The mighty search engine Google caused controversy this month when it updated its search algorithm to incorporate results from its own social media network, Google Plus.

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.

The new version of Firefox has just been made available for download – and it includes Twitter search navigation.

The latest version of the popular browser, which is made by Mozilla, was posted to its FTP servers last week a few days ahead of its official release.
Firefox 8 is available for PC, Mac and Linux computers.

The most notable development to this latest version of Firefox is that it lets users search Twitter directly. Users can search the microblogging site by selecting it as an option in a drop-down search box or alternatively by highlighting some on-screen text, right-clicking and selecting ‘search Twitter’.

Firefox users can search Twitter for people, hashtags and topics.

The new version of Firefox also disables all third-party add-ons in a bid to offer extra security. Should users want to enable third-party add-ons, they can do this manually.

Tab loading is also different in Firefox 8. When a user selects ‘show my windows and tabs from last time’ as the default start page, instead of trying to open every tab at the same time when the browser starts, it simply loads the one currently selected by the user and then loads the others when the user switches to them.

Other improvements include changing the animation when tabs are re-ordered or detached.

Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox around every six weeks, earning them a reputation for rapid-fire web development.

Facebook is the most popular social media site amongst SMEs wanting to promote themselves online.

According to a new survey of 500 SMEs, more than a quarter of SMEs use the site on a regular basis as part of their marketing campaigns.
YouGov’s SME Omnibus survey shows that LinkedIn, the professional social media website, and microblogging site Twitter, are also popular with the UK’s SMEs. Exactly a quarter (25%) of respondents use LinkedIn for promotional purposes, while just less than that (21%) use Twitter.

YouTube fared less well, with only 10% of those surveyed using it to help them promote their goods or services.

Somewhat alarmingly, more than half of respondents said that they never use social media to promote their company. Furthermore, the usage of social media seems to be split geographically. Just under 40% of businesses in the east of England never use social media, compared with a huge 64% of businesses in the north.

Meanwhile, blogging also seems to be a source of confusion. Although 80% of respondents said that they thought blogging was successful in terms of achieving publicity, only 10% of businesses use a blog to help them generate PR.

Just under 70% of SMEs who use social media say that they do so to promote their products and services, whilst 57% do so to promote their brand. Meanwhile, 21% of SMEs use social media to share discounts and promotional offers with their customers.

Debt collectors have been told not to use social media to pursue people.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) issued a reminder to businesses last week that using social media to recover consumer credit debts counts as unfair practice.

The warning also applies to banks, law firms and tracing agents as well as traditional debt collectors.

The OFT says that organisations who contact people via social media channels to chase them for money may expose their financial problems on public forums – something that would exacerbate any sense of stress, worry or embarrassment already being felt by the person in debt.

David Fisher, director of consumer credit at the OFT, said: “In the present economic climate, many people, including those who may be particularly vulnerable, are in financial difficulties.

“It is therefore crucial they are treated fairly by companies recovering their debts.”

Social media outlets that some debt collectors are using unfairly include Facebook and Twitter.

Delroy Corinaldi, director of external affairs at the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, told one financial website: “This is a welcome move. Many debtors are understandably anxious to keep their debt problems private from friends and work colleagues – and the possibility of being contacted by a debt collector on Facebook or Twitter causes serious worry for many.”

Chelsea FC are better than any other English Premier League football club at interacting with their fans via social media and the internet.

That’s according to technology consultancy Lewis Communications, who have just published a new study into the way that football clubs connect with their fans online.

The study took into account factors including the number of Twitter and Facebook followers that each club had, the level of interaction each club had with its fans, the ease with which fans could access them online and how many apps they had.

The research found that some clubs were failing to engage with their fans – despite having millions of followers.

Manchester United, which came eighth, had the highest number of Facebook fans out of all the clubs – 19 million in total – but did little to engage with followers on the site.

Chelsea FC also beat the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs. Blackburn, Bolton and Swansea took the bottom three places in the table.

Out of the 20 teams in the table, only Bolton does not have an official Facebook presence. Meanwhile, Aston Villa and West Brom are the only sides with an official LinkedIn page.

Alex Clough, digital strategist at Lewis Communications, said: “Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed a new generation of fans to connect with their football idols and teams in ways that they haven’t been able to within the modern game and clubs need to embrace this.”

Millions of Facebook users have used their pages to stage protests after the social media giant implemented sizeable changes to its site last wopening the way to possible changes in the world of social networking.

The changes are an attempt by Facebook to replicate the features of Google+ and Twitter, such as grouping friends, acquaintances and colleagues together, or the live update feed and option to subscribe to users’ status updates.

Facebook also suggests people for users to follow, in the same vein as Twitter, with Mark Zuckerberg’s former business partner Eduardo Saverin and MySpace founder Tom Anderson being two prominent suggestions.

As a result, the home page is more cluttered than ever, leading to many users bemoaning Facebook’s loss of simplicity.

A number of groups have been set up in protest, including  “Petition against the new Facebook homepage”, whilst many others are copying and pasting anti-Facebook images and status updates to their profile pages.

One such status update partially reads: “Facebook, you’re not near as smart as you think you are. Your algorithms for deciding what I want to see, who I want to talk to or what I think is important are 99.999% of the time the exact polar opposite of what I want.

“Everything you do to try to simplify things only complicates things more… Facebook should never consider themselves too big to fail. You’re not… repost if you agree.”

Experts are now keeping a close eye on Google+ to see how many Facebook users defect over to the site.

Nearly 70% of SME decision-makers say that a graduate’s experience in social networks and tools is important to them when considering them for hire.

According to a new survey from OnePoll and sales software company Salesforce, 76% of graduates are also attracted to employers who actively use social networks and tools.

The survey aimed to find out the importance of social networks during the recruitment process.

It also looked into stats regarding the use of social networks by SMEs – and showed that nearly half (47%) of those surveyed use social networks and tools to engage customers and prospects.

Meanwhile, nearly 70% of respondents say that social networks and tools are important to the future of their business. This figure rose to 86% amongst decision-makers aged 18 to 24.

SMEs are also more liberal regarding the use of social networks in the office. Only 15% of SMEs ban all use of social networks whilst 37% have no restrictions in place at all. This could work in those SMEs’ favour, as 40% of graduates surveyed said that they would be deterred from working for a business that had banned Facebook and Twitter.

Nearly 30% of managers in SMEs look to new graduates to teach them about how best to use social networking sites to grow their business.

Tim Barker of Salesforce.com said: “To attract and retain tomorrow’s talent, SMEs need to understand social networks and tools and use them to engage with customers, prospects, employees and in the recruitment process.”

In a more modest research project (in partnership with Glasgow Caledonian University), we’ve actually been doing our own SME survey, looking at SME Return On Investment (ROI) by using Social Media. The first outputs can be found in the links below:

Prezi : Social Media ROI Survey – as presented at the Turing Festival in Edinburgh, and Social Media Week Glasgow.

Return on Investment: What Literature Exists on the Use of Social Media and ROI? – an annotated bibliography of academic journal articles, professional publications, authoritative blogs and other resources that address social media and return on investment (ROI).

Beyonce’s pregnancy has set a new Tweets Per Second (TPS) record.

The singer revealed her pregnancy on 28 August at MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMA) by arriving on the red carpet and unveiling her surprise bump to the world.

By 22:35 that evening (Eastern Time, USA), the Twittersphere had gone crazy with tweets about the singer’s expectant state.

In an announcement on its @twitterglobalpr account, Twitter said: “Last night at 10:35pm ET, Beyonce’s big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second.”

The previous TPS record was reached a few months ago in July 2011 during the Woman’s World Cup. During two matches – Japan-USA and Paraguay-Brazil – a mass of football-related hashtags and names set a record of 7,196 TPS. Those hashtags included #WWC and #worldcupfinal whilst repeated mentions of the footballers’ names also set the TPS sky-high.

Before that, TPS records had levelled out at around the 5,000 marks, including just after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.

This means that there were also more tweets per second about Beyonce’s pregnancy than there were about the death of Bin Laden, the recent tragedies in Norway and the birth of the Beckhams’ daughter.

The news confirms Twitter’s status as the social network of choice for spreading news in a matter of seconds.

Tim Godwin, Scotland Yard’s acting commissioner, has revealed that he and his senior management team discussed shutting town Twitter as riots spread across the UK at the beginning of August.

Godwin discovered that his force did not have the legal power to shut down the social networking site and subsequently raised the subject with the government.

Mr Godwin told MPs at the home affairs select committee: “I contemplated seeking the authority to switch it off. The legality of that is very questionable. We did not request that it was turned off but it is something we are pursuing as part of our investigative strategy.”

Many of those taking part in the violence organised themselves on Twittter as well as BBM. BBM cannot be monitored by police as easily as Twitter can.

In fact, many of the discussions on Twitter helped police to stop further trouble: they secured the Olympic site in Stratford, east London, after talk on the site suggested that it was going to be targeted.

Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs select committee, said that he did not realise that the police had even considered shutting down social networks but that this option should be examined because Twitter and its counterparts had “allowed people to turn up at very short notice to demonstrate and riot”.

He said “We should look at whether we should give power to the police to order social media sites to behave in a certain way.”

Social media has been front page news this week, yet it’s hard to believe some people are unsure of its potential for their business.

A recent poll of US SMEs by insurer Hiscox found only 12% considered social media essential to promotion, with 50% not using social media in a business context at all.

Among the remaining 50%, there is probably uncertainty about how social media positively impacts ROI, and that it is a ‘fad’ and ‘something big brands do.’

Whether on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, the concept of starting a conversation with your customers, a more direct and instant one than ever before, is here to stay.

The key is to remain focused about your overall business objectives. If you sell shoes, then you need to interact with your customers on social media where they are likely to want to engage with your content and offers.

In the non-virtual world, this is like ensuring your shoe shop is on the high street where people do their shopping, or placing an ad in women’s fashion magazine.

Social media is no different. What you do, say, offer and discuss needs to be relevant, timely and engaging.

It is true that not all your potential customers are glued to Facebook and Twitter twenty-four-seven, so you need to consider social media as part of your marketing mix and get the right strategy in place.

Knowledge is power. And arming yourself with the know-how about what works in social media and what doesn’t is the first step to getting it right.