The postponement of a court case against Google by an Italian court has saved content providers around the globe from major ramifications.

The case is centred around a video showing the bullying of a teenager with Down’s syndrome which was posted on Google Italy. The debate in the court is about the extent of provider responsibility for the content on their sites.

The interpreter’s illness led to a postponement of the hearing in court which will resume in September.

Four executives of Google are facing charges of privacy violation and defamation under Italian law for permitting the online posting of the video.

Prosecutors have alleged that Google has provided neither adequate filters for content nor enough staff for content monitoring.
It is also argued that content showing four students bullying the teenager in front of a dozen others was uploaded without seeking permission from the parties involved.

If the court rules that obtaining permission of all those appearing in videos posted to sites like Dailymotion or YouTube is a must before posting, social media sites in Italy will be severely impacted feels DL Legal partner Nick Lockett.

The video which was posted in 2006, before Google acquired YouTube, had remained on the site for over two years until Google removed it after receiving complaints.

The youths who bullied the teenager were identified, expelled from their school in Turin and sentenced to community service. The Google executives face prison of up to three years if found guilty.

Facebook conducted a press conference in the United States yesterday where they announced that users will soon be able to turn on their status updates to be made public. Poking will also be allowed to be made public. This will be similar to that of Twitter wherein status updates can be made public.

Facebook has already begun to test their public updates in a restricted beta trial. However email settings on the options page of Facebook offers notifications when somebody connects as a fan. It is strong hint that this feature will soon be rolled out across the 200 million and still counting, users of the site.

The public update option would not be a surprise for long time users. The Facebook publisher bar was a clear attempt to imitate the buzz and popularity of the 140 character tweeting system that is offered by Twitter. However, the ability of sending links to your friends about cats playing pianos rather than the world makes it different and not a complete carbon copy. Public status updates from Facebook and providing other services to complement it, can make their service a true rival to Twitter.

Traffic to Yahoo! grew phenomenally following the death of Michael Jackson last week. The company has confirmed that it has set a new record for the number of visits it witnessed during the day.

The news of Michael Jackson’s death sent a large number of people to Yahoo!’s homepage to search for the reasons for his death and also to confirm the information.

A Yahoo! spokesperson has stated that Yahoo! News witnessed 16.4 million unique visitors in a single day. This is a new record for the company whose previous best was 15.1 million hits, on the U.S election day. Yahoo! News also saw almost four million people come to their portal between 3pm and 4 pm when the death was first announced. This is the highest traffic they have ever seen within an hour.

Yahoo! News has also recorded a phenomenal 175 million page views on Thursday, 25th June 2009. This is their 4th highest after the Inauguration and Hurricane Ike. The news link on Yahoo.com which read “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” was the most widely read story in the history of Yahoo!. It apparently generated 800,000 hits in the first ten minutes.

Microsoft is giving a lot of thought to its planned revamping of MSN later this year. It is thinking about innovative changes that would drive more and more people to their site instead of just making a small design change.
Microsoft is also playing with various designs for its search box to make it look more attractive. As of now, more than half of people are still using the MSN search box for all their search queries whilst the other half are typing in their queries at Bing.com.

Microsoft vice president Erik Jorgensen has stated in the interview that a lot of his energies are devoted to pulling in the Bing experience into the MSN portal without hampering the essentials and still making sense. He further added that they are looking at ways to incorporate features onto their main page which link up to the company’s search engine.

The company has also had a talk about various ways in which they could write features so as to push people towards their shopping, local and travel search engines. These also happen to be the most profitable part of Microsoft’s search related business. Microsoft is basically looking for makeover for its MSN portal that drives it closer to Bing.

Facebook has recently launched their latest offering that allow developers to produce and insert a live stream into their websites from the social network. Initially, CNN used the Live Stream Box, earlier this year during the appointment of Barack Obama. This Live Stream Box allowed Facebook users to share and comment on their status updates in real-time along with the video stream of CNN.

Presently, all website owners are able to embed their site with similar interactive boxes for numerous purposes that allow them to comment alongside multiplayer games and video streaming content.

Facebook’s Tom Whitnah described in a blog post that users can log in with Facebook Connect and at the same time, they can share updates on their profiles with the Live Stream Box. However, each posted link will redirect them to the Live Stream Box.

Tom Whitnah also said that the Live Stream Box comprises a tab that enables users to see the statuses that are updated by their friends as well as by everyone from across the web.

Micro-blogging site, Twitter has become Britain’s top 40 most visited sites and is the fastest growing site in the UK. According to internet research company Hitwise, in recent months the site has seen a significant rise in popularity after experiencing 22 times more traffic than last year. Twitter is currently the UK’s 38th most visited site as compared to the same time last year where it stood at the 969th position.

Research director for Hitwise, Robin Goad said that the most noticeable thing regarding Twitter’s growth is that a huge majority of it has happened during the early part of 2009. The media coverage of the micro-blogging site has increased immensely this year and also celebrity endorsements from Ashton Kutcher to Steven Fry have contributed as well.

The site’s profile continues to grow quickly as it has been an important communication tool for Iranians who are protesting over the disputed presidential elections. Twitter was also the first to provide witness reports of the Denver’s plane crashes earlier in the year and the terror attacks in Mumbai.

The new figures state that Twitter has become an important source of traffic to a number of other websites as well. Throughout the month of May, Twitter links accounted for 1 of every 350 visits that a website received.

Digg, the renowned social news aggregator has plans to replace its only sharing tool, Shouts, with a new system in favour of Facebook and Twitter for recommendations.

Shout’s feature, which has been withdrawn recently, did not serve purpose of sharing content between users and was being abused as the tool for spamming other users. Digg is now designing a new communication tool that will be far superior to its previous one.

The new system will provide a more direct way to connect users instead of promoting their links.

According to Digg CEO, Jay Adelson, the upcoming feature will enable users to communicate. The company doesn’t want to create a system that will be easy to abuse. He claims that tool will focus on conversations rather than dumping of links that led to pollution of Shout.

Another way to eliminate problems faced in Digg Shout is the grouping of certain conversation categories like sports and movies.

Digg has not set any time frame for introduction of new tool, but has worked out its action plan.

Some experts feel, even after introducing new system, the users are likely to abuse it and it will be a matter of great interest to see whether Digg succeeds in its improvement efforts.

A new book, inspired by Twitter, will retell the greatest literary works in less than twenty sentences. Titled “Twitterature”, the book will contain abridged versions of novels, reproduced in Tweets style – short messages via social networking services.

The publisher Penguin, have commissioned its authors, Alex Aciman and Emett Rensin, US students, to write the book which will be available later this year.

The writers will be shaving down the works of Shakespeare, Joyce, Dante, Rowling and Stendhal, to less than 20 to 140 character tweets.

The 19-year-olds are creating this revolution from a college dormitory at the University of Chicago, after completing first year of their studies. They claim their work will be retelling works of great literature in a humorous way in Twitter format, and will be aimed at people in the age group of 18 to 35.

Explaining what inspired them for the book, the pair said that they had an epiphany. After questioning themselves about grandest ventures of any generation and what best expressed 21st century American’s souls, they concluded that literature and Twitter were the most important platforms for their generation’s expression. They thus embarked on the project that will combine the two.

The effort could be a success as most people do not have the time to read big, long classic books anymore.

Complaints of inappropriate messages on Twitter websites have forced Plymouth City Council to bar its staff and council members from use of its equipment to access Twitter. They are now directed to use the local authority’s own website.

Some agitated councillors remarked that the council’s move deprived them of an important means of communication with their electorate.

The council explained that Twitter was being reviewed to prevent damage to its reputation from inappropriate messages or “tweets”.

The council received numerous complaints from public and members about content on the website. It had to issue warning to Labour group leader, Tudor Evans, for use of abusive language against another political party member.

Mr. Evans, agitated over the ban, remarked that it was ridiculous to ban Twitter for one single misuse out of 900 tweets he has put out. This made the council a laughing stock, he added.

Luke Pollard, who was named 10th most influential Labour member on Twitter, believes that the council has exposed itself as a backward-looking authority in the advanced age of internet.

The council announced only the corporate communication team will be given access to the site from its servers. It further added that policies and procedures on use of social networking sites and information technology were being reviewed.

The council felt those representing it have duty to uphold highest standards.

Google has started welcoming users to its universal voice mail service, which was announced in March this year to make it simple for people to manage their phone calls, text messages and voice mail. The new service is an evolution of Grand Central, which Google acquired a couple of years ago.

The users will be able to route their phone calls through a single number that will ring home, mobile phone and workplace simultaneously. This service attracted rave reviews from customers and news media.

Google Voice was initially available only to existing customers of Grand Central. But since this Thursday, Google started extending this service more broadly. Those users who place request for an invitation will receive it via e-mail. They will be then able to select a number and start using Google Voice service.

Currently voice service is free and Google has not made any announcement regarding charges as yet. Analysts feel the new service will strengthen Google’s mobile strategy.

Analyst Ben Schachter in his note to investors wrote that introduction of Google Voice, will accelerate Google’s mobile penetration. This would lead to creation of larger mobile ecosystem which will enable Google to target, sell and monetize advertisements. It is also anticipated that Google Voice will be integrated with Android and this may lead to increase in Android-powered smartphone’s penetration.

It has been reported that Yahoo Inc is working really hard to change the way it is perceived and the change might come in with its new main home page design, which is said to be released in autumn. It was also reported that the change was being led by Elisa Steele, the new Chief Marketing Manager.

Apparently, Landor Associates which is a brand consultant in San Francisco and Penny Baldwin, former executive of Young & Rubicam have been signed on for the project. Ogilvy & Mather, a company which has worked with the search giant before, will still be working with the company. However, it is not sure if Sigel and Gale are on for the project.

The report has come in just as Yahoo is getting ready for its first annual meeting with Carol Bartz, CEO of the company. It has also come at a time when Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp said that he is still ready to sign a search deal with the company.

However, it is not certain if Yahoo’s CEO will respond to the report or the latest from Ballmer. In February Bartz lashed out at the leaks the press were getting from someone inside the company and even offered a bounty of $1,000 on information regarding who was talking. She also said last month that Microsoft would have to come with boatloads of money to do a deal.

As the news of the pop-king Michael Jackson’s death was let out last night, it was reported that the internet had a tough time dealing with the millions of fans all over the world who were rushing to verify the news. Internet giant Google said that it feared an attack from hackers when the news was first released and had shut down for about half an hour.

Out of the top 100 searches on Google for US users alone, 36 were linked to the pop-star’s death. However, Google’s news section acted as a defence mechanism and responded to the information requests about the news with coded text. But Google was not the only site that had shut down.

As fans hastened to pay tribute to Jackson, Micro-blogging site, Twitter, also suffered a temporary shutdown. Twist, an analysis tool, showed that 22.6 percent of the Tweets posted were about him. Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder said that as soon as the story broke, they saw an immediate doubling of messages per second.

David Miliband, Foreign Secretary and Katie Price were among those who paid their respect on the site. Soon after, nine of Twitter’s ten most popular topics that were being discussed were related to the star. Fans even logged onto Lisa Marie Presley, Jackson’s former wife’s MySpace page to pay their respects.

Facebook has recently announced their plans of making status updates of their users even more public. The latest version of Facebook ‘Publisher’ (the box where you share links, photos and enter your status) is now under test. The new version Facebook ‘Publisher’ will let you to send out your status updates along with other content to everyone, irrespective of whether they are on Facebook or not.

It is a move that puts Twitter square in their sights. Twitter is more open in nature and allows everyone to read what you tweet, following which they can decide whether to follow or not. This is the reason why Twitter has surged in popularity. On the other hand, the decision by Facebook that will enable public posting of status updates has been met with some dissatisfaction in the Facebook community.

The age old concerns about privacy have once again reared its head, showing that Facebook still walks a fine line regarding protecting the privacy of their users and earning their share from the marketing potential.

The development team from Facebook have clarified that these status updates will not be published to everybody by default. They will only be published if the default privacy setting is set to ‘Everyone’.

Microsoft announced that it is developing the Bing search web site, which will break Google’s dominance by enabling users to make decisions from queries itself.

Since the introduction of the site this month, Microsoft’s share of U.S. search results has increased to 12.1%, as reported by research firm ComScore Inc.

Scott Howe, vice president for advertising and publishing at Microsoft, described Bing as a ‘decision-making’ site instead of a search engine.

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, while addressing a conference, called Bing a “mission-critical”. He claimed that lots of people are of the opinion now that Microsoft has started showing a different point of view.

Bing is different from competitors in the sense that it helps users make informed decisions. If the user searches for low-cost airline tickets, he/she will know not only prices, but also whether fares will increase or come down, plus get restaurant links and information regarding events and attractions at the destination.

According to Howe, Bing’s technology may lure advertisers which they have been looking for in display. The advertisers will be in a better position to understand intent behind users’ queries.

WPP Plc, the biggest advertising company in the world, announced it will work with Microsoft for search engine marketing and jointly research brand building.

Yahoo’s new CEO, Carol Bartz, addressing her first annual shareholder’s meeting, began with a terse clarification on repeatedly surfacing question of a deal with Microsoft. She declared if ever there is any deal with Microsoft, it will be made public; until that time there is nothing to say.

Bartz was congratulated by a shareholder for finally diverting public attention away from the Microsoft deal.

Answering a question on Yahoo’s competitive position vis-à-vis Google, she claimed that Yahoo and Google are companies with different models. While Google is a pure search company, Yahoo is selling a complete view. Bartz described Yahoo as the largest online media company where people seek valuable information – mail, search, messaging and news on finance, sports and entertainment. She claimed that 12% of online time is spent on Yahoo property in the U.S. alone.

Bartz stated that Yahoo is not Google. What Google does is only part of the business that Yahoo is doing. Comparing the two is not relevant, she asserted.

Talking about what is ahead for the company, Bartz stated that Yahoo is looking at everything from customisation and re-designing of home page to modernisation of mail and outsourcing properties that leave visitors with a bad taste.

The latest research has revealed that with the increase in traffic on the social networking tool Twitter, it has become the fastest growing website in the past 12 months. The study conducted by Hitwise, an online intelligence firm revealed that in May 2008, Twitter ranked 969th among the most visited website in the UK whereas during the same period in May 2009, it ranked 39th.

Hitwise director of research, Robin Goad said that the noticeable thing about this report is that the majority of the increase occurred since the beginning of 2009. Significantly, media coverage of the site has increased with high profile celebrities endorsing Twitter right from Ashton Kutcher to Stephen Fry.

The research has also revealed that Twitter has become an important traffic source for other websites. The micro-blogging site in May 2009 was the 30th biggest visitor source and accounted for one in each 350 website visits.

With more and more celebrities endorsing Twitter, it is become a popular source that allows people to communicate with the help of short status messages.

Google launched an aggressive campaign on Tuesday stressing the need for joint efforts to make the Web faster in certain areas, such as protocols.

In a blog post, Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president of operations, and Bill Coughran, senior vice president engineering at Google, wrote that managers were excited to discuss what they learnt about Web performance from Internet community. They however felt that for the optimisation of Web application speeds and making browsing of the Web faster, like turning pages of magazines, working together as community was essential, so that larger problems that prevent the Web from delivering full potential could be tackled.

Google is offering tutorials, performance tools and tips to Web developers on its developer Web site, code.google.com/speed, as part of its Web improvement efforts.

According to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering, speed does matter and users are able to make out even minute differences in speed and latency. He feels activities such as uploading pictures, watching high-definition movies and running JavaScript applications need to be instantaneous.

In order to push the internet forward, Google wants to work with others. The work will involve collaborating with internet standard bodies, developers and may involve developing alternatives to HTTP and TCP/IP. Updating of protocols will be an area of particular focus.

Google announced that it is bringing Adsense to Android Apps and iPhone. In fact NSDQ:GOOG was engaged in testing its mobile app ads with Sega, Backgrounds, Urbanspoon, Shazam and other developers for quite some time.

Google began to cautiously fashion its AdWords and AdSense system for mobile, nearly two years ago. It restricted tests to just four developers initially. It has now decided to open its beta to more developers with a condition that they will fulfil the company’s specific criteria, including daily page views of a minimum of 100,000 and commitment to go live with ads in 4 weeks. The AdSense for Apps will be available for iPhone and Google’s Android only. Google has now made the site live for developers.

Prior to the introduction of AdSense for Apps, AdMob and others had already started offering in-app advertising. The new program also reveals Google’s plan, disclosed in February 2009, for focussing on two kinds of mobile ads: eImage Ads and econtextual targeting ad. Both these ads vary in what they do on desktop.

In the video promotion of Google AdSense, Howard Steinberg, business development head at Urbanspoon, acknowledges that app will enable food guide to target ads according to keyword and geography.

Librarians now don’t want to remain disengaged from readers and are keen tweeting readers.

Libraries all over the UK have discovered Twitter as the best medium of engaging with readers and dispelling their own image as silent and fussy enclaves.

Librarians at the British Library are talking about a ride on John Berger’s motorbike. Aberdeenshire’ libraries are asking readers not to miss reading ‘Katherine’ by Anya Seton. Surprisingly, John Rylands University of Manchester library is making a great 14th century cookbook available to its readers online.

Librarians are well spread out around the country and are seizing on Twitter to network and share wealth of information among themselves. More than 40 libraries in the UK are using Twitter. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) is organising a “Twitter for librarians” course to be held in September for the benefit of other librarians who have not started using Twitter so far.

According to David Viner, assistant librarian Solihull Central Library, Twitter is an efficient medium to gather information and enables librarians to extend their services to users and non-users quickly and effectively.

According to Phil Bradley, a free lance librarian, number of tweeting librarians and libraries in the UK is only going to grow as librarians are taking to Twitter in a big way.

Twitter has started carrying tweets about job vacancies. Various companies are trying to capitalise on the popularity of Twitter to attract their prospective employees. The jobs are being advertised on Twitter in the form of 140 character long “tweets.” Anyone who is interested in these jobs can then click on the link which connects to a location where there is more information about the company and the job.

The number of people who are unemployed in the UK is currently pegged at about 2 million. This is supposed to be the highest level of unemployment since 1997. A lot of economists also believe that the level of unemployment might just cross the 3 million mark by next year. Almost 400,000 of the unemployed are in the age bracket of 18 to 24 years who frequent social networking sites more often than anyone else. Hence, companies are now looking to target these places to find their employees.

The use of social networking sites is completely understandable as they have grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years. Twitter has registered about 17 million unique users and the amount of users to this site has also grown by a phenomenal 83 percent during the period between March and May.