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Social Media Digest: Pinterest Explodes, Google Retails & Twaffic Twouble

Friday, February 10th, 2012

Welcome back to our round-up of all that’s hot on the world of social media. You probably haven’t been able to move for Pinterest stories this week, but we’ve been digging up some gems on other emerging platforms and some of the larger brands, so make yourself a brew, have a read and get back to us with your thoughts. As always, we’d love to hear from you.

1. Pinterest has already hit 10 million US monthly uniques, which is faster than any other standalone site…ever. In fact, by the time you’ve finished

reading this, it will have probably grown to 20 million. TechCrunch attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history. In fact, users are spending so much time sharing their favorite images that now only Facebook and Tumblr have more social media time on site than Pinterest. Who’s propelling its rise? 18-34 year old upper income women from the American heartland. Maybe we should call it blow-dryer growth. If you’d like to see our profile, just click here.

Will Pinterest be bigger than Twitter? Read our blog here.

2. Sky News has told its journalists not to repost information from any Twitter users who are not an employee of the broadcaster. An email to staff on Tuesday laid out new social media guidelines for Sky News employees, including a contentious ban on retweeting rival “journalists or people on Twitter”. The new

guidelines also warn Sky News journalists to “stick to your own beat” and not to tweet about non-work subjects from their professional accounts.

3. Following on from the news that Amazon may open high street stores, Google plans its first stand-alone retail store at its European headquarters in Dublin after a trial at a computer shop in London, according to a filing by the world’s most-popular search engine. The Google Store would be open to the public and sell unspecified Google merchandise, Google’s Irish unit said in a local planning application. Located in the Montevetro office block on Dublin’s Barrow Street, the store would have about 123 square meters (1,323 square feet) of space, including an added mezzanine floor designed to draw attention from passersby.

4. The crowd-source funding site Kickstarter has been doing well recently, giving thousands of entrepreneurs the opportunity to bring their projects to life. It also just hit a major milestone: the service has now funded two million-dollar projects, both on the same day. First up was the Elevation Dock for the iPhone, which takes design cues from Apple’s own aluminum unibody products. It hit $1 million in donations sometime around 1:30PM Eastern today. Following it was Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure, which hit its initial goal of $400,000 in approximately eight hours.

5. For probably not the last time, an entire country has taken up the fight against Twitter. A request for an injunction to stop Twitter users from alerting drivers to police roadblocks, radar traps and drunk-driving checkpoints could make Brazil the first country to take Twitter up on its plan to censor content at governments’ requests. Twitter unveiled plans last month that would allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws. “As far as we know this is the first time that a country has attempted to take Twitter up on their country-by-country take down,’’ Eva Galperin of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a telephone interview Thursday.

6. Fresh from a rather uplifting IPO, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is in line for a tasty 45% bonus.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Sky news, social media, Twitter
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Justifying FaceValue

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

The social monolith that is Facebook has announced it will be making an initial public offering (IPO) that will value the firm at somewhere between $75bn-$100bn, according to some reports, making it one of the mostly eagerly anticipated IPOs in history the biggest of its kind since Google in 2004.

The move will signify a major change for Facebook. So far its financial backers have been others from Silicon Valley elite who have patiently supported Zuckerberg’s focus on improving Facebook for users and expanding its membership to more than 800 million worldwide, of which 30 million reside in Britain.

Facebook’s IPO would coincide with other Web IPOs announced last year from the likes of daily-deal site Groupon, LinkedIn and an expected IPO from social-game maker Zynga. However none of those will measure up to Facebook’s size or investor demand.

In a letter to potential shareholders, Zuckerberg said: “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. These days, I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.”

Zuckerberg’s modest home reinforces Facebook’s alleged mission of ‘making the world open.’

However, Wall Street does not share the same zeal for Facebook’s mission of ‘making the world open,’ which Zuckerberg wears on his sleeve, just ask the guys camped outside.

So, the question is can Zuckerberg satisfy investors’ expectations without compromising Facebook’s global, seemingly a-demographic popularity?

It’s no secret that in order to retain a free service, Facebook converts its users into commodities. Besides from cultivating an invaluable market research goldmine, Facebook analyses every aspect of its users’ profiles and tailors adverts specifically relating to their recent updates.

This model is similar to Google’s, who deliver adverts based on what users were already searching for. Facebook’s IPO filing claims an annual turnover of $3.7bn, most from that deriving from advertising. Last year, Google brought in ten times that. There is a big distinction between searching and sharing. Googlers can expect to be exposed to related-advertising, however Facebookers (including myself) resent being targeted by adverts based on disclosed intimate musings and personal data.

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of the advertising conglomerate WPP Group, has raised concerns over Facebook’s long-term prospects, despite being one of its largest customers. He believes social networks have fundamental limitations as an advertising medium and that if Zuckerberg sells his users too hard under pressure from investors, it could mark the end of Facebook’s success story.

Inevitably, some if not all of Facebook’s loyalty to its user-base will have to be sacrificed for its financial obligations to its investors. However it’s important to remember how Facebook rose to such providence in the first place. The social network allows anyone with an Internet connection to communicate with anyone else in the world for free (which was Zuckerberg’s original intention for the site). Lest we forget, there are some Egyptian babies named ‘Facebook’ following its role in the orchestration of the Arab Spring, a true testament to the power of social media as a force for good.

Nonetheless the future of the network remains dubious. Apathy is a strong market influencer that has historically punished Facebook’s predecessors for their lack of innovation … does anyone still use Bebo or MySpace? Having said that, Facebook seem to have learnt from the demise of their counter-parts – their internal slogan is: ‘Facebook’s only 1% finished’,” according to Nate Elliott, a principal analyst focusing at Forrester Research. Whether Facebook has just signed its own death warrant or starting paving its way to greatness and longevity, only time will tell.

Tags: Facebook, Google, IPO, Sean Ball, zuckerberg
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Social Media Digest: McFail, Snickers Own Goal & More

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Welcome to the latest edition of the Social Media Digest. In case you’ve missed it, here’s what’s making news in the social realm this week:

1. McFail – McDonald’s suffered a Twitter blunder this week in a drive for positive user-generated word of mouth using a hashtag #McDstories, whichwas soon hijacked with the horror stories of disillusioned customers. One tweep commented “My brother finding a fake finger nail in his fries. #McDStories.” Some used the hashtag to simply mock the ‘Golden Arches:’ “#McDStories More than half a year since last McTerrible McFattening McMeal. I don’t McMiss the McFood McOne McBit.” In a bid to salvage the foiled initiative, McDonald’s promoted a more generic hashtag #LittleThings, however the twittersphere has so far used the tag for anything but Mcpraise.

2. Own Goal – Snicker’s launched their Twitter account a mere two weeks ago and have already found themselves mired in controversy. It all began after footballer Rio Ferdinand tweeted “You’renot you when you’re hungry @snickersUk#hungry#spon” with a picture of himself posing with a Snicker’s chocolate bar. The tweets have provoked criticism from all directions, including one user who replied with “Do you really need the money that badly?” and another added: “I’m not on here to be advertised at”. Ian Botham, Amir Khan, Cher Lloyd and Katie Price have alsotweeted similar sentiments and promotional pictures. An Office of Fair Trading spokesman said: “Online advertising and mnot you when you’re hungry @snickersUk#hungry#spon” with a picture of himself posing with a Snicker’s chocolate bar. The tweets have provoked criticism from all directions, including one user who replied with “Do you really need the money that badly?” and another added: “I’m not on here to be advertised at”. Ian Botham, AmirKhan, Cher Lloyd and Katie Price have alsotweeted similar sentiments and promotional pictures. An Office of Fair Trading spokesman said: “Online advertising and marketing practices that do not disclose they include paid for promotions are deceptive under trading laws.”

3. Search No Evil – Facebook, Twitter & MySpace have formed analliance against Google byengineering a software add-on for browsers which counteracts the effect of Google’s alteration of its search results to favour its own Google+ social network with a piece of code named after the giant’s first unofficial strapline “Don’t be evil,” resonating Google’s philosophy that ‘you can make money without being evil.’ Twitter claims Google+ artificially inflates its natural position by pushing its own results, rather than the best ones. However Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt insisted that Facebook and Twitter did not allow sufficient access to their sites for Google to be able to integrate results from them intoits search and that Google+ was not being unfairly favoured. The “Don’t be evil” code can found at “Focus on the user.”

4. Social Capitalism – A study by Delloite has found that Facebook adds an estimated €15.3 billion value to the European economy, as well as supporting 35,200 UK jobs and contributing £2.2bn to the British onomy each year. At the DLD conference in Munich on Tuesday, Facebook COO Cheryl Sandburg noted the emergence of a £467m per annum ‘app economy,’ as many companies have centred their business models on building applications and games to capitalize on the millions of UK Facebookers. Delloite also estimates that the development of Facebook apps generates 7,500 jobs in the UK. Deloitte’s report also claims that lovers of the social monolith contribute £550 million to technology sales, which supports 8,800 jobs. Considering the adverse economic growth in the UK last quarter, this will undoubtedly increase the influence of the Facebook lobby.

5. Megaupset – One of the world’s leading sharing sites Megaupload has been shutdown this week due to a verdict of the US Grand Jury, which found the site owner Kim Dotcom guilty of copyright piracy equating to $500 million of lost revenue. The flamboyant Kim Dotcom has been charged with global criminal conspiracy to pirate illegal and lost a bid for bail yesterday, with the judge ruling he was a significant flight risk. He is appealing that decision ahead of attempts by American authorities to extradite him. Just days of the SOPA blackout controversy, Dotcom’s sentence illustrates the fine line between ‘sharing’ and internet piracy.

6. LA Fiasco – The gym group LA Fitness faced the wrath of the Twitterati yesterday when a couple from Essex complained about being locked into a 2-year contract despite falling pregnant and her husband being made redundant. Originally reported in The Guardian, the scandalous behaviour of the gym prompted a storm of criticism and began trending on Twitter with angry tweets directed at LA Fitness’s account on Wednesday. The group was forced to delete its own earlier tweet claiming “We do not comment on individual cases,” and then began commenting quite a lot on this particular case, including an announcement that it would be waiving all outstanding fees charged to the couple – a testament to the transition of power that social media has brought about.

7. Twit or Miss? - Twitter announced that it will censor tweets in individual countries in a blog post yesterday. The new filtering technology coincides with the micro-blogging site’s ambitious agenda of expanding its user-base from 100 million to 1 billion. Reaching that goal will require expanding into more countries, which will mean Twitter will be more likely to have to comply to laws contrary to free-expression. Twitter will post a ‘censorship notice‘ whenever a tweet is removed, similar to what Google has been doing for years. If Twitter defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested, this is why Twitter is unlikely to try to enter China, where its service is currently block. Although it’s worth thinking about whether the Arab Spring could have been as successful if regional censorship had been implemented prior to the protests movements.

Tags: #LittleThings, #McDStories, Amir Khan, Censorship, Cher Lloyd, delloite, Don't be evil, Facebook, focus on the user, Google, Ian Botham, Kate Price, Kim Dotcom, LA Fitness, mcdonald's, McFail, Megaupload, Rio Ferdinand, Snickers, social media, social media digest, Twitter
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Social Media Digest: Foursquare Search, YouTube Growth and FB Apps

Friday, January 20th, 2012

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s our top 5:

1. Foursquare is rolling out its own search engine, called Explore, as the location-based social network looks to expand its audience. The firm descibed Explore as a product to add “an ‘interesting’ layer to the whole world, tailored just for you. In a statement, the firm explained how the search engine would be tailored to each user:

“Most real-world searches are one-size fits all. You search for pizza, and it gives you the same list of pizza places, whether you like deep dish or thin crust, whether you want a slice or a sit-down meal, or whether your friends would love it or hate it. But not with foursquare Explore, because you are your friends’ (along with 1,500,000,000 more from the foursquare community) help us personalize our recommendations for you. Ever you time you check in, we get better at finding places you’ll like.”

2. A study by Hitwise in December has shown that the UK accounted for 606 million Internet visits to YouTube. The study shows that video sharing sites, citing YouTube and BBC iPlayer as examples, received 936 million visits last month. This figure has been steadily increasing, and in October, we saw a 36% increase in visits to online video sites. But YouTube is clearly ahead of the pack. The site is one of the fastest growing according to Hitwise’s data, and accounted for 65% of visits to video sharing sites in the UK in December 2011.

3. Facebook, following a year of whirlwind growth, overtook Orkut as Brazil’s most-popular social network in December. Orkut is a social network that Google launched in 2004. Its popularity in Brazil, where 60% of Orkut’s users are based, led to it being hosted and managed by Google Brazil from 2008 onwards. Facebook’s user base increased 192% during 2011, according to a comScore report released Tuesday. In December 2010, 12.4 million Brazilians visited Facebook.com. One year later, that number skyrocketed to 36 million Brazilians.

4. A lot of the web went ‘black’ yesterday in response to the US governments prospective anti-piracy laws. Sites like Wikipedia downed tools and stopped visitors from viewing pages in an attempt to raise awareness of what they believe will be dangerous legislation for freedom of speech and freedom of internet use. Google and Craiglist also draped their pages with protests about the legislation. The New York Times has an interesting round-up of the day’s events.

5. Facebook is adding a series of new applications to let users share such things as photos, travel or fashion. The online social network firm unveiled more than 60 new apps that users can share on their Facebook profiles, known as their Timeline. Users can already share the music they are listening to or news articles they are reading. But this latest development expands the number of apps significantly.

Tags: Facebook, Foursquare, Google, social media, SOPA, Twitter, YouTube
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Social Media Digest: Google Dominates, FB Declines and MO Tweets

Friday, January 13th, 2012

Welcome back to our weekly installment of what’s hot in the world of social media. For you to peruse today whilst firing off the last few emails of the week are:

1. Google Sites accounted for 91.75% of all searches conducted in the UK in December 2011, up by 0.67% since November 2011, according to Experian Hitwise’s latest Search Engine and Social Analysis. Google was the only search engine that grew over the period, with Microsoft and Yahoo! Sites both falling by more than a quarter of a per cent.

2. A war of words broke out this week between Google and Twitter. It all started when it was announced that Google had added a new function called ‘Search, plus Your World’ that gives prominence to content from Google+ within search results. There are actually three new features – People and Pages, Personal Results and Profiles in Search. The functions will become available over the next few days to users signed-in and searching in English on Google.com…

3. …Fearing Google’s push to dominate, Twitter hit back, resoundly criticising Google, who in turn retailiated with a nice playground retort: “You Quit Us”. Time will tell how this argument will develop but we’re all ears here at Umpf Towers.

4. Facebook’s dominance of UK visits to social networking sites is getting diluted as the category diversifies, while YouTube is experiencing steep growth, according to new data from Experian Hitwise. Facebook’s share of total visits to social networks in December dropped from 58.5% in 2010 to 51.3% in 2011. James Murray, market research analyst at Experian Hitwise, said that Facebook is not losing visitors, but the market is diversifying “rapidly”. He said the number of visits to Facebook from Britons during the year remained static at the 1.3 billion mark. In reference to these latest stats, here is our infographic based on our research into social media usage in the UK (right).

5. Employers could face legal action for vetting job applicants through Facebook and TwitterEmployers could face legal action for vetting job. The use of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook by employers to vet potential employees could see companies sued for discrimination new research has claimed. According to research conducted by psychology consultancy OPP, employers to check the social networking sites of potential employees could be breaking the law.

6. After a slew of negative revelations over the last few days, Michelle Obama attempted to drum up some good publicity today using a true 21st-century tool – Twitter. The First Lady has finally joined the micro-blogging site, and collected thousands of followers in just a few hours on the site. But those hoping for juicy revelations may be disappointed – as her feed will be managed by her husband’s staff, and used mainly as a campaigning tool.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Socia Media, Twitter, Yahoo
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Social Media Digest: PostRank Purchased, Baidu Spends & Instagram Wins

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Welcome back to our latest instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed it, here’s what happened over the last week:

1. Google has announced that is has bought PostRank, the online social media analysts. A message on their homepage reads: “We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we now look forward to working with Google’s team to build more useful tools for measuring engagement online, and we’ll be sure to share details on our progress in the coming months.” Whether this will lead to further analytics tools for the web remains to be seen.

2. Chinese search engine Baidu will reportedly spend nearly a half-billion dollars to bring small businesses online and, among other things, train 100,000 search marketing professionals in China. As reported by both NASDAQ and AMP, Baidu will make a $470 million investment in China’s online market between now and the end of 2015.

3. Mark Zuckerberg fell foul of his own social media platform this week when it was revealed that a glitch in the security systems meant his private photos became public property. Whilst the photos were limited to holding a live chicken, killing said chicken and eating said chicken’s remains, the world tuned in to see behind the veil and glimpse the private life of the man who has made all of ours public.

4. Twitter has unveiled a new look today, features of which will be rolled out over the coming weeks. The general idea is to grow revenue through advertising. “We have to provide the simplest and fastest way for people around the world to connect to everything they care about,” Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo said as he introduced the new version of the site at an event at the company’s future headquarters in San Francisco.

5. Apple has released its annual iTunes Rewind, a look back at the most popular content available in the App Store over the past year. This year, top honors went to photo-sharing app Instagram, which Apple named “iPhone App of the Year.” As Apple’s reigning favorite, the app will be featured prominently in the App Store and is likely to see a significant surge in downloads. Instagram lets you shoot photos, apply polaroid-like filters and share your creations on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other popular social networks.

Tags: Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Instagram, PostRank, social media, Twitter
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Social Media Digest:Zynga’s $7bn, YouTube Redesign & More

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Weekly back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. Here’s our run-down of the top five:

1. In news that will spark fears of another dotcom bubble, Facebook games producer Zynga has been valued at c.$7Bn. The company plans to raise $1bn (£630m) in its initial public offering, valuing the fledgling internet firm at the massive amount. The company behind popular Facebook games Farmville and Mafia Wars said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it intends to sell 115m shares – 14% of its common stock – at up to $10 each.

2. YouTube has revealed its biggest redesign in its history. The redesigned video site displays a single news feed in the centre of the homepage featuring videos that an individual’s friends have uploaded onto sister site Google+. There is a channel feed on the left hand side of screen encouraging users to ‘subscribe’ to their favourite YouTube channels and shows – which could mean a major boost to TV networks and individuals who have their own channels on the site. And there are big Facebook and Google+ ‘buttons’ also in the left hand column so users can easily share and see content from the video site through to their choice of social network.

3. Foursquare launched its ”Save to Foursquare” and “Follow on Foursquare” buttons on Wednesday in an effort by the New York company to get users to integrate what they do on the Web with what they do in the real world. The Save to Foursquare button is aimed at online publishers and can enable publications to relate stories and reviews to places listed in the Foursquare app.

4. Google has rolled-out a new feature for its Google+ service, allowing US and Canadian users to make phone calls from within its Hangouts space. Hangouts currently enable up to ten Google+ users to meet up and use voice and video chat to communicate. The new service now allows users to make external phone calls and host conference calls, even to people who aren’t signed up to Google+. Revealed by Google employee Jarkko Oikarinen, the inventor of the first Internet Relay Chat, the update is available via a plugin from the Hangouts with Extras page on the social and business networking site.

5. Facebook now has 1000 times the referrals of Google+. The amount of activity on Google+ is falling, according to the latest data from web monitoring firm NetApplications, with Facebook massively ahead of the competition. The data showed that Google+ was outpaced not only by Facebook, but also sites like YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn. While Google+ is still relatively news to the social networking game, its data is no longer rising, but falling away.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga
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Social Media Digest: Facebook Tracks, Foursquare Revamp & Cowell Tweets

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s a run-down of our top five:

1. Virgin Atlantic is offering customers a ‘tweet bit’ service allowing them to get flight status updates via micro-blogging site Twitter.The @VAAInfo account takes customer queries about their flight and offers a response “within seconds” the airline said. Fergus Boyd, head of e-commerce, at Virgin Atlantic, said: “We now have over 50,000 Twitter followers worldwide and we know that many of them use the social network to keep abreast of travel news and updates.”

2. X Factor supremo Simon Cowell has finally joined Twitter – although so far he’s mainly just winding up Piers Morgan and rival judges Nicole Scherzinger, Paula Abdul and LA Reid. After dozens of spoof and fake accounts, Cowell finally gave in and joined the social networking site with the words: ‘It’s official, I know it’s taken a while. It’s really me! We’re live in 10 minutes. I’ll keep you posted. Lots of love #iamsimon’ Fans hoping Simon would continue his infamous caustic criticism online weren’t disappointed – having joined just in time for the X Factor USA live show, his second tweet provided the perfect opportunity to make a dig at his rival judges.

3. Foursquare has revamped its popular badge system in an effort to increase user engagement and encourage exploration. Starting Monday, Foursquare’s core 24 category badges will begin leveling up based on users’ checkins. A numerical icon now appears on the bottom right of badges such as “JetSetter,” “Wino” and “Great Outdoors”, indicating how often users have checked in to places related to those badges. “It’s rewarding exploration and awarding expertise,” says Foursquare Head of Product Alex Rainert. “It’s a platform to showcase tastemakers and get their content exposed.”

4. Despite the fact services and apps like Instagram, Twitpic and PicPlz are growing in popularity on our mobile devices, it seems that more users are uploading photos to the micro-blogging platform via Twitter’s own photo service instead. According to new research featured on ZDNet, Twitter’s fairly new photo sharing service, which is powered by Photobucket, is now the number one way users put their photos onto the social network.

5. In a series of interviews with USAToday, Facebook has finally revealed how it tracks users and non-users across the web, gathering huge amount of data as it does so. ABCNews/USAToday said: “Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.”

Images kindly sourced from:

1. http://www.air-valid.co.uk/virgin-atlantic-airways/event.html

2. http://www.simplyzesty.com/mobile/foursquare/whats-foursquare-simple-guide-power-user/

3. http://nexus404.com/Blog/2011/10/03/is-facebook-tracking-user-actions-on-other-websites-facebook-patent-application-indicates-tracking-on-other-domains-what-about-our-privacy/

Tags: Facebook, Google, Instagram, social media, Twitter
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Social Media Digest: Google update, Twitter stories, Klout Criticism

Friday, November 4th, 2011

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s a run-down of our top five:

1. Google has just announced that it has updated its search algorithm to promote the latest relevant results where it makes sense to do so. The company explains “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.” 35% of searches should be affected, Google says. These include, recent events or hot topics; regularly recurring events, and topics that are frequently updated.

2. Twitter has announced Twitter Stories, which is an online portfolio that Twitter will use to display stories about how single Tweets have affected its users. You can submit stories by mentioning mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag #twitterstories, Twitter says to feel free to link to a photo or video and they will include those in the story. Twitter will then feature a selection of profiles every month. The site is already live with a nice selection of stories to check out:

3. Search engine Google is now indexing public comments made on websites that use Facebook, Disqus and other add-ons. The move means that all comments on any publicly visible website could show up in Google search results. Previously, search engines were unable to read comments because Facebook, Disqus and Intense Debate used programming that was not easy to read automatically. This meant that comments could play any part in a website’s search ranking. Now, however, the web tools that Google uses to trawl the web and index content are able to read comments that have been made using Facebook’s Connect add-in for other websites, as well as other equivalent services.

4. Just five companies control 64% of all online spending, with Google controls 46% in total. The others are Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL. Here are the full results:

5. Following last week’s news that Klout had changed its algorithm for calculating social capital, there has been a groundswell of criticism against the site. CEO Fernandez responds to his critics here.

Tags: Facebook, Google, Klout, social media, Twitter
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