Social Takes Centre Stage

One of the biggest stories in June was Facebook and Yahoo! strengthening their relationship with the announcement of a cross platform status update. Users of both will be able to share any status updates and social media material across both platforms.

The growing influence of social media once again garnered some headlines when research from comScore linked online spending with social network use.

Plus the social sphere went all rock and roll with MTV launching a competition for their first TJ – Twitter Jockey. It demonstrates how serious major brands are taking social media by employing people to maintain their social presence. Plus it came with a juicy $100,000 salary!

Towards the end of the month, Google’s Chrome Internet browser overtook Apple’s Safari for the first time in the US. The marginal shift put Chrome in third behind Internet Explorer and Firefox as the leading Internet browsers. Although Chrome has been ahead of Safari outside of the US for some time, this weekly shift marks Chrome’s rapid growth in two years.

Also in the News in June

In other news, Facebook have once again been predicting the demise of email – despite all Facebook accounts requiring an email address. 

Bing were busy making plenty of changes over the month. As well as unveiling their new entertainment section they announced more deep content to help provide users with more relevant searches.

Google announced that click to call ads in mobile search will now be able to show more numbers. Initially, click to call ads could only display free telephone numbers such as local dialling codes or 0800 numbers but they have moved to add extra options.

Finally, Google continued to push the need for speed. They continue to recommend tips for websites to help improve download times as site speed becomes a ranking factor.