Many small businesses are still afraid of opening their doors on the social web. These are the people who are the most comfortable with using one way broadcasting methods to distribute their marketing content, because they feel that they want to control their brand and message. As a result of this, these people only control one part of their communication strategy because they don't allow anyone to interact with their message. The social web changed all this and it's 2012 -- ...

There are not many times in anyone’s life when things run exactly as planned. New ways of doing things pop up all the time; be it a social media site like Pinterest or a subculture that needs understanding and tapping into. But sometimes the playing field changes completely and people struggle to keep up. You’d think I was talking about social media; but I’m not (well, not really). I’m talking about mobile. Mobile has fundamentally changed the way in which we ...

Twitter is as essential a tool for journalism these days as a pen and notepad once were. One tweet can be can be as valuable as afternoon spent buying drinks for a source. It's also a great way of spreading your own content and building your name as a journalist. The same rules that apply to big brands when it comes to Twitter, apply to you as a journalist. It's not just about using Twitter, it's about how you use ...

Microsoft will do everything in its power beat Apple. Not just in personal computing, the space in which the two have been rivals longest, but in every space that the Cupertino-based tech giant plays in. In an interview with tech news site CRN, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer made it clear that the company would leave "no stone unturned" in its innovation battle against Apple. "We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered ...

Well known South African news portal IOL has not been hacked, says its editor Alastair Otter. People visiting the site were today greeted with a message from Google warning them that the site contains malware and that their "computer might catch a virus" if they continued on to the site. Speculation that the site may have been hacked was more than likely sparked by the second paragraph of the warning, which reads: Google has found malicious software may be installed ...

Google is set to pay a US$22.5-million fine for overriding the privacy settings on Safari and tracking the browsing habits of its users. According to the Wall Street Journal, the fine is the biggest ever slapped on a company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Back in February the Journal reported that Google had “used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users”. This was in direct contravention of mechanisms built into the Apple ...

A consortium looking to bring TV to South African mobile phones has received a major investment boost. The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NAFCOC), a black-owned independent and non-profit business support organisation, has bought a 20% stake in Mobile TV, which has been testing its product for the last 15 months. “This investment is likely to have a major impact on ownership, control and management demographics in South Africa,” says Dr Mothobi Mutloatse, founder and chairman of ...

China is cracking down on "inappropriate" online video content. A recent report from The People’s Daily states that two government agencies -- The State Internet Information Office and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television -- issued a statement informing online video providers like Sina and Youku, who just announced a deal with NBC, that they will be held liable for all content posted to their platform. According to the report, "the circular was issued upon requests from the public, ...

Motribe made a name for itself building mobile social networks, but the company's photo-based Mxit apps seem to really be taking off too. The South African-based company released MxPix, a little over a month ago. In that time the app, which makes Instagram-style photo sharing and filtering possible for people with feature phones has attracted over one-million users. The app reached the one-million user mark a full 14 days earlier than Motribe's other photo-sharing effort JudgeMe. To date, the million ...

Imagine, just for a second, that the internet didn't exist. You still got all your news from newspapers, spoke to your friends on the phone instead of via social media and IM, and consulted printed and bound encyclopaedias instead of Google every time you had a question. Did you just shudder at the thought? According to this infographic, if the internet really didn't exist, we'd all be spending a lot more money on media and postage stamps and quite a ...