With Facebook shares being released upon the world today, many will be buying up shares selling at $38 (£24) each. They announced earlier in the week that due to demand they would be selling 25% shares than originally planned. They should raise roughly £66bn for themselves, in this long awaited IPO.

Facebook isn’t the only ‘floating’ initiative this week, as Blueseed has announced its aims to launch an offshore tech ‘incubator’ 12 nautical miles off the coast of California where it will be outside of US law. It states that new companies & innovation are choking in Silicon Valley because of US laws and regulations.

Twitter has been rolling out a new weekly email to users of the most relevant tweets by people they follow. This new system comes only months after their acquisition of Summify which had a similar process which gathered and compiled news from social networks and sent it out in weekly emails. Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has been awarded Cannes Lions Media Person Of 2012 for creating “an entirely new way for people to communicate”.

Google has added a new function to its searches the ‘Knowledge Graph‘ that will make its algorithms act ‘more human’ for its search features. Rather than matching key words as it did previously, it will now understand context.

Company Structure

Hewlett-Packard is expected to be losing 30,000 jobs (8% of its workforce) as part of a restructuring plan to be set out by new CEO Meg Whitman next week. It has been suffering from losses as people turn to tablets and leave behind the PC. It has also had a lack of strong leadership over the past few years, seeing two CEOs come and go.

Groupon has seen better than expected first quarter figures as the international revenue surged, claiming technology innovation was the reason. They surprised many as their post-IPO performance had seemed unsteady. Amidst the excitment for Facebook’s IPO, co-founder Eduardo Saverin caused a stir when he renounced his American citizenship this week, with many claiming it was for tax breaks. However the brazilian born Saverin claims it is simply because he wants to live and work in Singapore, where he has been since 2009.

Digg, the social news aggregation service, has lost around 15 engineers to social advertising firm SocialCode, owned by The Washington Post. This confirms suspicions that Digg is on its way out, with the company being stripped down.

Sony has got together with Blinkx to provide their customers with easy access to Blinkx premium content. The app is now available on several devices including Bravia televisions and home theatre systems. There are 18 different channels separated by categories like Sports and News, with content from the likes of BBC, YouTube and ITN.

The local information website UpMyStreet has been bought by Zoopla the property site. The veteran site, set up in 1998 has been passed around since it ran out of money in 2003, being bought by uSwitch, which was then sold to EW Scripps in 2006 and then again sole to Forward Internet Group in 2009. The digital traffic to the site has been small and in decline so the acquisition is thought to have been for data and staff.

Yahoo has been causing a raucous this month with the “Resumegate” problems with the now former CEO. After also discovering he had cancer, Scott Thompson left Yahoo with no severance package, though is still to receive millions from his leaving of Paypal as President. New interim CEO Ross Levinsohn may be looking like the natural fit for the permanent position.

Industry Moves

Annette King, CEO at Ogilvy One has been promoted to UK Chairman and CEO of EMEA. She will be replaced by Sam Williams Thomas, MD and he will be replaced by Managing Partner, Jo Coombs.

Dave Morin, CEO of Path has joined Eventbrite as a member of the board. Also on the board are the ex-CFO of Netflix, ex-CEO at Ticketmaster and ex-CFO of Paypal.

Social Media

Twitter celebrated its 1st UK birthday this week, whose office now stands at 30. Their users active in the UK account for 10million profiles, making UK one of the most active.

Pinterest has taken $100m in a round of funding based on a $1.5b valuation. It was primarily lead by Rakuten, a Japanese eCommerce platform. This foreign partnership will not only help growth in international markets, but increase their eCommerce influence.

Google+ has released a new upgraded app for iOS, resembling an easy to use app rather than a mobile site as it did previously. However the question being asked is where is the Android version?

Facebook are testing a Highlighted Post feature, which will amplify a status update of users, working in a similar way to classifieds and Craigslist, charging a small fee alongside it.

Digital Product

Good news for the UK as eCommerce spending grew by 10% in April y.o.y. reaching £5.7bn. Although it is lower than the 13% growth from the first quarter, it is on the back of April’s strong performance last year that saw an increase of 19%.

Talk Talk the broadband and home phone service provider has announced its imminent launch into the mobile market, opening a mobile store selling handsets in addition to its already existing SIM only packages.

Google Maps has launched an Android app that provides indoor directions, with detailed floor plans. For now it is only key locations in the US and Japan but places like IKEA, who are notoriously difficult to navigate, is one of the major retailers to receive the service.

VLC Player, the Open Source media player, has hit over a billion downloads, from 2005. This may be set to increase further as the Windows 8 system gets rolled out as Microsoft announced that it will not have built-in DVD playback.

Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, has announced its new game ‘Amazing Alex‘ a re-branding of Casey’s Contraptions, that it bought earlier this month.

The Rest

Ruchi Sanghvi was the first female engineer at Facebook, aged 23, who helped develop the news feed, has been talking to the BBC about her struggle against old-fashioned ideals to carve her successful career through Silicon Valley.

This infographic traces digital recruiting technology since the 1990s (particularly interesting for us) but its fascinating to see how candidates have changed their usage too.

Have a great weekend.

Google has begun selling eBooks in Italy on its new Google Play service, its first step into foreign language eBooks. It is competing against the Kindle which sells 25,000 Italian eBooks in its store.

Google has also been in some trouble this week as it is found guilty and admitted misusing Java when it was developing Android, infringing on Oracle’s API. However there it is unlikely that this will pose any threat to Android.

Facebook has announced this week that it will be opening its own App Store titled ‘The App Center [sic]‘. In a blog post by Engineer Aaron Brady it was said that it will include a mobile version so that they can increase the number of mobile apps using the network and paid apps will be available for the first time.

Airtime, the video chat platform from Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning has now got a launch date of June 5th in New York City. The only details that appear to be available about the somewhat elusive product, is a countdown clock to the launch date on the website.

Asda the supermarket chain has been trialling virtual shop assistance for greeting customers. The holographic assistance were created by Tensator, who has also used them in airport check-ins. Shops in the US have already found them successful with chain Duane Reade already rolling them out.

Company Structure

Microsoft has made a pledge to go carbon neutral as of July this year, with its development labs, office building and data centres all going neutral. Competitors Facebook and Google have also made promises to go towards cleaner powered data centres, moving away from coal power.

After being criticised by the Office of Fair Trading and by Advertising Standards, Groupon’s CEO has announced weekly checks on the UK arm and has now started looking at the log of customer complaints in the UK.

Rovio Entertainment, parent to the Angry Birds brand, has seen lots of success including recently breaking records with its latest game ‘Angry Birds Space’. Now they are being valued at £5.5bn by analysts.

Evernote the cloud-based note taking service had acquired handwriting recognition app ‘Penultimate’, stating that they will tightly integrate the services whilst also promising not to change the service.

Facebook makes yet another acquisition, buying Glancee, an Italian start up to connect with new people around you. However since the purchase the app has been pulled from app stores and users have been given the opportunity to download their data.

Industry Moves

Frank Boulben & Kristian Tear has been hired by RIM as the new CMO and COO respectively, coming from backgrounds in mobile including Vodafone, Orange and Sony Mobile Communications.

Patti Hart, a Director on the Board at Yahoo! has announced that she will not be seeking re-election after taking a lead in the vetting of new CEO Scott Thompson, who it was revealed, falsified his education listing a computer science degree.

Sara Nelson has been hired by Amazon as Editorial Director of Amazon.com Books, to drive Amazon’s editorial ‘vision’. She comes from a background working in Oprah’s ‘O’ magazine and trade journal Publishers Weekly.

Don Ditri, publisher at Future Publishing, has been promoted to Head of Commercial Development for Entertainment. He will be focusing on business development.

Clair Porteous, Group Publisher at Future Publishing, has also been promoted to the role of Head of Digital Development, Entertainment. She was previously at IPC Media as Head of Marketing.

Julian Shambles, Digital Operations Director at Telegraph Media Group, has been promoted to Digital Product Director. He was previously MD at Rightmove.co.uk and started with Telegraph in 2006 as the Head of Online Operations.

Social Media

Twitter announced this week that it was standardising Twitter for all devices, networks and browsers, so that even people in rural areas and on low-bandwidths, can use Twitter for mobile web (mobile.twitter.com) all because the newer version uses a third less bandwidth and so the site can run faster.

However Twitter have also been arguing with the courts this week, as it has been asked to deliver three months of tweets by an Occupy Activists in New York, but has refused to do so, stating that the tweets are property of the user.

Facebook social reader usage is sharply dropping as several news sites see the number of people sharing articles through social tools.

Digital Product

Almost half of the UK’s mobile users (47%) are now using smartphones according to YouGov’s Technology and Telecoms team, predicting smartphone dominance by 2013.

Microsoft have been presenting its new augmented reality system that allows two users in separate locations to work together on a table top and share objects that they can both handle. Named the ‘Mirage Table‘ the researchers around have said that it is far from perfect but it is an exciting development that could easily be a game changer in the future.

The Rest

Google’s Self driving car, a prototype that has been seen on the roads of Nevada, USA, has been given a license, the first of its kind, to test and develop the technology. This comes only a few weeks after the emergence of Google’s AR glasses.

Finally here is an infographic showing the amount of digital clutter we collect.

Have a great weekend.

Amazon branching out as it is apparently looking to make original TV Content with £6k to option scripts and £34k if it’s okayed for production. You can see information on it via its site Amazon Studios. The BBC News website won the People’s Voice award at the 16th Annual Webby Awards, announced on May 1st, with an awards ceremony to follow.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, will be aiding the government in making taxpayer funded academic research available online to everyone. This follows a growing campaign from the academic community for open access named the “academic spring” which lead to 11,000 researchers boycotting the academic publisher Elsevier.

Google Engineer who was behind the Street View Data Breach has been named as British Ex-pat Marius Milner by The New York Times.

Microsoft has made a major investment into the new Barnes & Noble subsidiary (unnamed) to compete against Amazon and Apple in the ebook market. It will own a 17.6% stake.

Warner Bros has begun releasing enhanced film scripts as ebooks as part of their digital publishing initiative dubbed “Inside the Script”. Selling on the iBookstore, Kindle and Nook stores contain rare material from the archives including scripts from Casablanca and North by Northwest.

Company Structure

Ebay will be opening a new office in New York City that will include the Hunch team, acquired by eBay last year, and eventually hold 200 employees. This news comes only a day after Microsoft stated that it will be opening a research lab in NYC.

Evernote and Twitter have both expressed their desire to stay out of the public for a little while longer. This comes as Facebook prepares for its shares to start trading on the 18th May.

Digital Economy Act‘s anti-piracy law has been delayed until at least 2014. The act was passed in 2010 and has since met repeated legal challenges and subsequent delays. The act touts a three strikes letter system for persistent file sharers. Boris Johnson has also been weighing in for the digital fight this week, pitching to London’s digital businesses as part of his mayoral candidacy with promises of start-up funding, the promotion of Tech City and a broadband pledge.

This all comes in the same week that a Digital Advisory Board is formed in order to aid in delivering public services online by default. They will advise the Government Digital Service (GDS) who are launching Gov.uk to bring all services and information under one domain. There are 12 people on the board, including Martha Lane Fox UK Digital Champion, Richard Allan from Facebook, James Bilefield from Condé Nast and Laura Wade-Gery from Marks & Spencer.

Google have released their new initiative this week, Google Drive. This cloud based storage solution will compete against services such as Dropbox, Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Apple’s iCloud. It has already seen some backlash however, after its blanket Terms & Conditions have caused some worries over permissions as the agreement it can use any information you submit to “use, host, store, reproduce, modify and create derivative works”.

The Queen’s award for enterprise, has hailed 3 British technology companies; app-maker Shazam, a mobile security firm Revector and a hi-fi maker Linn. There was good news today as it was announced that research looking into mobile phone radiation has so far shown no indication of increased risk.

Bloomberg reported that Spotify may be adding a radio service, similar to Pandora. It would be ad-supported and is likely to launch before the end of the year. Spotify have not officially announced anything as yet.

Ecommerce giant Amazon is expected to be launching its own publishing operation in Britain in a bid to bring costs down by taking out the cost of publishing ‘middlemen’. It began publishing in the US last week, buying rights to the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming.

Company Structuring

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is proving to be a success with a 54.4% share in the market in February. The new statistics from ComScore, show that it is a leading Android tablet and doing so by quite a margin. The next largest share was the Samsung Galaxy Tab with a much lower 15.4% share and Asus and Toshiba at 6.3% and 5.7%.

The iPad is still fore-runner in the tablet wars however with Apple announcing that its quarterly profits were about £7.2bn almost doubling in the first three months of this year. They sold 11.8million iPads in the first quarter and 35million iPhones. Their success is obvious, particularly when you consider its profits being more than Google’s quarterly revenues.

Netflix has been talking success with its 1st quarter report on the UK launch, in which it claims has attracted more subscribers faster than other international expansions, contributing a total of 3 million new subscribers overall. It’s no surprise then that Netflix has plans to restart its global expansion initiatives, starting with Europe from Q4.

The long awaited release of the Nokia Lumia 900 in the UK is now delayed due to the overwhelming demand from the US. The phone will now no longer be available to the public until May 14th, though it should have been available today. Those who have pre-ordered will be receiving compensation.

O2 is attempting to join the Digital Wallet race with O2 Wallet, which can only be used right now for giving money to friends and shopping as there is no NFC payment tool at this time. Much like the recently launched Barclay’s Pingit app, O2′s Wallet is open to all consumers, not just its own customers.

Facebook‘s much awaited floatation looks to be delayed until June time after making several purchases including Instagram and patents from both Microsoft & IBM. The purchases mean they now have additional paperwork to go through which will delay the process. It was due to be floated on May 17th.

Etailer Asos has seen a significant increase in Q4 with international sales boosting sales 34%. Aurora fashions, who own fashion brands Coast, Oasis and Warehouse, are launching multi-brand website in the US and Australia. This follows on from last year’s success of its German site.

Industry Moves

Cristian Cussen has been appointed as Google+’s first Head of Marketing for EMEA. His background includes Director of Content and Marketing for MySpace.

Steve Conway, Kelkoo’s Brand Marketing Director, has been hired by YouView as Interim Head of Marketing for its autumn launch. This hire follows YouView’s decision in October 2011 to make its entire Marketing and Communications department redundant.

Michael Dick, Communications Planning Director for Coca-Cola, has been poached by MEC to become the new Head of Strategy for global solutions. He replaces Charlie Wright who leaves for a role in MEC Singapore.

Social Media

StumbleUpon the discovery service has hit 25million users and is growing at a fast rate, adding 5million in only 5months.

Twitter records were once again broken, as the Chelsea-Barcelona football match hit 13,684 tweets per second, breaking the previously held sport tweets per second held by the American Superbowl.

Google is launching a social network for former terrorists and survivors. Learn more about who it has partnered with and the service it will provide here.

Digital Product

Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, has joined the likes of Sir Mick Jagger as a top ten Music Rich List by The Sunday Times, at an estimated £190m. The service has only been built over six years but is already valued at £1.2bn and is growing internationally, particularly with its US launch last year.

The rich list was released in the same week that it was revealed that Britons spend a quarter of their money online. The survey by WorldPay also found that 0ne in six Britons buy using a smartphone. The explanation is that the ability to buy whilst away from a computer makes it fast to buy; over 50% where found to buy whilst in front of the TV and 3% were found to buy in the bathroom.

More British statistics were revealed by the 2012 Digital Entertainment Survey, with eBooks being owned by a third of Britons, whilst 38% aren’t interested in ebooks at all.

The Financial Times web app has now passed 2m users in less than a year, with 12% of subscriptions coming from mobile. The app was launched in June of last year in response to Apple’s introduction of new rules, which FT did not agree with.

The Rest

Econsultancy have gathered some of the most interesting statistics from the digital world this week and put them into one place, which you can see here. It includes internet use in the UK, Cookies and most interestingly Digital Salaries (for which the average has increased by about £2k in 2years).

If you were planning a particularly unproductive weekend, perhaps this will help; Google coders have been playing with the search results, so that when you google ‘Zerg Rush‘ several little ‘O’s start destroying the screen. You can destroy them buy clicking on them multiple times and then post up your score to Google+, providing Google+ with some great marketing.

And finally here is an infographic explaining how to leverage yourself as an expert using social media.

Have a great weekend.

The Kindle Touch will be released in the UK a week earlier, with the first expected tomorrow (21 April 2012). This follows news that orders for the new Kindles have “exceeded expectations”. There are hopes that this success will prompt Amazon to release the Fire in the UK.

MGM have agreed a deal with YouTube and Google Play for 600 new rental titles creating more competition for the likes of Netflix. Apple looks to be creating some new competition too with its new job hunt for a 3D expert particularly ‘cameras and surfaces’.

Code Club is the new volunteer after-school lessons in computer programming for kids, aged 10-11. It follows a national push to reform what is being taught in computer lessons. Code Club’s aim is to be in 25% of primary schools in the UK by 2014.

Random House has become the first in the UK to partner with Small Demons, a website that lets readers look at artefacts found in books. They are attempting to bring another digital layer to the reading experience.

The long awaited Pottermore site opened its ‘gates’ (see picture) to the public this week, providing a safe environment for the ‘ digital generation’ to enjoy the Harry Potter experience.

Company Structure

Encyclopaedia Britannica, who recently stopped printing, has released and app for iPhone and iPad as part of its new digital focus. Full Access to the Encyclopaedia will costs £1.99 per month though some of their features will be able to be accessed for free.

ITV and Shazam have partnered to agree an exclusive deal so ITV can offer advertisers functionality in their ads. Viewers will be able to access further information and content on the adverts and their brands.

UK based multiplatform studio, Zattikka, has been welcomed to the industry, raising £12.6m and acquiring Hattrick Holdings, Sneaky Games, Inc and Concept Art House, Inc to develop games. Zattikka has said that it will be adopting a ‘buy and build strategy’.

The rumour mill has been churning as a possible partnership between Valve after Tim Cook (Apple’s CEO) was reportedly spotted at the company and Valve began advertising for Hardware professionals.

Spotify has been teasing the digital world with a big announcement coming to a special event it is hosting in New York. The latest speculation suggests that it will launch Brand Apps.

In acquisitions this week, Twitter has bought social analytics start-up Hotspots.io, which is still in beta mode and calls its self ‘Social Media intelligence you actually use’.

Sony has announced their 10,000 job loss but this week it was discovered that Sony Europe‘s sales and marketing teams may look to suffer heavily losing 1,000 jobs. Electronic Arts are also rumoured to be cutting staff with reports of 500-1000 employees potentially losing their jobs.

Hachette Livre has sold its e-book distribution platform to its CEO and founder Denis Zwirn. They will continue to use Numilog’s service but the deal means that other players in the book trade will be able to use its service.

Industry Moves

Paul Weinberger, Chairman of The Red Brick Road, who has had a major influence on Tesco’s advertising for 22years, is leaving the agency following Tesco’s review of its advertising business.

Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking Google Product Executive, has been hired by Badoo as their COO.

Daryl Fielding, VP of Marketing at Kraft, is leaving her role after two years, returning to the UK after being based in their Switzerland HQ.

Guillaume Buat-Ménard has been announced as TMW’s first Technical Director, to drive their digital delivery.

Ricardo Figueira has been announced as JWT London’s first Digital Executive Creative Director. He joins Glue Isobar where he was Creative Director.

Michael Pring, former MD at Dare, is Leagas Delaney’s new International Managing Partner. He will be reporting to Margaret Johnson, Group Chief.

Jamie Lindsay has been announced as Amscreen’s new MD. He leaves his role at Brand Connections Global to manage Amscreen’s UK division.

Social Media

Facebook is planning IPO on May 17th, once all the paperwork has been processed. There are rumours of valuation ranging from $68bn to $100bn.

Foursquare celebrated 4sqDay this week (4/16) announcing that it has now got 20m users around the world and has had 2bn check ins since its launch in 2009.

Digital Product

Microsoft has announced Windows 8 as the next version of windows, with only three editions available this week. Whilst Mozilla has announced that phones running its operating system will be available by the end of this year, titled ‘Boot to Gecko’ (B2G) it will be a rival for Google’s Android.

Barclay’s launched its ‘PayTag‘ stick-on mini credit card this week, as part of the boost for NFC technology and its contactless payments (of up to £15). They will be given by request and seem to be advertised as stuck on phones (see picture).

Gmail went down worldwide on Monday for 45mins. One of the world’s most popular email services claims that only 2% of its 350m active users were affected.

The Rest

Google has been on the look-out for a new full time Doodler to create special designs for their home page. Unfortunately for UK based arty job seekers, it is based in their California HQ.

Econsultancy revealed some interesting digital marketing data today (20th April). It covers Social Media and TV, Online Ad Revenues, Mobile Websites, UK internet use and much more. You can read it in depth here.

A thought for the weekend as an American job seeking site, CareerCast, listed Software Engineer at the top of its 200 top jobs, with average incomes at $88,142. What do you think is the top job in the UK? Would it be technical like the US? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Finally here is an infographic showing the size of Twitter in 2012 across the globe. I think you’ll find its continued growth impressive with 11 new accounts created every second.

Have a great weekend.

Spotify have revealed that they are bringing a ‘Spotify Play Button‘ for sites to integrate free streaming music, giving websites a “personalised soundtrack”. In the same week, Google have launched ‘Google Currents‘ into the UK. The social reader application is available on Android and Apple and has launched with several content partners including The Independent, London Evening Standard and Metro.Netflix has released its app on the Windows Phone in the UK & Ireland, which has given Windows a much needed boost against iOS & Android.

After the announcement by Etsy that they will be awarding grants to women for their Etsy/Hacker School program, Marc Hedlund, the Engineering VP at Etsy who spearheaded the idea has given an interview about the initiative by Venture Beat.

Company Structure

Sony announced this week that it will be cutting 10,000 jobs in a dramatic restructure that will cost close to $1bn. This is not the first time they have done this, cutting 10,000 in 2005, though there is speculation that this is the idea of Kaz Hirai, Sony’s new CEO.

In America an anti-trust lawsuit was filed against Apple and five large book publishers (HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster) over eBook price fixing. Since the case was filed, 3 of the publishers have agreed settlements.

BBC Worldwide has invested in a mobile gaming technology firm Spaceport. They are due to use Spaceport for designing their next generation of games and apps, which we should start seeing the result of in summer.

Google has announced that it is shutting down its reseller programme in the UK for its eBooks. They have invited the bookshops to join their affiliate programme instead; the reseller programme allowed book sellers to sell on eBooks independently, whereas the affiliate programme means they can still advertise the book but the buyer is forwarded to the Google site to complete the purchase. Google has had a cause for celebration this week however, as its profits surge & UK revenues rise year-on-year 19%, reaching £721m. Its net income reach £1.8bn rising 60.7%.

Facebook this week bought up Instagram the photo sharing app for a cool $1bn. In a statement Zuckerberg said that the service will not be completely integrated into Facebook and that they will continue to grow the app and its features independently.

Industry Moves

Dan Keat, Carat’s Media Director, has been hired by M/SIX (previously MCHI), as their new Head of Broadcast. He has been at Carat for 12 years, becoming Media Director in January.

Dame Helen Alexander will be joining UBM plc. as a Non-Executive Director. She will be succeeding John Botts, who is leaving his Chairman role in May.

Nick Constantinou, Managing Director at McCann London has announced his departure after less than two years in the role. He replaced Chris Macdonald who was promoted to CEO in 2008.

Chris Fry, previously an executive at Salesforce, has been hired by Twitter as their new VP of Engineering. He replaces Michael Abbott who left last year.

Social Media

Pinterest is going from strength to strength as it is discovered that it is driving more revenue-per-click than Twitter or Facebook. In Q2 of last year it represented 1.2% of social media revenue for ecommerce sites, now it represents 17.4% with expected growth to 40% by the end of the year. This article by Jeff Zwelling, CEO of cross-channel marketing technology company Convertro, shows just how good Pinterest is at creating revenue and interest. With all its growth and success, it’s no surprise that the likes of Amazon and eBay have added Pinterest buttons to their product pages.

With Facebook’s new Instagram acquisition, a study revealing that they cater for different age groups probably isn’t welcome. The study, done by Experian Hitwise, showed that Instagram’s visitors are primarily under the age of 35, whereas Facebook’s are more ‘mainstream’ and have a much high rate of older visitors.

Facebook, as well as their Instagram acquisition, Facebook have announced that it will be adding to its ‘Download Your Information‘ feature, including IP addresses and friend requests. They introduced the concept in 2010 but only for your entire profile and photos, not all of your activities.

Google+ has revealed its redesign, offering more function and flexibility. The hope is that its 100m “active” users will find it easier to use and spend more time on it. This comes after the hire of Kevin Rose, founder of Digg. Despite some disappointing figures for Google+, they have seen growth over March, up 27% from February. These are only US figures and they are based on a very specific definition of a “visit” (which you can see here). There is not too much cause for celebration yet however, since Facebook’s US visits totalled more than 100 times what Google+ experienced in March alone.

Digital Product

WordPress has been named the most popular web publishing platform, by a survey from Pingdom. It found that of the top 100 blogs in the world, 49% used WordPress. It has also seen a 32% increase in users in the space of three years.

Hearst UK is launching a new women’s magazine designed specifically for tablet use, but also being sold as print. The tablet friendly magazine is the first of what will be a string of design changes in the publishing industry.

Amidst the Instagram madness of the past week, they have topped the free app charts on iTunes, removing the long-time reign of the popular Draw Something app.

A survey for Ping Identity has revealed that nearly half of employees would give up their work passwords for as little as £5, whilst a third would expect at least £50 for their Facebook password. Although worrying, a third did say that they would never sell their corporate login, for any price.

The Rest

Photos have been released of Facebook’s new Menlo Park campus that gives an insight into what it’s like to work in Silicon Valley. The campus, opened last week, boasts graffiti walls, its own coffee shop and numerous amusing conference rooms. See the photos here.

Finally to round off your Friday 13th, here is an infographic showing how Social Media is changing recruitment and can aid your job search.

Google has added a new service to their maps in the form of real time Tube data. This new system comes in place ready for the London Olympics this summer. Transport for London has also added live updates for its buses on their website but currently Google only covers their tube information. Google has opened its Campus for the project it partnered with the UK government on. The project provides tech start-ups with mentoring and free work space. It is based in Old Street and also offers seminars and talks from industry figures, a cafe and free high speed Wi-Fi.Thomas Cook has said that it looks to make a huge shift in focus to its social media activity after it had success with a Facebook competition.  Michael Thomas, Marketing Director, said that it was a subtle way of driving consumer engagement.

Vevo has revealed that video streaming on its site has seen an increase of 120% reaching a 177 million streams in January after launching only a year ago. In the UK the service is now receiving 12 million unique visitors in the UK. Its growth, it suggests, has been the result of the service being on more platforms and more sites, whilst also using more UK focused content.

Skype have been attacking Twitter and Facebook in a new ad campaign that wants to make its service more ‘human’. Its ads which say things like ’140 Characters doesn’t equal staying in touch’ and ‘Upgrade from a wall post to a first class conversation’ take an obvious stab at the popular networking sites. However Chris Matyszczyk of Cnet has made a good case against Skype’s new advertisement, which you can read here.

Company Structure

Grooveshark, the music sharing service, has lost its only major record label’s contract. The reason EMI have given for this withdrawal is that Grooveshark have “failed to meet the financial obligations of its licensing agreement”.

Digital marketing spend growth has reached its highest level in 5 years with £4.8bn spent in 2011, an increase of £687m, according to the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau). Game the retailer of video games, has been given a lifeline by OpCapita, who gave agreed to buy its UK assets, saving 3,200 people from redundancy. Game’s downfall has been blamed on their lack of a digital strategy to compete with the online gaming marketing in 2012.

Simon & Schuster, the CBS owned book publisher, has revealed that 18% of their global sales in the first quarter were digital. In the UK S&S sales were up 11% to £5.9m.

Yahoo has announced that it will be making 2000 employees redundant, about 14% of its workforce. This is the sixth time it has made redundancies in little more than 4 years. However this is balanced by good news from Skype as they announce their hire of 400 new staff, primarily across London & Stockholm.

Industry Moves

Paul Sciarra, co-founder of up and coming social network Pinterest, has announced his departure in order to join Andreessen Horowitz as entrepreneur-in-residence.

James Chandler, Mobile Account Director at Mindshare, has been promoted to Head of Mobile. He replaced Claire Valoti after she left to become MD of O2 Media at the end of last year.

Neil Roseman, a leading engineer at Zynga and a major part of Zynga.com is leaving. It has not been said where he is to go.

Neil Allen, Trading Director at Starcom MediaVest Group, has announced his departure in order to follow other interests. Erica Taylor, Trading Operations Director will be assuming his responsibilities.

Sarah Sands has been revealed as the new editor of London Evening Stand, as announced by Evgeny Lebedev on Twitter. This comes after Geordie Greig’s departure for a new role at the Mail on Sunday.

Social Media

Dell are introducing a ‘Share and Earn’ scheme in which its customers will receive cash rewards if any of their shares if it leads to a direct sale, earning £5 if a product is over £70. This comes after Dell claimed a few years ago that more than $6.5m sales coming directly from Twitter accounts globally.

Facebook shopping, which is still very unknown with only 1.5 million of 850 million members buying something each month, has been revealed as mainly being used by stay-at-home mothers. The most popular items being bought are baby clothes and other infant items.

All brands on Facebook last Friday were switched to the new Timeline format. With a month’s warning most brands have been scrambling to adapt the social strategies and branding to match.

The growth of people joining social networks slowed over 2011 as OfCom reports show that 59% of those asked now have a profile on a social networking site. It is up 5% from the previous year but this is compared to 10% in 2010 and 22% in 2009.

Digital Product

The popular app that is only 50 days old, Draw Something, has passed the 50m downloads milestone. It has reclaimed its number one spot on iTunes chart from Rovio’s Angry Birds Space. Pottermore has sold over £1m of eBooks in the three days since its launch according to CEO Charlie Redmayne.

Google caused excitement this week as it revealed that it is working on a project to create AR glasses named ‘Project Glass‘. They revealed images of their glasses prototypes and a video of how they expect them to work. They are also coming to Europe in TV form as Sony has revealed that it will be selling Google TV-based products from September.

The Rest

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, has been rated the top CEO receiving 97% approval ratings from employees, beating Ernst & Young’s CEO Jim Turley.

Since yesterday was 404 Error day (Being the date: 4/04/2012), this Easter weekend you can enjoy these best of 404 error pages from Mashable, you can see our favourite below.

Enjoy your long weekend!

Sources from within Google this week have revealed that they are building an online tablet store at the moment, competing with Amazon and Apple. Rumours have circulated that the release will be about mid-way through the year.

Twitter has launched a self-service ad platform for small businesses, which makes it simple to create promoted accounts and promoted tweets working on a pay per follower and pay per engagement program.To launch the switch over from analogue to digital TV next month, the Crystal Palace

broadcast tower will be hosting a light show on the 18th April. Arqiva, who engineered the digital switch-over projects, will be installing almost sic tonnes of lighting equipment.

The Harry Potter series has finally been released on eBooks, DRM-free so that you can read off of any ereader. However they are only available to buy on the Pottermore site which is still in beta so unless you already have access, you will have to wait for Pottermore to open its doors.

The London based social network, Badoo, has been released in the U.S.  The site aims to get you meeting new people, rather than mingling with existing friends. It has over 140million users in over 180 countries after being set up in 2006.

Spotify is facing new competition in the UK with the launch of U.S. based service Rdio. This is also a new competitor for Deezer, which could see prices fall as UK music fans get more choice. The launch date is yet to be confirmed.

Company Structure

Spotify has been making some changes within its service revealing that they are no longer limiting song play for free users across Europe, with the exception of the UK and France. There is no word on when or even if the UK will see the limit removed. This comes at the same time that a funding round for Spotify is rumoured at a £2.2bn valuation. The music streaming site Pandora has announced that they will not be re-entering the UK market; it says the rates are “too costly” as the PRS rates take 47% of Pandora’s revenue.

Game the retailer officially went into administration and announced the closure of over 600 stores and the loss of 2,100 jobs. The remaining 333 stores will be kept in the hope that a buyer can be found. There has been little info on its overseas operations including Australia and stores in Europe. Tesco has made a move into the gap left by Game running ads calling it the home of gaming, quoting its 10,000 games online and its trade-in service.

Disney UK has signed deals with both YouTube and Google Play to offer rentals. This will mean that viewers in the UK can watch the films from £2.49 – £3.49. This is the first deal Disney has signed with Google in the UK and adds to the increasing competition on Netflix and Love Film.

Industry Moves

David Marcus, VP of Mobile for PayPal, has been announced as its new President. He fills Scott Thompson’s place after his departure to Yahoo. Marcus will start at the beginning of April.

Michael Lynton, currently the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Chairman, has been appointed CEO for Sony Corporations of America as of June 27.

Arne Rees, previously the VP for ESPN, has been announced as replacing Tom Gleeson as the International Digital Media VP for ESPN International. Rees was also previously to Strategy Head of UEFA.

James Tipple, ex-VP of Marketing at Yahoo EMEA, has now been hired by Virgin as their new Brand Director for Europe. Tipple left Yahoo at the beginning of the year, after six years.

Rob Lowe, Senior Marketer at Nintendo UK is leaving after 8 years with the company. He leaves to take up the position of Marketing Director at BBC Worldwide.

Social Media

At the Y Combinator Demo Day, a new social media network, FamilyLeaf was unveiled. The premise is that you only share with your family, avoiding any embarrassing photos from friends, to post the things that matter most to them.

A Twitter Scam has been targeting users of the ‘Draw Something’ app, sending them a message claiming that the user has won a prize. OMGPOP have released a statement to say that they have nothing to do with it and that they are fake accounts.

Co-Founder of Foursquare Dennis Crowley, has been talking about the focus on British brands to bring the popularity of the network in the UK to the same levels as the US.

The Economist has hit a 1million fan milestone on Facebook, almost double the fans of Time and Wall Street Journal. Elle Magazine has also been doing well with social media after it has boosted its subscriptions using Twitter and its first live stream of a photo shoot with Kristen Stewart reaching the number one trending topic globally on the 13th of March.

Facebook has responded after stories of employers asking for employee Facebook login details were circulating. Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer, has stated that their privacy policy says “If you are a Facebook user, you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardise the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends.” On top of this they have threatened legal action in defence of users who are asked to hand over their details.

Digital Product

Amazon is finally bringing the Kindle Touch across the pond, due for release in the UK on April 27th at £109. However there has some questions surrounding the price as it is more expensive than its $99 counterpart both numerically and after exchange rate considerations. They defended their position with the following statement: “There are also different, and higher, taxes in Europe, as well as higher transport and other operating costs but we are always working to try and lower them.”

LG have announced a flexible e-ink display which is plastic, making it thinner, lighter and bendier than its glass counterparts. They are ambitiously expecting to have them available by the beginning of next month, but definitely by summer.

Angry Birds Space, the long awaited app, was released last week and reached 10million downloads in just 72hours.

The Rest

The Guardian posted a fascinating article on their site about the weird and wonderful world of interview questions, with a particular focus on the Google’s notorious questions. How would you do?

Enjoy your weekend.

After three years of negotiating, the Xbox 360 has finally got BBC Iplayer, which launched this week. The new Kinect motion-controller also means users would be able to control the platform using gestures and voice commands.

At the SXSW last week, Google’s Head of Web Spam, Matt Cutts, spoke about SEO and Google’s plans to ‘punish’ websites that are ‘overly optimised’. This follows their plans to introduce ‘semantic search’ to better understand the meaning of words for better results.

Harrods opened an Apple Store in-house on Friday last week, luring new customers with an offering of new iPads, creating a buzz on Twitter with the hashtag #HarrodsTech.

A study carried out by My Voucher Codes, found that 55% of Londoners didn’t want the internet coming to the tube; 48% stated that they had privacy concerns, particularly with passwords. Another stated worry was of Tube thefts rising with people having laptops and other expensive hardware on show more. Virgin Media has been appointed as the company to roll out the Wi-Fi access, which although will be free at first, will eventually be free only to Virgin customers.

MySpace has now become the top music site in the UK and receives around 7 million visits per month in the UK, meaning almost 30% market share. Deezer, the music streaming site is fighting against Spotify by bringing its own off-line mode. Deezer has only recently launched in the UK but poses a big threat to Spotify, who have recently expanded into US territory.

Company Structure

Spotify is also adding new features to its portfolio, with a new batch of apps for its desktop player. They focus, much like the first batch, on finding new music and using spotify in the best ways possible. Some of the apps integrate with social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to create playlists and other apps focus on genres and labels.

Another music streaming site, Turntable.fm, who launched in the UK then withdrew over streaming rates, looks like it may be making a come back. The site focuses on the social side of music, with different themed ‘rooms’ where up to 200 users, represented by avatars. A user will be ‘DJ’ of the room and will play from either the library or their own library, and the room can then vote. If they get too many ‘lame’ votes, the DJ is replaced by another.

Game, the gaming retailer, officially went into administration this week. Since bowing out, they have been searching for a buyer and its thought they may ditch Gamestation and start a new spin off.

The fast growing company OMGPOP, owner of iPhone app ‘Draw Something’ (the app that received 10million downloads within just 2 weeks of launching), has announced that after only 6 weeks in the app market, it is readying new features for the app. Read more about the features here (and see what the fuss is about by downloading here). Since the announcement, OMGPOP has been acquired by the Social gaming giant Zynga for a sum of an estimated $210m.

Google ad revenue it has been revealed, is now larger than the US newspaper industry, showing the sharp decline in print. The figures they revealed in January that they were up 25% in 2011 and exceeded $10bn (£6.46bn) in just one quarter.

Facebook has recently bought a batch of patents from IBM to boost its portfolio from the current 56, to over 800. There has been no details of the deal confirmed so price is unknown.

Industry Moves

Chris Ellis of Trinity Mirror, has become Managing Director of Trinity Mirror Digital, as part of a restructure that sees the national and regional digital teams merge.

Stephen Smith has been appointed the new CMO of Asda, replacing Rick Bendel who is going to a broader global marketing role for Asda owners, Walmart.

Tim Brooks has been hired as Chairman at Azullo, the digital advertising technology company. He was previously the MD of Guardian News & Media.

Sarah Bartlett has left her role as Senior Global Marketing Director if Ask.com, as the company begin winding down UK marketing as they shift to the US.

Matt James, MD at Starcom has been appointed as MD of Mi9 in Australia, leaving his post. He joined Starcom in 2010.

Social Media

Twitter celebrated its sixth birthday this year, posing the question to users, ‘what was your first tweet?’.

ComScore’s figures for last month, show that Pinterest has seen an increase in unique visitors of 52% over the single month. They also revealed that Google is still at the top with 186.6million visitors.

Friends Reunited is relaunching with a new focus on memories, in a bid to stay alive in a Facebook world. It was first released 12 years ago, but will officially reopen on March 27th.

Digital Product

After Square, and Paypal’s announcement of its payment system ‘Paypal Here‘, Eventbrite – the ticketing startup- has released their own iPad devise for event organisers to have a portable box office, named ‘At The Door‘.

The newspaper site Mirror Online has seen a huge fall in its monthly users for February, announcing a 30% drop, following their relaunch earlier in the month.

Google Chrome, the web browser, was revealed by StatCounter as the top internet browser for the first time last weekend, beating Internet Explorer for the first time.

Apple sold 3million iPads after it launched last weekend, reaching the same amount over one weekend than the original iPad sold in its first 80 days.

The Rest

One story from Associated Press this weekend had the recruitment world in shock when it was revealed some HR professionals have been asking for Facebook login details to explore the side of the candidate that may not be public. This has been widely criticised as invasive and unsafe as it would require handing over passwords, which is actually against Facebook policy, though is technically legal.

Paypal has announced that it will be launching a range of digital wallet amenities at SXSW in Texas. It is all with the aim of becoming the place for all your mobile commerce. They have said that the mobile wallet should be expected in late May (in the US).

Staying in SXSW in Texas, Marvel, the comic maker, announced a new generation of trailers through the use of Aurasma which will bring out trailers of books in stores alongside other features such as recaps and 3D animations. The new comics have been names “Marvel Infinite Comics“.

Company Structure

Netflix and LoveFilm have bought a new angle to the Competition Commissions investigation into BSkyB over their movie monopoly in the UK as they feel their position has now been weakened by the competition between Netflix and LoveFilm.

Spotify has hinted at an introduction to new ‘Family Plans’. Chief Content Officer Ken Parks, has said that they are currently on the cards and there would look to be about 10-20% discount.

Gowalla, a rival ‘check in’ service for Foursquare acquired by Facebook has now been officially shut down. Facebook is looking to further integrate itself in users’ everyday life.

Tesco and LivingSocial are trailling a tie-up that will allow people to swap Clubcard Points for offers of the LivingSocial site.

Twitter acquired Posterous the microblogging site this week, though both companies have promised that they will be continuing to operate Posterous as normal, there are rumours that Twitter may look to shut it down at a later date.

CNN are apparently in talks to buy the popular blog site Mashable.com, set up by Pete Cashmore in 2005 in his bedroom in Aberdeenshire, which is now estimated to be at a value of £130million.

Social Media

In an unexpected announcement, PG Tips has been revealed as the ‘most engaged’ UK Facebook brand along with Bang & Olufsen and Jaguar, according to performance marketing agency iProspect.

In honour of the 100 year anniversary of its journey, The History Press has created a Titanic Twitter account to tweet about the event, from different views in ‘real-time’. The account started tweeting on March 10th, a month before the Titanic set sail, and tweets from #captain, #crew and #engineering.

Instagram the photo sharing social network for iPhones reached a 27 million user milestone last weekend and has announced that android users won’t have long to wait before the app is available to them at the SXSW conference.

Digital Product

A new site, swarvemagazine.co.uk, registered by Steven Northam, is the 10 millionth .uk site registered with Nominet. Nominet has had charge of the .uk domain name since 1996 when there were just 26,000 .uk sites in comparison.

The long awaited 3rd iPad has gone on sale in Britain today (16th March) sparking frenzy at the Apple store, with one queuer reportedly offering his spot to the highest bidder on eBay after mistakenly taking his place 2 days earlier.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has gone completely digital after 244 years of printed volumes being available to buy. Though they have lost their historical physical form, President Jorge Cruz has said that they will not be compromising on the quality of content and will still have a focus on education.

Sal Khan, the man behind the popular Khan Academy, has spoken about the ambitious goal to provide free education for “anyone, anywhere”, and his beliefs on transforming education worldwide. Read more here.

The Rest

Here is an infographic that claims to give you all you need to train your employees on how to handle Social Media.

Have a great weekend.