing of all, a notice that a site will be shut down.

These are no ordinary messages. They’re attached to online services that store your mail and contacts (Gmail); photo collection (Flickr); music (Lala) and more. When the computer servers on these sites — and others like them — go down, you lose access to your data, and you can’t do anything but wait.

More people are storing information on the Web than ever before — 143 million in 2009 alone, according to ABI Research. That number is expected to grow to 160.6 million by 2015. Naturally, companies are coming out with new services that store files away from your computer and external drives, or “in the cloud.”

The rewards — and risks — of cloud computing
With this rush to offer cloud services comes unregulated risks that have caught the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC has set its sights on the question of who owns the data on the servers and what happens to that data if you decide to discontinue using that service. Earlier this year, the FTC asked another government agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to look into what cloud computing means for individuals — and whether the government needs to step in to protect you from cloud computing service providers.

“The storage of data on remote computers may … raise privacy and security concerns for consumers,”wrote David Vladeck, head of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, in a letter to the FCC. The FTC is concerned that the collection of data stored on a server could mean that your personal information is aggregated with other consumers’ to draw conclusions and sell to advertisers.

Although these issues still have months — if not years — to be resolved, cloud services are still a viable option for data storage. You just need to know how to keep your data safe.
How to protect yourself
“There are most definitely ways to protect yourself as a consumer,” says Jeffrey Payne, CEO of Coveros, a security consulting firm that analyzes software for risks. “While some risks are difficult to address, others are easily dealt with by anyone savvy enough to use Gmail.”

The World Privacy Forum suggests taking these steps to understand a service provider’s plans for your data:

• Read the Terms of Service before placing any information in the cloud. If you don’t understand the Terms of Service, consider using a different cloud provider.
• Don’t put anything in the cloud you would not want the government or a private litigant to see.
• Pay close attention if the cloud provider reserves rights to use, disclose or make your information public while you’re using the service.
• Read the privacy policy before placing your information in the cloud. If you don’t understand the policy, consider using a different provider.
• Find out if, when you remove your data from the service, the cloud provider still retains rights to your information. Consider whether that makes a difference to you.
• Ask if the cloud provider gives advance notice of any change of terms in the terms of service or privacy policy.

According to a study by Harris Interactive, 80 percent of respondents had security concerns with cloud computing. Knowing what the risks are — and how to avoid them — will make cloud computing a breeze.

Copyright (c) 2010 Studio One Networks. All rights reserved. Story by Laura Rich

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Chinese court hears Apple appeal on iPad

A Chinese high court has begun hearing an appeal brought by Apple against a Chinese firm, Proview Electronics, over the use of the iPad trademark.

Apple Inc is in several legal battles with Proview Electronics Co, which the US company says sold it the rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries, including China, in 2009. Apple contends that Proview has refused to honour the agreement and has not indicated any willingness to settle with Proview, a maker of computer monitors and LED lights.

Walking into the Guangdong High Court in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Wednesday, lawyers for Proview expressed confidence, but also indicated the company remained open to settling with Apple.

‘I don’t rule out the possibility,’ Xie Xianghui, a lawyer representing Shenzhen Proview Technology, the company’s main Chinese subsidiary, told reporters.

On Tuesday, Proview announced it was seeking to regain worldwide rights to the iPad name and is suing Apple Inc in the US for alleged fraud and unfair competition, hoping to have a 2009 sale of the trademark ruled void. Proview was previously only claiming rights to the iPad name in China.

Apart from having the trademark sale voided, it also is seeking unspecified compensation, a share of Apple’s profits from alleged ‘unfair competition’ and an order for Apple to stop using the trademarks.

So far, two lower courts in Guangdong have sided with Proview on the issue, while a Hong Kong court ruled in Apple’s favour. Last week, Shanghai’s High Court rejected Proview’s effort to get Apple to stop selling the popular tablet computer under the iPad name.

Proview, once a major computer monitor manufacturer, launched its own version of iPAD, or internet Personal Access Device, in 2000 but it was not a market hit. Apple launched its popular iPad in 2010.

Proview contends Apple intentionally misled it when it bought iPad trademarks through a special purpose company called IP Application Development Ltd that concealed it was acting on Apple’s behalf.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Coke’s social media ‘story’ fizzles out

Coca-Cola is the latest company to have a social media marketing attempt go wrong.

The company invited fans to post one-word comments in addition to previous posts on the company’s Facebook page, but it ended in customers attacking each other.

‘Here is a little social experiment Add a word to the person above you to create a happy story!’

However the story written wasn’t so ‘happy’ with some of the responses including insults and obscenities, sometimes aimed at other company ‘fans’.

The campaign attracted over 700 responses and the company confirmed that it was forced to delete many of them.

‘Earlier this week, we posted a status update that attracted 781 responses,’ Coca-Cola said. ‘Around 70 responses were removed as they were not in keeping with our ‘house rules’.’

It follows a recent string of botched social experiments in the Australian media.

In October, Qantas launched a Twitter marketing campaign that ended badly, with customers using the hashtag #qantasluxury to insult the company’s customer service.

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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GPs set to prescribe health apps

GPs in the UK are set to ‘prescribe’ smartphone apps to patients to help them manage their own health.

The Department of Health says the technology can put patients in charge of their medical records, and help them manage chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.

More than 500 apps were nominated as part of a competition run by the NHS.

The most useful and popular have now been included on a shortlist that doctors will be encouraged to recommend to patients.

One app, called Patients Know Best, allows individuals to take control of their medical records and make video calls to doctors.

It was created by Mohammad al Ubaydli, who has a rare genetic disorder that leaves him vulnerable to infections.

Using apps that locate local health services or apps that help you to get fit can dramatically improve your daily life.

Martha Lane Fox, UK digital champion and dot.com entrepreneur

He told Sky News: ‘It is a one-in-a-million condition and there are lots of doctors involved in my care.

‘I had to keep updating them on my treatment, so I thought I should take control of my records and then share them as needed.’

A third of medical records contain errors. Most are trivial, but some, such as drug allergies, are serious.

‘The best person to spot mistakes is the patient,’ he said.

The most popular app was Moodscope, which helps people monitor their state of mind and alerts friends, family or health workers if they are feeling low.

The Diabetes App reminds people when to check blood sugar levels and take medication.

It also records and tracks readings, which can be sent electronically to their clinic for monitoring.

And FoodWiz.co allows people with food allergies and intolerances to avoid certain ingredients by zapping barcodes on supermarket shelves.

Apps can put patients in charge of their medical records

Martha Lane Fox, UK digital champion and dotcom entrepreneur, helped to judge the apps.

She said: ‘We live in a world where digital technology is an essential part of people’s lives – whether it’s at work or simply getting around town.

‘I want to encourage more people to develop their digital skills, and that’s why it’s been great to be a part of this initiative.

‘Using apps that locate local health services or apps that help you to get fit can dramatically improve your daily life.’

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: ‘Innovation and technology can revolutionise the health service.

‘We are looking at how the NHS can use these apps for the benefit of patients, including how GPs could offer them for free.’

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Gen Y Speeds Up Luxury Goods Spending

Flash sale sites and the fashion industry’s maturing web presence boost sales to young consumers

As Generation Y grows up and gains more buying power, the 18- to 34-year-old age group is increasingly purchasing luxury goods. According to a survey by American Express Business Insights, Gen Y consumers upped spending on premium, full-priced luxury goods by 31% in 2011 over the prior year. Generation X followed Gen Y in terms of spending growth—climbing 23% from 2010.

Joining the workforce and earning higher wages has surely contributed to Gen Y’s purchasing appetite. Yet it can also be assumed, based on the American Express data, that online discount luxury websites—or flash sales—stimulated young consumers’ desire for luxury fashion products. In other words, Gen Y’s early adoption of flash sale ecommerce shopping has paved the way for full-price luxury purchasing. In addition, according to the American Express study, seniors now exhibit a growing appetite for flash sale merchandise.

When shopping for luxury goods, young, digital-savvy consumers are frequently turning to ecommerce sites and other webpages for product research and purchases. A November 2011 study by customer experience management company Empathica indicates luxury goods shoppers visited company websites slightly more often than they did companies’ brick-and-mortar locations. Moreover, almost half of luxury buyers told Emphathica that they read online reviews and 14% visited social media websites prior to purchase.

The Empathica findings demonstrate that the web and ecommerce make up a significant portion of the luxury shopping experience. Partly because Gen Y consumers are demanding a digital presence among sellers, luxury retailers are steadily rising to provide one.

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How Google’s +1 Button Affects SEO

Since the days of Google Buzz, the +1 button has been a mystery to users and content producers alike. It’s different from Facebook’s “Like” button, in that it doesn’t directly share content to a user’s social stream. But the cultivation of a social graph has long been the goal of Google, and its connection to search was likely inevitable.

Google defines the +1 as a feature to help people discover and share relevant content from the people they already know and trust. Users can +1 different types of content, including Google search results, websites, and advertisements. Once users +1 a piece of content, it can be seen on the +1 tab in their Google+ profile, in Google search results, and on websites with a +1 button.

The plot thickened last month when Google launched Search plus Your World. Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google Search, explained that now Google+ users would be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.” According to Ian Lurie from the blog Conversation Marketing, in Search plus Your World, search results that received a lot of +1s tend to show up higher in results.

Google has come out and described the purpose of a +1, but hasn’t necessarily explained the direct effect a +1 has on search ranking. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know.

Does a +1 Affect my Site’s Performance in Social Search?

The +1 has an indirect effect on your site’s search rank. This does not mean the more +1’s a link has, the higher rank it achieves in traditional search results. Take this scenario:

When a Google+ user +1’s a piece of content, he gives it his “stamp of approval.” Then, say one of his connections from Google+ searches for the same or related topic. Because of Search plus Your World, his friend is more likely to click on the same link the original user +1’d (when a signed-in user searches, his Google results may include snippets annotated with the names of connections who have +1?d the content). This is because content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers, according to Google.

This is also true for users who are not signed in to their Google account when they search. When a user searches for the same phrase, the results might display the total number of +1’s a link has received, which is another validation that it’s a relevant link.

How Does This Relate to SEO?

Since the +1?d link has a chance at a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR), there is a greater potential the link will be shared, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any social network. An experiment by Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, tested the relationship between Twitter and Facebook shares and search results in Google. He found a positive correlation between the number of retweets and shares a link received and its search ranking. This means, the more the link was passed around on Twitter and Facebook, the higher the search rank of the page. This in turn led to better SEO.

What’s the Take-Away?

A Google +1 can indirectly lead to a better page rank. A greater number of +1’s increases a link’s potential for a high CTR, which could lead to increased social sharing, and in turn can increase its Google search rank. What’s important to note here is the correlation, not causation, between +1?s, other social shares, and search rank.

The bottom line is, the SEO effects of a +1 are very indirect, which means traditional SEO practices should not be ignored. SEO methods such as link building, relevant keywords, and URL structure have a more significant impact on page ranking.

The Google +1 feature is still in its infancy of course, and more data needs to be gathered to draw a statistical correlation to search. As Google said, “For +1?s, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

SEO experts, such as Erin Everhart from 352 Media Group, have a positive outlook on the future of social search. She says, “I don’t think we live in a world, nor will we ever live in a world, where any social cue doesn’t have influence over SEO.”

Story by Keith Kaplan www.mashable.com

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UK legal claims served via Facebook

Legal authorities say a judge at England’s High Court has allowed lawyers to log on to Facebook to serve legal claims.

The Judicial Office for England and Wales said Justice Nigel Teare had agreed to the use of the popular social networking site to serve a claim in a commercial dispute.

Lawyers had been seeking a former employee embroiled in the dispute and successfully applied for permission to notify him via Facebook in a hearing last Friday.

The office had few other details of the case, but said it is thought to be the first time lawyers had sought to use Facebook in this manner.

Ordinarily British legal claims are served in hard copy, although unconventional means are occasionally employed if the people involved are hard to pin down.

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Web privacy tools to warn of internet tracking cookies

Internet users will receive a warning if sites do not respect their privacy thanks to new tools being developed by the web’s standards setting body.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wants to help users control how their personal data is managed.

It is designing controls to shield personal data and reveal when sites do not honour privacy requests.

The W3C now wants users, browser makers and businesses to help finish and implement the specifications.

"Users have the feeling they are being being tracked and some users have privacy concerns and would like to solve them," said Dr Matthias Schunter from IBM who chairs the W3C group drawing up the Do Not Track technologies.

Co-ordination

The working group is defining software specifications that will:

• let browser settings tell websites to do less tracking
• let websites acknowledge privacy requests
• define best practices for sites so they can comply with different privacy needs

Dr Schunter said the specifications aim to end the current situation in which different browser makers adopt incompatible Do Not Track systems.

"Currently websites need to implement all these different protocols," he said. "There’s no standard way to respect privacy preferences."

"We want to standardise all these protocols so they talk the same language and then tell websites what to do with them," said Dr Schunter.

The tools resulting from the W3C work would aim to be "privacy friendly" and surrender as little information as possible, he added.

For instance, he said, a site could log a user’s language preference by noting their name and native tongue and store that in a cookie – little text files sites use to record information about regular visitors.

A more privacy-friendly way, said Dr Schunter, would have browser software note that its owner prefers a particular language without surrendering any identifying information.

Users could be warned about sites that do not do a good job of respecting requests to keep information private.

While the W3C cannot insist that sites and software vendors follow its lead, said Dr Schunter, it was more than likely that they would adopt the technologies.

The finished technologies are expected to be implemented by browser makers first in mid-2012 with websites following soon after as they get to grips with the best practices.

More than 15 firms and organisations are involved in the Do Not Track work including Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford University.

Story source: www.bbc.co.uk

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Google cookies ‘bypassed Safari privacy protection’

Google has been accused of bypassing the privacy settings of users of the Safari web-browser.

The Wall Street Journal said Google and other companies had worked around privacy settings designed to restrict cookies.

Cookies are small text files stored by browsers which can record information about online activity, and help some online services work.

However Google says the story "mischaracterises" what happened.

Advertisers can use cookies to track online behaviour, helping them to target the commercials they show to internet users.

Some think this use of cookies erodes online privacy. In May, European Union laws are due to come into force which will restrict the use of advertising cookies.

But cookies are also essential to some web services like those Google offers.

Cookie control

The Safari browser is produced by Apple, and is the browser used by the iPhone.

By default Safari only allows cookies to be stored by the web page a user is visiting, not from third parties such as advertisers.

However, Stanford University researcher Jonathan Mayer found that advertisers were still able to store cookies on the computers of internet users browsing with Safari.

It was his discovery that formed the basis of the Wall Street Journal’s story.

Many Google services use cookies, for example to remember when someone is signed in to a service, but they are also used by the firm to help personalise advertising.

It was when Google attempted to find a way to enable some of its services and personalised advertising to work on Safari that, Google says, it inadvertently stored cookies.

Side-stepping Safari

In a statement, senior vice president Rachel Whetstone said that last year the company had decided to "enable features for signed-in Google users on Safari who had opted to see personalised ads and other content".

She added: "To enable these features, we created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalisation."

Ms Whetsone said the company had created new systems to make sure the information it collected was anonymous, but this had led to unintended consequences:

"The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser.

"We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers. It’s important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google "disabled the code after being contacted by the paper".

Google declined to provide further comment to the BBC.

Privacy warning

Online privacy advocates were highly critical of Google’s actions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote: "It’s time for Google to acknowledge that it can do a better job of respecting the privacy of web users."

Although much of the criticism has been directed at the search giant, the Wall Street Journal said that in addition to Google, a number of advertising companies had been using the work-around which had been known about for some time.

An Apple spokesman said in a statement: "We are aware that some third parties are circumventing Safari’s privacy features and we are working to put a stop to it."

Story source: www.bbc.co.uk

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SMBs Missing Opportunity to Integrate Email With Social

Although roughly 3 in 4 SMBs use email marketing tactics such as organic list growth and web-based sign-up forms to generate leads, just 41% include a sign-up form on their Facebook fan pages, according to a survey released in February 2012 by GetResponse. And while a majority optimize their newsletters with clear, recognizable, branded from field names and addresses, less than half include social sharing icons in their newsletters.
SMBs appear to be behind the curve in this regard: according to a survey released in February 2012 by Econsultancy, in partnership with the Email Experience Council of the DMA, 69% of US organizations are including social sharing icons in their emails, while a further 13% have a plan in place to do so.

Segmentation Also Not Widespread

Data from GetResponse’s “The State of Email Marketing in SMBs” indicates that only 42% of the SMBs surveyed segment their lists based on either subscriber personal data or subscriber actions, such as opens and clicks. List hygiene is poor, too: just 38% report removing inactive contacts, and only 36% try to re-engage them through re-activation campaigns. SMBs also seem to be ignoring the risks posed by bad addresses: only 53% use mailing systems that automatically process soft and hard bounces and take appropriate actions to the addresses.

Legal Compliance Better, Though

72% of respondents indicate that they use a confirmed opt-in email model, and 71% provide unsubscribe links in their emails. Overall, the marketers surveyed cited an average deliverability rate of about 97%, with the vast majority reporting no problems with delivery to most major client inboxes.

Largest SMBs Not as Socially Integrated

SMBs with more than 500 employees tended to report higher adoption of various list building and sign-up form optimization strategies, such as using sign-up forms to grow lists, collecting contacts offline using paper sign-up forms, and telling subscribers specifically what they will receive. However, these larger companies were far less likely than companies with 11-250 employees to run a Facebook page with a newsletter sign-up form (57% vs. 82%), indicating that they may be underestimating the power of social media integration. Similarly, they were less likely than companies with 11-250 employees or 251-500 employees to use social sharing icons.

Other Findings:

• Most SMBs have adopted measures such as regular mailings (70%), personalization (58%), compelling subject line (68%), and stats analysis (61%).
• 69% of respondents indicated that they have a complaint ratio below 0.2%.

For more on email and social integration, visit MarketingVox.

About the Data: The GetResponse data was collected from November 14-28, 2011 from approximately 600 respondents classified in 4 groups based on the business unit size.

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Google+ Making Strides Online

The popularity of Google+ has showed dramatic growth recently, according to February 2012 analysis from Compete, which tracked the the landing page for the main feature of the social network, the +1 button (google.com/+1/button, or plusone.google.com), beginning in November 2011. The page drew over 40 million unique visitors in December alone, with more than 10 times that amount in visits, while also passing 3 billion page views.

Computer Users Demonstrate Strong Growth

Compete also looked at its panel of 2 million non-mobile US-based users, representing a 1% sample size for the US, to determine the website’s popularity among non-mobile users. The company found that Google+ has grown by about 40% for US non-mobile traffic in each of the primary metrics that shows website performance. In fact, in December, Google+ reached a new peak of 20 million unique visitors, 50 million visits, and 200 million page views.

Share of SocNet Visits Up M-O-M

Google+ ranked 9th in the top 10 social networking websites and forums in December 2011, with 0.41% share of US market visits, according to Hitwise data released in January 2012. This represents 24% growth in just one month, after earning 0.33% share of visits in November. In fact, in December, Google+ grew its share of US social networking site visits to rival myYearbook, in the process also halving its gap with LinkedIn from 0.3% points to just 0.15% points.

Tailored Search Results Not Popular, Though

Google+ may not find its mark as a vehicle for tailored search results, though. According to an AYTM survey conducted in January 2012, just 7.5% of respondents said they would more inclined to use the social network if they knew they would get more tailored search results from doing so. By contrast, the vast majority (92.5%) said they were either ambivalent (48.1%) or not more likely (44.4%) to use the network to get more tailored search results.

Overall, 19.3% of the 400 US adults surveyed said they use Google+, although that was matched by the proportion (19.5%) who said they did not know what the social network was.

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Microsoft slams new Google policy

Microsoft has taken out full-page newspaper adverts to criticise changes to Google’s policies.

Google has touted the changes it announced last week as a simplification of detailed but obtuse policies and a way to provide a better user experience.

However, Microsoft’s adverts say the changes allow Google to internally merge the data it collects on user activity across services such as YouTube and Gmail and are meant to allow advertisers to better target customers.

Microsoft offered up its own internet products, saying users of its free email service, Hotmail, do not have to worry about the content of their emails being used to help target adverts.

The attack adverts have appeared in newspapers including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

‘Every data point Google collects and connects to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser,’ Microsoft says in the advert.

In response, Google published a blog post in which it refuted what it called ‘myths’ about its new privacy policy, saying: ‘Our privacy controls have not changed. Period.’

The company does not dispute that it serves up adverts based on words in private emails written by users of Gmail, but says such scanning is automated and is similar to how many email providers filter out spam. It has operated that way since Gmail’s introduction in 2004.

Both companies offer several controls to prevent advertisers from tracking users’ online activity.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the website Search Engine Land, said Google’s privacy policy simplification had turned into a public relations ‘nightmare’, but only because it focused attention on the kind of data that Google had collected for years.

He said Microsoft also collected a lot of user data from its search engine, Bing, and adjusted search results based on information it found in users’ Facebook accounts if they were logged in.

‘I think they’re largely about the same,’ Sullivan said. ‘It would not be hard to go through and pick any major internet company, talk about the kind of data they collect and start getting people paranoid.’

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Google reveals action over Mosley

Google has removed hundreds of web pages relating to former Formula 1 boss Max Mosley’s sex life from its search results index, Britain’s Leveson Inquiry on press standards has heard.

But the internet giant said it dealt with requests for material to be excluded on a country-by-country basis, meaning articles and videos might remain accessible on other national versions of its site.

Mr Mosley told the inquiry in November he had spent over STG500,000 ($A750,000) trying to restore his reputation after a March 2008 News of the World article alleging he had a ‘sick Nazi orgy’, something he strongly denied.

He described his strenuous efforts to get articles removed from websites, adding: ‘The fundamental thing is that Google could stop this appearing but they don’t or won’t as a matter of principle.’

Google legal director Daphne Keller on Thursday confirmed that someone in Mr Mosley’s position would have to apply individually to have web pages, known as URLs, removed from the company’s sites in different countries.

She told the inquiry: ‘I would hope that wouldn’t be a terribly difficult thing to do, and I can tell you that in his case we have removed hundreds of URLs.’

Ms Keller said a defamatory video could be removed from one of Google’s national sites but remain up on another.

‘If there is a country whose law says that that should stay up, then in that country we would comply with that law,’ she said.

But the lawyer rejected a suggestion that Google should block certain search terms.

She said: ‘In the Max Mosley case, obviously there has been all kinds of news coverage about this very inquiry, and other coverage that’s legitimate, and that you wouldn’t want to disappear from search results.’

In the first six months of last year, Google’s UK site received 65 government requests for a total of 333 different pieces of content to be removed, 82 per cent of which were complied with.

Some 135 of these pages were singled out on the basis of national security, 157 for privacy and security reasons, and 16 because they were defamatory.

Ms Keller warned that Google would end up with a ‘lowest common denominator of lawful speech’ if it removed offending material from all of its national sites after upholding a complaint about its UK service.

The lawyer said it normally took Google ‘days’ to deal with a request to remove a page from its search results.

But she stressed that ‘Google is not the internet’ and that it does not have the power to bring websites down completely.

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Twitter to censor itself in some nations

Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis.

The additional flexibility is likely to raise fears that the short-messaging company’s commitment to free speech may be weakening.

It comes as it expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money.

But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or ‘tweets,’ remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a maze of different laws around the world.

Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweets containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.

‘As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,’ Twitter said in a blog post.

‘Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content,’ Twitter said.

China, notably, blocks Twitter, a situation which Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey described recently as ‘unfortunate and disappointing.’

Story source: www.bigpond.com

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Facebook forces users to change profiles

Facebook will start requiring people to switch to a new profile format known as Timeline, making photos, links and personal musings from the past much easier to find.

Timeline is essentially a scrapbook of the user’s whole life, compared with a snapshot of today found on Facebook’s traditional profile page. Once activated, Timeline replaces the current profile.

Although some people have already voluntarily switched to Timeline, Facebook has started making the change mandatory. It is telling some users they have seven days to clean up their profiles before Timeline gets automatically activated. Facebook is rolling out the requirement to others over the next few weeks.

At some point, even those who have not logged on in a while will be automatically switched.

Timeline does not expose anything that was not available for sharing in the past, but it allows people to jump to older material more quickly.

A party photo a user posted in 2008 to a small group of friends would be more visible to relatives, bosses and others they may have added as friends since then.

Facebook users can change privacy settings on individual items to control who has access. Private information can be made visible only to the profile owner, a select group or deleted completely.

Timeline allows users to click on a star to feature major life events more prominently.

Besides the user’s traditional profile photo – the headshot – they can add what Facebook calls a cover photo.

Users who want to edit their profile should click on the ‘activity log’ to see all their posts at a glance and make changes to them one by one.

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McDonald’s Twitter promotion backfires

A McDonald’s Twitter promotion backfired after customers hijacked the hash-tag #McDStories, using it to share horror stories instead.

The fast food giant launched the 24-hour promotional campaign last week to promote its use of fresh produce, inserting paid-for tweets into the streams of Twitter users.

But things went wrong after the corporation changed its promotional hash-tag from #MeetTheFarmers to #McDStories.

Twitter users started using the hash-tag to accuse McDonald’s of making customers projectile vomit and serving a burger containing a fingernail.

"Fingernail in my BigMac once #McDStories, McDonald’s Twitter Hashtag Promtion, Goes Horrible Wrong," said user @capnmarrrk.

"Ordered a McDouble, something in the damn thing chipped my molar. #McDStories," @PuppyPuncher said.

"Hospitalized for food poisoning after eating McDonalds in 1989. Never ate there again and became a Vegetarian. Should have sued #MCDStories," @Alice_2112 said.

"Watching a classmate projectile vomit his food all over the restaurant during a 6th grade trip #McDStories," @jfsmith23 said.

McDonald’s social media director Rick Wion told paidcontent.org that within an hour they saw the promotion wasn’t going as planned and "set about a change of course".

He said the #meetthefarmers hashtag received mostly positive tweets.

Story source: www.ninemsn.com.au

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‘Downturn Shoppers’ Look to Digital for Savings

Price-conscious consumers do more online research, download coupons and compare prices in-store via smartphones

Despite some bright spots on the economic horizon, shopping remains more of a battle than a pleasure for financially skittish consumers. Some of them cope by using digital tactics to help save money.

A SymphonyIRI Group MarketPulse survey on how the economy affects behavior and attitudes when buying consumer products found that US consumers were more optimistic in Q4 over Q3 2011, but still relied on frugal habits developed during the recession.

For example, 39% of survey respondents downloaded coupons from manufacturer websites in Q4, while 37% downloaded coupons from retailer websites, up slightly from 35% for both activities in Q3. Twenty-seven percent researched products on websites, an increase of 3 percentage points from Q1.

Dubbed “downturn shoppers” by IRI to describe the way they approach grocery shopping in a prolonged downturn, these consumers increasingly view digital as an important tool, but rely on traditional offline methods more. Some 55% used coupons in Q4, and 49% checked newspaper circulars. Those numbers, already high, have been steady since Q3.

“What we are finding is that consumers are holding on to the old way of doing things—clipping coupons and circulars—but they are using the internet as an incremental way to save money,” said Susan Viamari, head of consumer insight market polls at SymphonyIRI.

Armed with coupons and sales promos, consumers continue to do research via their smartphones while in-store. A WSL Strategic Retail study cited by Internet Retailer showed that 56% look to their devices to compare prices in-store, while 46% continue to seek coupons or discounts and 53% use their photo feature to snap images of products.

The lesson for retailers and manufacturers facing this diversity of consumer tactics is “use media that complement each other,” SymphonyIRI’s Viamari advised. “Communicate with both traditional and digital media.”

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Marketers Follow Users to More Social Sites

Marketing efforts spreading beyond Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

Social media sites beyond Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are seeing significant boosts in usage, both in the US and elsewhere in the world. And where users go, marketers will follow.

Research from social marketing software firm Awareness Inc. indicates US marketers plan to do just that this year. The December 2011 survey found that the leading area for new social media marketing investments in 2012 would be increasing marketer presence across platforms, cited by 70% of respondents.

For some marketers, that will mean a new presence on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. While the vast majority of US marketers already use these sites for marketing, some laggards plan to join them there this year.

But smaller social sites with less current marketer usage will benefit even more. Nearly one in five respondents said they would begin marketing on YouTube in 2012. And though just 10% of marketers said they would have a new presence on Tumblr, that is on top of only 15% already using it, for an increase of more than 66%. Proportionally, usage of SlideShare and online forums would increase even more than that.

By number of marketers, blogs will be the greatest beneficiary of new efforts, with 28% of respondents saying they were not currently using them but would this year. Among the most experienced social media marketers surveyed, 91% said they planned to increase their use of blogs.