10 February 2015 – Global marketing news
Google must improve its privacy policy, says Britain’s ICO
Britain’s data protection regulator has ruled that Google’s privacy policy is too vague and needs changing, as reported by Reuters.
Google’s privacy policy has been under scrutiny since March 2012 when the search giant made the decision to consolidate its 70 privacy policies into one. Its practice of collecting data from Gmail, YouTube and Google+ users was also found to be against EU regulations.
An investigation by Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that Google’s privacy policy is too vague, and said that Google is now required to sign a formal undertaking to make changes before the 30th June, with the search engine having 2 more years after that to take further steps.
The ICO has not imposed a fine on Google, however, unlike regulators in France and Spain, which have fined the search engine 150,000 Euros and 900,000 Euros respectively.
Twitter adds over 20 new location options
Twitter has added 22 new countries as location options, as reported by Mashable.
The newly added countries include Iran, Cuba, Albania, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka.
Users from these countries will now be able to improve their account security by enabling two-factor authentication, and developers from these countries will also now be able to access Twitter’s developers’ platform.
Oddly, however, users from Iran and Cuba will not be able to register their mobile phone numbers on the site, meaning that they will remain unable to use the two-factor authentication or developers’ platform.
2 billion people now use social media
Over 2 billion people worldwide are now active users of social media, according to research by We Are Social.
This is a 12% increase in the number of active social media users from this time last year.
People from Argentina and the Philippines spent the most time online, spending an average of over 4 hours a day online, compared to the global average of 2 and a half hours.
Facebook retained its title as the most popular social network globally, with QZone coming top in China and VK coming top in Russia.
The report revealed that the popularity of mobile social services such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and WeChat increased significantly, showing that online behaviour overall is becoming more mobile-centric.
The report predicted that social media popularity would continue its growth throughout 2015, predicting that one third of the global population would be active on social media by the end of the year.
Baidu’s search app grew rapidly in 2014
A report published by Baidu has revealed that its mobile search app saw significant growth in 2014.
136 million mobile users searched on Baidu using their mobile devices in December 2014, up 105% on the previous year.
This increase was particularly steep for certain topics, with queries about online education, movie tickets and local services all seeing increases of over 140%.
The report also revealed that Baidu’s voice-based and picture-based search options soared in popularity in the last year.
Baidu’s dominance came despite competitors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Qihoo attempting to break into the mobile search market with their own apps.
Baidu is the most popular search engine in China, with an 80% share of the mobile search market and handling over 1 billion mobile searches every day.
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