How Far Will Employers Go to Control Employee Social Media Use?

CareerBuilder released some survey findings today indicating that over a third of employers in the U.S. are using social media to promote their company. It's employee use that still has some businesses worried.

A lot of companies are afraid to let their employees use social media freely, but they're also afraid not to. On the one hand, there are obvious reputation and brand issues that could come up from irresponsible employees social media use, but on the flipside, some of those issues can be avoided with responsible employee social media use. Of course there are many other benefits as well.

This week, FaceTime Communications introduced a new tool called Socialite, which is a security management and compliance solution for social networks. Available in Software-as-a-service form or as on premises solution, its aim is to give companies control over social media features and communications for users on corporate networks.

A rep for the company says key benefits include the ability to: track users across multiple social media platforms; prevent data from leaving the company, either maliciously or inadvertently; empower IT admin to manage access to Facebook and its thousands of “applets” by category or individual application; manage access to features (ie, who can read, like, comment upon or access 95 distinct features on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter); control Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, so content is required to be pre-approved by corporate communications or other third party; empower IT admin to capture all posts, messages and commentary in context; and export to an archive of choice for eDiscovery.

"Organizations in regulated industries are faced with the need to manage the features used and content posted on social networks in order to protect themselves and their customers," said Erin Traudt, Research Director, Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions for IDC. "FaceTime's heritage in the IM and Unified Communications markets should play well as communications move into the social arena, but still require security and compliance controls."

A lot of companies are simply creating social media policies and hoping employees abide. There's no telling how often or how strictly these are actually enforced. I would guess that a lot of infractions get overlooked until they cause real damage.

It will be interesting to see if more services like FaceTime's start being used in corporations as time goes on and social media continues to become more unavoidable. source: webpronews.com/topnews/

Yahoo Comes Up Shy With Q2 Earnings Report

However else Yahoo's shareholders may feel about the company's financial situation, they can perhaps take comfort in the idea that Carol Bartz won't be wasting lots of money on champagne and confetti today.  Yahoo's second quarter earnings report didn't contain much news the CEO could celebrate.

The company failed to hit three out of four major targets.  First, in terms of gross revenue, it reported $1.60 billion instead of the $1.64 billion analysts expected.  Second, with respect to net revenue, Yahoo reported $1.13 billion rather than $1.16 billion.  Then, Yahoo reported $175 million, not $178 million, in operating income.

The bright spot - and it's not a big one - just came with Yahoo reporting GAAP earnings per share of $0.15 instead of $0.14.

Also, for whatever it's worth, Bartz said in a statement, "We're pleased that we continued to deliver strong operating income and margin expansion.  Our search fundamentals are improving . . ."

But investors literally aren't buying it, sending Yahoo's stock down 7.24 percent so far in after-hours trading.  Which makes for a worse fall than the one Google suffered after delivering its second quarter earnings report; it was down only 4.02 percent around this time of day.

Yahoo fans who want to put these results behind them should know that the company announced, anyway, "Revenue for the third quarter of 2010 is expected to be in the range of $1,570 million to $1,650 million.  Income from operations for the third quarter of 2010 is expected to be in the range of $160 million to $200 million." source: www.webpronews.com

BBC.com Launches New U.S. Website

The BBC said today it is launching new U.S. edition website along with a redesign with advertising partner HP.

"Building on the incredible journalism already available on BBC.com you're going to see more analysis, more insight and more perspective that connects the dots on events and issues that affect us all in the U.S.," said Miranda Cresswell, SVP, BBC.com.

"Our new redesign will make it even easier to find, use and share this great content."



The new U.S. edition will be staffed by a new team of online journalists now based in the BBC's Washington, DC bureau, led by BBC.com Editor, U.S. Matthew Davis.

Later this summer, BBC.com will launch a travel section, in partnership with its sister company Lonely Planet. It will be led by former NYTimes.com Travel & Style Editor, David G. Allan who was recently appointed Editorial Director, BBC Travel. Improved sports, technology, business and entertainment sites will launch soon.

BBC.com also offers apps, including BBC News and the BBC Sports app. The BBC News app is the sixth most popular app in the U.S. BBC.com attracts over 16 million users a month in the U.S.

New Google Release Could Change Everything. Will it?

It's a simple concept, with enormous implications (even for non-Android users). The introduction of App Inventor has provoked a great deal of discussion around the web and with good reason. The product basically puts app creation into the hands of everyone (though you will still have to learn how to use App Inventor itself, as Jason Kincaid points out. Think Dreameaver for apps.) Businesses will be able to create apps on the fly. Consumers could be able to create apps that cater to their personal preferences, and therefore make their devices more useful.



Simplification often leads to wider adoption. Look at what blogging platforms did for online content creation. Look at what Twitter is doing for news consumption (essentially what RSS has been doing for years). If people have a simple way to create apps quickly that can be used by users of any Android device, they are probably going to take advantage, and those apps will get users, and inspire more app creation.

Too Many Bad Apps?

Users ultimately decide what apps to put on their phones. It's not like using the web. Your Android device is not going to be spammed with so-called bad apps. Android is an operating system, not the web. You don't use Android like you use the web, you use the apps themselves that you decide to use like you use the web. source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

MySpace Upgrades Global Music Offerings

MySpace users all over the world should have a much easier time discovering music thanks to some new changes. This afternoon, MySpace overhauled its approach to playlists, eliminating (or at least cutting back) limitations that might have affected the way people shared songs.

A key point before we get much further: this development involves all MySpace territories other than the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, meaning the rollout's pretty huge.

As for some specifics, Rebekah Horne, Managing Director & GM of MySpace International, explained in a statement, "MySpace users worldwide can create an unlimited amount of multi-song playlists (up to 100 songs) which they can broadcast and share on their public profiles."

Furthermore, "Each playlist a user creates will have its own page to share with friends," and users can "manage playlists using a new product called My Music and check out Public Playlists to hear playlists created by artists and other MySpace users."

These changes could do a lot to keep bands and music lovers coming back to MySpace. If not, well, MySpace did ask for feedback and hint that more upgrades are in the works, demonstrating that it's committed to finding other solutions. source: webpronews.com/topnews/

Massive YouTube Film Experiment Announced

A project that should entirely live up to the billing "historic cinematic experiment" has begun. Ridley Scott, Kevin Macdonald, YouTube, and LG have asked people all over the world to record (part of) their lives on July 24th, and then much of the footage will be used to create a single film that'll premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

This undertaking has been labeled "Life in a Day." It's meant to act as a sort of time capsule, showing what the earth was like at a specific point. The only restrictions involve not including trademarks or copyrighted content (music, TV clips, etc.), and would-be participants must also upload their footage before July 31st.



As for the men behind the project, Kevin Macdonald, who directed The Last King of Scotland, will be responsible for actually editing the footage together, and Ridley Scott, who's perhaps best known for his work on Gladiator, Blade Runner, and Thelma & Louise, is acting as executive producer.

The final product could be quite remarkable. Scott, Macdonald, YouTube, and LG have created a strong incentive for people to participate - 20 contributors will get taken to the premiere, and everyone whose footage is used will be credited as a co-director - so there should be no shortage of material.

More information is available here if any of this sounds interesting to you. Good luck to all involved.

Google UK Chief Speaks Of Focus On Mobile, Social

In nine days' time, Google will report its second quarter financial results, and no matter how well the search giant's done, at least a few critics are sure to argue that it needs to succeed in new fields. Matt Brittin, Managing Director of Google UK, seems to feel mobile and social are the two main candidates.

Google isn't exactly trailing its competitors in terms of offering mobile products and services, of course. Android has become a fairly mainstream mobile operating system, and more and more info is starting to circulate about Chrome OS, which might function in a similar space. Plus, it's already possible to access just about all of Google's existing products using any sort of smartphone.

Brittin hinted that Google's mobile efforts may soon overshadow its more traditional endeavors, however.

Brittin told Jonathan Sibun this weekend, "As growth in broadband starts to flatten off, we're seeing the next wave. The big shift is to mobile internet. Between 25pc and 30pc of consumers use their mobiles to access the internet. But in three years' time analysts believe more people will be accessing it from their mobiles than from a desktop. That's a massive change."

As for what he said with regards to social networking, Brittin wouldn't go so far as to confirm the existence of Google Me. Still, he didn't deny that a new product's in the works.

Furthermore, Brittin implied that Facebook can be beat, and the UK exec even issued a reminder that one of Google's properties has already achieved some success in the field.

"Facebook is an absolute phenomenon but there are other social networks which are successful too," Brittin said. "We've got Orkut, which is fantastically successful in India and Brazil. And Bebo is successful in other countries. It's a phenomenon that is with us to stay. I think what we'll see is the internet becoming more of a social place, as well as people being social within the context of social networks." source: www.webpronews.com/topnews/

Facebook Revisits Privacy Policy Ahead Of New Features

At this point, it seems inevitable that people will object to every little tweak Facebook makes; even a 99.9 percent success rate would leave around 400,000 users unhappy. But Facebook has proposed some revisions to its Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities in what appears to be an attempt to prepare everyone for some rather big changes.

One interesting amendment relates to location. Michael Richter, Facebook's general counsel, confirmed something new is in the works by writing on the Facebook Blog, "The last time we updated the Privacy Policy, we included language describing a location feature we might build in the future. . . . Now, we've got some different ideas that we think are even more exciting. . . . So, we've removed the old language and, instead added the concept of a 'place' that could refer to a Page, such as one for a local restaurant."

Richter also hinted at the existence of third-party deals, saying that Facebook's "explained the possibility of working with some partner websites that we pre-approve to offer a more personalized experience at the moment you visit the site. In such instances, we would only introduce this feature with a small, select group of partners and we would also offer new controls."



Then the other changes could be better defined as clarifications; Facebook's mostly just trying to make sure users understand how existing mechanisms work.

Google Adds More Extensions to Latest Chrome Browser

Google has just released the latest and most stable release build of its Chrome browser for Windows. Most notable features are the additional of more Chrome browser extensions and of course bookmark sync which has been tested in the browser’s previous beta version.

If you have not donwloaded the previous Chrome browser beta version, you might have missed the Extensions feature. These are just your usual Firefox plug-ins/add-ons which extend the functionality of the browser.

Right now, there are more than 1,500 available extensions in the Chrome browser extension gallery.

The other feature which made it to the latest release of Google Chrome browser is bookmark syncing. This is very useful if you used Chrome browser on different machines. It lets you synchronize all your bookmarks from one computer to another. After enabling bookmark sync, any bookmarks that you add on one browser installation will automatically appear on the other browser installation on your other computers.

For those using Chrome browser on Linux, the extensions feature is already available in the beta channel. While Mac users will have to wait some more to have the extensions and bookmark sync on their Chrome browser installations.

Facebook's 2009 Scorecard Shows Huge Gains

Simply put, Facebook had a terrific 2009. This afternoon, comScore provided some statistics that cover the entire year, and the easiest way to sum them up is by saying that double- or triple-digit growth occurred in an impressive eight out of ten categories.

According to comScore, the total number of unique visitors to Facebook increased 105 percent between December of 2008 and December of 2009, hitting 111.8 million before the new decade began. At the same time, the number of average daily visitors increased by an even greater amount: 181 percent.



Meanwhile, the total minutes and total pages viewed stats rose 198 and 151 percent, respectively. Average usage days per visitor hit 10.4 (up 37 percent), average minutes per visitor totaled 246.9 (up 45 percent), and average visits per visitor reached 27.4 (up 64 percent). And total visits increased 236 percent.

The only sort of weak metrics were the average minutes per visit measurement (down 11 percent, probably due to people visiting the site so often), and the average minutes per usage day tally (up just 6 percent).

So Facebook's certainly starting 2010 in a much stronger position than it entered 2009. And looking at the tail end of the line in comScore's graph, it doesn't appear that the social network's stats are going to plateau anytime soon.
source: http://www.webpronews.com

Skype Sees Big Jump in International Calls

Skype announced that its share of international calling minutes has jumped by 50% year-over-year. This data comes from a new report released by research firm TeleGeography.

According to this report, Skype's share of international calling minutes jumped to 12% from last year's figure of 8%. Telegeography says that the volume of traffic routed via Skype is growing at an "astonishing" pace. The following graph shows the net increase in international phone and Skype traffic from 2005 to 2009.

Skype's Peter Parkes writes on the Skype Blog:

Skype retains its top spot as the ‘largest provider of cross-border communications in the world, by far’ according to the same report. Skype-to-Skype international calling minutes grew by 21 billion in 2009, a phenomenal acceleration of almost 100%. Telegeography strategy VP Stefan Beckert said at a meeting in Honolulu (why can’t we have meetings there?) that ‘he knew Skype hit a tipping point when his grandmother started using it’.

Sten Tamkivi’s presentation at eComm in Amsterdam explored some of the backstory behind Skype’s conquest of the international long distance calling space, and included some discussion of the reasons behind Skype’s increasing ubiquity. Definitely interesting viewing, if I say so myself, and there’s a transcript over at Skype Journal if you’d prefer to digest it in text form.

It should be noted, as Skype points out, that Telgeography has slightly altered its methodology for the report this year. The firm is now comparing international Skype-to-Skype minutes to the total number of international minutes to get the 12% figure. In the past, the Skype share included Skype calls to landlines and mobiles too.

Details of the TeleGeography report, which covers much more, can be viewed here. Samples can be downloaded.

source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/19/skype-sees-big-jump-in-international-calls

Google Gets 75% Of Paid Search Clicks & Dollars: Report

Three of every four paid search clicks happen on Google, and 75 cents of every paid search dollar is spent on Google. That’s according to the latest quarterly report from Efficient Frontier, a search advertising agency that manages more than $750 million in annual digital spending annually. The stats cover Q4 of 2009, and show Google’s share of paid search clicks rising from 71% in Q3 to 74.4% in Q4. Yahoo’s share of paid clicks, meanwhile, dropped from 24.4% in Q3 to 21% in Q4. Bing’s share was down slightly, but remains up 31% year over year.

The numbers are similar on the spending side, Efficient Frontier reports. Google is the clear leader, but the company’s 74.5% share is actually down year-over-year. For the year, Yahoo remained steady at 20.4% of spend, while Bing grew 25% from Q4 2008 to Q4 2009.

The report offers an overall positive outlook on search advertising. Efficient Frontier says the retail sector led a strong Q4 2009 that was up 6% from quarter to quarter and from year to year. Retail advertisers spent 17% more in Q4 than they did a year earlier, but retail CPC was down 9% from Q4 2008 levels. The report suggests lower cost-per-click may be due to search engines experimenting with new ad formats:

“Google and the other engines are adding more features to provide comparative shopping data within the SERP, a move that is likely contributing to a retail CTR drop-off of over 40% YOY.”

Looking ahead, Efficient Frontier is optimistic for 2010. The company expects that a “moderate amount of CPC growth will accelerate growth in Q1 and throughout 2010,” and that “2010 spend growth will exceed earlier estimates of 10-15%.” The report also predicts solid growth for Bing in 2010, saying that a 30% gain is possible, which would put Bing between 6-7% of click share by the end of the year. But there’s also a warning that Yahoo’s falling share of paid clicks could offset Bing’s gains if and when the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is approved and takes effect.

source: http://searchengineland.com/google-gets-75-of-paid-search-clicks-dollars-report-33780

Google Makes Google Docs a Cloud Storage Service

It has been quite awhile since Google’s GDrive project has been talked about. In fact it seems that Google may have shelved the project already. But not until now, as Google just announced that Google Docs users can now upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. This may not be GDrive per se, but it could be Google’s baby steps towards launching GDrive or possibly turning Google Docs into it.

Users can now upload any file, not just those currently supported by Google Docs, up to 250MB at a time. Free storage is up to 1GB and this does not include the files converted into any of the Google Doc supported formats. If you need more storage, you can purchase additional space at $0.25 per year.

So basically, Google is going up against other cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Box and others. And given the popularity of Google Docs, Google just might give those other cloud storage service a run for their money.

In addition, those files can be stored in shared folders as well. Hence making it easy to store, organize and collaborate on files. Uploaded files are also easily searcheable just like any Google Docs documents, spreasheets, presentations and PDFs.

source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

How Social Media and the Web Helped Avatar Make $1 Billion

The Simulcam and Fusion 3D camera inventions were not the only technologies that made James Cameron’s Sci-Fi epic Avatar a massive box office success. While smaller films have used social media to spread the word guerrilla-style, no other major blockbuster has employed a full-on social web marketing assault quite like Avatar.

The results in its case were a $232 million opening weekend, a total of one billion dollars in revenue by year’s end, and the rank of #2 highest grossing film of all time. Cameron’s $500 million act of hubris has paid off. Here’s an outline of the social media moves Avatar’s team made to achieve success.

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The Basics: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace

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Avatar has its own Facebook (), MySpace (), and Twitter () pages. That’s getting to be standard these days. The 18,000-follower Twitter account has tellingly not been updated since a few days after the film’s theatrical release; once the word was out, the job was done. While it was active, though, its followers would retweet updates to their followers, who (if interested) would do the same, spreading the word all over the web. The Facebook Page is even more impressive, with over 700,000 fans.

Facebook’s updated Page features make it the place to be for brands seeking exposure. The site allows brands to push updates to fans. Those fans see the updates in their personal news feeds, and they can then share them with others, just like on Twitter.

source: http://mashable.com/2010/01/08/avatar-social-media-web/