As I've said before, "if you’ve seen me speaking, or read my stuff, you may know that one of my favourite past times is busting social media marketing myths, and one of my favourite examples of 'unicorns and rainbows' advice is 'engage in the conversation'".My effort to analytically study the unicorns-and-rainbows myth of “engaging in the conversation” started by looking at the relationship between the number of followers a user has and the percentage of their Tweets that are ...

Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference Patrick Pichette, Google's chief financial officer, said that the company's new chief executive Larry Page, has decided to refocus the internet giant on products and its "startup philosophy".Pichette also said investors should not worry about Google earning revenue from its Android mobile operating system or its Chrome Web browser."With scale there always becomes this tension of how do you keep the start-up philosophy", Pichette said of Google which now employs over 28 000 ...

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday tweeted that his Facebook page had been hit by the hacker group Anonymous, which took a swipe at the country's independence celebrations."I regret the interference with the Facebook account that is in my name, and the messages that have been published there," Santos said in the microblogging service.On Santos' personal page, Anonymous left short phrases that are one of its calling cards, and a link to a video entitled "False Independence," as Colombia ...

When selling our services as a specialist Pay-Per-Click (PPC) agency we often encounter the same question from our potential clients: Does it make sense to outsource my PPC advertising management?Whilst there’s no black/white yes/no answer to this question, and companies like First National Bank have gone in-house, understanding the shades of grey can better equip your company to make the smart move. The crux of the argument revolves around answering the following questions about your own company:Can our in-house team ...

A first for the continent, one of South Africa's Big Four banks, First National Bank (FNB) has launched an online banking app for smartphones and tablets.FNB says the app delivers a unique user experience by combining “the benefits of banking with the power of a smartphone or tablet”.Michael Jordaan, CEO of FNB says the app speaks to "FNB’s strategic drive to be the leader in innovative banking through the use of technology, and that the bank is constantly looking ...

The press was expecting an angry, mutinous mob at RIM’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders 2011 held at the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario last week. Instead the existing board of directors were re-elected without any protest from the shareholders, and they listened peacefully as Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie outlined their plan to release 7 BlackBerry OS 7 devices before the year’s end -- the largest global launch in the history of the company.Investors' concerns were smoothed over as Lazaridis ...

This week I take a look at Molenotes, a note-taking app that recreates the feeling of writing in actual notebooks with limited pages on your iPhone. I will come right out and say it, when I first heard about Moleskine notebooks and how much they cost, I was appalled. I mean come on now, why would you want to pay that much for a notebook that’s only differentiating factor from the standard Croxley 180-page classic that we all used at school ...

A major aspect of a social network’s success, it can be argued, depends on the ability of users to access it on the go. Twitter, first launched as a mobile service, and Facebook have recognised this with a variety mobile apps and a mobi site.Now, the latest kid on the social networking block, Google+ has joined the party with the launch of its official iPhone app.In keeping with the thought behind G+, Google describes the app as "making sharing the ...

An online audio and text guide shop may not be the most innovative idea, but having content easily available on mobile application anywhere in the world may just beat having a tour guide. If anything, according to its founder, it eliminates the need for one.This seems to be the thinking behind Hummba.com, a company planning to afford the resources of a personal tour guide to any user anywhere in the world.Founder Mark Allewel says the company's flagship product, ...

Review: Eleven years ago, my parents bought their first digital camera. It was an Olympus with 1.2 megapixels, less than the average cellphone’s front-facing camera nowadays, although perhaps the vastly better lens counts for something. Times have changed, pixel counts have gone up, but somehow that old camera still looks and feels like the brand new Olympus SP-610UZ. A decade on and this compact superzoom has piles more features, but surprisingly many of my criticism of the old model remain.Read more ...