It is the social networking phenomenon which has taken 2007 by storm but I have started getting a little bored with Facebook of late.  Now that the thrill of connecting with old friends has passed and the days of logging in to a potful of notifications is behind me I’m struggling to get excited by it all.  All I seem to get these days or invitations to join the latest application doing the rounds and numerous postings of those annoying chain letter style messages (for the last time, nothing bad is going to happen if you don’t pass it on, no-one is going to delete your profile and you aren’t going to come into any money!).  There are a few friends who I contact through it which make the process of logging in worth while but aside from that its all a little dull for me now.  Maybe I am alone in this feeling? I know for a fact many of my close friends are still wildly addicted to it and if they go a day without logging on they start breaking into cold sweats and having panic attacks.  But I just don’t get that feeling of anticipation when logging in anymore.  Sure, I still use it, but more out of habit than enjoyment and also the fact I use the internet all day everyday at work so have access all the time.  I certainly wouldn’t be too worried if I had to go with access for a period of time though and can’t see Id miss it at all.  Maybe this is the start of the great Facebook decline, where the casual user drifts away and only the hardcore remain, leaving thousands of redundant accounts.  This is how I see Myspace’s current existence, I haven’t seen their take up figures recently but I would imagine they are in sharp decline, part due to the rise of Facebook but also because they are no longer the flavour of the month and only the hardcore survive.  Facebook is a long way from this status as they are still in the stage of sign up growth but they need to keep one eye on the future and think about how to avoid the decline, either that or get out while the going is good.  As they say, timing is everything, but I doubt they will ever be valued at more than the current $15 billion so it may be time to cash in.

Latitude Group, the award-winning internet search engine marketing company (and also my employer!), has received financial backing from private equity investor Vitruvian Partners in a management buy-out. Ernst & Young advised Latitude Group.

Management of the Warrington and London-based business have received backing from Vitruvian in a deal which re-capitalises the business in order to fund a rapid growth programme.

Latitude has seen turnover rise from £500,000 in 2002 to more than £30m in 2006, meanwhile, headcount has risen from eight in 2002 to more than 100 in 2007.

Latitude is led by chief executive officer Dylan Thwaites, winner of the Ernst & Young Technology and Communications Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2006. The management team also includes chief financial officer Julie Moran, chief operations officer Richard Gregory, and chief technology officer Rob Shaw.

Dylan Thwaites commented on the transaction: “This is a fantastic development for Latitude and its clients. This will help us fund future expansion through acquisition and internal growth. We will be looking at new geographic markets and diversification into other digital marketing products including further development of social media and display advertising. All with a view to providing our clients with an even better and more complete service”

On the choice of Vitruvian as a partner, Thwaites said: “Vitruvian are ideal backers for Latitude. We share the same entrepreneurial values and we were impressed with their experience and knowledge of the digital marketing arena.”

The business’ powerful growth comes on the back of the strongly performing UK internet advertising market, in which online advertising spend is expected to reach £2.75bn in 2007 according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

This follows a 52 per cent hike in paid search to £1.166bn in 2006, which accounted for 56 per cent of all online advertising expenditure.

Latitude is the UK’s largest independent search engine marketing specialist offering both paid and organic search services, with household-name clients including Tesco Finance, House of Fraser, Kwik-Fit Insurance, Crystal Lakes & Ski, Alliance and Leicester, William Hill and Bank of Ireland.

Vitruvian Partners is a recently formed London-based private equity firm dedicated to investing in middle-market buyouts, growth buyouts and growth capital across a range of industries in Northern Europe.

Ian Riley, a managing partner of Vitruvian Partners, commented: “Latitude represents a successful, entrepreneurial company in a dynamic, high growth market and we are excited to become a partner with the management team to support their expansion plans.”

Latitude was advised by M&A and tax teams from the Manchester and London offices of Ernst & Young.

Elaine O’Donnell, A partner who led the Ernst & Young team, commented: “Latitude is clearly a fast-growth company in a dynamic sector, with a highly ambitious development strategy. There was considerable interest in the business and Vitruvian emerged as the ideal investment partner to drive and facilitate this growth, working within a very challenging timeframe. Vitruvian will provide ongoing sector expertise which will act as a powerful springboard for Latitude’s further growth.”

Google are one step closer to the doubleclick buy out! as reported below on bbc news and here on Google’s own blog:

There have been two new announcements in the world of mobile marketing in the last few days.

Google have announced that their Google maps tool will now be available on mobile handsets along with location pinpointing effectively making it a GPRS tool. The mobile version of maps will be able to pinpoint your location along with providing real time traffic reports, directions to a specified location, integrated search results (this is where the money is made!), and satellite imagery of a location. Depending on its usability this could be a big step forward for maps as it actually brings a bit more use and functionality to the product. It could be especially useful in central London when trying to navigate the capital on foot. It could also be the start of Google’s entry into the Sat Nav market with a little more advancement in the technology and the appropriate handset. Full details

Yahoo also announced today that the Panama platform (the latest incarnation of the advertising center) is to become integrated with mobile devices from January onwards, according to an article in NMA. This is another development in Yahoo’s aim to become a major player in the mobile advertising market and should allow them to pitch the integrated platform approach to advertisers. From an advertiser perspective if the platform truly does allow you to create and manage mobile campaigns it will significantly increase availability of this channel and enable more companies to begin trials.  I am predicting mobile to become more widespread in 2009 with more and more of the big brands embracing it as part of their digital strategy.  This means that publishers and agencies need to be preparing themselves so that they are in a position to make the most of it when it takes off.  This is exactly what Yahoo are doing with this launch.

Google announced on its blog yesterday the launch of a new tool for universal search, the flight status function.  All you have to do is search on the airline and the flight number and Google will tell you whether it is delayed or on time and its departure and arrival times.  its a useful little tool this one as it removes the need to find the airlines web page and with a lot of people having Google as their homepage or using a tool bar it speeds up the process.  I would be interested to see if it cover ALL airlines though and how accurate and frequently updated the information this as this is key.  Without accuracy the tool may as well not exist.

It was announced last week on the official google blog that Google are currently testing out their latest project Google Knol which is a wiki based information source populated by knowledgeable contributed and edited by the users.  This is obviously a direct competition to Wikipedia and is based on the same principles and ideas. 

Apparently the challenge posed by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge, and this was their solution.  At the moment the tool is only open to a select group of invited individuals and the tool is in its first stage of development and testing but with the speed at which Google tend to do things I cant see it being long before its launched to the public.  According to the article goal is for Knols to cover all topics and to highlight and credit authors, something which is rarely done online. 

Much like on Wikipedia users will be able to submit edits, questions, comments, additional content etc etc but they can also include Adsense ads in relation to their article and earn a percentage of the revenue earned through these ads.  This is where Knol might steel a march on Wikipedia as Wiki users participate for free and have no option to earn money.  It is a nice touch from Google as they are appearing to be giving back to the contributors when in reality they are obviously taking the Lion’s share of the profits for themselves.

One question that does need to be asked is what does this mean for Wikipedia, and in particular their search rankings?  They do very well in the natural results and Google have often been criticised for ranking the site so well.  Could it be that we will start to see the demise of Wiki’s search rankings once Knol is introduced, now that would be convenient!  However Google might not even need to do this as they say in their article “A Knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.” Which suggests to me that the Knol’s may become a part of the Universal Search page and appear above all the natural results anyway.  Could the end be nigh for Wikipedia?

Tags: wikipedia, Google, universal search, google knol, knol

In last weeks media week Microsofts’s UK head of marketing, Alex Marks, discussed microsofts marketing strategy and attempted to justify the money they had pumped into Facebook.  Denying it was a simple land grab and a chance to hold of a Yahoo or Google purchase Mark’s validated the purchase by speaking about how Facebook satisfies a basic human need to communicate and engage with fellow human beings.  He also goes on to say how internet behaviour is becomingly increasingly commnuity based seemingly suggesting that the future of the internet lay in propoerties such as Facebook.  Apparently we are no longer talking about social networking sites but social utility sites much more than quirky communication tool and are becoming a tool for managin offline relathionships online.  With the sum totoal of its wares so far the exclusivitiy of banner advertising on Facebook Microsoft has a long way to go before they convince anybody that they got a bargain for their £118M stake.

Tags: facebook, microsoft, aquisition

Its finally happened after a long period of speculation. Facebook have removed the “is” from the status option. I speculated a while ago about what they may replace it with and I have to say I’m disappointed they went for the easy option and just removed it all together. I would have liked to have seen some imagination used into what it could be replaced with they have gone for the safe option and simply removed it.

I used to think gambling companies were pretty intelligent when it came to online advertising. I have dealt with a few of them and due to the size of the online market in their industry, and prioir to a few months ago, the restrictions which prohibited them from using many of the traditional forms of media, they are usually pretty clued up. Many have large in house teams to deal with their online activity as it is a key to their business and over the past few years more and more gamblers are turning to the internet to feed their addiction 24 hours a day and away from the environment of the traditional bookmakers.

A couple of searches today however have made me think otherwise. The biggest sporting event this weekend, and the most eagerly awaited boxing contest of the last 12 months, takes place this weekend in las vegas when Ricky “the hitman” hatton goes toe to toe with floyd mayweather for the title of best pound for pound fighter in the world. This event is a bookmakers dream, all the hype, all the build up and unlimited interest. But yet when I search on phrases related to the fight and specifically betting on it the big players are conspicuous by their absence searches on “hatton odds”, “mayweather odds” and “hatton mayweather odds” produce just 4 results in total. In the past when I have been involved in gambling campaigns attention to detail and the major sporting events have been key to their success but it appears that they are missing a trick at the moment. I know boxing isnt one of their major sports for account driving but surely this weekend would be a time to make hay?
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It was reported on the social networking weblog today that Facebook is finally bowing to user pressure and using the “is” from the Facebook status function.

I have been wondering how long this would take to occur since the massively popular pressure group was set up within Facebook’s own network campaigning for it to be removed.  It has not happened yet and there is no indication of when it will happen but it will be interesting to see what it will be replaced with. 

An obvious option would be to remove the verb all together and allow the user to write whatever they want after their name.  But another option could be to have a drop down list of verbs to choose from when setting your status so that there is one for every occasion.  This way the Facebook traditionalists (if there are any!) can continue to use the “is” yet those wanting more flexibility should be able to construct whatevere status they wish.

Tags: facebook, social networking