January is always the dawn of a new year with new possibilities. The Consumer Electronics Show from Las Vegas dazzles us with the latest technology available and on the market and Google potentially completely opens up the privacy of all its users with new policies under a personalised search initiative called SPY World, or more discretely Search Plus Your World. While there are numerous articles online regarding Google possibly becoming the modern equivalent of George Orwell’s 1984 “Big Brother”, I’d like to analyse more the implications of how SPYW affects digital marketing in regards to strategy and reach of efforts already in place by social media and SEO agencies. The premise of SPYW is the melding of the search giant with its fledgling social media platform Google Plus to create an integrated system that provides users with a user centric search algorithm that changes the results heavily dependent on the user.

Everyone wants a slice of the social media pie. After all, it has surpassed the label of being a trend and has stood its ground and passed the test of time. Google has been trying to join the social media gang since its failed attempt with Buzz and also with Wave. Its newest attempt on becoming a permanent passenger on the social media band wagon is Google Plus. With the ink still fresh on the wall of the web there is an array of different opinions on whether Google Plus will stand the test of time, what its influence will be on the current big dogs of social networking and what influence it will have on SEO.

It’s impossible to ignore the power wielded by social media in both business and personal networking; but while any SEO agency would agree that these platforms are ideal for the promotion of content and the sharing of ideas, the privacy concerns posed by these platforms are also unavoidable. Recently, a bill known as the Social Networking Privacy Act was proposed by a US senator eager to impose stricter privacy laws on networks like Facebook.

Search marketing services and social media go hand-in-hand, merrily skipping down the information highway as they accumulate countless friends and customers. SEO is malleable, changing constantly to meet the demands of the major search engines, as well as its clients who generate their profits from the search results. The new Facebook design is in line with SEO’s ethos of change and marks a new direction in the usability of this popular networking site. The new Facebook design for 2010 includes:

Bing Social Search was announced on Wednesday, with the aim of personalising search and hopefully giving industry giant Google some significant competition. The third quarter of 2010 saw positive growth in the search marketing services industry, and unsurprisingly a study revealed that Google dominated search with 66.1% share. The study showed a decline in Yahoo’s share and slight growth for Microsoft search engine Bing. Currently Bing trails behind Google and Yahoo with only 11.2% search share, but the Social Search initiative could boost their growth in the coming months.

“Information about people is indeed the most important information in the world,” says Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, and the partnership with Microsoft Bing aims to harness the relevance of this information for individual users with Social Search – using the slogan “Now it’s personal”.

Twitter Tales is the latest “stories” site to be launched by a social networking platform with the aim of sharing its users’ personal experiences. All users are encouraged to share their stories on Twitter Tales, whether they use the network to connect with others, inspire their communities or simply to find solace in 140-character self-expression.

This year, the Google marketing department surprised us by airing a TV commercial during the Super Bowl championship. However, this was by no means a sign that Google would be breaking from their traditional advertising methods. The Parisian Love video had been available on Youtube for some time, and heralded the launch of a series of gorgeous Google “Search Stories”. Twitter Tales aims to promote user interaction in the same way, by demonstrating the creative uses of the platform and how the technology integrates with users’ everyday lives. The Twitter Blog describes Twitter Tales as “a growing set of articles that highlights creative individuals and businesses from all corners of the world that help make Twitter awesome”.

Search marketing specialists will tell you that the social network has become an incredibly useful and important tool for making and maintaining contacts, or keeping up-to-date with the latest information in your field. Whether you’re looking to boost your profits with social network advertising, get the latest news on world events or simply annoy your friends with random messages, the social network provides the ideal platform for online interaction.

The rise of the social network is set to reach a milestone when social networking platform Facebook announces the joining of their 500 millionth user. With 8 percent of the world’s population now active on Facebook, it’s hardly surprising that a Hollywood producer would want to tell the story of the social network giant. That’s right – David Fincher’s movie The Social Network is in post-production and will be opening the annual New York film Festival in September.

A lot has changed since our last blog on the market share statistics in the search engine and social media industries. Twitter yesterday reached 50 million tweets a day, Facebook is just getting bigger and bigger and Bing is fast making and impression on the search engine market. Let’s take a look at some of the stats courtesy of Hitwise.

Search Engines:

First of all, let’s take a look at the UK search engine ranking report and compare it to last year’s report:

As you can see in the above search engine comparison, Bing didn’t even feature in the April 2009 report and now they are 3^rd behind Google. The Bing search engine most likely wont be ever be able to take on Google’s search engine, not in the foreseeable future anyway, but they certainly are making their presence felt. Yahoo on the other hand have dropped down one position even though they have remained steady as far as market share goes. Ask have dropped out of the top 5.