Digital Marketing Forum

Interesting news - [URL="http://www.facebook.com"]Facebook[/URL] is expecting the Web to become more social and is issuing its developers with code to enable them to take part in this change. The owners - Zuckerberg et al - are saying that this will improve the way things are because people aren't using their …

The demand for compromised social network accounts is now so big on the cybercrime black market that, according to the latest research, just one such underground site has 1.5 million of them for sale. The international reach of social networks has meant that these sites have become the de facto …

The latest research from security vendor Symantec would appear to suggest that cybercrime gangs are now applying drug smuggling techniques to their trade, and are actively using 'malware mules' in order to distribute threats within social friendship networks. According to the latest Internet Security Threat Report, email accounts are now …

[URL="http://www.twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] has gone on a charm offensive, after buying Tweetie and announcing it's going to make its own URL shortener and users won't get the choice about whether or not to use it. We are still nice guys, they're saying, and you'll still be able to work with us. I'm …

Spotify is fast become the de facto way of listening to music online for millions of in the know users. Rather than buy a copy of a track which is downloaded to a player such as an iPod, Spotify users either pay a monthly fee (for a no advert service) …

[URL="http://www.twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] announced today that it will derive revenue from ads. It's their plan to capitalize on their extreme growth since their 2007 inception. Personally, I think this will kill Twitter and I can't say it will be a bad funeral. Hopefully, someone will start another site just like it that …

According to Facebook's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, safety is the social networking site's top priority. Indeed, he [URL="http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=381246352130"]says[/URL] that his team are dedicated to "creating an environment where people can connect and share comfortably" and has revealed a redesigned Safety Centre which provides new safety resources for parents, educators, …

I've just come up with something better than [URL="http://www.twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL], [URL="http://www.facebook.com"]Facebook[/URL], Email, [URL="http://www.hellotxt.com"]HelloTxt[/URL] or any of the other so-called social media messaging systems. I call it Instantaneous Messaging. Don't confuse my Instantaneous Messaging with the lamer, last century version called, "Instant Messaging." Instantaneous Messaging is better than Instant Messaging or any …

According to Gartner you, as in everyone, will start spending more on IT this year. Richard Gordon, a research vice president with the information technology analyst outfit, says that strong fourth quarter sales along with "an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010" plus a little …

More often than not the consumer worries that it will be bad news when a popular software tool from a small developer is bought by a bigger company. However, in the case of Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter clients for the iPhone, things could be very different. For …

Social networking site [URL="http://www.twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] has found a new application - according to research from [URL="http://www.hp.com"]HP[/URL] the movies that get talked about the most are likely to be the biggest hits. That's not exactly what the HP release says, of course. It talks about measurement, it talks about accuracy and it …

Legal firm [URL="http://www.tbilaw.co.uk/"]Tilly, Baker and Irvine (TBI)[/URL] has agreed to stop sending letters to Internet users when they believe they may be infringing copyright. The ironic thing is that this is the same week in which UK law changed to allow the Government to cut users off for precisely the …

In March, Facebook proposed that there should be a number of changes to its privacy policy in order to allow it eventually share personal data with 'pre-approved' third party websites. Such information, should you be logged into Facebook and then connect to a third party website, as your name, gender, …

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch [URL="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357091/murdoch-launches-fresh-volley-at-google"]has called upon[/URL] other newspaper publishers to stop Google from taking their content for free. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Murdoch suggested that Google might like to consider either just publishing headlines along with a brief line or two, or alternatively perhaps actually …

The death of Guy Kewney early this morning is not only a huge loss to the world of IT journalism, but to the world itself. He deserves recognition as the first dedicated technology journalist, having started way back in the early 1970's, as well as devoted husband, father and a …

Probably just about everyone over 25 remembers the game and show '[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Sandiego"]Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?[/URL]' If San Diego were around today (maybe she is, who knows), we would all know exactly where she was because she would broadcast her whereabouts by tying her FourSquare account to …

[I]So, did anybody hear tonight's mysterious southeast Portland explosion? [/I] Apparently a lot of people, like my Portland friend, did. ("Tonight" was Sunday.) What's interesting is how they used Internet tools to track down the location. As described in an article in the [I]New York Times[/I], people immediately started using …

What appears to be a brand new feature of our beloved Google is the ability to "Note" any URL which turns up in the search results. Noting a URL adds it to your personal notebook, which works like a scrapbook ala bookmarks. Pretty interesting ... although I'm still a fan …

A news [URL="http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=135404&provider=top"]article [/URL]was making the Facebook rounds today, warning about a site called [URL="http://www.spokeo.com/"]Spokeo.com [/URL]that aggregates publicly available information. "It can list your address, a picture of your home, how much it cost, how long you have lived there, your approximate age and income, your relationship status and more," …

News International has confirmed that it is to start charging visitors to access both The Times and Sunday Times newspaper content online from June. This heralds the emergence of the much talked about Murdoch Paywall which News International owner Rupert Murdoch has long argued is essential in order to make …

It's starting in the UK - the London [URL="http://www.thetimes.co.uk"]Times[/URL] (we just call it the Times over here but I imagine that would have a different connotation for American readers) is going to have a paywall after May. Subscribers will be allowed in for nothing. Clearly the [URL="http://www.wsj.com"]Wall Street Journal[/URL] has …

[URL="http://www.nestle.co.uk"]Nestle[/URL] is a European confectionery manufacturer which upset a lot of people on Friday. Actually it upsets people quite often, it's a big business, they do that, all of them. But on Friday it annoyed people through its Facebook group, and I'd kind of assumed that wasn't the idea of …

It's not exactly news that the relationship between Google and China has soured over the last month or two and it looks as though [URL="http://www.macworld.com/article/147096/2010/03/china_google.html?lsrc=rss_main"]Google may quit China soon[/URL] leaving the vastly lucrative Chinese market to Microsoft and others. What's not clear is what the implications will be for the …

Forget about PC gaming, the new geek chic is social gaming and according to one new report it's women and divorcees who are leading the way. The latest [URL="http://www.globalwebindex.net"]Global Web Index[/URL] has identified that the most addicted social gaming players do not fit the typical geeky teenage boy computer gamer …

Google does a lot of things well, maybe too well, and it's adding to its portfolio of tools on a weekly basis. At some point you have to look at the number of pies in which Google has its fingers and start to get a little frightened of this company. …

Steve Ballmer, [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/03/microsoft-bing"]speaking[/URL] at the [URL="http://searchmarketingexpo.com/"]Search Engine Marketing Expo[/URL] this week, credited Google with being the first company to get internet search done right. Google certainly wasn't the [URL="http://searchenginewatch.com/2175241"]first internet search engine[/URL]. Yahoo!, InfoSeek, Excite and Alta Vista to name but a few, came along long before Google emerged in …

Craig Newmark, the man that newspaper editors love to [URL="http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/weekly-newspapers-in-crisis/Content?oid=923530"]hate[/URL], celebrated the 15th anniversary of Craigslist -- the garage sale listing of the Internet -- this month. In Newmark's [URL="http://www.cnewmark.com/2010/03/craigslist-is-around-fifteen-years-old.html"]blog[/URL], he posted a copy of a message from March 28, 1995, from the seminal online service The WElL. "My focus, …

I was driving down the highway the other day, and it ocurred to me that Facebook sucks. No, really it does. Sure, it lets us connect with friends and we all put up with it, but think about just how bad it is. [LIST] The security features are hard to …

The news in the UK that our [URL="http://www.asa.org"]Advertising Standards Authority[/URL] is being [URL="http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/988680/Advertising-industry-recommends-ASA-extends-its-remit-online/"]urged to monitor Internet ads[/URL] as well as those offline will raise two sets of eyebrows. First there will be those people who assumed it did already. There are ads online, how can an advertising standards authority not …

After finding out that criminal [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story253452.html"]attorneys [/URL]and divorce [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220645.html"]lawyers [/URL]are using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to find out information for and about clients, it shouldn't be any surprise that banks are doing the same thing. "Companies like RapLeaf of San Francisco have been quietly gathering information …

The answer, it seems, is everyone. The total number of 140 character maximum [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story231619.html"]messages posted to Twitter stood at 5 billion[/URL] late last October (up from a billion the November before) but has leapt forward as the popularity of the micro-blogging system goes into overdrive and last night hit the …

[URL="http://www.google.co.uk"]Check it out[/URL] Google has turned the lights out and gone black, but it is only for today it seems. Apparently it is all in a good cause: Earth Hour which invites people around the world to switch off their lights for an hour during the course of Saturday 29th …

Federal magistrate Barry Garber has ruled that a lawsuit can proceed for what a student said was a violation of her First Amendment rights after she was suspended for setting up a Facebook page that criticized her teacher. Katherine Evans was a junior in Pembroke Pines Charter High School in …

It may only have impacted a "small number of users" for a "short period of time" as a Facebook spokesperson put it, but by pushing out buggy code the social networking giant created a potentially huge privacy problem for those whose accounts it did touch upon. Considering that Facebook has …

Those of us who still read newspapers have seen them -- the pages and pages of teeny type describing changes in zoning, foreclosure notices, and all sorts of other arcane information. Most of us just turn the page. But in publishing, it's big money, and newspapers that have already lost …

Three Google executives have been found guilty and given six month suspended sentences in a case revolving around the posting of a video to YouTube which shows a teenager with Down's Syndrome being bullied. According to the [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8533695.stm"]BBC[/URL] Google itself is none too happy with the verdict, quoting the Chief …

When you are dealing with a populations as large as China's, even when you take into consideration that three quarters of the population doesn't have internet access, you are still talking about a very large number of those who do. So it's no surprise that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! want …

Google Buzz was not a great moment in the history of Google. It seemed to bring to the surface a lot of lingering bad feelings that people have been having about Google for some time. The botched Buzz release only made it worse, confirming people's worst fears that Google didn't …

Who could forget the saga of sex.com, the domain that just continues to keep giving? Indeed, it has had such a history that books have been written about it and kept many a journalist in beers for good measure. The rights to ownership of the sex.com domain were at the …

Wow. That's quite a statistic, but there it is in front of me jumping off the pages of the latest [URL="http://bit.ly/b2rUFg"]global State of Enterprise Security study[/URL] from Symantec. The two lines shining so brightly and grabbing my attention read "75 percent of organizations experienced cyber attacks in the past 12 …

Twitter users are being warned not to click the links in a Direct Message which has been circulating in large numbers since late Saturday. The message simply says either "LOL, is this you?" or "LOL, this is funny" or "ha ha, u look funny on here" and has a link …

Lately everyone on the Web has been wanting to know about one thing Google Buzz, well I'm tired of that subject. I would probably write about a different company but when I found out that [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/pictures-worth-thousand-translated.html"]Google is getting into the food industry[/URL], I felt that I had to write about …

I wish I had gotten this story before the [URL="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=57438&o=3&gta=commentslistpos#commentslistpos"]San Fransisco Chronicle[/URL] or [URL="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10455573-71.html?tag=rtcol;pop"]Cnet,[/URL] but the truth is they got it before me. A lady in Florida got a team of lawyers to sue Google, the Search Engine firm in San Fransisco, CA for breaching her privacy with Google Buzz. …

[URL="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=57438&o"]Someone sued Google[/URL] the other day for violating her privacy with the original implementation of Google Buzz. You see, when you first opened Google Buzz last week, Google looked at the people you most frequently email or chat with and used that list of people to seed your followers list. …

I know this isn't really funny but someone has set up a website called [URL="http://pleaserobme.com"]pleaserobme[/URL]. And I'm delighted. Why am I delighted? Because it's there to tell people what I've been telling people for ages, including through my [URL="http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1906465703?tag=crimebookshopcom&camp=1406&creative=6394&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1906465703&adid=0FFR50HXSMFQ1B7244X3&"]social media book[/URL]. Specifically, could everyone STOP ANNOUNCING THEIR HOLIDAYS THROUGH SOCIAL …

We already know that the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story254897.html"]US military has embraced the social networking concept[/URL], and that [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story257648.html"]Twitter accounts are becoming valuable commodities[/URL], now it looks like the advertising industry is throwing money at Facebook in terms of spend - and doing so at the expense of Google. New Media Age is …

When [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/10/18/twitter-finds-its-voice-and-roars/"]Twitter gets it right[/URL], it beats all the major news gathering organisations to the punch with the really big news. I heard about the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story253604.html"]Haiti earthquake[/URL] first on Twitter, and it took a fair while for the traditional news networks to catch up. But what happens when Twitter gets …

A police officer who posted to a Facebook page criticism of a political movement in which pro-gun advocates openly carry firearms in public has come under fire for claiming, in what he is now saying was a joke, that they should be shot. East Palo Alto Detective Rod Tuason was …

According to the latest State of Spam and Phishing [URL="http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/other_resources/b-state_of_spam_and_phishing_report_02-2010.en-us.pdf"]report[/URL] from Symantec, a truly astonishing 92% of all adult phishing scams are being conducted across social networking sites. This coincides with a newly identified trend of adult oriented phishing whereby users are being tempted to enter personal credentials in exchange …

Google, the almighty, [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story245746.html"]non-eco-friendly search engine[/URL] released [URL="http://www.google.com/buzz"]Google Buzz[/URL], a new type of social network this Tuesday. When I read an article on [URL="ttp://mashable.com/2010/02/11/google-buzz-9-million/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+(Mashable)"]mashable.com [/URL]saying that Google claims that there has been 9 million posts and comments since Tuesdays launch, I found it impossible to believe, so I went and …