Read all about it! Weekly news (16/07/10)
Friday 16 July 2010
TAGS: Amazon | Facebook | Google | Social media | Twitter
Facebook Credits will be launched in September and integrated into Facebook Connect
Facebook plans to launch Facebook Credits its virtual currency in September in the hopes that it will rival market leaders PayPal.
At first the credits will be used to buy virtual goods, such as games. But eventually it will be rolled out to include physical items.
Facebook credits could provide lucrative opportunities for brands giving those brands the ability to offer transactional services on Facebook, but also through linked sites via Facebook Connect.
Experts believe it could rival large online retailers like Amazon, due to the user data Facebook has access to, allowing advertisers and brands to target particular groups and segment users based on their Facebook preferences.
‘Networked Nation’ launched by UK’s digital champion to get every working-age British citizen online by 2012
Martha Lane-Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com wants to get the ten million working-age people that have never used the Internet, online in two year’s time.
Ms Lane-Fox believes Networked Nation could save the country £22 billion each year as government services could be delivered cost effectively, charities could communicate with disadvantaged groups with greater ease and businesses would be able to target a bigger customer base.
According to the Prime Minister, ‘We need to ensure people aren’t being left behind as more and more services and businesses move online. Promoting digital inclusion is essential for a dynamic modern economy and can help make government more efficient and effective.’
Twitter now second to Google in online search
Twitter now delivers 24 billion searches per month and it’s rapidly attacking Google’s market share.
Currently Google is still ahead with 88 billion searches each month, but Twitter’s daily search numbers have jumped from 600 million in April to 800 million today. Combined, Bing and Yahoo! only account for only 13.5 billion a month.
Twitter has been gaining momentum thanks to real-time searches through its Trending Topics Google has only recently incorporated Twitter feeds and its own Caffeine update (providing 50% fresher search results than the current indexing system) into its search facilities.
Although there’s a long way to go, with demand for real-time search growing, the microblogging site, Twitter, could become increasingly dominant.
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