While Chrome 13, the browser’s latest incarnation, is one of the fastest web browser out there in the market (how fast depends on whether you’re working from a Mac or Windows system), Statcounter doesn’t exactly match the statistics that can be found elsewhere.

For example, according to NetMarketShare, IE is far and away the most popular browser out there holding 54 per cent of the market. Firefox and Chrome are neck and neck with only a percentage point separating them (Firefox holds 20 per cent) while Safari is far behind with only 5 per cent.

The stats acquired by W3Counter has less separating the top three browsers, but the story remains the same. IE holds a 29 per cent market share, Chrome is second with 26 per cent and Firefox just behind them with 24 per cent. Chrome 18 is the most popular web browser holding 22 per cent of the market, but IE still has three different versions of its browser in the top ten.  
Going by our own site, Chrome is the most popular browser used (37 per cent) with Firefox in second place (24 per cent) and Safari and IE third and fourth respectively (15 per cent and 14 per cent respectively). While one website doesn’t imply that these are general trends, we have noticed that Chrome is a browser that’s on the up, converting more new users as time passes.

But on the up doesn’t mean popular and depending on where you look, as the examples given above illustrate, Chrome is either neck and neck with Firefox, or is shadowed by IE’s dominance because it’s made standard with every Windows desktop and laptop in existence.

Chrome could very well be the most popular browser out there, but until there’s more evidence to confirm this, it’s best to take such claims with a grain of salt.

A new report from SEO and PPC consulting and technology firm Greenlight suggests that a significant proportion of users aren’t warming to Facebook advertisements with 44 per cent of users saying that they’ve never clicked on an advertisement or sponsored listing on Facebook. To add further worry, this was the most popular answer of those choices available.

Only three per cent of users surveyed said that they clicked on them regularly while 10 per cent said that they do it often. With 31 per cent saying that they rarely click on Facebook advertisements. This 44 per cent figure becomes more worrying when you realise that in that survey, 13 per cent of those surveyed said that they don’t use Facebook so you could say that roughly half of users never click on advertisements.

Cause for concern?

This report come at what is a crucial time for Facebook with the company now trading on the stock exchange and their share price performing quite steadily. But is this cause for concern? Well, the idea that almost half of users ignore advertisements isn’t encouraging to say the least.

Also, Facebook and Twitter were the two sites that users would be least likely to trust their personal data with. This isn’t particularly helpful when you consider the fact that Facebook uses personal data to better target users and present ads that the user would be more likely to engage with.

Yet advertising on Facebook has become the norm for brands and an integral part of any strategy due to the amount of users there. It’s very difficult to ignore a potential audience of 900 million.

Also, despite the large percentage that said they never clicked on an advertisement, another report from TBG Digital says that sponsored stories bring a 32 per cent decrease in cost per sales and an increase in clickthrough rate (CTR). As well as that, in Greenlight’s experience, when a brand runs a traditional ad format alongside a sponsored story format, there’s usually a 30 per cent increase in conversion rates.

The findings are part of Greenlight’s global Search & Social Survey (2011-2012) where 500 people – ranging from professionals, students and the unemployed – were asked how they engage with online advertising, search engines, and social networks. The full report can be found here.

There are hundreds of video sharing sites out there, but since the early days, YouTube has been head and shoulders above the competition and it was that dominance that persuaded Google to buy the site for $1.5 billion; many would argue that it has been the company’s best play in the social space over the years. Some of the stats from Google are truly amazing:

Today 72 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute. Like many 7 year olds around the world, we’re growing up so fast! In other words, every single minute you now upload three whole days worth of video instead of two. That’s 61 Royal Wedding Ceremonies, 841 Bad Romances, and 1,194 Nyan Cats.

We’ve come along way in the past 7 years. What started as a handful of videos shared among friends has transformed into a global platform delivering the next generation of channels to anyone, anywhere, and on any device. This last year was especially big for us. We helped bring more great channels to YouTube and we redesigned the site, making it easier for you to discover, watch and subscribe to the videos you love. And all 800 million of you all over the world have shown us we’re on the right track by increasing subscriptions 50% and watching over 3 billion hours a month.

The only slight blot on their copy book has been the ability to find an ad format that turns the huge traffic into a cash cow for Google and ongoing copyright battles with studios all over the world. They have achieved a huge amount in the last seven years though and we expect them to grow from strength to strength.

These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the world of technology and social media, offering their thoughts and views regarding the biggest stories of the week.

You won’t make it through them all in one sitting but it’ll bring you up to speed with this week’s happenings. So just sit back, grab a coffee and enjoy.

- Can Facebook stay cool now that it’s an enormous public corporation?
- The ultimate list of reasons why you need search engine optimization (SEO).
- Why people post their innermost thoughts on social media.
- Why sharing is the new search [Video].
- Pinterest set to announce new funding at $1 billion valuation, with an eye on ecommerce.
- Disassembling Android: Chinks in Google’s mobile armor.
- At your service: how businesses are taking care of their customers online.
- Twitter and Reddit as crowdsourced fact-checking engines.
- Twitter breaks into TV dollars with ESPN deal.
- What if “the social graph” isn’t revolutionary but merely social graph 1.0?

- Facebook vs. Google: The epic battle.
- Can the Internet ever be an intimate social space?
- Spotting the next big thing: Why emotions are big business.
- Facebook has got too many friends and not enough customers.
- What’s the next Instagram? Video sharing apps are fighting to become the next big thing.

- These are the technical reasons why Facebook’s iOS app is so terrible.
- …and its aggressive approach to solving its mobile problems.
-  The top 10 tech startups best positioned to strike engineering gold.
- Mobile – Facebook and Google can’t live with it and they can’t live without it.
- The business benefits of Twitter.

- The paradox of Twitter.
- Subscription commerce – the next hot trend in ecommerce.
- 14 tips for making the most of the tablet for your business.
- Why Facebook needs to take marketing seriously.
- Four years of app store: Developers weigh in on search, discovery and curation.

On Simply Viral this week, what’s more refreshing than a cool drink on a hot summer’s day? A giant drinks machine which acts as a cool, refreshing shower for beachgoers in Rio de Janeiro.

While I’m not sure I like the fact that this campaign has been launched with the focus that only ‘women’ get embarassed by others hearing them in the toilet, it’s a pretty creative idea nonetheless. The idea behind the app is to raise awareness of the fact that over 219,000,000 litres of water are wasted each year, needlessly, by people flushing the toilet to disguise the….um….sounds coming from the bathroom.

But not only is this app from Thirst Global Awareness aimed to get people thinking about it, but it actually hopes to eradicate the needless waste of water through an iPhone app that replicates the sound for you, doing away with needless flushes.

You can choose which particular sound you want to play within the app if you want to get a bit more inventive than flushing water. And should you want to, the app is available to download here.

I like to think that the app is more than just a quirky marketing stunt and that it has actually been executed with the intention of eradicating unnecessary waste. Otherwise there will just be a whole load of unnecessary downloading going on, which isn’t actually conducive to energy saving. Just saying.

The biggest thing to take from this is that PayPal accounts for around 60 per cent of all web transactions or 66,059 total calls made during the test period. Its closest rival was authorise.net which accounted for 16 per cent of all calls or 17,991 total calls. Google Checkout came fifth with 3,407 calls made during the test period. This isn’t entirely surprising considering that PayPal experienced a huge increase in payments during 2011, jumping from $750 million to $4 billion in one year.

It should be mentioned that, like all studies, this is a glimpse of what is a large market so the findings should be taken with a small pinch of salt. Other notable details include Google being the fastest when it came to average transaction time at 0.26 seconds (PayPal was 10th with 1.45 seconds) and in the worst case scenario, you could be left waiting for 92.4 seconds to process a payment.

The findings were compiled with data derived from 113.626 calls and was taken between the period of January 13th to April 20th. The data was pulled from all New Relic customers with apps making external calls to payment gateways; the top 15 gateways featured averaged at least four calls per day.

Facebook

901 million monthly active users.
Most popular page: Facebook, with 66,708,318 fans.
300 million photos uploaded per day, as of March 31 2012.
500 million active users on mobile.
Most popular brand page: Coca Cola with 41,906,911 fans.
Brazil is the busiest Facebook audience with 76.7% of the online active audience visiting Facebook in March 2012.
Most popular app: Socialcam, with 51,500,000 users.

Twitter

1 million new Twitter accounts created every day.
10 million users in the UK.
107.7 million users in the U.S.
165 million users (latest figures released October 2011).
50% of these access Twitter on mobile.
27% of users tweeted during a three month period.
Brazil and Japan are the second and third largest markets respectively.
The Netherlands is the most active market, with 33% of Twitter users updating their accounts in a three month period.

Instagram

One new user joins Instagram every second.
Approximately 58 photos uploaded each second.
Thirty million registered users.
81 comments left on photos per second.
27 million registered users.

Pinterest

11,700,000 monthly active users.
Estimated that 97% of Pinterest users are women.
35-44 is the most popular age range, accounting for 29% of users.
Pinterest accounted for 3.6% of total referral traffic (as of January 2011).
A case study from Boticca found that Pinterest customers spend an average of $180, compared to $85 for Facebook users.

LinkedIn

Over 161 million members across 200 countries and territories.
Over 2 million LinkedIn company pages.
22% of unique visits come via mobile.
71% of college graduates in the U.S. have secured work through LinkedIn.
Approximately 2,300,000,000 page views per month.
51% of users are male.
Two new users sign up every second.

Foursquare

Over 20 million users (note – these are not classified as ‘active’ users).
Over 2 billion checkins As of April 2012.
50% of users are in the U.S.
31% of mobile users active on social networks use Foursquare.
60% of users are male.

Google Plus

Over 90 million users, of whom 60% log in daily and 80% log in weekly.
Google Plus drove 0.24% of total referral traffic in January 2012.
PC users spend an average of three minutes per month on Google Plus.
Britney Spears has the most popular profile with 3,125,326 followers.
69.4% of users are male.
Over 50 million users are using Google Plus enhanced products each day.

Flipboard

73% of users are male.
Users in the U.S. have an average income of $106k.
As of September 2011, 3.5 million downloads of the app.
As of September 2011, 11.4 million ‘flips’ daily.

You won’t expect to see these vending machines coming to every street corner or shopping center any time soon, but you can see how they work well in terms of engaging with the consumers for these particular products. One campaign comes from China and the other from Argentina and both have been well thought out.

Corelle China

This plate brand wanted to highlight that their products were 100 per cent chip free, but nobody seemed to be believing them so they placed vending machines with the plates for sale in prominent city center locations. There is no better way of highlighting the strengths of the product than this.

Rugby Beer Machine

This beer company was having a tough time getting cut through among rugby fans in a country obsessed with football so they decided to create an innovative way of getting your beer out of the machine. Although it looks fun, we’re not sure this would get approved over here from a health and safety perspective.

According to AdAge, Amazon is pitching ads on the device’s welcome screen and telling ad agencies execs that they must spend around $600,000 for any package that includes such an ad. The campaigns would run for two months and would also include inventory from Amazon’s “Special Offers” product. For $1 million, advertisers would get more ad inventory and be included in Amazon’s public-relations push, according to two different agency executives.

This isn’t the first time that Amazon has introduced ads on their Kindle range. Other models display full-screen ads that the company calles ‘sponsored screensavers’ when users power down the device. Whether ads on the Kindle Fire will appear in a similar way when the devices are powered on or woken up is unclear.

However, the agencies that have spoken to AdAge had declined Amazon’s offer for several reasons. For one, Amazon isn’t guaranteeing the number of devices that the welcome-screen ads will reach, telling agencies that it hasn’t decided whether the ads will start popping up on devices that have already been purchased or just on new devices.

Also, disrupting the consumer experience is a concern, especially if the ads start showing up on devices that have already been purchased. The idea of turning on your Kindle Fire and finding that ads now appear on your device could upset users who are used to an ad-free experience.

Despite this, the ad pitch is still very much in its infancy and if Amazon decide that the ads will only appear in new devices, they could take a different approach and sell cheaper Kindle Fire devices with ads while leaving the more expensive devices ad-free. The second generation Kindle Fire is expected to be released later this year so it could be a case that we’ll see two similar devices being sold when winter arrives.

Once the car drives past the building, the Fiat begins to follow the car for a few more shots before it mysteriously disappears into thin air. Chances are the car drove into the car park located beside it or took the road to its right. The street view shot changes from one side of the road to the other so it’s possible that the car drove off at this point.

If Fiat’s car was driving past Volkswagen HQ the same time Google did, you could pass it off as coincidence, but the fact that it was parked at the front door (you have to wonder how long it was parked there before anyone at Volkswagen noticed) means that they knew Google’s street view car was going to arrive that day.

Fiat’s Swedish HQ is located 45 minutes away from Volkswagen’s so if it caught wind that Google would be capturing the streets of Södertälje, it wouldn’t have taken too long to take advantage, but Volkswagen will have to live with the fact that Street View has made its HQ a place to show off Fiat’s new model. That is until Google updates its Street View images which it does every year or two years.

[Via Yahoo! news]

Twitter is now launching a number of experimental features on the site with tailored suggestions. Taking place in a number of countries around the world, certain users will be able to see a list of accounts that Twitter will recommend you can follow. The tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem. The reason that Twitter is able to do the latter is because the site receives visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn already do.

So by identifying accounts that are frequently followed by those who visit popular sites, Twitter can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t want your Twitter activity to be tracked, you can disable it through the second experimental feature: A personalisation section in account settings. Users will be able to tailor Twitter based on their recent website visits and disable these features, which in turn will stop the collection of information for tailored suggestions.

The director of growth and international at Twitter Othman Laraki wrote on Twitter’s blog that: “Today’s experiment in providing tailored suggestions lets novice users go from zero to pro faster and more easily than ever before…we hope this experiment immediately makes Twitter yours, and you can start getting closer to the things you care about with a few clicks or taps.” The last line hints that this feature will also be extended to Twitter’s official app on iOS and Android devices over time.

Also, Twitter recently announced its support for the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Track (DNT) and said that those who have DNT enabled in their browsers will not have any personal information collected and won’t see any tailored suggestion.

As soon as you spot somebody illegally parked in the street, you fire up the app and take a picture of the offender. The app then uses your IP address, taps into a database of license plates and creates an online banner featuring the illegally parked car. The really smart part is that the car is turned into a banner advert that blocks users screens completely and is only shown to people in the local area using their IP address to target them. To remove the offensive banner from the screen, you are requested to share the picture of the car with your social network.

The thinking behind this is absolutely brilliant because it guilts people into thinking about their actions and because the campaign targets such a local area, there’s a very good chance that the offenders will see the ads. Possibly the smartest and best thought out campaign we’ve seen this year.

This isn’t just 52 per cent of people that perceive paywalls negatively, or choose not to return to the site, but over half of visitors that see a paywall IMMEDIATELY leave the site. This shows that there is a huge risk associated with introducing a paywall into your content, and how far away this is from entering the mainstream as a viable way to monetise your site. It is a long way off from competing with traditional paid subscriptions. Furthermore, a quarter of respondents claim they have a negative view of the company after seeing a paywall.

Hopefully, what this study points to is that there is a lot more work to be done in how publishers charge for their content, exposing the limitations of a paywall model. But this certainly isn’t stopping sites from putting one up anyway. Canada’s Globe and Mail are the most recent publisher to move to a paywall model.

For a group of young people in Silicon Valley working for Facebook, that is about to happen today and what did they choose to do? Work all night and make their company even better. Facebook gathered all their staff for an all night hackathon to celebrate their upcoming IPO by building new products for the site and it shows the one reason why I would invest in the company for the long term: The culture.

Despite all the praise that has been heaped onto Mark Zuckerberg for being a genius and connecting people all over the world, it is his work on forming a unique culture at the company that impresses me most. See trends come and go, products go out of fashion, markets change, technology improves, but the one thing that makes sure you will be around for a long time is culture.

Google has a great culture. Like it or loath it, Apple has a culture that works. People are totally bought into the vision of the founder and that is what keeps them up working all night and on the one day they should be kicking back with a beer. Mark Zuckerberg has convinced them that they are changing the world and people live for stuff like that far more than they do for money.

I personally wouldn’t invest today because I think the markets are a little wild and the IPO overhyped (I’d still expect the stock to fly today) but I would put my money in to the company over the next 10 years. The culture is in place for them to deliver time and time again and to grow the company in to something special. Culture is about making people love coming in to work rather than dreading it. It’s probably the hardest thing you have to nail as a company and Facebook have it hands down which is why they are around for the long term. You only have to read this quote from one of their engineers said over on his account to see what a unique company it is…

Facebook’s 31st hackathon will kick off from this spot in just a few hours. Thousands of people from across the company will stay up all night long to build brand new Facebook products. Then, at 6:30AM, Mark will open the NASDAQ from this spot and Facebook will begin trading on the public stock markets. What should we work on tonight? What features or fixes would you most like to see in Facebook?

It’s a simple code printed on to the side of a Guinness glass, but the real beauty is that it only works when you fill it up with beer. Not just any beer either because as the creative says if you fill it with a normal larger or any other inferior product, it just won’t scan.

Try and scan it when the glass is empty and it won’t work either. The code itself takes you through to special Guinness content on Facebook and Twitter, giving you the ability to download vouchers and to invite your friends along to the bar where you are at.

Don’t expect QR codes to start taking off in a big way just because of this campaign, but it is refreshing to see a campaign where the product is put at the very center of the marketing. If you want to see how it works have a look at the handy chart that Guinness have produced for you here although we are not sure what Guinness drinking purists here in Ireland will think about this new design.