Facebook:
The impact of new and digital media has massively changed how audiences now consume media products. For example, in the past (historically) when social networking did not even exist, many communicated to one another through telephones and they used to hear the news/entertainment stories and so on through word of mouth/reading newspapers. However, today audiences can now consume media products through their Smartphone e.g. Facebook/Twitter apps and can now communicate constantly, not only because we live in a culture of ‘constant opinion’ but because of the immediacy of the e-media platform.
Economical factors that could impact on Facebook:
Facebook is ‘financed’ by adverting and advertising is placed on this social networking site because of the number of people using it. Most of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising. Microsoft is Facebook’s exclusive partner for serving banner advertising and therefore Facebook serves only advertisements that exist in Microsoft’s advertisement inventory.
Facebook currently has around 845 million active users worldwide (as of Feb-2012). One economic factor that had a great impact on Facebook was the recession (2009). The owners of Facebook as a result had to put up more advertisements on the social networking sit in order to generate revenue and keep up to date with their expenses.
On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts. A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry average was 25% for in-banner video ads
Statistics
Year 2011
Revenue: 4720
Growth: 114%
Growth: 114%
Politically:
Facebook has helped to bring about political change:
In 2011, Facebook was the catalyst, which triggered the political change in Egypt, as a video, which was posted by ‘Khaled Said’ on Facebook became the starting point for the revolutionary movement. This video set off a mechanism, which eventually led the citizens of Egypt to set up a Facebook page that encouraged the citizens of Egypt to protest against the government. The Facebook page, which influenced the citizens of Egypt to engage with the protest, ultimately led the President ‘Hosni Mubarak’ to give away his title. Although Facebook did not directly cause the revolution in Egypt, it was still essential and constituted towards its success
Wider Context: Costa Concordia’ Italian cruise disaster
Many of the survivors of the ‘Costa Concordia’ Italian cruise disaster were actually updating their statuses on Facebook, to ask their friends and family for help, which resulted in the police investigating further into the cruise ship disaster to find survivors as they initially thought that everybody was dead. This ultimately led to 10 people’s lives being saved. This shows that impact on new and digital media on Facebook has helped people to seek immediate help when needed, and therefore based on this we could argue that social networking sites are not that dangerous after all.
GOOGLE+
‘Google introduces Google Chrome for mobile phone’ (New and digital media)
The article which was posted on the Media Guardian on the 7th of February 2012, which by headline is called ‘Google introduces Google Chrome for mobile phone’ shows how new and digital media can change how we consume our texts.
Google is to replace the web browser in Android smartphones with a revamped version named after its Chrome desktop product, as the search giant redoubles its efforts to knock Microsoft off the top perch in the battle of the browsers.
Chrome for phone, which is faster, links to the user's desktop and allows an unlimited number of pages to remain open simultaneously, begins its public "beta" trial on Tuesday, and may move to a full launch this spring.The upgrade reinforces Google's push to eat into Microsoft's dominance of web browsers. Since Chrome for desktop computers was launched in October 2008, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has dropped from a 67% to 37% market share, according to analysis by StatCounter.
Chrome, which has 200 million users worldwide, overtook Firefox, an independent open source browser funded by a trust, as the second most popular in December 2011 and now has a 29% market share, with Firefox at 25%.
In a move designed to tie users more closely to Google products and services, Chrome desktop users will be able to call up on their phone, at the touch of one button, the last set of web pages opened on their desktop.
The feature should be useful for those leaving the office in a hurry: look up the location of a meeting but forget to print out the map, and the phone can open the map page without having to carry out a new search. Start work on an online document at the office and continue adding to it on the move without having to spend time retrieving it.
Bookmarks saved on Chrome for desktop are also automatically available on the browser of any smartphone, tablet or laptop also using Chrome. A user's various Chrome browsers will synchronise with each other every two minutes.
Google claims Chrome is faster than many other browsers because of technology that anticipates which page a user is going to click on next so that it can start pre-loading it, and in a demonstration at Google's London headquarters on Tuesday, Chrome completed the loading of pages containing rich media such as photos and videos more quickly than Apple's Safari browser on an iPhone.
Chrome for phone will work only on the latest version 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google's Android phone operating system. The browser will only be available to Android phones during the trial period, but a Google spokesperson said it hoped eventually to release versions for all operating systems including Apple's iOS for iPhones.
Chrome will come pre-installed on Android phones as the default browser, although users will be free to select a rival such as Firefox, Dolphin and Opera. The advent of an improved browser is likely to slow the adoption on smartphones of independent alternatives, which have attracted praise in comparison with Android's current offering.
Google calls this seamless link between devices the "personal web", and it is clearly designed to ensure that it retains control of the gateways to the internet on all devices.
The development is yet another sign that Google is deploying a strategy very similar to Apple's – tying customers into the brand on whatever screen they happen to be using. Unlike Apple, Google does not manufacture hardware, and wants its software to be available on any device its users choose to buy.
Chrome's presence as an operating system on desktop computers is also negligible. But with most activities moving off the desktop and on to the internet, a suite of tools such as email, Chrome and Google Docs, plus sharing services like Google+ and YouTube, have given the company a daily visibility on Apple and Microsoft machines that no advertising spend could buy.
So much so that it no longer feels appropriate to refer to Google as a search giant. Although without search dollars, none of these market shares building but so far loss-making activities would be possible.
TWITTER:
“We came across the word ‘Twitter’ and it was just perfect. The definition was a ‘short burst of inconsequential information, and chirps from birds. And that’s exactly what the product was” Jack Dorsey (owner of twitter)
Historically, Dorsey (owner of twitter) introduced the idea of an individual using SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original name for the service was ‘twttr’. However, today ‘Twitter’ has around 300 million active users according to the statistics which were realesed in June 2011.
Twitter
Growth
The company experienced rapid growth. It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008. In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. As of March 2011, that was about 140 million tweets posted daily. As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second.Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on June 14, 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17, 2010, and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second. The current record was set during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published.[ When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.
Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application, now called "Twitter" and distributed free of charge, is the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.[
From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites including YouTube, Flickr, as well as a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream, while 'Messages' and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top of twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010, the company confirmed that the "New Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users.
REVENUE SOURCES
Revenue: US$ 140 million (2010 est.)
In July 2009, some of Twitter's revenue and user growth documents were published on TechCrunch after being illegally obtained by Hacker Croll. The documents projected 2009 revenues of $400,000 in the third quarter and $4 million in the fourth quarter along with 25 million users by the end of the year. The projections for the end of 2013 were $1.54 billion in revenue, $111 million in net earnings and 1 billion users No information about how Twitter planned to achieve those numbers was published. In response, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone published a blog post suggesting the possibility of legal action against the hacker.On April 13, 2010, Twitter announced plans to offer paid advertising for companies that would be able to purchase "promoted tweets" to appear in selective search results on the Twitter website, similar to Google Adwords' advertising model. As of April 13, Twitter announced it had already signed up a number of companies wishing to advertise including Sony Pictures, Red Bull, Best Buy, and Starbucks.
The company generated $45 million in annual revenue in 2010, after beginning sales midway through that year. The company operated at a loss through most of 2010. Revenues were forecast for $100 million to $110 million in 2011. Users' photos can generate royalty-free revenue for Twitter, with an agreement with WENN being announced in May 2011. In June 2011, Twitter announced it would offer small businesses a self serve advertising system.
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