Mission complete: Rosetta touches down on comet

Many Memeburn readers are considered "social media gurus", most often by themselves. A "social media guru" is kind of like being a spiritual guru, except instead of devoting your life to the quest for enlightenment, you devote it to trying to make big brands look good online. I am not making fun of these people, in fact I am one myself. I was recently ordained to official guru status by his holiness, Śri Sathya Dave Duarte after staring at the screen of my Macbook for seven days, until I had a godlike marketing awakening. My awakening was this: to...

With the imminent launch of The Sable Accelerator, South African businesses look set to benefit from a new network of advisers and investors based in Silicon Valley and London that can help with international expansion. Founded by South Africans now living abroad, The Sable Accelerator is backed by angel investors, CEOs, directors and consultants from companies such as McCann Erickson, Grant Thornton, McKinsey and Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa. According to Tech Central, Vinny Lingham, founder of Yola and more recently Gyft -- check out Ventureburn’s exclusive peek at Gyft -- is also onboard as an investor. Read more at Ventureburn.comvar vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var...

With the launch of Google Fiber, we think it's safe to say that never before has Kansas City Missouri seemed more of an attractive destination. With a gigabit network -- think 100 times faster than today's average broadband -- we're about to have a vicarious look into what the future holds for the rest of us, as about 500 000 people log onto Google's new network. While we wait to see if Google Fiber manages to upend the telecommunications and broadcasting industry with its cost saving DIY approach, we collected some opinions from the digerati. For more on Google Fibre check...

Proving that the internet is truly a part of great world events, father of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee made an appearance at the opening ceremony of this year's Olympic Games in London. The man, known as the inventor of the web, also tweeted during his appearance. His tweet was displayed around the stadium, with the letters made up of 'pixel' squares set up alongside seats. With close to one-billion people watching, that's what we call a tweet with reach! This is for everyone #london2012 #oneweb #openingceremony @webfoundation @w3c— Tim Berners-Lee (@timberners_lee) July 27, 2012 Berners-Lee is currently working...

Instagram has been on a roll recently: it followed up its popular iPhone app with an Android version, agreed to sell itself to Facebook for US$1-billion and expanded its community to 80-million users. Wait, what? Yes, the team behind the photo sharing app recently announced that their community has grown to 80-million users who have shared almost four billion photos since the company started in late 2010. But if you hop along to the Apple App Store or Google Play today, don't be surprised if there is one less feature in your update than there was in the previous...

Google's done some pretty epic doodles in the past. The one it's done for the 2012 Olympic Games is not one of them. We were really hopeful when we saw the picture on the Google home page. A load of cutesy looking Olympians with the Google letters arranged them, what would happen when the mouse hovered over them. Would they start enacting their perspective sports? Nope. All you get is a line of alt-text saying "London 2012 Opening Ceremony". Bear in mind that this is the company that gave us the Freddie Mercury doodle and the Moog Synthesiser one....

Well there's one for the books. The analysts were pretty much dead on the money when it came to Facebook's first earnings call as a publicly listed company. The social network pulled in US$1.18-billion with a profit of US$0.12 per share. Analysts were predicting US$1.15- billion, also at US$0.12 profit per share. If you were looking for any spectacular revelations from CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, sorry no luck. The message from the hoodied one was more or less the same as it's always been: Our goal is to help every person stay connected and every product they use...

Twitter's important. Most of us get it, and it seems the vast majority of politicians do to. At least, they get that being on Twitter's important -- some of them just aren't sure what do once they're there. In fact, according to a study released today by PR company Burson-Marsteller, nearly two-thirds of the world's leaders are now on the 140 character-or-less social network. Bizarrely though, less than half follow their peers from around the globe. The company claims that the study, called Twiplomacy is the "first research of its kind, aimed at identifying to what extent world leaders...

No, it's not just your computer or your phone or your tablet -- it's everyone. Google has confirmed that its messaging service is offline, and that it's working on the problem. Visitors to its app status dashboard will be greeted by a comforting red dot, and the following message: We're aware of a problem with Google Talk affecting a majority of users. The affected users are able to access Google Talk, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. We will provide an update by 7/26/12 1:50 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that...

Looks like Facebook's taken a leaf out of Twitter's "search and discovery's where it's at" book. The world's largest social network today announced that it was rolling out a recommendations bar. The new social plug-in is aimed at helping people find articles based on what their friends like and share from your site. As a person reads an article, a small pop-up surfaces at the bottom of the screen highlighting recommended articles and prompting them to like the page. Recommendations are based on content that friends have explicitly liked and shared in your app or website. Facebook says the plug-in...

Ever wonder what makes display advertising work? Ever wonder what makes for the perfect date? Well you're in luck! Here are some of my tips and tricks to keep in mind when looking to win those moments that matter! Context/ Environment -- Even if your personality doesn't sparkle with rays of sunshine, with the right environment even you stand a chance at romance! Category -- Do you go for quaint dinner? Do you go for a playful day out? Your category will send out certain signals of affiliation and intent. Interest -- Sharing common interests is always a great...

The mobile phone is the future. It’s prosperity, hope, development and empowerment all rolled into one handy device with a camera and an FM radio. What we do with our cellphones matters, wherever you are. Given all of this, it was hardly surprising that the meeting room tech media were gathered to hear the latest results from the Mobility 2012 survey conducted by research company World Wide Worx and sponsored by financial giant First National Bank (FNB) was so crowded. Based on interviews with a nationally representative sample, the Mobility 2012 project consists of two reports, The Mobile Consumer...