UK regulates Facebook and Twitter marketing

Social media marketing by UK companies will be regulated for the first time from tomorrow as part of the Advertising Standards Authority’s newly expanded digital remit.

This will see online marketing by all UK companies – regardless of their size or the sector they operate in – come under the control of the ASA.

It will apply to “marketing communications” on organisations’ own websites as well as any “non-paid-for space” they control – including social media marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter hissy fit, new Google algorithm, Wikipedia growth plans

UberSocial is the number one Blackberry Twitter app

Twitter has decided that while a thriving eco-system of third party apps may have done wonders for the uptake of its service, there comes a point when putting the upstarts in their place is necessary.

The first to suffer from the company’s harder line was UberMedia, which controls 20% of all tweets through a stable of mobile apps that includes Tweetdeck, Echofon, UberTwitter and Twidroyd. It was the last two of these that incurred Twitter’s wrath and lost access to the service for four days.

They returned after a short blackout last weekend (with UberTwitter now the brand name-respecting UberSocial), but UberMedia’s UberCurrent app remains offline. Clearly a sign of things to come, just days later the TwapperKeeper app (whose name begs the question: when do the prizes for awful app names get given out) cut a number of features to remain in Twitter’s good graces after the service ‘requested’ some changes.

Google Social Search update, having your cake, US digital divide

You may start seeing more friends and colleagues in your search results as Google continues to take increasing notice of social media sites, expanding the Social Search feature it launched in 2009.

The company will now mix social search results throughout query results based on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at the bottom) and add notes for links people have shared on Twitter and other sites.

The expanded Social Search will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks, but only on Google.com and only in English for now (this video shows how it should work).

2010: a ‘game-changing year’ for mobile

More usually associated with measuring the desktop and laptop-based online world, Comscore today released its first report on the mobile landscape.

The Comscore Mobile Year in Review covers the US, the top 5 European markets and Japan, and looks at the changes driven by smartphone adoption, 3G penetration and unlimited plans.

Casting their eye over 2010 the analysts recount a “game-changing year” for mobile, as its very definition expanded under the weight of technological innovation in tablets, e-readers and other connected devices.

Nokia and Microsoft, Twitter merger talks, Pandora’s IPO

Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop

There can be few better ways of starting a week you know will end with a major strategic announcement than by inadvertently ‘doing a Ratner’. But seeing as the deal Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop unveiled on Friday was one to kill off Symbian, the leaking of a memo in which he compared it to “a burning platform” probably didn’t do too much harm.

The company’s decision to jump into bed with Microsoft and use its Windows Phone 7 operating system might seem an odd one – Nokia invented the smartphone and leads the market with 37.6% of all smartphones sold last year running its Symbian operating system.

But its smartphone position has been waning, with market share down from 46.9% in 2009 and, as Elop noted, “Apple owns the high-end range” and Android is “winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100”.

The Daily, Facebook Places Deals, UK’s Supreme Court OKs tweeting

As one failed opportunity to make an online killing is earmarked for sale by a corporation not entirely au fait with the internet, another potential still-born venture is picked apart by critics, who all seem to be asking “what’s the point”.

Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only newspaper The Daily is clearly desperate to be the future of publishing. But the costs involved (including a $30 million launch), the estimated 650,000 subscribers needed to break-even and its reliance on a single, high-end niche platform make it feel like a very risky move indeed.

It’s available free for the first two weeks, then at 99 cents a week, or $39.99 for a year, but for News Corporation’s long-term strategy you’d certainly hope they start offering an Android-compatible version soon. In the meantime non-subscribers can see its free content online here.