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Twitter celebrates its seventh birthday this month with 200 million users worldwide- who now send an average of 400 million tweets every day.The service, originally called “stat.us” and then “twittr”, was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey.

He says he was inspired by signing up to blogging service Live Journal in 2000 and spent the next six years refining his idea for “a more ‘live’ LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from the road”.

Now people use Twitter to campaign, share and discuss news, fundraise, propose marriage, challenge authority – and try to catch the eye of teen heart-throb Justin Bieber, who at time of writing has more than 36 million followers.

On Twitter everyone is so accessible – you can tweet anyone. With Facebook, you have to be friends with them first.

The problem with Twitter – which is the power of Twitter – is that you are publishing into the world. It’s out there with the same power whether you have one follower or whether you have three million followers.

The joy of Twitter is that it’s a stream, you step into it, you step out of it.

You can look at the world in terms of before and after Twitter. Before Twitter, from a consumer standpoint, lots of news and information services were out there, but we hadn’t really been deep into the mobile-app revolution.

In the world after Twitter, suddenly people have access to real-time news and information.

Twitter bites

• Each message posted on Twitter can be up to 140 characters long, including web addresses, user names and hashtags
• There are 200 million active Twitter users worldwide
• Every day 400 million tweets are sent every day
• It took three years, two months and one day for the first billion tweets to be sent
• There are 10 million users in the UK, and 80% of them access Twitter via their mobile phones
• Of Twitter’s global users, 60% check the service on their phones
• Some 40% of Twitter users choose not to write any tweets themselves, but use the platform to follow news and interests

250,000 Twitter users have had their accounts hacked in the latest of a string of high profile internet security breaches.Twitter’s information security director Bob Lord said about 250,000 users’ passwords had been stolen, as well as usernames, emails and other data.

Affected users have had passwords invalidated and have been sent emails informing them.

Mr Lord said the attack “was not the work of amateurs”.

He said it appeared similar to recent attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal as the US newspapers reported that their computer systems had been breached by China based hackers.

Mr Lord said in a blog post Twitter had discovered unauthorised attempts to access data held by the website, including one attack that was identified and stopped moments after it was detected.

“This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident,” he wrote.

Mr Lord did not say who had carried out the attack, but added: “The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organisations have also been recently similarly attacked.”

“For that reason we felt that it was important to publicise this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the internet safer for all users.”

The biggest worry for most of Twitter’s 200 million active users is not this attack per se, but the additional new “phishing” scams the attack has already inspired.

Since Twitter users now know to be on the lookout for emails asking them to change their passwords, criminals are sending out very similar messages.

If users click on the links in those they risk – once again – having their account hacked.

Dr Search warns you- don’t click on links in any emails asking you to change your password- instead go directly to the web site, log in normally, and change it using the instructions without clicking on email links.

“You have to be careful if you get hold of one of these emails because, of course, it could equally be a phishing attack – it could be someone pretending to be Twitter.

“So, log into the Twitter site as normal and try and log in to your account and, if there’s a problem, that’s when you actually have to try and reset your password.”

Social media laws in the UK are to be reviewed in the wake of recent prosecutions.New guidelines for policing social media are to be discussed to avoid a “chilling effect” on free speech, the most senior prosecutor in England and Wales has said.

Director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer QC said that the right to be offensive “has to be protected”- but that there had to be a balance.

His comments came in the wake of two prosecutions for offensive postings.

Matthew Wood was jailed on Monday for posting comments about missing girl April Jones. He was jailed for 12 weeks after he made several “abhorrent” postings about missing five-year-old April Jones on Facebook. Members of the public had reported his comments to the police who arrested the man for his own safety after 50 people went to his home.

The teenager’s 12-week prison sentence was followed by the prosecution of Azhar Ahmed, 20, who was given 240 hours community service after writing an offensive post about dead British soldier which posted that “all soldiers should die and go to hell” on Facebook. He said he did not think that the message was offensive.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will invite lawyers and academics, as well as representatives from social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, to be part of the discussions.

The new measures are expected to be announced before Christmas.

A freedom of information request revealed that there were 2,347 investigations after complaints regarding posts on social media in 2010. This number rose to 2,490 in 2011 – about 50 different cases across the UK each week.

Mr Starmer said prosecutors were finding it difficult to work within the existing law.

“The emerging thinking is that it might be sensible to divide and separate cases where there’s a campaign of harassment, or cases where there’s a credible and general threat, and prosecute in those sorts of cases and put in another category communications which are, as it were, merely offensive or grossly offensive.”

Mr Starmer said the new guidelines would enable relevant authorities to use remedies other than criminal prosecution to address instances of offensive activity.

“The threshold for prosecution has to be high,” he added. “We live in a democracy, and if free speech is to be protected there has to be a high threshold. People have the right to be offensive, they have the right to be insulting, and that has to be protected.”

The world’s most valuable company- Apple Inc has clocked up another accolade- it has been voted the “coolest brand” in the UK. It beat Aston Martin, which has taken the top spot in six of the previous seven annual CoolBrands surveys.

Online and technology brands performed well, with YouTube pushing Aston Martin into third place. Twitter came fourth, followed by Google and the BBC’s iPlayer.

The results are decided by responses from 3,000 consumers and a panel of 39 experts.

Twitter, Skype and Nikon were in the top 20 for the first time in the 11 years of the survey.

Some of the luxury brands have dropped out of the top 20, including Maserati, Ferrari, Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, which all featured last year.

A quarter of the top 20 brands are free to consumers.

“It is interesting that in this age of austerity our perception of cool has increasingly shifted from aspirational, luxury brands to free or more affordable brands that provide us with pleasure,” said Stephen Cheliotis, chairman of the CoolBrands expert council.

YouTube was among the biggest risers, having come in tenth place last year.

CoolBrands top 20

1. Apple
2. YouTube
3. Aston Martin
4. Twitter
5. Google
6. BBC iPlayer
7. Glastonbury
8. Virgin Atlantic
9. Bang & Olufsen
10. Liberty
11. Sony
12. Bose
13. Haagen-Dazs
14. Selfridges
15. Ben & Jerry’s
16. Mercedes-Benz
17. Vogue
18. Skype
19. Nike
20. Nikon

Following on from yesterday’s post Apple ordered to pay damages to Samsung by Dutch court the roles have been reversed as a US court has banned sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet while it decides on the firm’s patent dispute with Apple.Apple has claimed that Samsung infringed its design patent and copied the look of its popular device, the iPad.

The Samsung tablet is considered by most analysts as the biggest rival to Apple’s iPad.

The ban does not apply to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 II, the tablet’s new edition. The trial for the case is scheduled to begin in California on 30 July.

Apple will have to post a £1.67 million ($2.6 million) bond to enforce the injunction, which it applied for in May, to compensate Samsung if the ban subsequently proves to have been unnecessary.

The judge had previously denied Apple’s appeal for an injunction on the Galaxy tablet and smartphones, but was asked by a federal appeals court to reconsider Apple’s request on the tablet PC.

Samsung and Apple are tied up in several legal cases, each becoming increasingly bitter as they each try to hinder each other’s chances in the lucrative tablet market.

Surprisingly enough, the feud hasn’t stopped the companies working together – the latest iPad uses several Samsung-made components.

Elsewhere, in a sign of increasing frustration at the tit-for-tat nature of the patent disputes, a US judge threw out a separate case involving Apple, this time against Google-owned Motorola Mobility.

The judge said Apple’s claim that Motorola’s alleged patent infringement had harmed the iPhone’s standing in the smartphone market was “wild conjecture”.

Apple has been filing suits against various manufacturers who use the Google Android operating system in their tablets and smartphones.

Apple and Samsung are involved in a variety of legal cases in various countries across the globe amid claims and counter claims of patent infringement.

While Apple had accused Samsung of “blatant copying” of its design and look, the South Korean firm has alleged that Apple infringed its patents relating to the way phones and tablet PCs connect to the internet.

Apple and Samsung are two of the biggest manufacturers of tablet PCs and smartphones in the world- and each are using every tactic to attempt to hinder each other’s market share growth.

The UK’s Advertising Standards Association (ASA) watchdog has banned a Wayne Rooney Nike Twitter campaign.The ruling follows tweets by Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney and his Arsenal rival Jack Wilshere who posted on to Twitter at the request of the sportswear firm.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that the messages did not make clear they were “identifiable as marketing communications”.

It is the first time that the ASA has acted against a Twitter based campaign.

The authority said it had intervened after receiving a single complaint earlier this year about two tweets – one from each of the sportsmen posted to their personal accounts.

Wayne Rooney’s tweet read: “My resolution – to start the year as a champion, and finish it as a champion…#makeitcount gonike.me/makeitcount”.

Jack Wilshere had posted “In 2012, I will come back for my club – and be ready for my country gonike.me/Makeitcount”.

Rooney has close to 4.8 million followers on his account. The offending tweet was posted on 1 January.

The complainant challenged whether the tweets were “obviously identifiable” as adverts.

Nike responded that the presence of its web address alongside a hashtag with its marketing campaign strapline distinguished the tweets from other personal posts by the players. It added that both sportsmen were well known for having being sponsored by the company.

But the ASA said the elements did not make the tweets “obviously identifiable” as adverts, bearing in mind that many Twitter users scroll through a variety of messages at speed. It added that not all of the social network’s users would have been aware of the “make it count” campaign, or the footballers’ relationship with Nike.

It suggested that in future firms should add #ad or some other clear indication that a message had been paid for.

Whilst this action by the ASA does break new ground, the fact that it has only just been announced- some six months after the event indicates that they don’t currently expect to be upholding many social media complaints.

However it does act as a reminder that people and business much take care and not assume that some sort of online impunity exists.

Art galleries and curators are increasingly using the internet to sell art at affordable prices.Some websites are even letting people rent out works of art for less than the price of a monthly mobile phone bill.

Young artists are hoping that this will help them reach an entirely new audience.

They also rent out original works of art to people to try out on their living room wall before they commit to buying it.

The pictures are delivered with a curator’s description of the piece and a pair of white gloves to minimise damage.

The social networking part of the site encourages potential customers to join the online community and talk to the artists about their work.

This gives the artists a chance to promote their work to a new generation of collectors.

Some galleries are now just using their studio space as a marketing tool to promote their e-business.

DegreeArt is both a physical shop in Bethnal Green and a website, which allows art lovers to buy the works of art students, and those who have recently graduated.

It is co-directed by friends Isobel Beauchamp and Elinor Olisa.

The women realised there was a gap in the market for a company that could promote and sell graduate art work.

Both of them advise students on how to brand themselves post-university and surrounded by a colourful exhibition of pictures of rats and amphibians Ms Beauchamp stresses the importance of online promotion. If you don’t have Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Flickr then you’re missing a massive trick.

Ms Beauchamp says that artists now have to be business savvy and appeal to buyers with less disposable income.

China has more than 513 million internet users, and nearly half of them are using microblogs – mostly Chinese microblogging tools collectively called Weibo.The numbers from China Network Information Center’s report sound staggering, but China’s Internet penetration rate is actually only 38.3%.

The country added around 55.8 million new internet users in 2011, which represents a 4% annual growth — lower than the average annual growth rate of 6% between 2006 and 2010.

Interestingly enough, the slowdown was to be expected, as most people with a high school diploma (90.9%) and nearly all with a college education (96.1%) are already online.

The rest simply haven’t got the funds or the education level to use the web.

Microblogging might be the answer for further web usage growth, as it has become an extremely important way of accessing the web in China.

The number of microbloggers increased by 296% year-on-year to 250 million in Dec. 2011.

For comparison, Twitter reported 100 million active users and 200 million registered users in Sept. 2011.

Unfortunately for the largest microblogging service outside of Asia, grabbing a chunk of the vast Chinese market is, for now, an impossible task.

“We would love to have a strong Twitter in China, but we need to be allowed to do that,” said Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey at the AsiaD conference held in Hong Kong last year.

Weibo services, the largest of which is Sina Weibo, can compete anywhere they want. Sina Weibo is currently working on an international version; it’ll be interesting to see what it can do on the Western markets.

From: http://mashable.com/china-500-million-web-users/

Google is profiting from ads for illegal products generated by its pay per click advertising system.The ads include unofficial London 2012 Olympics ticket resellers, as well as cannabis and fake ID card sellers.

Google has since taken down links to illegal Olympic ticket resellers following requests from the police.

But the search engine confirms that the company keeps any money it might make from companies advertising illegal services before such adverts are removed.

Selling tickets on the open market without permission from the Olympic authorities is a criminal offence in the UK under the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act 2006.

The maximum penalty fine for reselling Olympic tickets without authorisation from the Olympic authorities was raised last year from £5,000 to £20,000.

Despite this, Google has placed adverts for unofficial ticket resellers which are breaking the law by selling London 2012 tickets to customers in the UK.

But research found other sponsored Google adverts – for online cannabis sellers, fake ID cards, and fake UK passports.

Google’s Pay Per Click AdWords advertising system is partly automated and this helps make the initial selection of the advertisements which appear at the top of its search results.

Google’s AdWords does filter key words that can help sift out adverts which might be offering unlawful services.

If a filter flags an advert, then Google will run a manual assessment – a human takes a look – and if it breaks Google’s policy, the advert will be taken down.

In a statement, Google said: “We have a set of policies covering which ads can and cannot show on Google. These policies and guidelines are enforced by both automated systems and human beings.

“When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate. Our aim is to create a simple and efficient way for legitimate businesses to promote and sell their goods and services whilst protecting them and consumers from illicit activity.”

However, dubious online retailers are still finding their way to the top of the advert results and can do so by paying a higher cost per click than other advertisers.

Google says the quality of ads also plays a role in the ranking advertisers achieve, as well as the price the advertiser is willing to pay.

Google’s sponsored links have proved costly in the past and, in August, Google agreed to forfeit £324 million ($500 million) for publishing online adverts from Canadian pharmacies selling illegal drugs to US customers.

Facebook’s share of the UK online usage has fallen by more than seven percentage points in the last year- raising concerns that it may have hit saturation point.The social network – which is expected to make an initial public offering (IPO) this year – still attracted significantly more online time than its nearest competitor, accounting for 52.6pc of all visits to social networks in December.

However, Facebook has lost substantial ground since the previous December, when it took a 58.5pc share of the UK’s social networking market, according to data from Experian Hitwise.

It slipped 1.3 percentage points last month alone.

The decline has raised concerns that Facebook is running out of steam in the markets where it is best established, whilst its competitors gain ground.

“Facebook’s growth is levelling out,” said James Murray, market research analyst at Experian. “Because Facebook had such a clear lead, it was always going to be difficult for Facebook to maintain [its position]. It has probably reached near enough its maximum growth.”

The figures will come as a blow to the company, which has been investing heavily in extending its reach and enticing users to click on its adverts, ahead of its long-awaited IPO. Facebook is expected to float with a possible valuation of  £65 billion ($100 billion)- the biggest technology IPO ever.

By contrast, YouTube, the user-generated video site owned by Google, grew its traffic by 45pc last year.

It accounted for just over a quarter of all UK visits to social networks in December, putting it 7.4 percentage points ahead of the previous year.

“We’re expecting video to be even more influential as a marketing channel, and marketers will have to adapt their strategies to incorporate a multi-channel approach in order to secure customers both on and offline,” said Mr Murray.

Twitter and Yahoo! Answers also made gains, but remained tiny by comparison, with 3pc and 2pc of all visits to social networks respectively.

Google’s social network, Google +, did not register in the top 10 most visited social networks at all.

However, Google grew its share of search engine usage market in the UK, edging up from a 91.3pc share of the market to 91.8pc.

Microsoft, its nearest competitor, was a minnow by comparison. Its suite of sites accountted for 3.6pc of all search engine visits in the UK in December, whilst Yahoo!’s popularity for searches fell nearly a percentage point to 2.5pc.