Google making 3D tablet: report

SAN FRANCISCO — Google next month will start cranking out prototypes of a 3-D tablet designed to give users immersive experiences that could include virtual reality, according to US media reports.

The tablet will have a 7-inch display and an array of sophisticated cameras, sensors and software, the Wall Street Journal said in a story citing unnamed sources.

Google on Friday said they had nothing to announce.

The tablet was reported to be part of a Project Tango worked on by a special team at the California-based technology firm.

The project was said to involve giving advanced mapping and virtual reality capabilities to mobile devices powered by Google’s free Android software.

Nearly 42 percent of people in the United States used tablets at least once a month last year and that figure was expected to top 46 percent this year, according to industry tracker eMarketer

source: interaksyon.com

1.6 billion people on social networks - study

WASHINGTON DC - An estimated 1.61 billion people, more than one in five globally, will log in to social networking sites at least monthly this year, the research firm eMarketer said Tuesday.

The study said the number was up 14.2 percent from a year ago and growth will push that number up to 2.33 billion by 2017.

The highest penetration of social network users, according to eMarketer, is in the Netherlands, at 63.5 percent. Norway was second at 63.3 percent, followed by Sweden (56.4 percent), South Korea (54.4 percent), Denmark (53.3 percent), the United States (51.7 percent), and Finland (51.3 percent).

A majority of residents were also on social networks in Canada (51.2 percent) and Britain (50.2 percent, according to the report based on data from research firms, government agencies, media outlets and company reports.

The 1.61 billion figure represented 22 percent of the world's estimated population, the survey said.

The report said India is seeing the highest growth this year of 37.4 percent, though only 7.7 percent of the population uses social networks. Indonesia's numbers will climb 28.7 percent and Mexico will grow by 21.1 percent. eMarketer said.

All three of those countries are also high-growth areas for Facebook, the world's largest social network with more than one billion users.

The US remains the country with the greatest number of Facebook users, at 146.8 million, but with India's large population and expected growth rate, it will have the largest Facebook population of any country by 2016, according to the report.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook buys Microsoft ad technology platform

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc said on Thursday it had agreed to buy advertising technology from Microsoft Corp that measures the effectiveness of ads on its website, which should help in its fight with Google Inc for online advertising revenue.

Under the long-rumored transaction, Facebook will purchase the Atlas Advertiser Suite, an ad management and measurement platform that Microsoft took on with its $6.3 billion acquisition of digital ad agency aQuantive in 2007. Facebook did not say how much it paid for the technology.


Unable to make it work for its own purposes, Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion of the aQuantive deal’s value last year.

Facebook has long been dogged by doubts about the effectiveness of its ads and was embarrassed just days before its initial public offering in May when General Motors Co declared it was pulling the plug on all paid advertising on Facebook’s network.

Since then, Facebook has introduced a number of tools and partnerships to prove to marketers that advertising on its social network delivers enough bang for the buck.

Brian Boland, Facebook’s director of monetization product marketing, said the purchase of Atlas was not a step toward creating a much wider ad network beyond the Facebook site, but analysts believe that is Facebook’s ultimate goal.

“Although the statement announcing the deal focused on Atlas’ measurement tools rather than its ad targeting technology, we expect that Atlas will soon be using Facebook’s data to target sponsorships, in-stream ads, and other rich ad formats across the entire web, and that’s big news,” said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott.

“The question now is how quickly and successfully Facebook can integrate its data with Atlas’ tools, and whether they can avoid a privacy backlash as they do so. History suggests they’ll struggle on both counts,” he said.

Google leads the $15 billion U.S. market for online display ads with 15.4 percent share, according to researcher eMarketer, followed by Facebook with 14.4 percent.

source: interaksyon.com