10 April 2015 – Global Marketing News
Turkish internet users evade ban on Twitter and YouTube
Twitter and YouTube were both temporarily banned in Turkey earlier this week, despite a court ruling having said such blanket bans are unconstitutional.
Turkish netizens seemed to easily get around the ban, however, with many users using VPNs to access the banned social networks.
Users ironically used Twitter to express their outrage at the ban, with the hashtags “bans don’t affect us” and “free social media without censorship” trending on the site.
The main opposition leader also took to Twitter to criticise the ban, saying: “Don’t you realise? The more you prohibit it, the more people tweet.”
The bans were in response to the kidnapping and killing of a high profile Turkish judge, with the government justifying the bans by saying they were imposed to stop images of the event being circulated online.
Naver under investigation for illegally collecting user info
It seems that Google is not the only major search engine to come under scrutiny recently over alleged over-zealous information gathering practices.
Naver, the dominant search engine in South Korea, is now under investigation by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) for collecting a needlessly excessive amount of personal information about its users.
The KCC explained that: “When you download an application to your smartphone, an inquiry screen pops-up asking whether you agree to provide your location information. But it also asks for information which seems to be unnecessary to use the service.”
The KCC will work in partnership with the Korea Internet and Security Agency to punish any companies who are found to be illegally collecting personal information.
Naver is not the only large technology firm under investigation by the Korean authorities, Facebook, one of the most popular social networks in the country, is also under scrutiny.
Vivendi puts in 250 million Euro offer for Dailymotion
The French media group Vivendi has put in a 250 million Euro bid to buy a majority stake in the French video-sharing website Dailymotion.
Dailymotion, which is owned by Orange, started life as a French video-sharing website similar to YouTube but has since spread internationally, with just 20% of its revenue now being generated in France.
Although the site is still growing at a rate of around 30% a year, it is still tiny in comparison to YouTube, which has around 6 times as many monthly views and generates around 50 times more in revenue.
Orange is seeking a partner to help it grow Dailymotion internationally, saying that they “don’t think the future of Dailymotion is French”.
Yahoo had previously expressed an interested in acquiring a majority share of Dailymotion for 300 million US dollars, but this was blocked by the then-Minister of Industry.
The Chinese telecoms and media company PCCW had since been looking like a likely partner, but has now withdrawn its offer to buy a 49% stake in Dailymotion.
Global mobile ecommerce trends revealed
Criteo has published a report on how the global mobile ecommerce market is evolving.
The report analysed 160 billion US dollars worth of global ecommerce sales and found that smartphones have overtaken tablets as users’ preferred mobile ecommerce device.
It put this trend down to customers’ increasing confidence using smartphones to buy products online, as well as the leveling out of tablet uptake while smartphone uptake continues to rise.
The report found that mobile ecommerce now accounts that more than half of all ecommerce sales in South Korea and Japan, with the global average creeping up to 40%.
Mobile ecommerce accounts also for one third of all ecommerce sales in the US, a growth of 10% in the last 3 months alone.
WeChat’s selfie app for passport photos banned by Chinese authorities
And finally, the WeChat selfie app Xingfu has been banned as a method of taking and submitting passport photos by the Chinese authorities, just 2 days after its launch.
The app allowed users to take a selfie and upload it to China Telecom, where it could then be forwarded to police centres that process passports.
Concerns were raised, however, about the fact that the app allows users to edit images before sending them off, meaning that people could change their appearance which is contrary to passport rules.
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