Facebook has outlined plans to encourage users to share more of the media they consume - including music and movies - with friends.

Its founder Mark Zuckerberg also unveiled a dramatic redesign to the website, replacing user profiles with an audio visual timeline of their life.

The updates were revealed at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference.

A wave of new features in recent weeks have been welcomed by some users and caused annoyance to many others.

Facebook’s latest changes point to a desire to keep users engaged through new features, in the midst of rapid innovation from social networking rivals.

The site’s application platform has been redesigned to allow users to share what they are consuming on streaming music services such as Spotify, and the movie rental site Netflix.

News sites, including the Guardian and Independent newspapers, are also included in the initial roll out.

Depending on privacy settings, users will be able to see what friends are doing - for example, playing a song - then listen-in themselves.

Mr Zuckerberg said he wanted to create, what he called, “real time serendipity”.

“Being able to click on someone’s music is a great experience, but knowing you helped a friend discover something new and they liked your taste in music, and that you now have that in common is awesome,” he added.

Facebook said that users would only be able to do as much on the site as its media partners allowed in each country, so free music sharing through streaming apps would only work where that service was already available outside Facebook.

New look

Alongside the deeper integration of media content, the restyling of Facebook’s profile pages is also likely to prove a hot topic among users.

The most radical departure so far from the site’s well known profile format will doubtless prove contentious with its sometimes conservative members.

Identities will now be defined through a densely packed vertical timeline of major life events, made up of photos, videos and other items. The level of detail diminishes the further down a reader scrolls.

Profile pages had previously been limited to basic information along with a stream of every single item posted by a user.

The latest offering is significantly different to those of Facebook’s biggest social networking rivals, Google+ and Twitter, and more closely resembles the once-popular site Myspace.

“Facebook is positioning itself as not just your social graph online, but your life online,” Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran told the Associated Press.

“These changes not only help trump rival Google but will open up new opportunities,” he said. “But concerns around privacy and immaturity in how to do these things effectively will make it a slow go.”

Facebook stressed that all of its new offerings could be controlled by members using its recently simplified privacy controls.

In particular, it stressed that timeline items could be modified within the new “activity log”, allowing users to limit who can view certain events from their past.

The updates are expected to start appearing on users’ computers in coming weeks.

Source: bbc.co.uk 22/09/2011

Web search data can provide an early signal of house price changes in the UK, a study has suggested.

The research in the Bank of England’s latest quarterly bulletin concluded that the search data outperformed other traditional economic indicators.

Using Google’s Insights for Search tool, researchers found that searches for “estate agents” tended to peak a month ahead of rises in house prices.

The Bank also said the data could help predict changes in unemployment.

Searches for “unemployment” and “JSA” (jobseeker’s allowance) rose markedly in line with the unemployment rate during the 2008-09 recession.

Surprisingly, searches for the term “jobs” did not seem to vary much with changes in employment.

Although the results provided a good leading indicator of the jobs market, they were not significantly better than other existing indicators, such as the Jobcentre claimant count or consumer confidence surveys.

‘Noise’“Internet search data have a number of appealing properties as economic indicators,” said the study.

“They are extremely timely and cover a potentially vast sample of respondents,” it explained, noting that 60% of UK adults use the internet on a daily basis.

However, the researchers warned that the data also contained pitfalls.

Internet users tend to come from specific age and income groups, which may skew the data.

Many users made searches based purely on curiosity - which can add a lot of unhelpful random examples to the search data - while some important economic activities, such as business investment decisions, did not typically involve internet searches.

The Bank also noted problems with the Google data itself, particularly the fact that it only provided percentage changes in the relative popularity of a given search term, but did not give the actual number of searches.

This made it particularly hard to know which search terms to use for the study.

The fact that the data only went back a few years also made it difficult to draw definite conclusions about its usefulness.

Source: BBC 13/06/2011

Experian Hitwise’s latest Search Engine and Social Analysis shows that Google and Yahoo! both lost market share in terms of searches in May 2011 as Bing, Ask and other search engines made significant gains.Google Sites were still responsible for over 90% of UK internet searches in May, accounting for 0.32% fewer searches than in April. Year-on-year, Google Sites were also down by 1.40%, with a lower share of the search market than in May 2010.

Yahoo! Sites also lost search market share last month, dropping from 3.15% of all UK Internet searches in April to 3.08% in May. The dip in performance for both Google and Yahoo! Sites can be attributed to Microsoft Bing’s growth in popularity.

Microsoft Sites, led by Bing, increased their market share of all UK Internet searches by 0.18% last month, taking the company to 4.26% of UK searches. Microsoft also improved on its performance in the search market year-on-year with a 1.26% increase in searches. Although not as prominent as Bing, Ask Sites saw growth in May improving their market share of searches by 0.10% and the niche search engines included in the Other category also saw growth of 0.10% between April and May 2011.

“Google is still very much in the driving seat when it comes to search, and May’s minor loss in market share does little to dent the 90% share Google has in this field,” commented Experian Hitwise’s Research Director, Robin Goad. “However, the more interesting trends are to look at year-on-year changes in the search market, where Microsoft is taking market share away from Google. The key will be if Microsoft can continue this trend and mount a stronger challenge on Google.”

Facebook loses further ground to YouTube and Twitter

YouTube and Twitter were the fastest growing social networks in May, whilst market leader Facebook lost market share of visits for a third consecutive month. YouTube consolidated its position as the second biggest social network in the UK, accounting for 20.52% of all UK Internet visits to social networks during the month. Meanwhile Twitter had its biggest ever month of UK Internet visits, peaking on 21 May when the website accounted for 1 in every 184 UK Internet visits.

The growth of YouTube and Twitter during May had an impact on Facebook’s market share, which dropped to 53.61% of all visits to social networks for the month. Overall seven of the top 10 most popular social networks in the UK gained market share of visits in May, whilst Facebook, Moshi Monsters and MySpace all lost market share.

Robin Goad added: “It has been a pretty extraordinary month for Twitter, with more visits coming to the website than ever before. Twitter has carved a niche for itself as an excellent platform through which Internet users can share and consume news. As the micro-blogging platform becomes more mainstream marketers need to be able to monitor what is being said about their brand and how they can engage with this ever increasing audience online. Twitter is no longer purely in the domain of early-adopters; rather it is becoming a mainstream tool which is being used increasingly by all types of Internet users, regardless of their online preferences.”

Source: Experian Hitwise 07/06/2011

LivingSocial will use a raft of product and service innovations as it looks to overtake market leader Groupon in the UK by the end of the year.

he group buying site says it has seen a “good trajectory” of growth in the UK since its launch here last June and expects its upcoming advertising campaign to attract more users to the site and make it the market leader in terms of users.

The campaign, which is set to launch in July, will include “more traditional forms of advertising” although further details have yet to be announced. LivingSocial currently focuses most of its marketing spend on digital display and search campaigns.

LivingSocial’s UK site will also be updated to migrate its family deals platform from the US and to include “Instant Deals”, a service that will bring offers to users in realtime on their mobiles.

The UK site is also set to extend its hyperlocal offering, by including more towns and smaller areas in cities in location-based targeted deals. LivingSocial in London currently features six separate markets.

LivingSocial UK managing director Peter Briffett says: “Hyperlocal is our key driver, we’re the only company offering that - it’s the future of local advertising. We give businesses real ROI and a powerful model to promote themselves.”

LivingSocial currently attracts about half as many monthly unique visitors as Groupon, according to comScore.

Briffett says the launch of similar deals and offers services by bigger internet players such as Google and Facebook is not a threat but instead shows “the big appetite there is for deals”.

Groupon’s UK managing director Christopher Muhr also denied that services such as Google Offers would dent its position as the market leading daily deals service.

Top 5 coupon sites
Source: comScore April 2011

Source: Marketing Week 03/06/2011

Former Miss Wales and Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas has signed up with Paddy Power for a campaign to promote its UEFA Champions League final offer.

Full-page press ads featuring Thomas in a Manchester United shirt, wielding a Paddy Power-branded football, have appeared in newspapers today (26 May).

Thomas has been the centre of a media storm around “super injunctions” due to her alleged affair with Manchester United player Ryan Giggs.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming used Parliamentary privilege to reveal Giggs’ name, after tens of thousands of people on Twitter had also named the player who had taken out the writ.

The ad promotes Paddy Power’s money-back special offer ahead of Saturday’s (28 May) Chaimpons League Final between Manchester United and Barcelona.

The campaign carries the tagline “Imogen can’t keep quiet about this!”.

A Paddy Power TV ad featuring a blind footballer kicking a cat was the most complained about ad of 2010, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Sourec: Marketing Week 26/05/2011

Their is no hiding for Ryan Giggs this week, ahead of Champions League final, the Manchester United star has been tangled up in the Twitter war.

Can this story now make him a famous brand? Why not? He is a legend and a family man that’s has appeared in the UK media all for the wrong reasons. This story will soon be forgotten about next week if United win the Champions League against Barcelona and Giggs is the star man. If he performs on the day, then their is no doubt that he will be a household brand in years to come.

So what makes a good brand? Well let’s look at David Beckham, Giggs former teammate. Beckham has become a global brand with the help from his amazing football skills as well as sponsorship deals.

Although Giggs case is different, there is no doubt that after this weekend, people will always see him as a legend.  I can only see his brand profile increase.

UK consumers have spent a massive £300bn shopping online in the 11 years the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index has been running.

MRG, which started the index in April 2000, predicts that the e-commerce market will be worth nearly £70bn in 2011.

Shoppers spent just £800m online in 2000, but a decade later, that figure reached £58.8bn.

Clothing is the biggest contributor to the sales surge, growing 3,245% in the past 10 years. Electricals is the second best-performing sector, up 996% since February 2002.

The nation’s thirst for booze has also fuelled growth – beer, wine and spirit sales have grown 825% since February 2002. The segment experiences seasonal sales spikes in November and December. The IMRG said that the size of the spikes is growing at an increasing rate.

James Roper, IMRG’s chief executive, said: “We expect [2011’s £70bn forecast spend] to easily double within four years.

“With 80% of the UK population now online and government plans to extend the speed and geographical reach of broadband services, we anticipate a continued acceleration of growth, irrespective of the economic situation as a whole.”

Last month, IMRG published data revealing that, in spite of economic pressures, consumers spent £5.1bn online in March, the strongest figure in years.

Total retail sales hit £30.7bn in March, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Source: Marketing Magazine: 25/05/2011

A massive 31% of Britons do not expect to buy a property, according to research by comparison website moneysupermarket.com.

While many are not taking the home ownership plunge, others are leaving it till later in life as tough market conditions continue. The average age for buying a first property is now 38 years old. In London it is 43 years old.

There are many reasons why Brits are holding back or opting out of buying home. Less mortgage products available and the need for higher deposits are two of the main ones.

Only 5% of potential first time buyers currently have a deposit saved while the number of mortgage products available to first time buyers has tumbled to 1,581 from the 14,940 available in pre-credit crunch Britain, the data showed.

However the number of mortgage products available is starting to rise, albeit slowly while the drop in house prices should provide a welcome incentive for first time buyers.

Clare Francis mortgage spokesperson at moneysupermarket.com said, “There is no rush to buy as the housing market looks set to remain subdued for the foreseeable future. Therefore aspiring homeowners can take their time to save that all important deposit without the fear that house prices are going to soar out of reach.”

Source: LSE: 20/05/2011

Orange and Barclaycard have launched a mobile payments service that lets users pay for items via their phones at retail outlets including EAT, Pret A Manger and Subway.

The service called Quick Tap lets users pay for items up to the value of £15 in a single transaction by tapping their phones against compatible NFC readers.

Other telecom providers have NFC handsets close to launch. O2 will partner with Visa to deliver its “mobile wallet” contactless payment service in the second half of this year.

Quick Tap sees payments made through a chip in the device’s SIM card, which is connected to a user’s Barclaycard, Barclays debit or Orange Credit Card. Users can then transfer up to £100 to the device.

Users can activate the service via an app that is installed on their device and confirm payment by entering a secure PIN.

Pippa Dunn, Orange VP, says: “Orange Quick Tap is the first of its kind, a service that allows you to pay for everyday items just by tapping your phone wherever you see the contactless payment symbol.

The service launches officially today and will be available to all Orange customers using Quick Tap handsets.

The service will initially be available on Samsung Tocco Lite and Samsung Tocco Quick Tap handsets with other supporting devices to follow.

The launch will be supported by an integrated marketing campaign although exact details of its executions were not disclosed.

Source: Marketing Week 20/05/2011

The cost of running a house has hit its highest level since 2008 despite interest rates of just of 0.5%, according to new research by Halifax.The average annual cost associated with owning and running a home rose by 1.4% from £8,956 in March 2010 to £9,083 in March 2011. It’s the highest rate since UK homeowners paid an annual bill of just over £9,400 in March 2008.

The increase in housing costs was driven mostly by electricity and gas charges, which surged nearly £70 in the last year.

Mortgage payments were the only housing expense category to see a fall between March 2008 and March 2011. The average mortgage rate paid by existing borrowers fell from 5.80% to 3.49% between March 2008 and March 2011, giving an annual saving of £956.

Commenting on the report Suren Thiru, housing economist at Halifax said, “The current strain on household finances is particularly concerning at a time when earnings growth remains weak.”

“Household finances remain under pressure with the significant drop in mortgage payments since 2008 mostly offset by increases in other household bills.”

Source: LSE 16/05/2011