Digital Marketing Blog

Xing posts results, reports massive user growth

Open Business Club AG, which operates German business social network Xing , has announced its preliminary results for 2006.

Back in December, Xing became the first web 2.0 company to go public, and its results for the past year show some pretty impressive growth.

by Graham Charlton 06 March 2007 17:32pm 1 comment

Microsoft attacks Google's 'cavalier' ad billions

Microsoft is expected to publicly criticise rival Google's "cavalier" approach to copyright in a speech to the publishing industry today.

According to an advance copy of an address due to be delivered by associate general counsel Thomas Rubin to the American Association of Publishers, and obtained by the Financial Times, Rubin will say: "Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs.

by Robert Andrews 06 March 2007 11:00am 0 comments

Netscape launches ad-free personalised homepage

Netscape, which last year remodeled itself as a Digg-like user-organised news portal, will today roll out a NetVibes-like personalised start page service.

The new site, My.Netscape, will include around 100 modules that add news, weather and more from destinations around the web, and will allow users to create modules consisting of custom RSS feeds.

by Robert Andrews 06 March 2007 08:59am 1 comment

BBC partners with IBM for video search technology

The BBC has announced that it is partnering with IBM to develop a range of new technologies across its departments, starting with a video search system for its CBeebies and CBBC programming.

Under the deal, the BBC will introduce an IBM system called Marvel, which has the ability to analyse images and video and categorise the content based on appearance.

by Graham Charlton 05 March 2007 14:13pm 0 comments

Police limit online fraud investigations

With the high levels of online fraud, the police are unable to investigate every complaint they receive about instances of online crime and, in some cases they are unable to investigate.

Cases where individuals have been defrauded to the amount of a few hundred pounds are being pushed to the back of the queue, as police do not have the resources to cope with the problem.

by Graham Charlton 05 March 2007 14:11pm 1 comment

Marketer wins damages for mailing list spam

A Scottish court has ordered an internet service provider to pay £750 plus expenses and interest to a man it "spammed" by sending a single e-mail obtained via a discussion list.

Gordon Dick took Transcom Internet Services to court in Edinburgh after receiving a marketing message apparently via an email group operated by UK domain registry Nominet. Both parties belonged to the group.

by Robert Andrews 05 March 2007 14:03pm 0 comments

Does paid search affect organic search engine rankings?

Even if your search engine optimisation strategy is successful it is still important to promote your brand using paid search, according to Susan Minniear at the Official Google CPG Blog.

by Graham Charlton 05 March 2007 12:51pm 6 comments

Google embeds YouTube videos in AdSense

Google is testing a version of AdSense that includes YouTube video ads, hinting at the next step in the search giant's efforts to monetise the $1.65bn video network.

A new Flash-based 300x250 AdSense unit includes text links as well as a 250x200 embedded YouTube video. The test ad is "Gmail Theatre" - a low-budget video spot that is hosted on YouTube and trails Google's own email service, which dropped its invite-only barrier last month.

by Robert Andrews 05 March 2007 09:36am 0 comments

YouTube woos BBC, ad-supported channels planned

Google-owned YouTube has inked one of its most significant content deals by agreeing a partnership with the BBC.

YouTube will create three BBC branded channels, two for ‘short-form’ video content and a third for BBC News clips. All should prove highly popular, but two will host advertising.

The BBC signed up to the deal on a non-exclusive basis as part of its remit to “secure commercial revenue via BBC Worldwide, to supplement the licence fee”.

by Chris Lake 02 March 2007 12:15pm 0 comments

Babelgum launches to rival Joost in IPTV battle

Babelgum is a new internet TV service, using P2P technology to stream video to your PC at near -TV resolution, very much like Joost.

Like Joost, Babelgum has plenty of financial backing. While Joost's founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis raised around £1.3bn from the sale of Skype, Babelgum founder Silvio Scaglia has just sold a quarter of his stake in Italian broadband firm Fastweb for £148m.

by Graham Charlton 02 March 2007 12:08pm 1 comment