In at 1
Facebook hits 250m user mark

Facebook has announced that it now has more than 250 million users around the world, some three months after it reported a user base of 200 million.

This represents a "humbling and exciting" moment for the social network, says Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook.

Facebook said that it had hit the 200 million mark back in April, meaning that it has grown by 50 million users since then. The website was first established five years ago.

Zuckerberg says in a blog post that the company is continuing its efforts to attract even more users through the development of new services and products.

"This means reaching out to everyone across the world and making products that serve all of you, wherever you are - whether through Facebook Connect, new mobile products and the other things that we are building," he comments.

Facebook recently announced the addition of new ad targeting capabilities for developers and advertisers.

Developers can now target their ads at users who have never visited their applications to potentially increase growth and push ads to existing users for repeat visits.

In at 2
Bing increases its US market share

New figures from comScore suggest that Bing, Microsoft's new search engine increased its market share two weeks after launch.

The internet monitoring company says that 16.7 per cent of US searchers used Bing between June 8th and 12th, compared with 15.8 per cent in the previous week and 13.7 per cent just before the search engine's official launch.

Meanwhile, Bing's share of all search results pages rose from 9.1 per cent between May 25th and 29th to 12.1 per cent between June 8th and 12th.

Mike Hurt, senior vice president of comScore, says: "It appears that Microsoft Bing has continued to generate interest from the market for the second consecutive week.

"These early data reflect a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch."

On June 1st, Bing received double the number of visitors that its predecessor MSN/Windows Live did the day before, according to recent figures from Nielsen Online.

It also overtook Yahoo! to become the second most visited search engine in the US on its launch day and took Microsoft's overall share of the search market from 8.7 per cent in the week of May 25th to 14.7 per cent during the week of June 1st.

In at 3
Etailers expect rise in sales despite fall in consumer spend

Online retailers are confident of continued growth over the next few months, despite the second new media age Online Retail Survey revealing just 27% of consumers plan to shop online more than on the high street in the next six months.

This figure is down nearly 10% in the last six months from the previous nma survey, conducted in January by Lightspeed Research, which found 36% planned to shop online more than on the high street.

Despite this, consumers still consider online with the lowest prices for most categories except groceries. 68% and 45% of consumers believe that clothing and groceries are cheaper in store, respectively. The report coincides with the second Ebay Online Business Index, released today, which found 69% of online retailers are confident about their business over the next quarter, with 57% expecting sales to rise.

The difference in outlook between retailers and consumers suggests a disconnection between shopping forecasts as the recession continues.

Ralph Risk, marketing manager at Lightspeed Research, said, "This could suggest people are already spending more online, so the figure is steadying as consumers have moved online as much as they want to."

Karen Hazeldine, business unit director for clothing retailer Oli, said, "Our research found customers aren't cutting back on spend but selecting where they spend their money more wisely. They're focusing on price.

"We're still confident we can grow in this market — fashion for occasion and footwear is still growing. We're paying close attention to price points as people are conscious about price."

Vanessa Canzini, a spokeswoman for Ebay, said businesses need to be able to respond to consumer demands during the recession.

"It's clear that consumer insight not cutbacks is the key to success," she said. "People look online for the best deals, and those retailers that can offer those, whether it is cheaper postage or lower prices, will win."

David Walmsley, head of web selling at John Lewis Direct, said, "Our customers are already sophisticated online shoppers and are increasingly using online as part of a cross-channel shopping task."

In at 4
Firms fail to engage Twitter users

Not enough companies that use Twitter for marketing purposes make an effort to properly engage with potential customers, according to a new study by a top PR firm.

The research saw the company examine the Twitter activities of 140 big brands and found that most use the microblogging site as a tool to broadcast information to users.

More than one quarter of these were discovered to adopt a formal tone of voice in these messages and only talk about themselves or their specific sector.

According to the research, companies that used Twitter to engage users by talking about their target audience's interests and embracing the free flow of conversation were more likely to see success in the form of more followers, recommendations and participation.

The research also found that while some businesses, like BMW, tweeted about once a month, others such as smoothie maker Innocent did so up to 900 times per week.

The 12 months to May 2009 brought a 22-fold increase in UK traffic to Twitter, according to web monitoring company Hitwise.

In at 5
Yahoo! Search Pad launched

Users of Yahoo! Search can now make use of a new tool to help them conduct and store online research undertaken via the search engine.

Search Pad allows Yahoo! users to copy, organise, store and share information they discover when searching for specific data on the web.

The tool, which is currently in beta, automatically saves recently found items and links in a single notepad that stays with the user as they conduct more searches.

These notes can be edited, printed or emailed to other people and comes with features such as the ability to automatically detect research intent and sharing capabilities across different social networks.

Search Pad is currently available to Yahoo! users in the UK, the US and 13 other countries worldwide.

Larry Cornett, vice president of consumer products at Yahoo! Search, says: "Yahoo! is providing an elegant solution that understands when valuable research is being conducted and offers a way to effortlessly gather information in one place."

Yahoo! first revealed that it was working on the new tool in February this year.

According to web monitoring company Hitwise, Yahoo! has a UK search market share of 2.91 per cent, with Google UK and Google.com together accounting for over 90 per cent of the sector.

Source: IAB, NMA, BBC