Yahoo Prepares To Attack Facebook With Tumblr

While Facebook is celebrating the first anniversary of its $1 billion acquisition of image-sharing social network Instagram, archrival Yahoo is poised to purchase the picture-heavy blogging network of Tumblr for $1.1 billion. With Tumblr's existing 108 million blogs by 170 million users and 13 million page views from across the globe in April alone, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is about to throw the biggest punch since her entrance in July 2012.

A once-pioneering name synonymous with the internet, Yahoo has gradually been obscured by the social media era of Twitter and Facebook, with Google taking the crown for search engine of choice back in 2008. Striving to regain those lost to the likes of Facebook and Google, Mayer is also due to announce alterations to Yahoo's existing photo-sharing possession Flickr, with the hope that these dual moves will encourage both departed and new advertisers to plant their loyalties in Yahoo. All will be revealed in concrete by the end of today, as Yahoo have sent out invites for a New York press announcement at 5pm ET (10pm GMT). 


Tumblr's impressive user figures have been historically dampened by the brand's lack of revenue, however, recent amendments to the website mean that advertisers can now purchase space across Tumblr, including on iOS and Android apps, meaning that Yahoo could potentially coax the financial butterfly out of its cocoon. Paid advertising stands as a main source of income for Yahoo, and so the worldwide Tumblr audience promises to grant Yahoo a stable increase in visitors, with the blossoming use of Tumblr on mobile devices also allowing Yahoo to adapt to our perpetually connected world.
 
As Tumblr announced its exploration of the advertising landscape this year, global brands such as Pepsi and Warner Bros immediately jumped at the opportunity to access Tumblr's young, socially influential and responsive demographic, with Warner using Tumblr to market their huge spring cinema releases The Great Gatsby and The Hangover Part III.


And Tumblr isn't resigned to the world of beauty bloggers and aspiring photographers - just like Instagram and Twitter, the site is peppered with  multinational brands striving to build up a fanbase with exclusive access to company operations, games or simply a visual showcase of products. Fashion brands like VOGUE and Vans stand alongside the likes of Land Rover, Barbie and Coca Cola, making Tumblr a legitimate contender in the digital marketing universe. 

The New Google Maps: Starbucks Coffee Promotions and Deep Sea Diving

Have you ever had a map drawn for you by a friend - lovingly sketched out to exclusively pinpoint the things you would recognise, only highlighting the roads relevant to your journey? Well, hold tight, because Google is about to become your new best buddy and negotiator of your personal world.

The global corporation already used the annual Google I/O conference to divulge plans for an invigoration of the digital music world, announcing their Google Play Music All Access on Wednesday. However, perhaps more universally beneficial, Google geo-products developer Brian McClendon explained the company's redesign of Google Maps. Re-constructing the application 'from the ground up', Google are promising 'the most comprehensive map ever made', allowing every single person to develop their own individually tailored bubble. And the more you use it, the better it gets.

  

The new Google Maps was rolled out to developers yesterday, and the public are encouraged to submit an invitation request for a sneak preview until the pending worldwide desktop release and mobile upgrade. Described as 'experimental' by Google, the new features seem guaranteed to carry us through the world with unparallelled ease.

Minor design alterations will increase productivity levels, such as the search bar being integrated into the map and results appearing with names rather than merely a red droplet. But the real development lies at a slightly deeper level, as users will now be able to traverse their surroundings based on recommendations and previous search results, described in a blog post by the company as "a mapping experience that helps you find places you never would have thought to search for". These pioneering features will even allow you to combine Google Maps with your social media connections, meaning that never again will you be forced to wander the streets due to a lack of territorial experience.


And then, as if it's not enough that we can suddenly gain a knowledge bank equating to that of a lifelong local resident, Google are even allowing us to do everything from deep sea diving to mountain climbing. We won't just be able to check out locations from the outside, but we will be able to browse through bars and select a window seat before we even decide to go there. From real-time transport updates, such as the London Underground, right through to searching for flights, Google Maps is about to revolutionise your mobility. Even walking directions are about to be enhanced, meaning that users will no longer be left wondering whether they'll hit a brick wall or if that blank space on the map is indeed a shortcut.

In addition to you personally benefiting from a map that gravitates towards your lifestyle, interests and friends, businesses will also experience significant perks. Google Maps will now display pop-up information and public ratings (courtesy of review partner Zagat) without so much as a click, which essentially offers free advertising to anybody talking a virtual stroll within the vicinity. Larger corporations will even be offered the opportunity to present promotions, with coffee chain Starbucks named as a participant. 

BlackBerry Threatens Apple and Facebook With New Social and Messaging Services

Whether you're a BlackBerry user or not, you've probably caught wind of BBM - the free BlackBerry Messenger real-time communication feature. The internet-based inter-BlackBerry facility is now about to commence a war of fruits by challenging Apple's iMessage, as CEO Thorsten Hein yestersday revealed plans to release BBM as a universal mobile app for iOS and Android at Florida's BlackBerry Live 2013 conference.

Scheduling the release for this summer, the move will not only unsettle Apple headquarters, but a subsequent rolling out of BBM voice and video calls for non-BlackBerry users will also lash out at apps such as Skype, Viber and WhatsApp. While iMessage is currently exclusively available to iOS devices, the pending availability of BBM will enable messaging fiends to connect for free with their entire social network, regardless of mobile carrier, phone or location.

Currently experiencing 10billion daily BBM messages across 60million users, BlackBerry's Andrew Bocking deduced that "the time is definitely right for BBM to become a multi-platform mobile service". Senior consultant of worldwide PR agency Davies Murphy Group, Chris Green, also said: "Expanding it to be multiplatform not only widens the consumer appeal but also may help woo back corporate customers it lost due to earlier technical problems."

 
In addition to providing competition for standalone apps, BlackBerry will pose a threat to social media colossus Facebook and online social commentary leader Twitter, as the company outlines its upcoming 'Channels' platform, where users can interact with everybody from friends to brands and celebrities.

Facebook Can Get You Cheaper Petrol With Waze

Mobile satellite navigation app Waze is apparently in talks with social network Facebook, working towards a deal worth somewhere in the region of $1billion. Offering real-time, turn-by-turn GPS maps, Waze would reinforce Facebook with its social mapping capability, which allows users to collectively outsmart traffic and thus travel as seamlessly as possible.


You might remember the utter failure of Apple's own Maps creation which aimed to rival the global success of Google Maps - including houses being mislocated on airport runways, a London Eye with no spokes, no colour in areas of Croatia and a flat Eiffel Tower. Tracing back to 2008, Israeli company Waze has already won the award for Best Overall Mobile App at the Mobile World Congress and has over 40million users as of April 2013.
  

Facebook is clear taking a wiser route by selecting a pre-established interface, with Waze being currently available on both iOS and Android and enjoying consistently successful ratings - 418,501 out of 579,907 Google Play users give it top marks and the app displays a full five stars on iTunes. As Waze allows the additional benefit of social networking, it couldn't be better suited to Facebook. This means that a group of friends can track each other on the way to a destination, roadworks can be avoided thanks to updates from other drivers, and it will even send you to the cheapest petrol station nearby thanks to community reports.   

Adding the 'Who' to the 'What' and 'Where'

Here's a question for you: Facebook photo tagging - the most mortifying online feature known to man or a valuable way of engaging with friends and even businesses? Either way, image sharing website Instagram is joining the battle against social anonymity with its latest feature 'Photos Of You'.


iOS and Android updates now allow users to tag friends and brands in their uploads, which will then be displayed in a 'Photos Of You' section within the platform. Mirroring the functions of Facebook, Instagram photo tagging is activated by tapping the image and inserting a corresponding user. While this poses a nightmare for the debaucherous failings of youth culture, businesses are poised to reap the benefits from the visual content of their adoring fans. In a post on the Instagram For Business blog, Instagram pointed out this new feature's ability to "explore photos of your business or brand", giving companies "a new way to curate and share the photos that best showcase your brand as documented by your biggest fans".

For instance, global coffee chain Starbucks has over 1.2million Instagram followers - and so now, with users now able to tag Starbucks in their snaps, the company can trace its most popular products, it can analyse social statistics such as which age groups opt for certain drinks, and even the most preferred beverage of individual cities. Imagine the marketing possibilities.

Evidently taking tips from the perils of Facebook-related tagging embarrassment, Instagram has devised a set of regulations which mean that only you can tag your own photos, you can opt to hide photos which have been connected to your face, you can choose to review images tagged as you before they feature on your profile, and the facility is even undergoing a two-week trial run until the 16th May so that everybody can perfect their skills.


Coming just days after the UK government passed a law which dissolves user rights of intellectual property ownership, and months after Instagram received a violent reaction having attempted a similar alteration of its terms and conditions, this 'Photos of You' feature continues to support Instagram's potential for brand awareness.





Introducing Photos of You from Instagram on Vimeo.

Your Facebook Photos Can Now Be Sold Without Permission

Photographers, get your watermark templates at the ready - your intellectual property no longer belongs to you. On the 25th April the UK government's Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act received Royal Assent, meaning that it is now an Act of Parliament - or, in simple terms, it is now the law.

You probably don't know how or why this will affect you, however, the consequences are in fact relevant to almost anybody who uses social media. Thanks to pressure from American technology corporations, a collision of bureaucrats and the UK government has 'modernised' copyright regulations to render your online images available for public exploitation.

Draft versions of the Bill have been under scrutinasation for some time, meeting early opposition from House of Lords members - such as Baroness Buscombe, who stated that: "For companies such as ITN, Reuters, Associated Press and Getty, this would be vital as they make thousands of pieces of content every day", adding that "The Intellectual Property Office has stated that extended collective licensing will bring no economic benefit to the UK, but industry tells us that it will do great damage to burgeoning creative industry sectors."

Visual content with no identifiable owner - described by the government as 'orphan' works - will be lumped into an extended collective licensing stystem, thus allowing them to be commercially abused. Renowned portrait photographer David Bailey - whose subjects have included Salvador Dalí, Kate Moss, Mick Jagger and Twiggy - has provided an outraged backlash to the Bill by writing an open letter to MP George Osborne, during which he says: "I am told everyone will be able to get their hands on our so-called "orphans", so libraries and museums can publish old photographs whose authors have long been forgotten. But never mind what's lying around on dusty old shelves, what about the millions of “orphans” that are being created right now every day!"

While the government has calmly let the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act pass noiselessly by as if it were innocuous, surely you can all remember the global uproar when Instagram attempted a similar feat? Within four weeks of the image sharing network's sprawling copyright shambles, Instagram experienced a 50% drop in users, even after immediately retracting their proposed terms and conditions update. And creative bodies outside the UK are promising to defend the Bill, with a collective letter arriving on Vince Cable's desk that states: "If the use of foreign works in the UK is directly or indirectly permitted by this Bill, a firestorm of international litigation will immediately ensue, and any persons, businesses or institutions making use of foreign works under this Bill would be well served to expect to be promptly sued by the copyright holders".

Described by Lord Grade of Yarmouth as "economically damaging and morally wrong", these new terms of copyright also overlook sub-licensing, which will consequently allow your precious creations to be distributed on a wholesale level without so much as a sniff in your direction. And so in order to protect your work, the UK government is barricading you against two small options - either avoid uploading content entirely, or go through the tiresome process of registering each piece with a licensing body - of which there is only one, named PLUS Registry. In the words of campaigner Paul Ellis: "Ideally you want to empower individuals to trade, and keep the proceeds of their trade. The UK has just lost that."

Facebook Enlists Coca Cola, Tesco and MediaCom For Advisory Board

If you were asked to compile a list of the most prominent brands in the UK, the chances of Coca-Cola and Tesco appearing are relatively high. And so it's only fitting that figures from the two corporations are due to appear amongst a new group of decision-makers for social media giant Facebook.

As the platform where discontinued novelty favourites like Cadbury's Wispa and Vanilla Coke have been resurrected, Facebook is reinforcing its perception across Britain's marketing landscape with the newly formed 'UK Advisory Board'. The board will hopefully encourage UK brands to consider Facebook as a serious contender for their digital campaigns, intending to elevate expenditure for advertisers on the network by extracting ideas from this cluster of influential members.



Led by Facebook's UK director Christian Hernandez and sales director Stephen Haines, 11 leading UK marketers will put their heads together four times annually, sharing their views in order to elevate Facebook from its habitual social media position. Facebook global marketing solutions vice president, Carolyn Everson, said: "It’s not about buying impressions and being a bunch of media sellers, the conversations that take place in this Advisory Board will be much more strategic.”

Representatives will come from the biggest UK media agencies, covering Aegis, MediaCom, ZenithOptimedia, Omnicom Media Group,  Mindshare and Starcom MediaVest. Brand ambassadors will include Coca Cola general manager Jon Woods and Tesco's chief marketing officer Matt Atkinson, in addition to Unilever media director Sarah Mansfield, EE marketing director Spencer McHugh, and PepsiCo's vice president of sales, Jason Richards. Spencer McHugh said: "The appeal is we will have concrete actions taken at the end of our discussions on a big platform like Facebook."

CEO of multinational advertising group WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell, recently commented that "Facebook to my mind is not an advertising medium. It is a branding medium", highlighting why Facebook has been fuelled towards offering this "complete range of marketing solutions – from brand building to direct response advertising". As Facebook continues to develop its role within the digital sector, they aim to be "in constant contact with our industry partners, listening to their needs, and working together to help make their marketing efforts on Facebook more effective and efficient."