Global Marketing News – 4th July 2016
Facebook wins appeal in Belgium, can resume data collection
Facebook has won an appeal against Belgium’s privacy watchdog, allowing it to resume collecting data from non-Facebook users in the country.
A Belgian court had previously ordered Facebook to stop tracking users who were not members of the social network.
The order related to a Facebook cookie that tracked the activities of anyone who visited the website, regardless of whether the person was logged in to the social network or not.
The cookie gathered information such as which pages the user visited and how long they stayed on each page.
Following that ruling, Facebook had had to stop using the cookie and block access to its website to Belgians who were not logged in to the social network.
Now that this ruling has been overturned, it will be able to resume tracking the internet activities of non-users.
A Facebook spokesperson commented on the result, saying: “We are pleased with the court’s decision and look forward to bringing all our services back online for people in Belgium.”
The Belgian privacy watchdog said that they were “not happy” with the decision and that it planned to launch an appeal and investigate all aspects of Facebook’s business, not just its data tracking cookie.
Twitter rolls out location tagging feature
Twitter has teamed up with Foursquare to roll out a new location feature to its iOS users.
The new feature allows users to tag themselves at a specific location, such as a museum, business or sports stadium.
Whilst it had been possible for users to tag themselves in a particular city before, this is first time that users can tag themselves on a more local level.
It is also the first time that this location information will appear on timelines and profiles. Previously, the location tag had only been visible if you clicked onto an individual tweet.
Clicking on the location tag brings up a location feed, which contains all tweets and media that has been tagged at that location, with a map at the top of the page to show where the place is located.
Twitter hopes that by improving its location-based search, it will help to create location-based Moments, which will be useful for understanding what’s happening at particular events, including breaking news stories.
It also hopes that it will encourage more people to tweet, as it will amplify users’ voices. It could also be used in the future for location-based ad targeting.
New government-run social network set up in Uzbekistan
A new government-run social network has been set up in Uzbekistan.
Davra is the 38th state-run social networking site to have been set up by the Uzbek government, as it tries to clamp down on foreign sites by launching its own domestic alternatives.
However, many fear that the government-run sites are being set up to spy on users’ online activities and to try to spot potential dissidents against the government regime.
Uzbekistan was classed as “Not Free” by a recent report by Freedom House, which concluded that government-run telecoms companies were frequently “blocking access to the websites of foreign news organisations, human rights groups, and exile publications”.
Uzbekistan has an internet penetration rate of around 40%, equivalent to almost 13 million people.
Nike sales increase by 51% in last year
And finally, the sports footwear maker Nike has revealed that it has seen its sales increase by an impressive 51% in the last financial year.
Nike is thought to have sold 1.5 billion US dollars’ worth of those goods online.
This has been attributed to the recent launch of its Nike+ mobile app, as well as the fact it has launched ecommerce sites in 20 new countries over the last year.
A spokesperson from Nike commented on the company’s digital success, saying: “The investments we make in mobile and on-line experiences are paying off”.
Webcertain’s global marketing news bulletins are daily 5-minute videos, providing marketers with the latest international digital marketing news in an easy-to-digest format.
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