Marketing

After the announcements from Google, Facebook and Microsoft last month, July has been quiet as far as the major technology companies are concerned. This week saw Facebook's 'Want' button slip into the public, thanks to a curious developer, Fairfax Media is moving to the Cloud for their software needs and Smartphones are used as much for surfing the Web as they are for communication.

Mobiles Phones: for more than Calls

This week saw Google's annual I/O conference bring a number of cool new products to the public. Google Glass featured strongly, to no-one's surprise, but Google Now certainly was a surprise. Google+ just turned one year old this week and Facebook is replacing user emails with an @facebook.com address on profile pages.

Apple may soon have a competitor in the tablet market with Microsoft announcing a new device, Surface. Facebook is also going to roll out a real time bidding platform for their ads which might be the first step towards a Web-wide ad network.

Microsoft Does DIY Hardware

This week saw Apple's Developer conference (WWDC) and the announcement that iOS6 will no longer use Google for their mapping tools. Google also announced their membership in the Ads Integrity Alliance, a partnership aimed at protecting users from bad ads and an Australian online retailer encouraging its customers to upgrade their browers by charging them more.

Stopping Bad Ads Online

This week LinkedIn joins Sony and loses millions of users' passwords, Facebook users can now apparently pay to spam their friends. Starting with E-commerce stores in America, Google aims to help online stores perform better online with their Trusted Stores program.

LinkedIn Leaks Passwords

As of yesterday, Google Places has just become the latest Google product to be enhanced with Google+. By adding Google Places (now Google+ Local) to their social network, Google has created a layer of identity for user generated content such as photos and reviews, and added location recommendations to Google+.

Yahoo! and Microsoft have been online for almost as long as there has been a World Wide Web, and just this week, both of these veteran tech giants have launched new products. Yahoo! has released Yahoo! Axis, a new cross platform tool that connects a browser with their search tools, and Microsoft has launched a social network built around Bing. Google has also introduced something new in the form of the Auction Insights report now available for AdWords advertisers.

Auction Insights for AdWords

Yesterday the Inside AdWords blog posted "Make smarter decisions with the new Auction insights report", announcing the release of the new Auction insights report. This new report supplies information on who is competing for certain keywords and how aggressively:

This week has seen a lot happen both in search engine marketing and social media. Google's latest change shows how we can expect search to evolve in the near future and Facebook has finally IPO'ed. Google in partnership with a number of research specialists have3 released an exciting study on the changing nature and numbers of Mobile and Smart Phone use globally and GM has pulled their Facebook advertising.

Is Knowledge Graph Google's Future?

This week saw Google release Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads for us here in Australia and the search engine arguing that they have the same rights regarding freedom as speech as a newspaper. We also checked out Google's Mobile Playbook, a site optimised for tablets and other mobile devices. Mobile phone optimisation is an important part of the website design process. Here at Aspedia we are excited to see how implementing a mobile site has helped our clients, and are looking forward to producing more websites for mobile and smart phones in the future.