The results are derived from an experiment in which roughly 1,500 TypePad bloggers installed the button (launched by FB last April) on their blogs and then recorded the ensuing boost in traffic. Full graphical data of the results can be found at either TypePad or Mashable.

Whatsmore, once TypePad added the like button as a post footer, bloggers saw a 200% boost in referrals from Facebook, which is the kind of result that is pretty foolish to ignore. Of course, Facebook also wins immensely in all this as people now begin to think of themselves as Facebook users even when not directly on the actual site itself. In other words, Facebook is increasingly cross-linked with the web as whole and this can only be a good thing from their point of view.

To summarise then: there is nothing overly complex here (not to say Facebook’s button isn’t clever though). The like button can boost traffic massively, as TypePad’s experiment has shown – especially if added as a blog post footer. Meanwhile, for Facebook, the button is part of an overall strategy to connect the network’s previously sealed-off world to the rest of the web, meaning that eventually the social network could become a portal through which all other web surfing happens: i.e. in the course of doing all the other things we do on the web (aside from being on facebook.com) we will also be inputting and interacting simultaneously with our FB networks. Now that’s pretty clever…

Dejan Levi

So, with this in mind I decided that it would be nice to present some of the finest moments of World Cup 2010 which, in previous years, would probably have been lost without the aid of today’s social media. I guess this is somewhat of a World Cup withdrawal remedy mixed in with a celebration of how social media has changed our experiences of such events (and facilitated just one more ‘hit’ for world cup fans with a sudden gaping hole in their schedules).

The best place to start is yesterday’s excellent post over at Social Times, which offers a lively top 10 videos from the tournament. You have some real gems in there, ranging from wonder goals, to the more weird and wonderful moments such as Maradona insisting he’s not gay after misinterpreting a press conference question…

In addition to these great moments, I’ll add a few highlights of my own. First of all, two clips of some of the most bizarre training exercises I’ve ever seen, courtesy of Argentina and North Korea.

Very curious indeed – maybe England could learn a thing or two from this. ‘Thinking outside the box’ seems more than an understatement. Anyway, swiftly on to trick of the tournament – which didn’t sadly happen during a match but came in a training session, courtesy of Spain’s Juan Mata.

Finally, something to remember the Vuvuzela by with this enthusiastic Algerian supporter.

As the sheer volume of media out there continues to expand at a frightening rate (and not just relating to the World Cup of course), it’s a testament to the sophistication of indexing tools out there (search, ‘likes’, Digg etc) that we continue to be able to find gems such as those above in minutes, rather than having to trawl through endless TV media archives (which we wouldn’t have access to anyway) for days just to find something worth sharing. Basically, the World Cup (like so much else) is a lot better with Social Media. I for one can’t wait for the next one :)

Dejan Levi

But let’s discuss events in the present first before we go reeling off wild speculations about the future. Here’s the low-down on the App-Inventor for now:

- It’s still in beta mode, but is free to download from Google

- Requires no coding skills at all, instead offering users a drag-and-drop interface for easy and quick App creation

- With the launch, Google joins Nokia in being the only companies currently offering such a tool

- Inventor uses Open Blocks Java Library (designed at MIT), thus saving you the effort of actually learning Java

The big debate in the immediate wake of the beta launch is over the quality control issues that often arise from the distribution of such easy-to-use builders. Techcrunch for example highlights the flood of low quality websites that emerged following the launch of similar html editors like Geocities as a potential problem, with Google’s app environment in danger of being swamped by useless and poorly designed junk.

However, one expects that as long as there is an effective way to manage the app ecosystem, relegating the rubbish to obscurity and ensuring the quality gains prominence and visibility, this potential pitfall can easily be avoided. In such a case, the App Inventor surely becomes an additional asset in the Android locker, which has recently also received a boost following Youtube’s HTML5 compatibility announcement (thus rendering obsolete native Youtube apps such as those found on the iPhone).

While Google’s smartphone market share continues to be well below that of the dominant players (Apple & Blackberry RIM), it is currently the only company seeing really significant growth in this department over the past few months. It is interesting to discuss this market trend in the context of Google’s strategic positioning vis-a-vis some of their rivals.

For example, while Apple builds much of its success on the concept of customer lock-in – offering an excellent range of vertically-integrated products and apps, it nonetheless ensures that the boundary between creator and consumer remains firmly in place. In other words, there is no place for getting clever or creative with your iPhone unless you’re a pro developer: no open source possibilities, no drag-and-drop app inventor tool, low cross-compatibilities with non-Apple hardware etc etc.

While there is nothing wrong with such a strategy (indeed Apple’s success proves there is more than a little right with it), it does nonetheless inevitably turn-off those of us who like to have somewhat of a give-and-take relationship with our technology.

You know the kind of people I mean here, those of us with soldering irons and custom-built motherboards lying around the dining room table, people who set up their own servers in the airing cupboard, your friends who spend hours overclocking their processors just for a few extra frames per second on their favourite computer game – and so on. Basically those who aren’t daunted at the odd line of code or a glimpse at what lies beneath the slick UI’s which organise our interaction with technology these days – people that like to get under the bonnet and have a little poke around for themselves.

Well I would expect that these people are especially likely to be won over by Google’s commitment to creating open technologies (rather than Apple’s ’sealed’ products) and it is as a result of this that Android’s market share might continue to grow in the smartphone sphere. In any case, for now it seems Google has done extremely well to identify a weakness in the formidable positions of rivals such as Apple and Blackberry, and seems to be making a good fist of exploiting it to establish a decent market position of its own thus far.

Dejan Levi

Update: Check Techland for a great list of top Android apps to get you up and running with a Google phone

So, if you fancy learning a thing or two (I certainly did) about doing business in the tech and web market, you could do a lot worse than have a gander at faberNovel’s excellent analysis. Perhaps most interesting for me was the role that services such as the App store play in the Apple revenues (the contribute almost nothing relatively speaking – less than 1%). Nonetheless the App store is an absolutely essential facilitator of Apple’s consumer lock-in and vertical integration goals.

iTunes for example once occupied a similar position a few years ago (before digital music sales really took off), but now forms an indispensable component of Apple’s overall product line. Clever stuff indeed – and very thought-provoking for anyone involved in this market sector, whether in web or hardware design, consultancy, analysis or whatever else. Many of the lessons of Apple’s success can be applied and localised across various tech sub-sectors, so it’s a pretty smart idea to learn a thing or two from the current sector high-flier!

Enjoy!

Dejan Levi

It should be noted however that this is based on the BBC’s own figures for how much it spent on its online service – which doesn’t take into account the fact that much of the material is sourced from its news or radio arms for example, and is paid for by their budgets. So, probably the true figure is a fair chunk higher than the £8/annum above, but it’s simply impossible to calculate (if a show is delivered across multiple platforms, including the website, how to split the costs of its production for such a calculation?).

In a way though, it doesn’t matter too much for what I would like to discuss here – which is the overwhelmingly positive response from users to the reports of the website’s cost. This is perhaps not surprising, as, due to the aforementioned distortion, the BBC’s ‘implied paywall’ is roughly 10 times lower than similar(-ish) competitors such as the Times website.

However, I would venture to say that, even in the hypothetical scenario of the entire license fee being used solely for the website, it would still represent pretty good value for money when compared to other competitors for similar news and media. Indeed, judging by the comments on the aforementioned article, people are more than comfortable with the idea of paying for online content, and the notion that the majority somehow expect online media to be free is thoroughly contradicted.

Nonetheless, the BBC system does suggest that when it comes to the paywall model, economies of scale are better placed to deliver value. In short, the BBC offers so, so much through its various services that I doubt anyone would be turned off from paying for the license fee simply due to a slight year-on-year increase for example. Smaller providers on the other hand have a lot less wriggle-room regarding price – a few pounds can make all the difference to user numbers.

I suppose what I’m getting at is the fact that, judging from the discussions following the BBC’s accounts publications, BBC website users are strongly indicating that they would happily pay for the service, even if it was offered through a more standard monthly paywall model (rather than the beeb’s rather unique license fee payment system).

Paywalls therefore are not inherently unworkable, as some commentators have suggested – though they usually can only work well as part of a strategy that mixes up free and premium (paywall) services (Spotify is a great example). On the other hand however, such a system would not work for every online media provider – some, unfortunately perhaps, must make do only with ad revenue or go under (the general rule is, of course, the less unique you are, the less users will be prepared to stump up for content).

Perhaps this is why even Google CEO Eric Schmidt refuses to condemn paywalls, despite the relatively high profile disagreement between Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp and Google over the UK newspaper, The Times’s, online content (which now has a paywall as a result of the spat). The concept is certainly one which we can expect to see more and more in the future, particularly as publishing – in its traditional guises – continues to decline. The golden era of ‘free’ is, and has been, drawing to a close for some time with regard to online media content. In its place there is currently the priced mobile app, the paywall and other such revenue models, of which we can expect to see more and more in the future.

Dejan Levi

As anyone following any sort of technology-orientated media sources in recent years will be aware, the likes of Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook tend to get about three to ten headlines (this is a blatant guess from me, let me know if you disagree) for every one Microsoft is able to get. And even when MS does get a headline, more often than not it is about various un-sexy PR disasters (racism in its Polish ad campaign last year, complaints over vomit ad, monopoly lawsuits etc), while others like Apple usually seem to have some pretty morale-boosting sales figures or mega-hyped product launches to throw in the mix (though they of course get the odd bad headline too…).

Among others I also questioned some of Microsoft’s long term prospects in recent months, particularly the difficulty they have in muscling in on the disproportionate media coverage given to some of the aforementioned rivals. Well, Frank Shaw’s post yesterday is intended exactly for people like me: a dose of bare hard facts to set the record straight.

And guess what? All in all, it makes for pretty impressive reading, and I must applaud Shaw for his astute use of the blogosphere to restore some perspective and redress the balance of coverage given to major players in the tech world.

The main gist of the post is that Microsoft is BIG, getting BIGGER, and outperforming all its rivals if one looks at the companies balance sheets as a whole (profits for 2009 stand at well more than Apple and Google combined for example).

However, Shaw is keen to illustrate that the extent of media coverage devoted to Microsoft’s rivals is highly disproportionate to the relative size of the companies involved. Again, point well made, though Shaw seems unwilling to acknowledge that this is because much of what is offered by these high profile rivals tends to offer mainstream news media with viable stories (about social networking, fancy new phones etc), while operating systems tend to be of little interest to ‘mainstream’ media channels (BBC news for example is unlikely to report on Windows 7 sales, while iPhones of course are big news). The lesson here is that MS needs to get its ’sexy’ stuff working a little better in the mainstream news and media arena – something like the xBox for example might be just the product to do this.

In any case there’s a wealth of expert analysis of Shaw’s figures floating around already, with Guardian tech and Techcrunch being my two top tips so far (check the Guardian one for some excellent ‘reading between the numbers’, and TC for some more comical analysis).

However, one thing which neither have yet discussed is the question of who Shaw’s figures are intended for? After all, if Microsoft is happily smashing profit targets and dominating markets in a relatively quiet and understated way, then who cares if the press want to discuss iPads all day and night? Ultimately, as Shaw points out, Microsoft’s profits and growth rates are such that they need not worry too much about what others are doing. And yet they clearly do worry somewhat about their inability to be the media darlings that Apple and Google currently are.

For example, Shaw points out that Nokia’s smartphone sales far outstrip iPhone sales in 2010 – the message being simply ’shut up about Apple already – they’re not even that big…’ But isn’t it funny that Nokia don’t seem half as bothered about endless iPhone hype, they’re just calmly reeling in mega-profits year after year, mainly by letting products speak for themselves. I somehow feel Microsoft’s best strategy, judging by their self-evident success regarding sales numbers and profits, might be to follow suite, since I doubt they’ll ever succeed in out-cool-ing Apple or Google in terms of media image.

Dejan Levi

However, perhaps more intriguing is Forrester’s breakdown of the market by 2015, which suggests that most of the tablet share will actually come at the expense of desktop pc – and not the other two portable devices (notebooks and netbooks) with which one might assume it was in direct competition with.

Whatever happens, I expect web developers will be following all these projections with interest and anticipation for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most relevant one however will be the fact that tablet computers such as the iPad utilise a completely different user interface in the touchscreen, and hence will demand a unique approach in terms of web design, which has so far only been a factor with regard to smartphones.

As a rather simple example, consider the fundamental difference between using a mouse pointer and a finger to navigate a website. The latter will surely demand bigger and more spread out buttons for a start, and will therefore have significant impact on the aesthetics of layout and design. Then there remains the question of whether different versions of sites will be designed for tablet computers (operating through an ‘app style’ feature as with iPhone Facebook for example) or if a one-size fits all method will be more popular.

Certain trends with regard to user interfaces in web design already suggest that the anticipation of tablet computing has been a consideration for some time – such as the current popularity of 3D style ‘pushable’ buttons. Nonetheless, one expects that if Forrester’s predictions regarding tablet computers are right (and in a sense if they are wrong, it can only really be because they underestimated tablet popularity – judging by impressive iPad sales), then web developers will have considerable work to do in accommodating the widespread touchscreen interface into their design considerations.

Dejan Levi

Ballmer opened the last day of the conference, accompanied by his chief software architect, Ray Ozzie. For those who weren’t able to attend, there is now some very interesting video highlights available online over at Guardian technology. What’s most interesting for me here is the difficulty Ballmer has in keeping the discussion focused on Microsoft, and not simply discussing the innovations of successful rivals like Google and Apple.

There’s some interesting points from both Ozzie and Ballmer – as well as the odd, slightly confusing, ramble, but all in all, it’s hard not to be left feeling that Microsoft is a company that is currently struggling to convince on its prospects for innovation and creativity. While there can be no doubt about Ballmer’s experience and insight into market trends, question marks remain over his charisma in situations such as this one – though indeed it’s always easier to appear charismatic and camera-friendly when you have some sure-fire hit products to discuss (i.e. Steve Jobs).

Anyway, while certain products such as Microsoft’s xBox console have been enjoying massive success, it’s hard not to get the impression watching Ballmer, that Microsoft could really do with some fresh, original ideas – and the positive press that comes with it sooner rather than later. After all, for a company of such size and impressive massive market share almost in every field they’re involved in, it’s hard to say that they have the number of market leading and original products that one might expect. While it would be foolish to imagine that Microsoft has any sort of short-term difficulties as a result of this, it does not bode well in the long game…

Dejan Levi

Facebook responded with some excuse about third-party sites keeping this data online, and re-iterated that they themselves had actually deleted the data. Anyway, with both parties basically calling eachother liars, Techcrunch thought they’d do some actual research rather than merely report the mud-slinging match – and hence tested Mahalo’s policy on account termination.

Surprise, surprise – it’s actually harder to quit Mahalo than Facebook, and nigh on impossible to get your data out (which is one of Calcanis’s main criticisms of Facebook). All in all, once we set aside the fascinating gossip-fest of watching silicon valley tech celebs tweeting grumpily about eachother, a rather more serious question emerges over the general state of play with regard to data control on social networks.

The unmistakeable trend that users are experiencing is that while it’s extremely quick and easy to create expansive profiles and upload hordes of details and info about yourself, it’s much, much harder to get it out again afterwards. It seems that this is increasingly emerging as a key issue that requires very delicate balancing if a network is to attract/retain users and also ensure some sort of profitable revenue model. (The recent funding success of wannabe Facebook rival, Diaspora, is further testament to this – see a previous post on this blog for more).

This is without doubt a major topic for social networks over coming months and, for mature networks like Facebook, represents the last major hurdle before reaching serious profitability. As the discussions and debates continue on the topic, it seems likely also that, for the first time since social networking arrived online, the most important factor for users choosing a network will not only be the choice of network used by their peers/friends etc. Instead, one expects that users will ’shop around’ a little more, now that network choice has proliferated – and one essential aspect in their decisions will be the nature of the accompanying privacy policy of the network.

Dejan Levi

Well, judging by the amount of negative feedback Google’s backgrounds attracted on forums and blogs, I doubt that many will lament the technical problem which supposedly prompted Google to remove the feature. However, what has been most interesting for me during this episode is Simon Jary’s insight over at PC advisor.

In a nutshell, Jary points out that, while Google has lost very little in this episode (the ‘bug’ excuse seems to be saving face pretty well so far), other competitors who also feature similar backgrounds and have done so for some time – most notably Microsoft’s Bing, have had their design approach indirectly, but quite loudly, admonished by the blogosphere. And it’s not like they can suddenly go to a clean interface right after Google’s experiment without anyone noticing, having had the lively backgrounds for some time now.

Anyway, I’m not pushing any sort of conspiracy theory here – indeed I suppose we’ll never know exactly what Google were thinking throughout this little experiment with their interface, but the real curiosity is simply the manner in which surprising consequences can emerge from even the most trivial little things – such as the fact that, as a result of all this, much of the discussion is now, rather unluckily for Bing, centred on their own engine interface.

Dejan Levi