The BBC recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of its first ever TV broadcast. After seven decades 90 per cent of UK viewing is still linear – we flop in front of the box and watch whatever’s on.

With Netflix poised to launch TV streaming services in the UK and Ireland early next year, this is set to change. LoveFilm, now a subscription service with 1.4 million members, will be stiff competition. So will Google be when it expands into film rental via YouTube, alongside Apple’s film and TV show rentals through iTunes. Meanwhile, broadcasters and cable TV providers like Sky, Virgin and BT increasingly offer on-demand services. Read More »

If you’re anything like me, you’ve let a bit of dust accumulate on your once proud and shiny LinkedIn account. Outdated information, neglected networks, a CV that could use some spiffing up—it’s a classic case of LinkedIn lethargy.

Well, the website has been doing some interesting things lately, like its job application button, and is really beginning to stake its claim as the anti-Facebook.

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Facebook has released some intersting stats on its Open Graph features for media partners, which include Yahoo! News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Daily,  that it announced at f8. We already know that Facebook is a major driver of news traffic with twice as many getting their news via Facebook than any of social network, but the amount of traffic it is drving on a daily basis is striking.

The Guardian is picking up around one million pageviews a day while the Washington Post is getting 3.5 million monthly readers for its social reader app. The Independent has in excess of one million monthly active users are connecting their Facebook accounts and Yahoo News has seen a 600% increase in traffic. Read More »

A few weeks back a post went up about how twice as many get their news via Facebook, which underscored its position a place where increasingly a lot of people pick up and share news.

Facebook has just published a list of news that is being shared with its 50 most shared stories of 2011. It is a real mix from the serious, the top most shared story was about the the Quake and Tsunami in Japan, to the ridiculous. The third most story is headlined ‘No, your zodiac sign hasn’t changed’. I don’t even know where to start with that one. Read More »

As the saying goes, the customer is always right, which is why marketers spend significant amounts of time and money investigating, through user groups and forums, what it is their customers want. But for the online retailer, whose business success relies on correctly displayed content, understanding what the customer wants is often made more challenging when their actual online behaviour contradicts what they might say in a focus group.

That’s why multivariate testing becomes such a vital tool in the optimisation of websites, removing the guesswork! But without strategic use, the impact will only ever be short-lived. Read More »

This is really pretty cool. CNN has launched a great Twitter data visualization tool called ‘Ecosphere’ in support of the COP17 climate change conference in Durban, which starts this week.

The site picks up every tweet tagged with the #COP17 hashtag and uses them to stimulate growth in a plant or tree in the Ecosphere that represents a certain topic, such as sustainability. Read More »

Reuters is reporting that Boston based private equity firm, Thomas H Lee Partners, is interested in buying the US operations of Yahoo!.

This marks a major change in approach to other interested bidders, including Microsoft and other private equity firms such as Silver Lake, KKR and TPG, which have placed the value on Yahoo’s Asian operations. Read More »

As with Twitter if you want an indication how big the service is getting then look at the celebrities.

On Twitter Lady Gaga has more than 16 million followers. She isn’t on Google+ yet, but Britney Spears is and she has just passed Google CEO Larry Page to become the most followed person with more than three quarter of a million fans. Read More »

Aussies not on social media.....

Aussies really do prefer social email to sex and are completely addicted to it – social media that is not sex……according to a new survey. The survey revealed that some Australians will stop whatever it is they are doing – even sex – to respond to a Facebook update or a tweet. That’s very sad.

Tick Yes, the social media specialist behind the survey and conducted by Nine Rewards also found that 80% of Aussies do not use social media to connect with brands despite all the marketing money thrown at it. 80% do not connect with your brand on social media. Think about that before you spend the next million on facebook as Pepsi found to their cost

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Delta got to grips with social media problem in a way that Qantas wished they had

Delta have recently done an amazing job in dealing with a potential social media problem in a way that Qantas wish they had.

To recap on Qantas. Having first cancelled all their flights without telling anyone they then tried to run a Twitter promotion giving away a pair of pyjamas to someone who could say what their idea of a luxury experience was.

What started out as a tacky idea to improve weeks of negative publicity, very quickly went turned into a PR disaster when thousands of people hijacked the hashtag to fire relentless comments about the recent Qantas grounding.

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