It’s unlikely you will have escaped the hoopla and hype recently over Google Wave. It’s top trended on Twitter and even knocked Bing off the top of the tech news lists (even on Bing!). The initial batch of 100,000 invitations sent out by Google to Internet users wishing to trial a beta version landed in lucky inboxes at the tail end of September.

Google are talking big. They believe that Wave offers a ground-up reinvention of the way that people communicate and collaborate online. Google Software Engineering Manager Lars Rasmussen, defined Wave as “A single shared space where two or more users can exchange real time dialogue, photos, videos, maps and documents in what we call a Wave. Everyone can reply to a Wave, people can come and go and you can drag and drop information from all over the web.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an interesting fact straight off the interesting fact press. New statistics from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers claim that US Internet advertising revenues are down 5.3% from the same period last year. Not insubstantial at $10.9 billion for the first half of this year, the fact that the numbers are down at all in light of the dramatic drop in ad spending offline is somewhat of a surprise. A break down of the figures reveals that search makes up 47% of these revenues, followed by display/banner ads (22%), and classifieds (10%). Rich media and lead generation both contribute 7%. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official – figures released by the Internet Advertising Bureau recently reveal that spending on online advertising is now larger than spending on TV advertising. Few in SEO (search engine optimisation), web marketing and digital marketing agencies would express even the slightest surprise – all will tell you it was just a case of when not if.

Online advertising now has a 23.5% share of the UK advertising market in the first half of 2009, compared to 21.9% for TV according to the study carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Centres. Online advertising grew 4.6% during that period. Paid search made up 59.8% of online ad spend. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone’s talking about social media marketing services. Do you Tweet? Do you Facebook? LinkedIn perhaps, or FriendFeed, Tumblr or Posterous? For the uninitiated the whole thing can sound like a complete geek-fest, a chamber of commerce business breakfast club gone mad. We spend our lives avoiding the party sharks. You know the sort of people, stained ties, polyester, who stalk you until you find yourself pressed into a corner unable to refuse a business card, a pitch; every sinew of your ever-so polite, well mannered gentility stretched to breaking point. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to have friends get sucked into a multilevel marketing scheme and have ended up on their hit list, having to make a sharp exit after cheap German wine and nibbles, then you will know exactly why social media marketing might start ringing the alarm bells for some. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last 12 months Twitter has been the fastest growing major website in the UK. There isn’t many days that pass where you don’t see or hear it mentioned in personal company or in the media. 2009 has been an amazing year for the micro-blogging site; 93% of its growth has occurred during 2009 and we are only in month 8! Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our Social Media blog!  I want to first explain what Social Media is, without trying to teach anyone to suck eggs, and how best businesses should consider and use this communication tool.

Social Media is in its simplest form, people voicing their opinions, talking about their day and asking questions to this community online.  There are niche corners of the Internet allowing people to interact with others of a similar ilk or there is the more general free-for-all type forum that appeals to the masses.  The likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have achieved a tremendous following in a very short space of time, placing a lot of other Social Media sites in their shade, but there is still a lot to be gained by seeking out the social media acorns that have yet to grow and bear their own fruit. Read the rest of this entry »