Nothing sparks backlash against a social media service quite like a Terms Of Service (TOS) change. Users who have already willingly given up their privacy to sign up to the services in the first place, suddenly get annoyed when companies push a little bit harder.

The latest row has engulfed Instagram. They announced a TOS change that gave them extensive rights of photos taken with the service, and the metadata linked to those services. Many users were angry, believing that it meant their carefully filtered food photos could sold to advertisers. Ultimately this backlash came back to hit Facebook too. The company is no strangers to privacy rows, and became Instagram’s parent in a $1 billion deal earlier this year.

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With the latest wave of Ipsos MORI’s Technology tracker comes something of a technology landmark to end 2012 with. Smartphone ownership rises above the 50% mark for the first time. Considering that in 2010 the figure stood at just 20% that is rather impressive.

This is of course the latest in a series of technology milestones in the 21 century. It started with mobile phone ownership reaching 50% in 2000 followed by internet access reaching the same level only a year later.  But this was the most impressive milestone in terms of internet access arguably came years later in 2006 when the majority of the population finally had broadband access. Read More »

The benefits of social media to business strategists and marketers, whether financial or cultural, have not always been clear. But with social media now the single largest source of unsolicited consumer opinions, these strategists must find new, innovative ways to analyse and monitor the opinions, perspectives and sentiments in each tweet, post, comment, and status update.  Read More »