Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Gasta Social Networking: Facebook
Facebook’s willingness to work with third-party developers and pull in third-party content, and its encouragement of content-sharing between members has helped the social network’s population surge to more than 175 million members. That openness is also boosting Facebook’s status as a traffic-driver: the social net has topped Google (NSDQ: GOOG) as the number-one source of traffic to a number of large sites, including PerezHilton.com, Gasta.com,CafeMom.com and events site Evite.
And it’s a trend to watch, since, as AdAge notes, Facebook now only gets about a third of Google.com’s unique visitors, per comScore, and the traffic—both the clicks and the eyeballs—is what generates search revenues. Companies spent over $12 billion on search marketing last year.
Much of the Facebook-driven traffic comes from links that members post via areas like “Notes” and photos. If Facebook’s influence as a traffic source continues to rise, the next step would be to figure out how to monetize the traffic to those areas with paid search. That would be one way to entice Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to renew its search deal (and give Microsoft a better return on its $240 million investment in the social net).
By Tameka Kee
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Gasta News:New domain to be web's phone book
The .tel addresses will be reachable via mobiles too
From 3 December companies will be able to buy addresses associated with a new web domain.
Called .tel, the domain is intended to act as a universal contact point rather than as a hook on which to hang websites.
Owners of .tel domains will be encouraged to populate it with details about how they can be contacted.
The domain is designed to work on the web and with mobile phones such as the Apple iPhone and Blackberry.
"All other top level domains like .com use the net's domain name system in the same way," said Kash Mahdavi, head of Telnic which runs the .tel registry. "They all store IP address and they are all about websites."
By contrast, he said, .tel had been designed to act as a repository for all a company's or individual's contact details. A .tel domain, said Mr Mahdavi, could feature phone numbers, e-mail addresses, GPS data or buttons that kick off a Skype call.
Mr Mahdavi said it had some similarities to the Enum projects that aim to bind phone numbers and e-mail addresses into a unified contact system.
The flaw, he said, with Enum was that it demanded people be on the web. By contrast, .tel will work with many different devices such as smart phones.
Phase one
Owners of .tel domains will be able to manage their contact details via a simple dashboard and surrender as much or as little information as they desire, said Mr Mahdavi.
He added that .tel domains have a "friending mechanism" that will grant close friends access to private areas that give more ways for a person to be contacted.
"It will become their place on the cloud," said Mr Mahdavi.
Access to the domain is being granted in three phases. The first begins on 3 December and is the "sunrise" phase for trademark owners to get domains related to their brands.
The second phase begins on 3 February 2009 and is a "landrush" phase open to anyone though domains will be on sale at a premium.
The final general availability phase starts on 24 March 2009 when the domain will be open to all comers.
Phil Kingsland, director of communications for Nominet, the firm that manages the .uk domain, notes that a number of new domains will go online when a new process for allocating them rolls out next year.
"Businesses will need to be aware of the potential uses of .tel and how it can work for them," said Mr Kingsland.
"They should have a clear and robust domain name strategy in place, so that when new top-level domains such as these come onto the market, they are ready for them."
Mr Mahdavi would not be drawn on the final price for a .tel domain but said it would be in line with that charged for other domains.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Gasta News:Mobile internet is growing eight times faster than PC-based web
The mobile internet is growing eight times faster than traffic to the PC-based web, according to the first set of mobile data from Nielsen Online.
The research company has released its first Mobile Media findings which show traffic on the mobile internet increased by 25% to 7.3m during 3Q 2008. The survey found 25% of mobile internet users are aged 16-24 compared with just 12% who are older than 55.
BBC News is the most popular mobile internet site, attracting 1.7m
Kent Ferguson, senior analyst for Nielsen, said the mobile web was a great opportunity for advertisers and publishers to reach important demographic groups. "People often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are," he said.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Gasta Video News:
Online TV viewing doubles in past year
The regulator’s annual UK Communications Market Report found the number of people watching TV programmes online grew from 8% to 17%, and nearly a third of internet
The number of UK internet users who watched YouTube hit 9m in April, nearly 50% more than a year ago, while the BBC iPlayer delivered more than 700,000 daily video streams in May 2008.
The number of households with digital video recorders grew 53% in 2007 to nearly 6m (23%) and the majority (88%) use them to fast-forward through ads.
The findings were in line with increased online ad spend, which, according to Ofcom, grew to £2.8bn in 2007, attracting more money than the combined ad spend on ITV1, Channel 4, Five and S4C.
This was mainly driven by consumers upgrading from dial-up to broadband.
More than one in ten mobile phone users have accessed the internet on their phone and 3G mobile connections increased by 4.7m (60%) in 2007 to reach 12.5m subscribers.
According to the Ofcom report, the average UK adult spent seven hours nine minutes a day using various communications services, six minutes more than in 2002. This includes radio listening, TV viewing, time spent online, texting or talking on the telephone.