Today’s announcement that Yahoo! and ABC News are to work together to deliver news has a familiar ring to it. That’s because the two companies set up a remarkably similar alliance back in December 2000.

While developments at Yahoo! should be welcomed, it’s fair to say that an anticipating audience was expecting a little more from today’s announcement.

But let’s see, in quiz form of course, if you can distinguish between Yahoo!’s new strategy and its strategy circa 2000.

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Twitter is a little over five years old and has racked up some landmarks along the way.  This infographich nice details some of those moment and all the key numbers you need to know.

They include some early ones such as when Michael Jackson’s death hit and tweet per second levels hit 456, which is nothing two years later. Jump forward to 2011 when the they hit 7,196 as Japan beat the US in the Women’s world’s cup.

There is also a good break down on the growth of Twitter in terms of user numbers, its commercial model and top users.

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What  a mile stone. The Huffington Post has reported today that it has topped one billion page views and 37 million unique monthly users.

The 37m unique monthly users, however, puts it behind  the MailOnline, which earlier this year saw its unique visitors rise to 39,635,000. Read More »

When listening to the presentation of a partner at last week’s e-Commerce Expo in Paris, my attention was caught by this sentence: “If someone does not want to pay for a professional solution for conversion, we implement Open Source.” This made me ask myself: is this solution really just about money? On the one hand if it is an issue of cost, one could easily say that Open Source is free, and costs nothing – but is this really the case? Read More »

Two major online worlds for children have launched this year: Pottermore, an extension of the Harry Potter franchise; and Horrible Histories, Scholastic’s virtual environment based on the books of the same name (disclosure – Horrible Histories® is a client of ours). Children’s worlds are big business. They are a chance for brands and IP owners to connect with young people – both to encourage children to read or learn, and to tap into new revenue streams.

Kids are a tough audience. Your world might be the most beautifully designed thing in the world, but if it doesn’t have a strong enough purpose or story, it won’t hold a child’s interest for long. Read More »

There was much talk last week about how Spotify potentially risks a backlash as it insists new users must have a Facebook account.

However, a week after that and the other changes comes news that Spotify has gained one million new monthly active Facebook-integrated users since Facebook’s f8 conference. Read More »

After shaking up user timelines Facebook is turning to advertising and is taking the wraps off of a new ad unit and measurement tool called “People Talking About” that’s designed to help brands get closer to users.

The changes are designed to address concerns by advertisers who have wanted more detail from Facebook in terms of metrics.

The changes echo what some have been saying about brands needing to get much more social in their advertising while other advertisers have talked about how some brands are disappointed with their level of engagement with users on Facebook as the number of people ‘liking’ brands wanes.

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