Facebook’s announcement of Graph Search, the company’s first move into socially-powered search which now in beta trial in the US, leaves many details unanswered including full launch and monetisation plans. Reliance on user-generated content from Facebook friends limits the usefulness of Graph Search as a conventional search engine and hence its impact on Google and other web search businesses in the near term. In the longer term, Graph Search could become a powerful recommendation engine for certain categories like travel, but its dependence on user data and privacy restrictions are likely to limit its wider utility and revenue potential.
Press advertising performed worse than we expected in 2012, with double digit declines both last year and this year now a very real possibility.
Previously resilient areas of the press have weakened. Popular national titles have seen sharp advertising declines, while faltering circulation in celebrity magazines exposes an underlying decline in demand.
Retail and services advertisers continue to pull spend from print, largely in favour of online, though TV is also very resilient. Industry efforts to offset these structural shifts include the development of trading platforms, further consolidation and a number of commercial editorial tactics.
Under regulatory pressure, France Télécom introduced in July 2006 a wholesale ‘naked’ DSL offer, under which broadband alone is supplied to the customer, as the lower frequency portion of the line used for PSTN telephony is deactivated
Orange’s new ‘free broadband’ offer brings savings of up to 60% for Orange UK customers who pay for broadband, and may appeal to a great many of them