They will have a significant effect on how businesses operate on the internet and have been met with a mixed reaction as companies tried to assess the implications for their future operations.

One of the aspects of the proposals that generally met with a positive response was the intention to unify data protection legislation across the entire community. Currently, each individual state of the 27 member EU has its own regulations making it expensive and confusing for companies operating across the EU. According to the EU, the imposition of a single law could lead to major cost savings and less red tape for companies operating on the internet.

However, some companies have already expressed concerns that, in general, the legislation will increase obligations on businesses which, in turn, will increase costs. Others have stated that some of the proposals could even be technically impossible to implement.

The proposals will not just affect EU businesses, but also global companies who offer internet services to European consumers. This has drawn harsh criticism from the United States where the proposals were described as being excessively prescriptive.

Future legislation that places too many burdens on internet companies had the potential, critics said, to hinder the development of the internet and restrict its ability to continue as a major driver for economic growth. The implications for internet marketing have yet to befully explored.

The increasing rapidity with which Google changes its search algorithm is an indication of how fast things are moving in the world of internet marketing and SEO.

In the past year, Panda, Caffeine, Freshness and Search Plus Your World are all Google updates that have fundamentally altered the way search works. There is no longer a unified search return; different users will get different results dependent on their location and social networks.

The results of these changes are that online ranking is now dependent on many more factors. Today, SEO techniques require a fully diversified approach that takes into account on page optimisation, backlinks, a content strategy, social media and additional factors. The combined use of these practices is necessary to keep ahead of your competitors and maintain a highly visible presence over the whole of the internet.

The internet is evolving at such a rapid pace that staying ahead of the game is no simple matter. Large companies often have the resources for their marketing departments to keep abreast of the changes, however small enterprises do not have this luxury. Therefore, outsourcing to professional companies represents a sensible solution to the increasing complexity of internet marketing.

When undertaking a search the new update, known as ‘Search, Plus Your World’, provides search users with results drawn in part, from content shared by people in the user’s Google Plus network. However, the change has caused disagreement in the tech industry not least among Google’s competition in the world of social networks.

Twitter was particularly critical of the change describing it as a ‘bad day for the internet’ and claiming that it ‘warped’ search results. Other industry experts voiced concerns that the update skewed results and led to a decline in the world’s most popular search engine’s ability to provide the most relevant results. They claimed that the failure to include results from other social networks like Facebook and Twitter was a mistake.

Google hit back that its terms of service with both those networks did not allow it to perform the kind of deep searches required to include the information in their results and claimed it was prepared to discuss the issue with rival companies.

Quality of search results was not the only issue seized on by critics of the update. Google, which has already drawn the attention of lawmakers with regard to its potential monopoly over online advertising, was – according to some observers – in breach of anti-trust regulations regarding Search, Plus Your World.

They argued that Google’s dominant position in the world of search did not allow it to discriminate against rivals.

Its redesigned internet TV service, BT Vision, incorporates social media elements in order to offer a more personalised service.

The move comes as Netflix, the internet film and TV service, launched in the UK last week.

BT Vision will be introduced within the next few weeks and will offer users a large library of on-demand content. The pay-TV service includes sports and films along with other kinds of TV programmes.

Social networking is also expected to be a key element of BT Vision, perhaps in order to help it compete with Sky. Sky have recently launched a social networking feature in their TV packages that enables viewers to share what they are watching and chat about it with others in real time.

Ian Livingston, chief executive of BT, told the Financial Times recently: “BT is focused on bringing true interactivity to the TV set, which is the most-watched screen in the house.

“That means on-demand services; it means the availability of buying things as you watch it; to have personalised services; to know what your friends like and what they think of it. I think that will change viewing habits quite considerably. It won’t happen overnight but I think it’s the start of something quite big.”

Listen With Friends lets Facebook users listen along with any of their friends who are playing music.

Alexandre Roche, a product designer at Facebook, wrote a blog post about the feature last week in which he said: “ This feature lets you listen along with any of your friends who are currently listening to music. You can also listen together in a group while one of your friends plays DJ.

“You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time—so when your favourite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you’re jamming out at a performance or dance club.”

The feature works via the chat sidebar. When a Facebook user is listening to a song, a music note will appear next to their name. To join them in listening to the track, users can hover over their friend’s name and then click the “Listen With” button.

Users do need to share the same music service in order to use the feature, with Spotify and Rdio being the only two services that are currently used by Facebook. If a user attempts to listen to a song with an incompatible music player, they will be prompted to install the right one instead.

Listen With Friends is also part of Facebook chat, meaning that users can chat online about what they are listening to.

So I was somewhat-excited to see the arrival of Netflix to the UK today. We’ve had a Netflix account for many years in the US, (dad watches something on Netflix every day). Though it’s my account, I can only view it when I am in the US!

So for years I’ve had a LOVE FILM account. I use both the DVD-by-mail and stream services almost equally, I guess.

As of today though, there’s a dilemma, do I keep LoveFilm? Do I use both? Do I use Netflix only?

Netflix offers a Free Trial for a month – so I’ve just signed up and I’ll run them both side-by-side to see how they go. As I don’t have much time, there really is only a need to keep one of them.

LoveFilm is a name you’ll likely all be aware of, as the UK-based company got their start (in one incarnation) a nearly decade ago now. Since then it gone through many different guises and mergers – right up until Amazon bought them a year ago. Their core business was DVDs by post, but as times are changing, since around 2007, they’ve begun offering streaming to a variety of platforms.

Netflix, the newcomer to the UK market, was launched in my hometown of Los Gatos California way back in 1997. They, too, got their start by doing DVDs by mail, but since 2007 have shifted their core to streaming, and do so across more platforms (seemingly) than LoveFilm does. Netflix streams to – PS3, Xbox, Nintendo Wii, Apple TV, Smart Phones, Tablets, …

Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix was on the Breakfast show in BBC1 this morning, not really viewing Lovefilm as a threat, but more B-SkyB  (Sky Movies, Sky Atlantic) is the company to beat as it’s, “the big dog”.

To be honest, over the past year or two my own habits are radically changing. I seem to be doing less and less in terms of CDs, DVDs and physical books – opting to move everything over to digital (which clutters up my flat less).

I’ve even opted to not bother getting a Blue Ray player (so far). I’d only want one to stream stuff anyway so it seems pointless to me at present when I could use one of the services discussed here today!

So on that note, I’ll try to compare the two services side by side here in the UK and decide at the end of the month.

As I say I am already a user of both services (here and in the US) so it will be interesting to see if the content I am interested in is there for the UK version of Netflix.

It is, without a doubt, in the US, but on first glance the TV shows I’d want to stream here in the UK aren’t on the UK version of Netflix (much to my chagrin,…)

So it’s a case of “we’ll see”. It will be interesting to watch these two firms go head-to-head over the coming year.

What do you do? Do you use LoveFilm? Will you take Netflix up on their free one month offer like I just did? Let us know.

Happy viewing!

Steve Felice will take up the reins in a couple of months. His remit is to lead the company in selling more packages of technology products and services to customers, including web hosting and cloud services.

Felice will look after all customer business segments, including public, large enterprise, small and medium enterprises and consumer.

Dell hopes that the new appointment will help it to develop and market its products to create a sales organisation that is “more customer-focused, more collaborative and better able to deliver innovative and practical solutions that meet customers’ needs.”

Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell, told one industry website: “These changes will enhance our sales and marketing efforts, bringing us even closer to our customers and increasing the speed, agility and responsiveness of every aspect of our business.”

“Steve has been a trusted colleague for more than 12 years and shares my passion to serve our customers. Under his leadership of Dell’s sales and marketing organization, I am excited about the many opportunities ahead of us.”

Doubtless the emphasis will be stronly on internet marketing.

Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer marketing at Microsoft, has written in a post on the Windows Team blog that the browser now has less than a one per cent market share in the United States (according to recent data from Net Applications).

The United States is not the first country to get down to this figure, but it had more internet users to convert to other browsers than the likes of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. These countries have already effectively killed off the browser.

Microsoft say that other countries to have reached the below one per cent figure recently, alongside the US, include the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, Portugal and the Philippines.

Many web developers will also be celebrating the end of Internet Explorer 6. It presented many obstacles to developers and designers because of its limited feature support and other anomalies.

Microsoft was so keen to get rid of the browser that it created  the IE6 Countdown website, which tracks the progress of countries across the world as they move across to more modern browsers.

According to the latest figures from NetMarketshare, many people are moving across to Google Chrome rather than to the new version of Internet Explorer.

The card, a customised Visa debit card, works in the same way as a credit card. Facebook adds more money to each researcher’s account as they report more bugs.

Ryan McGeehgan, manager of Facebook’s security response team, said in a recent interview: “Researchers who find bugs and security improvements are rare, and we value them and have to find ways to reward them. Having this exclusive black card is another way to recognize them. They can show up at a conference and show this card and say ‘I did special work for Facebook’.”

The card might also give researchers other benefits, such as passes to get into Facebook parties.

The social media giant is also planning to tap further into researchers’ knowledge. For example, researchers may be brought into products as soon as they reach production stage in order to help Facebook catch any problems as early as possible.

Researchers who report security bugs that are eventually confirmed can make at least $500, but they have to follow Facebook’s Responsible Disclosure Policy and not go public with the vulnerability information until the problem has been fixed.

According to research by Experian Hitwise, the social networking giant now accounts for just over three per cent of all searches.

This represents a huge 46% increase from 2010’s figures.

Four variations of the term ‘Facebook’ also appear throughout the list of the top ten most searched-for items in the US. Altogether, these terms account for just under five per cent of overall searches, marking a 24% increase from 2010.

The second most searched-for item in 2011 was YouTube, which has moved up one space from last year’s third place on the list.

Third is ‘Facebook login’, which is followed by ‘craigslist’ and ‘facebook.com’.

A host of new terms also appeared throughout the list of the top 50 most searched-for items. These included ‘addicting games’, ‘amazon.com’, ‘cnn’, ‘chase online’, ‘face’, ‘facebook sign up’, ‘hotmail’, ‘pandora’ and ‘twitter’.

Simon Bradstock, general manager of Experian Hitwise, said: “Navigational searches dominated the top search results as users typed in terms versus typing in the URL in the browser bar.

“Hitwise saw 11 percent growth of single-word searches in 2011 as terms like ‘face’ and ‘you’ made the top 50 searches. Marketers need to be particularly brand-savvy when managing their search engine optimization campaigns because of this behaviour, which is a result of predictive search functionality across major search engines.