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I remember the day when the web changed forever for me. It was at the end of the dot com boom in 2001 and I was about to sell my business to a large global corp.

Working during the dot com boom had been like riding on a huge wave of growth and optimism and then one day suddenly it all stopped. I got the call to say that along with a couple of dozen other purchases ‘Large Global’ had decided not to buy, which in their case was unheard of.

There is no question that good quality content drives the Internet; however when you are creating content for your business or website, it is important to remember that consumers are looking for information that solves a problem or question, not to be blasted with sales pitches.

Five years ago yesterday, Steve Jobs famously revealed the iPhone. Through creating the iPhone and subsequently the iOS platform, Apple fuelled a movement of not only how we would come to use our mobile devices in the future, but also change what we would use them for. The rest, as they say, is history.

First I would like to wish everybody a happy New Year. A new year with all sorts up its sleeve I’m sure!

For anyone that doesn’t know I am rather partial to a cream tea breakfast. This has developed into a needless obsession with jam. Yes, I love scones and jam. I rather sadly take great pride in selecting the finest jam I can get my hands on and then enjoy the delights of a beautiful scone filled with fresh clotted cream and jam.

In light of the news this morning, it occurred to me that over recent months karma appears to be well and truly catching up with the world’s most notorious dictators.

2006 saw the death and execution of Saddam Hussein after being found guilty of crimes against humanity. The next to drop was none other than the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, or Osama bin Laden to his friends. The Al-Qaeda founder was stopped in his tracks early in May 2011 by the US special force.

With news that Facebook comments are now going to be fully crawlable by the Google ‘bots, we can make the assumption that they are not only interested in knowing more about us, they are systemically creating a contingency plan for Google+ if it is to reach the successful heights of Facebook. 

Marketing in social media is no easy thing as you are effectively treading into the world of the consumer, a scary and volatile place indeed, not to mention a place where a relationship can go sour in the time it takes to update a status or send a tweet. Once being shown the door it is quite safe to assume that you are not welcome back.

Early this morning Twitter delivered the trending topic ‘Techcrunch as we know it’, you can find out more about it here. It’s a very sad day indeed for the tech community and will no doubt add concern to other successful companies that have found themselves snapped up by other media conglomerates only to be later picked apart and merged into the abyss  of a belching behemoth.

It seems like all the tech blog sites are telling us smartphone adoption is currently experiencing exponential growth. No surprising considering the likes of an iPhone of HTC Android are becoming the de facto in mobile ownership.

The task of converting almost 800 million Facebooker’s into active Google+ users is going to be a battle for Google. Facebook has become so deeply ingrained into our everyday lives that many of us (marketing types and not) find it hard to imagine a time before it.