Thanks to its 55 million users, Facebook has become the target of advertisers, who are anxious to break into this potentially huge market. The website created by Mark Zuckerberg has decided to respond to this demand with an advertising system that has created high expectations in the advertising sector as well as an important debate regarding privacy and data protection on Web 2.0.

Social networks are becoming a hotspot for online advertisers, thanks to the tremendous amount of personal information these sites contain. However, advertisers had better learn to handle that info with care.

Read (PDF, 23 Kb)

IBM is predicting the end of advertising as we know it. According to the consulting firm, over the next five years the advertising world will undergo more transformation than in the past 50 years combined.
The report, based on a survey of 2,400 consumers and 80 specialists from the advertising market, highlights a number of factors considered responsible for the control shift happening within the industry. First off, paying attention to the users, who have increasingly more power in terms of the barrage of ads they are subjected to. Case in point: 71% of those surveyed connect to the Internet more than two hours a day for personal use, compared to the 48% who spend that same amount of time watching television. Secondly, creativity: 39% of those surveyed say their first choices are sites based on user-generated content. Another factor is measurement. Two thirds of the professionals interviewed predict that 20% of the advertising revenue will move from impression-based to impact-based approaches.
Finally, advertising inventories, open platforms for selling ad space. These platforms will garner 30% of the revenue that until now had gone to the traditional media, this according to over half of the managers surveyed.
As for the present, a study by PwC and IAB Spain indicates that the volume of investment in interactive media advertising in Spain during the first half of 2007 totaled €220.30 million, a 74.5% jump up from the same period a year ago. According to the report, this boom is due to the presence of two factors driving the market’s growth: the role that most advertising sectors continue to play in the development of interactive media; and the model based on search engines and sponsored links, which with a year-on-year growth of 101.6% already amounts to 47% of the overall investment and is approaching the more mature European markets.

Study in IBM and IAB-PwC (PDF, 269 Kb)

At the end of year, computer security companies tend to present their own annual reports on the status of malicious code and cybercrime. One of these is Symantec, whose study entitled Internet Security Threat Report reveals the increasing professionalism of cybercriminals and their businesslike strategies. In the third edition of its Virtual Criminology Report, McAfee has chosen to emphasize the rise and increasing sophistication of the online spying operations done by governments and allied groups. Another player who does not miss out on this annual opportunity is Panda Security. Although its annual study will not be released until after the new year, the company has published a specific report on malicious code at companies with over 100 computers. It concludes that more than 72% of companies of this type are infected, even if they have taken precautions, which requires them to bolster their security through regular audits.

Studies in Symantec, McAfee and Panda Security

Kindle is a wireless reading device that connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi, or by using the PC’s USB bus, to download electronic books, newspapers and other texts from the Web. In the United States, the device costs $399 and comes with a 6" black-and-white “electronic paper” screen with a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels, along with a powerful battery and storage capacity for up to 200 books. Up to this point, it is just another in the multiple electronic book reading devices that have gradually appeared ever since Adobe’s launch of its e-Book technology, which was followed by Microsoft. The expectation it has created is that it is a creation of the virtual bookstore Amazon, which does not conceive it as a product but rather a complete service. The on-line library offers almost 100,000 titles that can be downloaded for $2-10, including the first chapter for free. It can also download electronic editions of newspapers, dictionaries and certain Web content. Time will tell whether these are sufficient reasons for Kindle to take off where the others have failed.

Articles in El Pais.com and in Forbes.com

According to ComScore, in the United States, electronic commerce spending between November 1 and December 7 of 2007 was up 18% with respect to the same period a year ago. This trend will have to hold up during the current holiday season, when most shopping gets done. One of the formulas designed to drive things along is called CyberMonday, a day of special discounts online.
The Christmas time e-commerce rush affects Europe as well. A report by Forrester done at the request of Unisys predicts that a third of all Europeans will shop via Internet during this year’s holidays, spending €51 billion, most of which will fall in the season’s last two weeks.
In Spain, according to the Year-End Holiday Survey 2007 by Deloitte, 2% of all Christmas shopping will be done online, a practice that will actually be true for one out of ten Spaniards.
Christmas e-commerce will grow by 5.1%, driven by various factors including the increased availability of broadband services—2007 will come to a close with 8 million new line installations in Spain—and by the gradual rise of Web users’ confidence. Nonetheless, security is still a concern for 60% of European users, according to Forrester. That is precisely what the campaign Me gusta Internet, seguro que sí (I Like the Internet, Of Course I Do) is trying to do: combat this perception so as to foster Christmas time sales in Spain’s online stores.
As for which technology items are the most sought after online by Spaniards, this year’s sales will be split between consumer electronics, mobile telephony and videogames. More specifically, the two hottest products in Spain will be the iPod and the Wii videogame console, according to the daily El Periódico.

Studies in ComScore, Deloitte and Eldia.es
Inform of Forrester
Articles in Businessweek.com, La Vanguardia, Unisys, El Periódico, Baquía.com and The Financial Times

Tens of millions of people around the world participate in these virtual online gaming platforms, which allow them to simultaneously interact with many players. The economic and social repercussions of MMORPGs (Massively Multimedia Online Role-Playing Games) are increasingly important, and they are likely to go beyond the limits of play. A report by the PwC&IESE e-Business Center analyzes this industry by taking an example from it, World of Warcraft, a videogame by Blizzard Entertainment that has amassed over 50% of the market share.

Read (PDF, 1012 Kb)

ICTs bring about three types of transformation in companies: they can reduce transaction costs, contribute to the development of new capabilities at the company, and assist in development of more dynamic and flexible business structures. Under the direction of Sandra Sieber, this study analyzes the scope of these changes in twelve Spanish companies that have successfully adopted their own ICT-based innovations.

Read (PDF, 18 Kb)