Google continues to add people ... but it works

One of the tenets of this industry seems to be the need to continuously reduce headcount, but that's not the way that Google have gone - both in terms of their never ending programme of acquisitions and in general hiring as they continue to both grown and diversify their business away from its traditional search engine dominance.

As well as being the best payers in the industry - with their 10% across the board payrise and other bonuses helping - Googlers are clearly adding to the company's bottom line as they join, as is shown by the improvement in the company's average revenue per employee as more of them come on board:Credit to Silicon Valley Insider for the graphic.

UK Broadband Market Update

On the back of the plethora of financial results last week, ISP Review have updated their list of the Top 10 (by subscriber size) Internet Service Providers in the UK - and remember that the BT figure includes at least 783k business customers within their base of punters:It's notable how the 'big four' continue to dominate the market and pull ahead of the smaller providers.

Sky Q2 Results

Sky also announced their financial results last week, and along with the expected support for chairman James Murdoch they also revealed good customer acquisition numbers thanks to their compelling packages and ever significant marketing spend in the 'Happily Ever After' series of advertisements across multiple channels.

They added 174k customers (net) to their broadband service in the quarter, taking the overall customer base to an impressive (given how relatively recently they launched their broadband product compared to others in the market) 3.335 million - the net additions being up 46% on the same quarter in 2010.

Sky have unbundled 385 exchanges in the last year, giving them coverage of 79% of UK households on their own network - and plan to add another 400 before their programme of planned network upgrades completes.

107k customers take only broadband from the company, the first time they have revealed this figure. This is up by 31k in the quarter.

Analysts questioned the company on demand for faster speeds over fibre (to the cabinet) connections and they reported that they have yet to see significant demand but still plan to launch a service using the same technology that BT are using for their 'Infinity' faster broadband service within the next 12 months.

27% of Sky customers (compared to 21% a year previous) now take a 'triple play' (broadband, TV and calls) bundle from the company, which has also gone to add to impressive reading financial results - which can be accessed here [press release, PDF]. The accompanying investor slides [also PDF] can be found here.

Spotify charged US launch sponsors a million a head

Music streaming service Spotify has just launched in the US, and they did so with a bang in charging their launch sponsors a million dollars apiece to support their high profile rollout in the American market.

The launch sponsors included the likes of Coca-Cola, but Spotify is not expected to use such deals in order to fund their long term viability in the US - with the now familiar subscription model being the underpinning of their launch across the pond after many delays thanks to the shenanigans of negotiations with music labels.

Other revenue streams such as sponsored playlists are also expected.

Everything Everywhere Q2 Results

Mobile giant Everything Everywhere - the oddly named company that comprises the UK operations of Orange and T-Mobile - have announced their financial results, which include an update on the performance of the company's fixed line broadband operation under the Orange brand.

As they seem to have done forever now, the company again reported a quarterly reduction in their broadband customer base - this time posting a net loss of 10k customers to take the overall base to 716k, although they will be encouraged that the losses are less than they have been in other recent quarters. The company also has 22k dialup customers, presumably largely still due to a hangover from the business' Freeserve days.

However, they will be encouraged that their customer satisfaction ratings have improved as a result of their network outsource to BT - and they also announced the UK's first customer trial of 4G technology in association with BT in the same quarter.

The company's chief executive Tom Alexander said of the results:

"The first half of 2011 was a period of good progress for Everything Everywhere. Leveraging our unique strengths and market leadership, we are delivering on our strategic plan set out in September 2010 and are ahead of plan with our synergy capture. We are investing in building the best network experience for our customers and in creating platforms for growth."

The results will be the last for Alexander, who has announced that he is leaving the business for "personal reasons" - although many believe that the relatively poor financial performance since the conglomerate has formed is the reason for his departure. He will be replaced by Dutchman Olaf Swantee, who is currently heading up the European mobile operations for France Telecom.

Alexander's departure came as a surprise to the City.

TalkTalk Q2 Results

Last week was clearly a week for financial results, with TalkTalk also releasing their second quarter results.

The company - which has traditionally played at the 'value' (i.e. cheap and cheerful) end of the broadband market and has now successfully completed the integration of Tiscali after some pain along the way - reported a 25k reduction in their broadband base in the first quarter of the year ... and the pattern continued for a third consecutive quarter with a net loss of 27k customers in their broadband base despite the marketing spend to promote their 12 months half price offer and a 49p per month reduction on their broadband packages.

TalkTalk now has 4.172m broadband customers, 87% of which (3.642m) are on their LLU unbundled network which offers customers the best speeds and - more crucially - TalkTalk the cost savings over a BT Wholesale powered connection.

Demand for faster fibre to the cabinet based broadband speeds were reported to be limited, which is not unexpected given the target market that TalkTalk plays in ... around 1,000 customers (that's a thousand, not a million) are on their fibre based product.

Around 100,000 of their customers have activated the controversial 'Homesafe' network based security product in its first 8 weeks of launching, with the service designed to limit the network bandwidth costs to the provider as a result of malware infected computers.

TalkTalk have been under the watchful eye of Ofcom as a result of the troubled Tiscali integration and the company also took the opportunity of their results to emphasise their customer service improvements - technical support and general enquiries from customers being down 40% in the quarter compared to the same quarter in the year previous, more than half of enquiries now being dealt with online (~30% in Q2 2010) and 75% of new customer orders being completed within 20 days in June (50% six months previous).

The press release of the results can be found here [PDF].

Murdoch (jnr) gets backing of Sky board

The board of BSkyB (Sky) have backed chairman James Murdoch with a unanimous vote on the back of the phone hacking allegations according to the BBC.

A board meeting at the company today is understood to have resulted in the glowing support for Murdoch, most famously recently seen presenting to the parliamentary select committee to answer questions about the hacking along with his father Rupert, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation - who are no longer seeking to take control of the 60.2% of BSkyB they do not already own.

Despite the Prime Minister saying that Murdoch (jnr) has questions to answer about the evidence he had given at the hearing, he has the support of his board to continue and that will apparently be announced alongside the results tomorrow.

Prominence of Promoted Tweets on the rise

Twitter have today announced that they will be making their chief form of paid for advertising, Promoted Tweets, more prominence on the Twitter stream of users with them set to appear "at or near the top of your timeline", starting today for users.

In a blog posting they elaborated:

"These Promoted Tweets will scroll through the timeline like any other Tweet, and like regular Tweets, they will appear in your timeline just once. Promoted Tweets can also be easily dismissed from your timeline with a single click."

The move is bound to be unpopular with some, and you wonder how firmly they have their tongue in their cheek (or should that be 'tweek'?) when they add that they "look forward to your feedback".

BT Q2 Results

BT also announced their financial results this morning and the company has registered their satisfaction with continued growth in the broadband base of their Retail division, much of which is supported by consumers signing up for their 'Infinity' faster broadband service who have not been customers of the provider previously.

BT Retail (including businesses) reported net additions of 141k customers in the quarter to further cement their position as the UK's largest broadband provider with an overall customer base of 5.832m - at least 783k of who are business customers. Less than 20% of the net additions were from customers signing up for their 'value' Plusnet brand.

The quarter marked BT's releasing of their cheapest ever broadband offer (which was heavily supported by marketing as ever) as they continue to focus on bundles, so it's probably accordingly unsurprising that their Retail division secured 56% of net additions in the ADSL and LLU market (down from 64% in Q1 but up significantly from 40% in the same quarter a year previously).

90% of customers joining the company's Retail division in the quarter took a bundle from them (so at least one other of fixed line telephony or the BT Vision television service) and 5.8% of BT customers now have a bundle from them - up from 4.4% in the same quarter a year previous.

Customers on their 'Infinity' faster service grew by 71k in the quarter to take the overall customer base to 215k, a third of who are new customers to BT. BT's chief executive Ian Livingstone said bullishly of the product's performance:

"Our roll out of super-fast broadband is one of the most rapid in the world, passing an average of 80,000 additional premises each week and we have plans to roughly double the speed of our fibre-to-the-cabinet based service in 2012."

BT also continued to emphasise their free WiFi Hotspot service in marketing in the quarter where the number of hotspots (on FON and Openzone) grew by 200k to pass 3 million hotspot locations. They also heavily advertised their new Home Hub with its 'smart wireless' technology in the quarter.

Growth was also reported at their Openreach access division with 251k more (up 4% on the same quarter in 2010) premises connected to broadband, taking the (non cable) UK broadband base to 16m homes and businesses. LLU connections now account for 47% of all connections served from BT exchanges.

Openreach also confirmed that their Fibre-To-The-Cabinet (FTTC) rollout [using the network that their Retail division is running the Infinity service over] has now passed over 5 million homes and 500 of their cabinets have over 10% consumer take-up.

BT also said that they expect a launch of the YouView connected TV service in "Spring 2012", and you'd have to assume that this is the case given that they are a partner company in the consortium.

The full press release of the results can be found here and the usual accompanying slides you would expect here [both PDFs].

O2 Q2 Results

The financial results season is in full swing, and amongst those posting their latest subscriber numbers were O2 - via their parent company Telefónica's second quarter global results announcement today.

O2's fixed line broadband customer base (on both their own and their Be Broadband brands) shrunk for the second consecutive quarter despite a campaign in the quarter to their existing mobile customers offering them fixed line broadband with the first six months free, although to be fair they did limited marketing in the quarter.

At the end of Q2 the company's fixed line broadband base was 653k, a 16k contraction on what it was at the end of Q1 - and they also added a limited number of landline customers in the quarter (20k, to take the overall base to 136k).

The full results and the usual slew of accompanying documentation can be found here.

Photobox buys Moonpig

Moonpig, that company with the jingle that you can't get out of your head, has been snapped (ho ho) up by online prints company Photobox in a deal that values Moonpig at £120m.

In what is a complicated sounding deal the management of both firms are merging into a new board, with the resultant business well positioned to form a dominant position in the market - Photobox dealt with a million prints a day last year and Moonpig sent out 38 million cards in their last financial year.

Are phishers improving their English as well as their design?

One characteristic of (usually) foreign sourced phishing e-mails has been the poor English in them, which is a dead giveaway to what they are and is even occasionally funny.

A particularly well crafted (design wise) phishing e-mail targeting Virgin Media customers spotted at the weekend though is showing that it's definitely on the improve (although there are clearly still errors in it), making me ponder whether the lucrative trade is resulting in the highly organised phising gangs recruiting copywriters:

[Click on image for a larger version]

Of course messages like this also make it difficult for providers if they do have to use e-mail to contact their customers for any similar reasons, as understandably consumers will be very suspicious of them.

Virgin Q2 Results

Virgin Media are again the first of the big players in the fixed line broadband market to announce their quarterly results, with their Q2 results having been announced this morning - and they can be found on their website here (PDF).

The results, which also post their half yearly numbers, show a contraction in their (overall) customer base in these tough economic times (and in what is a seasonally weak quarter) with 36,000 leaving the company as a whole - but the 4.78 million who are still with the provider are spending more (as a result of a higher proportion of them taking all services from the company) so their financial performance has improved with a 2.2% growth (to £986m) in quarterly revenue.

In the quarter they lost 18.1k (net) broadband customers, which the company has reported were largely on the lower broadband tiers - they have seen a 25% jump in overall data demand from their consumer base in the first half of the year. Virgin Media now has 4.3145m (4.0486 on their cable network, 265.9k on their ADSL service covering areas outside of their cable footprint) broadband customers.

In other snippets of broadband news in the release, the company said:

We have seen an increasing proportion of new broadband customers signing up for our faster speeds since we unveiled our new 30Mb tier in place of 20Mb. Half of all new subscribers in the quarter ordered speeds of 30Mb or more, compared to 18% ordering 20Mb or higher a year ago.

Almost 1m customers now subscribe to tiers of 20Mb or above, which represents nearly a quarter of our cable broadband base. We have over 170,000 customers on our 50Mb and 100Mb tiers, more than twice as many as a year ago and a 45% increase since the year-end. We are on track for rolling out the country's fastest widely available broadband service, 100Mb, right across our network by mid 2012 and around 6m cable homes already have access to this superfast speed.

We also continue to see strong growth in the amount of data downloaded by our customers. On average, our broadband customers are each downloading around 25% per month more than they were just six months ago. The amount of data consumed by customers on our network has grown on average by 43% every year since mid 2007.

Virgin also announced a new share buyback and debt repayment programme, activity which normally boosts a company's share price.

Footballer makes quite an entrance to Twitter

The worlds of Twitter and football have had an interesting coming together, with stories ranging from the fascinating (a fan asking Rio Ferdinand to follow him instead of for an autograph) to the damaging (of which there are many examples, such as the ill advised rant of Danny Gabbidon) and, of course, the whole Ryan Giggs super injunction story which has only quietened down because of the phone hacking scandal dominating column inches.

The most damaging entrance to Twitter I've seen though would have to be the one outlined at the Media blog of Leicester City player Paul Gallagher, who joined after his wife suggested it. It's a rude one and it's fair to say she's embarrassed by it ... have a look here for more.

BlackBerry maker to cut 2,000 jobs

Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry smartphone (and now the PlayBook tablet) is to cut 11% of their workforce with the news that they are to shed 2,000 jobs (and yes, I had to resist the childish urge to put the company initials before that last word).

The cuts will be global and are designed to improve their time to market for new launches as well as to refocus the business on the most profitable and attractive products financially.

Earlier this year the company warned that profits would be lower thanks to reduced demand for the BlackBerry in the face of competition from Apple and Android devices and their share price has dipped by more than 50% since the start of the year.

Netflix shares on slide

Shares in online VoD giant Netflix were down 10% on Monday as a result of a backlash from subscribers unhappy with recent price increases, which the company has said has dampened their outlook.

Their market statement also said that they expect their quarterly revenue to be something in the region of USD$780m-805m, well below analyst estimates for the company that is dominant in their market across the pond.

They said that any subscribers they do add in the current quarter are likely to be cancelled out by those leaving over the price hike.

Google picks up mobile startup

It wouldn't be a regular month going by had Google not opened their Google wallet (ho ho) to buy someone, and this time the purchase is to augment their Google Wallet mobile payments service.

The search giant has reportedly forked out something in the region of USD$10m to pick up the Punchd loyalty service, which Punchd themselves explain as:

Basically... Punchd puts paper loyalty cards on iPhone and Android

Punchd's team of six are expected to move to Google's headquarters at Mountain View.

Zeus sold for $110m

Cambridge-based web server and software-layer application management firm Zeus Technology has been acquired by US based WAN network optimisation firm Riverbed Technology, with the price in the region of USD$110m and being all paid in cash.

The deal for Zeus, who were previously owned by venture capitalists as well as private shareholders, gives Riverbed important application performance technology to add to their existing expertise at the network level and seems a good fit for a company focused on optimisation technology as the massive amount of traffic across the Internet continues to grow with more and more Cloud computing happening.

The press release can be found here for those interested in the usual quotes from company management.

YouView partner concerned at broadband capacity

The on again - off again nature of the YouView connected TV service has created much confusion as to whether it will eventually come to market or not, something that Lord Sugar has been brought in to kick the tyres on and assess.

Quite what the other partners - and the ISP partners BT and TalkTalk in particular - will make of comments from Arqiva's YouView representative is an interesting thought, given that Russ Armstrong told a Westminster eForum that the UK's lack of broadband capacity outside of the cable footprint of Virgin Media was set to hamper such services.

Arqiva has, of course, an almost unique perspective on this as a result of their operating of the SeeSaw service which they recently sold to the owners of Bebo - and Armstrong told the politicos:

"If you're outside a cable area you've got problems, and BT Infinity is still a few years away. So although we might lead with services broadband is still a real choke point."

YouView's original plans to launch this summer have been shelved with the service currently due to come to market next year.

Baidu profits surge by 95%

Chinese search giant Baidu has posted impressive financial results which underline the growth of the Internet in the world's most populous country.

Profits were up 95% on the same quarter a year ago (yes, that's almost doubled) to £155m (well, the equivalent of) as they reap the benefits of dominating the search market in a country that Google has effectively withdrawn from.

The company's head honcho Robin Li reported that a growth in advertising revenue was behind the impressive performance:

"We benefited from strong traffic growth and improved monetization. We were especially encouraged with the strong spending from large clients."

With the company having also inked a deal with Microsoft for Bing to power the English language version of the site as well as continued growth opportunities in China they're certainly one to watch.

Funding round values Twitter at $8bn

Twitter is in the process of raising USD$800m in a funding round that values the company at USD$8bn - and even the failed accountant candidate in The Apprentice could tell you that 10% of the company is being sold in the funding round then.

Half of the money is expected to come from a familiar source, Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment vehicle who are serial Internet investors and already have a stake in the company.

Twitter recently celebrated its fifth birthday and has over 200 million users.

Ofcom speedtest results

Ofcom have released their biannual (i.e. twice yearly) speedtest report, which benchmarks the ISPs in the UK via a panel of SamKnows devices installed in the homes of ISP customers around the country.

As per the previous results they've published, the cable guys at Virgin Media come out best given that broadband speeds their customers get are not affected by the distance they are from their local exchange (unlike ADSL services):The average download speed in the UK is now 6.8Mb - up 10% on the last results as consumers move to faster throughput packages with their need for more speed.

Alongside the report Ofcom highlighted that less ISPs are now headlining (pardon the pun) their advertising with the 'up to' speed as some switch to more lifestyle based messaging but they are still concerned that the approach has the potential to mislead consumers - which is why they initiated a review of how broadband is advertised, of which the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is examining via their CAP and BCAP committees.

The regulator found that a third of consumers on ADSL packages advertised as being 'up to' 24Mb actually got throughput speeds of of 4Mb or less, something of which Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said:

"The research is still telling us that some consumers are not receiving anywhere near the speeds that are being advertised by some ISPs."

He added:

"Ofcom continues to urge the CAP and BCAP committees to make changes to their advertising guidance so that consumers are able to make more informed decisions based on the adverts they see."

The ASA report is due in the next few months.

Virgin Media, whose own campaign for broadband speeds to be advertised using typical measures rather than theoretical limits was ruled against by the ASA last month, commented via broadband executive director Jon James:

"The gulf between what's advertised and what speeds customers get continues to grow.

We remain concerned that people paying for fast broadband are still being misled and believe it is absolutely essential that consumers have all the information they need to make an informed choice."

Ofcom's own code of practice (which many ISPs have voluntarily signed up to) calls for providers to give consumers a typical range of speeds they will actually receive when they join them and allows them to move onto another provider without penalty if the speeds they do receive are below estimates, but it's not enough according to Broadband Choices' Michael Phillips:

"Ofcom's code of practice has made some steps in the right direction, but without some more careful thought, there's still room for a lot of confusion.

How will my mum know if a service offering 1Mb - 6Mb is better or worse than one providing 2Mb - 5Mb? She needs to know what speed she's most likely to receive most of the time."

Either way it's safe to assume that the results will be used in advertising from providers over coming weeks as has happened with previous incarnations.

The decline of MySpace

The reason why MySpace went from costing USD$580m when News Corporation purchased to being only worth USD$35m when they sold it six years later is perfectly summarised in the Chart of the Day outlining its relative unique monthly users to Facebook over that time:Their user base staying relatively static over a period when the number of people online massively increased along with their time on social networks would not have been such a major issue were it not for how totally and completely they have been trounced by the Facebook behemoth.

Yell shares climb after Microsoft tie-up

Listings company (both online and in Yellow Pages phone book directories) Yell have inked a strategic relationship with Microsoft which ensures that their search results get prominence on both the Yahoo! and Bing search results, improving the profile of their advertising customers and hence bolstering their share price in the process.

The company's shares were up 16% on the deal which also gives their small to medium enterprise business (SME) customers access to Microsoft's cloud computing based offerings and online versions of Microsoft Office.

In fact the company has been really busy in trying to turn around their business - their shares have dropped by 59% in the last 12 months - also this week securing deals with e-commerce provider Znode and social commerce site Bazaarvoice.

The Znode deal will provide their SME customers to manage a number of websites at a time while Bazaarvoice will give them additional insight into the 'word of mouth' conversations being held about them online on social media networks.

Twitter etiquette guide

A Twitter etiquette guide - 27 signs you're a dick on Twitter - was highlighted by the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones on the micro-blogging site himself and it's definitely close to the bone ... I've been guilty of more than a few of them myself.

These ones made me laugh particularly and I'd have to plead guilty on them both:

Ballmer admits Windows Phone failure

Overly enthusiastic and often gaffe prone Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has admitted that Windows Phone 7 has been a failure since its launch last October, but foresees a brighter future partially as a result of their strategic tie-up with Nokia to get the operating system onto the Finnish company's handsets.

Speaking at a Los Angeles industry conference the man of 1,000 jumpers said:

"In a year, we've gone from very small to ... very small."

Windows Phone 7 has consistently had around 1% of the market since its launch but Ballmer believes that it now has momentum as an operating system, adding:

"It's been a heck of year and you are going to see lots of programs in that market as we move forward.

Nokia and people in the phone business believe in us."

In the main though Ballmer used his address to speak about cloud computing, highlighting that Microsoft have gone "all in" in that space in order to compete with those who have been earlier to market than them such as Google and Amazon.

Citrix spends $200m+ on Cloud.com

Virtualisation technology specialist vendor Citrix have forked out what is believed to be north of USD$200m to pick up open source cloud computing firm Cloud.com as they expand to compete with Amazon's cloud hosting services.

The so-called IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) company is a developer of the open source cloud platform CloudStack that has been positioned as taking on the EC2 platform from Amazon in what is set to be a growth market.

Zynga to go to $1bn IPO, warns of Facebook reliance

Nobody was surprised when social gaming firm Zynga filed for an IPO on Friday - the company seeking to raise USD$1bn in a listing that is expected to value them overall at something in the region of USD$15-20bn.

The company, whose games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars are better known than they are, noted their heavy reliance on Facebook as a platform in their regulatory filings - which is of course just the kind of thing that a company should be mentioning if they are as reliant on a third party as Zynga is for the success of their business.

They noted that, should they have a falling out with Facebook at any point in the future, that it would "harm business and adversely affect the value of our Class A common stock" as they generate "substantially all our revenue" from web users playing games on the massive social network.

Zynga made USD$90.5m profit on revenues of nearly USD$600m last year according to their SEC filings and their IPO will be keenly watched, as all other social listings are ahead of Facebook finally coming to market.

Virgin rapped by advertising watchdog

In a pair of separate rulings the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled against broadband advertisements by Virgin Media as the marketing battle between the various ISPs is proven to be as intense as ever.

It's of little surprise that the main protagonists in complaining about the advertisements were competing ISPs, who most notably took umbrage with Virgin's Stop The Broadband Con campaign - the cable provider's upping the ante on the review being undertaken by the ASA on how broadband speeds are advertised in the UK, Virgin arguing that the current norm of using the theoretical 'up to' maximum of the technology (which are rarely achievable in an ADSL context) in speed claims should be replaced with typical actual throughput speeds.

This is, of course, where Virgin shines as shown in the independent Ofcom speedtest results.

As reported previously, Sky and BT both complained to the ASA about the so-called 'speed honesty' campaign, saying that it denigrated them - and also that the ability for web users to speedtest their connections and share the results with others went beyond standard advertising practice.

The ASA agreed with the complainants, setting an interesting precedent for so-called 'viral' marketing campaigns. The campaign was ordered not to be used again in its current form and the provider was told to talk down the supporting website. They were also told to not discredit or denigrate other marketers in future advertising.

In their ruling the ASA said:

"We considered the ad went beyond highlighting the disparity Virgin believed existed between advertised broadband speeds compared to those that were delivered and implied that other ISPs dealt with consumers dishonestly in relation to broadband speeds."

Virgin remained bullish in response, saying via a spokesperson:

"Advertising 'up to' broadband speeds you can't deliver is a con. The ASA, Ofcom, numerous consumer groups and thousands of internet users have all reiterated our call for change and, instead of complaining about a legitimate effort to give consumers a voice in the debate, Sky and BT should step up to the challenge and start being honest about their broadband."

Virgin Media also re-iterated their belief that Ofcom should force ISPs to advertise typical speeds rather than the 'up to' theoretical maximums.

BT naturally had a different view of the ruling, saying via their Retail division's managing director (and interestingly a former executive at Virgin's predecessor Telewest) John Petter:

"This is incredibly embarrassing for Virgin Media: its campaign for the industry to use 'average' as opposed to 'up to' speeds relied on misleading broadband users to make its point."

In the second set of rulings, the ASA upheld 5 of 10 complaints against Virgin's advertisements which included their 'Speedy Gonzales' campaign from late last year, with complaints coming from members of the public, provider XILO ... and BT again.

Amongst BT's complaints was that the advertisements were unfair because they compared cable and ADSL technology (yes, they really complained about that - that one seems to have been thrown out) but also that comparisons were not made with their 'Infinity' faster broadband service when speeds were put up against each other in the marketing.

Overall the ASA ruled that the advertisments needed to be changed before they appear again in the future.

Share buy values Facebook at $70bn

Investment firm GSV Capital has made an investment in buying Facebook stock (shares) that values the social network at USD$70bn - somewhat south of the USD$100bn that some believe the site will overall be valued at when its IPO happens, which is now expected to be before the end of this year.

The publicly traded investment firm picked up 225,000 Facebook shares at a cost of USD$29.28 apiece - or at least they will when the 30 day "Right of First Refusal expiration" clause runs out.

Whatever their purchase price, they're set to make a tidy packet when the massive social network finally does go public.

LivingSocial to go to $1bn IPO

Group buying website LivingSocial, the number two in the sector behind Groupon, is planning to go to an IPO and raise USD$1bn in the process according to sources of Reuters.

Joining the throng of social media firms heading to a public listing - led by Facebook, but Groupon are also going public - the listing is expected to value the overall LivingSocial business at something in the region of USD$10-15bn, although the company themselves did not comment on the speculation.

They raised USD$400m in an April funding round backed by the likes of Amazon.

MySpace sold ... at a $545m loss

Despite stories that (now previously) News Corporation owned social network MySpace may in fact reach its asking price of USD$100m, it did not with the site being sold for just USD$35m (plus News Corp also get a 5% stake in purchasers Specific Media) in the end before the end of the second quarter - so that News Corp could claim the up side of it in their financial results.

The buyer was unexpected, as was the fact that musician Justin Timberlake is taking a share in the site - but he will give the site a bit of a boost as the new owners have plans afoot to turn it more into a content hub according to Specific Media's head honcho Tim Vanderhook:

"[We plan to make] Myspace what it was supposed to be ... a true home for content creators and artists."

Vanderhook was, however, forced to deny that the purchase was so they could get hold of the all the data that MySpace holds about their users:

"With the acquisition of Myspace, Specific looks more like a Yahoo! or a Google than it does just an ad network. Myspace is an iconic brand. They have 70 million to 100 million unique user-reach in any month. We're a digital media company."

Whatever the reason, it's a hell of a challenge to turn around a site that has sunk so low from when News Corp thought they were getting a bargain when they picked it up for USD$580m back in 2005.

The site's co-founder Tom Anderson spoke out about the massive drop in valuation, stating what everyone else always knew - that it missed the social boat by being eclipsed by Facebook:

"Quickly I saw that it's really hard to layer in social to features after the fact. At Myspace we had the luxury of having social first, and building the products on top of that layer. Then I choked and Facebook realised that vision."

Connected TVs to top half billion by 2015

Research firm DisplaySearch believes that the total number of web enabled TVs shipped worldiwde will surpass 500 million by 2015, with the proportion of sets sold with capability connectivity to jump from 25% (2011 expected figure) to 47% over the same period.

Such a change in the market has big implications for Internet providers with data demand set to grow to a point where 90% of Internet traffic will be video by the end of this decade (source: Cisco), and interestingly it's not just the so-called 'developed' world where the demand is coming from with countries like India having good broadband access for many - who are keen to get a hold of the best content.

They also predict that almost a hundred million TV sets that are wireless 'N' (802.11n) enabled will be in use by 2015, enabling a direct connection between TVs and wireless devices in the home.

Bing to power English language Baidu

Some would consider China a bit of a basket case when it comes to the search market, and not just for political and censorship reasons. Even before Google effectively withdrew from the country they were playing second fiddle to local powerhouse Baidu, and some at Mountain View will be seething that Baidu have done a deal with Microsoft to evolve their English language services as they expand globally.

Developing their English language services (which will now be Bing powered) is needed according to Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo:

"More and more people here are searching for English terms. But Baidu hasn't done a good job. So here's a way for us to do it."

When questioned about what sacrifices that they need to make to operate in China, Microsoft tellingly said:

"[Microsoft] respects and follows laws and regulations in every country where we run business.

We operate in China in a manner that both respects local authority and culture and makes clear that we have differences of opinion with official content management policies."

A cynic might read that as saying that profit comes before principle at Redmond.

News Corp cancels Sky bid

It was inevitably going to happen - News Corporation have withdrawn their bid for the 60.1% of Sky (BSkyB) that they do not already own under the weight of great politicial pressure as well as huge scrutiny from members of the public, with their UK newspapers thought to have seen a significant drop in readership since the phone hacking scandal kicked off again so dramatically.

In a statement News Corp chief operating officer Chase Carey said:

"We believed that the proposed acquisition of BSkyB by News Corporation would benefit both companies, but it has become clear that it is too difficult to progress in this climate.

News Corporation remains a committed long-term shareholder in BSkyB. We are proud of the success it has achieved and our contribution to it."

Whilst they may remain committed to Sky, some believe that the BSkyB board may be less patient with News Corp, which could lead to them eventually divesting themselves of the business altogether should things become fractured. There are also suggestions that there may be calls from the boatrd for James Murdoch to step down from involvement in the Sky business after questions were asked about his judgment during the saga.

Whilst politicians were naturally crowing at the news, the level of embarrassment about the withdrawal that News Corp will be feeling was well summarised by BBC business editor Robert Peston:

"It's a huge humiliation. This was [News Corp's] biggest investment plan of the moment. It was one of the biggest investments they've ever wanted to make.

It is an extraordinary reversal of corporate fortune... And questions will now be asked whether this is the full extent of the damage to the empire."

BSkyB's share price has nose dived by 20% in the last month and a government initiated enquiry into the phone hacking scandal will commence as soon as possible according to the Prime Minister.

Apps for singletons

The latest development in smartphone applications is innovative if not particularly surprising - applications that will use facial recognition technology to work out the gender of and number of people in a bar, allowing singletons to choose which bar to go to on a night out on the pull.

Cameras are being setup in bars that will identify the number and gender of people in a bar, although they are not (well not yet anyway) sophisticated enough to be able to link up to Facebook profiles and identify the individuals - which would no doubt be a stalker's paradise.

US startup SceneTap has linked up with 200 bars to install the cameras and launches this month. One of the co-founders unconvincingly claims that the idea behind the app came from a night out in Chicago "bar-hopping, spending a lot of money on cabs, getting somewhere and not having it be a good time."

No doubt there will be plenty of controversy about this one to come.

US search market share

Chart of the Day today has an interesting graphic about the US search market share, showing how Microsoft's Bing search (sorry, decision) engine has yet to really worry Google despite its ekeing of market share (largely as a result of massive spending on advertising):The data (click on the above for a larger version), based on comScore measurement, shows how Bing has picked up around 1% of the share of Yahoo! but has, more tellingly, further squeezed other small providers out of the market as Google's share has remained relatively static - in April 2010 the 'big three' were responsible for 93.7% of US searches but last month that had crept up to 95.8%.

Amazon buys independent online bookseller ... if the OFT lets them

Online e-commerce giant Amazon intends to purchase their smaller independent bookselling rival The Book Depository, a site with 6 million titles in its catalogue that is expected to turnover £120m in 2011.

The deal for the retailer whose unique selling point has been free worldwide delivery of titles is subject to approval from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), who are investigating whether it would result in a distortion of competition in the UK online booksales market. Interested parties have been invited to make any submissions by next week ahead of the OFT making a decision at the end of August.

Amazon's purchase price has not been disclosed.

Facebook passes 750m active users, launches video chat with Skype

The massiveness of social network Facebook continues to impress with news that the site now has 750 million active users - or, to put it another way, were it a country it would now be the third biggest on the planet behind China and India:One in nine of the world's population is allegedly an active Facebook user, but chief executive Mark Zuckerberg believes that this is no longer the most important measure.

Zuckerberg believes that time spent on the site and data generated are far more meaningful metrics as to the site's growth - and says that the information shared daily is now twice of what it was only a year ago.

Facebook announced the updated metric (although they do not say what they consider to be an 'active' user and presumably people with more than one Facebook account count for each of them) as they unveiled their partnership with Skype, who they have been working with for the last six months and hence well before Microsoft spent USD$8.5bn on the VoIP company.

Facebook users are now able to click on a 'call' button on the site which will launch a video chat with other users in what is an integration that appears very similar to the core Skype client experience.

Zuckerberg said of the tie-up:

"We think this is an awesome [partnership]. We are using the best technology for video chat with the best social infrastructure [Facebook]."

At present only 1-2-1 video functionality is available but video conferencing is expected to follow.

Virgin Media and Spotify agree partnership

Virgin Media and Spotify have agreed a partnership to offer the latter's music streaming service to the cable company's customers across broadband, mobile and their TiVo online TV service - with Spotify's paid for tiers to be available to all the company's customers.

The deal will kick in over the next few months and pricing will be confirmed over coming weeks, with Virgin Media's customers being offered a discount on Spotify's retail pricing of £4.99 (Spotify Unlimited) or £9.99 (Spotify Premium) per month - a good incentive for users to migrate their Spotify accounts into being the 'Virgin' format ones.

Announcing the deal Virgin's broadband executive director Jon James said:

"We are delighted to have united the Virgin Media brand with the world's best music service. Spotify will help our customers to fill their world with music, whether it's at home or on the go, and provide a unique way to get even more out of Virgin Media's leading digital services."

Spotify's business development director Andreas Liffgarden added:

"By teaming up with Virgin Media we're giving millions more people across the UK the chance to enjoy all the world's music at their fingertips, however they choose to listen to it - be that on their computer, mobile, and for the first time through their TV."

A Virgin Media spokesman went on to elude to the company's previous music plans, which were allegedly put on the back burner after they were unable to agree terms with record labels about an 'all you can eat' service of unlimited downloads:

"We did have intentions to launch a music store-type service, and we are still in discussion with the various labels on that, but this is a different proposition — more about streaming and availability of music on a non-purchase basis, which is what consumers seem to want to go for.

There is an obvious advantage by working with Spotify ... it makes it a much more straightforward commercial relationship, [just] between ourselves and Spotify. It's not eliminating the record labels, because they're involved with Spotify themselves, but this is ultimately about the consumer."

Virgin Media's press release can be found here, and their regulatory head honcho thinks it will help with the ongoing fight against piracy on ISP networks also.

Matt Rogerson told a Westminster eForum:

"If you bundle it in with broadband, consumers are more inclined to buy it. In Sweden, [Spotify has] had a real impact in the reduction of piracy."

If their deal does the same here then both the government and rights holders will be happy bunnies given all the controversy over the anti piracy measures outlined in the Digital Economy Act (DEA).

Music labels adapting to new models, UMG claims

Universal Music Group (UMG) claim that the recording labels are adapting to the new world of digital music models and loosening the ties on their traditional reliance on physical media, with the company's global digital president Rob Wells hailing the development.

Citing revenue generating models such as those being progressed by Spotify and Vevo as well as brand sponsorship offerings, Wells claims that the labels are "coming through the pain" of getting on board with the new models after global music sales reduced from USD$27.2bn in 1998 to a mere USD$15.9bn last year.