This Week in Digital: w/c July 16th

What’s happened this week:

• Twitter has boosted its search functionality in an attempt to compete with Google and Facebook in real-time search.
• Digg, one of the symbols of web2.0 has been broken up and sold as mobile begins to dominate news distribution.
• Qualcomm launched Gimbal; a context awareness platform for mobile.
  • Some believe that this is the next frontier for mobile.
  • Facebook’s mobile ad strategy seems to be pointed in this direction.

 What we have learned:

• 55% of Britons shared news on Facebook last week vs. 33% using email and 22% on Twitter ~Reuters Digital News Report.
• Streaming accounts for 89% of Digital Music sales in Sweden and over half of all music revenue.
• Connected TV owners spend 12 hours a week watching online video on the big screen.
  • Social TV interactions are up at least 171% so far this year.

 Cool stuff

• YSL has created a line of products exclusive to its Facebook fans, expect to see many more exclusive product initiatives for online communities.
• This amazing video of Ken Block racing around San Francisco highlights the concept of multiple advertiser supported content enabled by the network.
• Broadcasters are promising up to 24 simultaneous streams of content to 4 different digital platforms for the Olympic Games.

Where to find more:

• ‘Measuring marketing’s worth’, McKinsey’s view of the 5 questions we should be able to answer.
• Why DMPs are emerging as the keystone of Data driven marketing. If the acronym isn’t familiar to you, read this.
• With so much data at our disposal price is becoming an ever more elastic concept, for example mac users pay 30% extra for hotels on Orbitz.com.

 - Sam (thanks to JP and the Futures team)