Reports on Twitter’s trend topics revealed that internationally, at 11:40am GMT during the address made by the Bishop, all of the top ten trends related to the Royal Wedding; it was also referred to sixty-seven times a second on Twitter posts.  Also dominating the high ranking topics was the ‘royalwedding’ hash tag, (used to add additional information and metadata to tweets), which proved to be a lucrative investment for a certain company who promoted the keyword tag.  While on Facebook, unsurprisingly, the wedding governed status updates, with 74 mentions per second.

The wedding of Prince William and Catherine also saw a flood of traffic hitting sites streaming footage of the ceremony; the BBC bearing the brunt of the increased amount of visitors, with people logging on and eager to watch live video of the event, the site was forced to post an update at 11:15am apologising for the slower speeds experienced by users.

Google reported that at 11:00am GMT, of the top twenty searches performed in the United States, half of them were in relation to the Royal Wedding; throughout April search topics relating to the marriage of Prince William and his bride Kate increased by ninety percent, and according to Yahoo’s data on search topics, ‘Kate Middleton’ is currently being searched more frequently on Yahoo! than Barack Obama.

Further evidence of the role played by social media in relaying the events of the 29th of April is the British Monarchy’s official channel on YouTube; transmitting images, news and a full three hours and thirty seven minutes of the ceremony and proceedings throughout day.  The investment by the Royal family in a channel broadcasting on YouTube, and the sponsorship of popular hash tags on Twitter, demonstrates the influence of social media platforms when it comes to global events; with people interacting online, across the world, through mediums such as Facebook and Twitter, with the global population posting comments, feedback and general opinion, at an unprecedented level.

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The firm purchased the Huffington Post last month for £196 million, and AOL will be making redundancies in order to mitigate the number of duplications in job roles between the two companies. In the US 200 jobs will be lost primarily made up of roles in the technology and content divisions. In addition, this further seven hundred jobs will be cut from their Indian workforce as they reduce back office roles. AOL has announced that three hundred of these positions are intended to be outsourced to contractors who will be adding support to the company without being directly employed stop

the company has purchased the Huffington Post in an effort to increase the revenue which they gain from advertising. It is thought that AOL are taking measures to combat recent failings which reduced profit following their disastrous takeover of Time Warner in 2000, which has now been scrapped. At its best, AOL employee a team of over 20,000 staff.

The Huffington is an American news website which was founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti in 2005. It covers a number of news items including entertainment, style, environmental issues, world news, comedy, media, business and politics. It also features a daily blog and a range of original content. The site features a community of over one million readers. AOL announced last month that it would be purchasing the Huffington Post for $315 million. It remains to be seen whether or not the takeover will boost AOL’s flagging revenue.

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The Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (more commonly known as the ePrivacy directive) is designed to regulate the use of confidential information; such as an individuals traffic data, and more specifically, cookies.  These are small text files that are stored as you browse; they might be used to remember your password, specific site settings for an individuals user profile; or to track pages you view.

The EU directive specifically rules that from the 25th May, websites and companies must obtain a users express permission, before storing information relating to their browsing habits, with particular emphasis on cookies that remember what you have bought online; and utilise this information for the purposes of advertising.  In their Assessment on implementing the revised EU Electronic Communications Framework, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills cites that the privacy, security and protection of personal data are key motivations for the revision of existing EU regulations:

“Poor levels of privacy, security and protection of personal data associated with the use of electronic services means that users may suffer financial loss and distress because they are at risk of their personal information being used other than in ways that they have given specific permission for.”

Currently there is speculation about the implementation of a system that is able to regulate whether websites and companies are meeting the guidelines of the directive; and how such measures can be rolled out effectively; without significantly disrupting a users browsing experience.

One of the most likely solutions is the use of browser settings to control cookies, for example Internet Explorer 9 already incorporates a Tracking Protection function to stop sites capturing users information online, Firefox and Google Chrome are currently developing their own version of  ‘do not track’ features within their web browsers, while Google Ads preferences already provides users with the ability to ‘opt out’ of interest based advertising, but they also observe that: “You will see the same number of ads as before, but they may not be as relevant”.

The Internet Advertising Bureau is currently deploying a pilot scheme with Yahoo! Microsoft and AOL, that will present an icon alongside advertisements, providing information about online behavioural advertising and specifically offering consumers the chance to ‘opt-out’ of interest based marketing.

Outside of web browser providers developing their own means of managing the privacy of traffic data; while minimising the disruption of a users experience; there seems to be little investment by the UK government in order to meet the May 25th deadline.  The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will be responsible for  preparing the guidelines to help companies and websites meet the directives key objectives; however, according to the BBC, specific information about how these guidelines can be deployed will not be available until after the deadline.

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The Home Office has explicitly stated that it is not legal for mail to be intercepted without the sender being aware and agreeing to it, and this is a criminal offence. However, West (who raised the issue at the House of Lords this week) has requested that officials continue the work which he commenced with the government in looking in to the problem.

He commented: “This is something I think is important for the nation. Giving private companies the right to go and look into people’s e-mails is something I find rather unhealthy. If, as a minister, I wanted to look at someone’s e-mails I would, quite rightly, have to seek the permission of the home secretary. But these companies want the right to go into people’s e-mails and look for key words without anyone’s permission.”

Deep Packet Inspection software, which scans mails for certain words and tracks the browsing habits of users is very common across the UK, and those people who would prefer not to be targeted by the software have little recourse of action to change the activity. The executive director of the Open Rights Group, Jim Killock has commented: “It’s clear the police will ignore all but the most blatant abuses, and very few if any problems will ever get to court. A regulator is meant to issue advice, consult with industry and make sure rules are being observed: not wait until the worst abuses brings furious citizens knocking on their door.”

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The congregation gathered in order to offer Obama their ideas and views relating to the provision of technology in the face of poor economic conditions across the US. The primary focus of the discussions were to identify ways in which businesses could invest more funds in to innovative practices, supporting new developments and growth across the sector.

Other people attending the get-together included the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, the Netflix Chief Executive Officer, Reed Hastings, and John Doerr, of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Dick Costolo, the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter was also present.

The meeting was held primarily to cover a number of initiatives which Obama wished to progress, and the President pledged to invest in tax credits to support the development of technological research and reform the patent system across the US. He also discussed the importance of offering the entire country access to high-speed Wireless internet connections.

Obama made reference to Facebook in his State of the Union address last month, suggesting it was one of the factors which placed the United States at the forefront of invention, innovation and strength. He stated that he was committed to supporting the growth of the site, commenting:”We’re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices — the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers, of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living.”

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The founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has well over two thousand contacts on the site, and FastCompany have published the network to demonstrate the efficacy of the site when it comes to building and maintaining online business relationships.

Reid Hoffman has commented: “We’re taking the aggregate data set [of our 90 million members] and turning it into new products that are useful for everyone. That means users can now search new Company Pages to find connections to a given company (as well as recent hirings and firings), while college students can use a new app called Career Explorer to follow the employment footsteps of real people. Where do people normally go when they graduate with my major? Which universities does this company hire from? There’s a massive lack of information. When everyone can see the patterns, it’s useful to everyone.”

Hoffman’s network shows how LinkedIn categorises connections on the site, showing how different colleagues and co-workers can be colour coded and grouped in to clusters. FastCompany states: “Hoffman’s own quite useful network of 2,400 contacts is depicted here. Working clockwise, from the bottom left of the image above, the clusters represent his current colleagues at LinkedIn (green), contacts from a former stint at PayPal (blue), classmates from Oxford (yellow), colleagues from Apple’s 1990s online service eWorld (light green), and his universe of tech contacts from his legendary angel and VC investments in Facebook, Zynga, Flickr, Digg, Six Apart, and more (blue, orange, mauve).”

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Towards the end of lats year, SOCA (the Serious and Organised Crime Agency) drafted a plan to make this legal, giving the police more power over online crime fighting. SOCA have called for the plans to be formalised, by enabling Nominet (the body responsible for policing the .uk domain) to shut down the sites which are suspected of enabling illegal activity. Until now, Nominet have not had the authority to close down such sites, which has limited the actions available to them when they discover illicit activities.

The plans drafted by SOCA are now being opened for public debate, and the forum have requested volunteers from interested public parties to discuss the proposed reforms to legislation. Those who are interested in participating have been requested to put forward their details to the forum by February 23^rd. The move to make the discussion public has been taken as a result of the high volume of queries made to Nominet, following the original proposal announced through SOCA. A policy discussion group will now be formed to develop the plans.

Nominet has stated their intention to create a ‘balanced group of stakeholders’ in order to discuss the potential implications of the new policy, and work through the feasibility of empowering police to take direct action against criminal activity online. According to SOCA, the proposal was initiated following research undertaken last year in to those companies or individuals who sell fake goods online, or engage in other criminal activities.

The stakeholder group will be finalized early next month, and will be meeting in March to kick off discussions. The agenda for the meeting has already been prepared, detailing the potential issues and implications of the change to legislation.

Nick Lockett, a lawyer specialising in computer law, said: “I am deeply concerned about SOCA’s proposal if it means it could act before a conviction had been secured. In a world of online retailing, the ability for a police officer to seize any business, whether that is blocking a domain or seizing the servers – pre-conviction or certainly pre-warrant – would be a dramatic change in the relationship between the police and the internet community.”

“The police will have to be very careful about the sites they judge to be engaged in criminal activity. Mistakes that result in shutting down a legitimate site will leave them open to claims for massive damages.”

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In essence, SEO manipulates web content through a series of activities which make the copy appear to be relevant to the most popular keywords, thereby ensuring that users are exposed to the copy when they input the relevant text. However, Randfish has argued that good SEO strategies can make irrelevant material feature prominently, thus potentially wasting the time and resources of the user as they search for their required returns.

However, the article also suggests that making potentially irrelevant content rank highly on user keyword lists is largely a waste of time, as users will not be satisfied with misleading results, and therefore advertisers who manipulate SEO results simply produce unappealing and worthless returns. Randfish comments: “SEO is almost never applied to make non-relevant results rank for unrelated queries. And, I’d go one step further, arguing that if white hat SEO didn’t exist, millions of search results would be far worse, as fewer high quality, relevant results would make their content accessible to search engines and well-targeted toward queries.”

SEO practices are responsible for a major segment of investment finance and marketing energy which is deployed to determine what consumers are looking for, and provide it to them. Companies which deploy outstanding SEO activities are in a position to generate more traffic through the ethical promotion of web content. Without this activity, Randfish argues, our advertising would be compromised as commercials would be less appealing, and less revenue would be spent on attracting visitors and encouraging them to make a purchasing decision.

He concludes: “If SEO is misleading, then so is every other form of influence and marketing (and in many cases, SEO less so than the others). Human beings who were born in the 20th and 21st century recognize marketing and know what it means, how it works and who it serves.”

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The new plans by Google and Verizon have been described as an ‘internet killer’ by consumer groups who oppose the anticipated changes. The meeting has been called following a loud demonstration last week in California, where around one hundred people marched to protest against the plans, ending up at the Google head offices. Protesters had amassed around 300,000 signatures requesting that people enjoy net neutrality regardless of where they come from.

Google and Verizon are looking to offer enhanced services to people using mobiles to access the web, and certain other categories of specialised content. The scheme was made public following a meeting held by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the future of net neutrality.

An agreement must be reached soon, in order to comply with US government plans to provide high-speed access to the net across the US by 2020. Currently, approximately 100 million American citizens do not have any broadband access at all. A spokesperson from the industry body commented: “Great progress has been made to develop internet openness principles in recent weeks, but more needs to be done to ensure cross-sector support and to preserve internet access, innovation and investment.”

“This new effort will build on that work to arrive at something that can achieve both public and private sector support and strike the balance of encouraging continued innovation and investment in the internet. The way forward is through a private sector initiative. All the other solutions are ones that will take a fairly long time to effectuate. Private sector leadership is important here.”

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The study, which was conducted over thirty days, revealed that workers within the public sector accessed over seventy million sites, despite the fact that less than 150,000 were significant or useful to their roles at work. The move has been made to reduce wasted time and increase the output and achievement of workers.

Marwan Juma, Jordan’s Information Minister has stated: “This policy will improve services in Jordan. We knew there was waste, but not to this extent. These policies are not unique; when I worked in the private sector, all the companies I worked for had policies. It’s part of our attempts to improve services and get staff to use the internet as a tool to help them with their work.”

“This is a continuous process and we are revamping our monitoring and filtering tools with a view, perhaps, of time limited access to certain sites, rather than an outright block. The blocked access will only be in place during office hours. When someone is at work, they should be focused on their job.”

Following the ban, a quarter of a million workers still attempted to access blocked sites.

Jordanian Communications Minister, Ali Ayed commented: “This measure must not be misinterpreted. The government is not targeting any particular website. Even the government’s own news agency, Petra, has been blocked. The public sector’s time must be spent in service of the public interest and public servants must focus their attention on the public’s needs, instead of wasting their time surfing the web or playing games. Jordan will be continuing with our broadband roll out and parts of the country, such as Amman, are already having fibre laid.”

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The site is designed to support journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public. Since 2007, it has obtained, published and defended such materials and championed the integrity of our common historical record and the rights of all peoples to create new history.

This week, almost 100 thousand records involving incidents relating to the war in Afghanistan have been published. The reports, compiled by the US military, shows intelligence collated from the war. This publication marks the latest activity by the site to make government intelligence available to the public.

Previous exposes include the video which WikiLeaks broadcast showing an Apache helicopter killing twelve people in Baghdad, which led to members of the US military being put on trial for leaking the material. Another leak involved the publication of the names and addresses of BNP party members, in 2009. WikiLeaks have also posted up details of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay’s operating procedures. The site now features over one million documents.

Mr. Assange, spokesperson for WikiLeaks, stated: “To keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions. We’ve become good at it, and never lost a case, or a source, but we can’t expect everyone to go through the extraordinary efforts that we do.”

“The site has recently undergone enormous growth, and has received an extraordinary amount of material. It exceeds our ability to get it out to [the] public at the moment. As a result, the site is changing and we hope to set up a number of independent chapters around the world as well as to act as a middle-man between sources and newspapers.”

“We take care of the source and act as a neutral intermediary and then we also take care of the publication of the material whilst the journalist that has been communicated with takes care of the verification. It provides a natural connection between a journalist and a source with us in the middle performing the function that we perform best.”

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Sites such as the BBC news pages provide real-time updates and articles, and a magazine which offers personal perspectives about things which are going on all over the world. It’s also free. The Guardian has also promised to keep their news site going without charge to readers.

The Times now charges £1 per day for access to their site, or £2 weekly if readers sign up for an ongoing subscription. This action sees them joining the ranks of the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.

The move has seen Times online traffic drop significantly, showing that people are protesting at having to shell out for a service which was previously free. Although we are happy to pay for a paper, it seems that the UK public are resenting the new charging system. All other major papers rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat.

Internet statistics are showing that visitors to The Times have then gone on to seek out news online from the Telegraph and Guardian. With so much competition out there for site visitors, it remains to be seen whether the Times can retain its readership.

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Conversely, printed newspapers held steady at around 35 per cent, beaten into third place for the first time by the internet and television, which 70 per cent* of those asked claimed provided most of their news.

*The wording of the survey allowed participants to choose more than one source for ‘most’ of their news, this is why the totals don’t add up to 100.

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