The Skinny…A daily double-shot of digital goodness.

The Skinny is a synopsis of current digital marketing and social media trends. The Skinny’s mission is to deliver the buzz
to you in a few minutes or less so you can be in the know and focus on what matters most- your work.

Facebook Acquires Snaptu for $70 Million

 Facebook has acquired the Israeli startup Snaptu, a creator of simple mobile
applications for feature phones.
 Snaptu’s technology is designed to bring web service such as FB, Twitter
and LinkedIn to almost any phone through a series of applications it has
designed.
 Snaptu’s Java-based apps replicate many of the features of smartphone
apps but make them accessible to the millions of people that don’t own a
smartphone.
 Facebook chose Snaptu because its technology works on more than 2,500
different mobile devices.
 Snaptu said in a blog post “…Joining Facebook means we can make an
even bigger impact on the world.”
 Snaptu was founded in 2007 as Moblica and has raised funding from
Sequioa Capital and Carmel Ventures.
Happy Birthday Twitter

 Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the very first tweet five years ago.

 Since then, 30 billion 140-character-or-less Tweets have been sent which

catapulted Twitter into the upper echelon of consumer web companies.

 Twitter has been heavily criticized by the mainstream media in the past, but

today Twitter usually plays a major role in world events since it serves as a

source for said media.

 Some estimates peg Twitter’s 2011 revenue at $150 million since its

advertising platform continues to evolve.

 What role will Twitter play in digital communication in the next 5 years?
France Fines Google $142,000 for Privacy Violations

 France’s data privacy regulator has fined Google €100,000 ($141,670 USD) for

gathering data from private Wi-Fi networks while collecting imagery for Google Street

View.

 In August 2010 French police stopped a Google Street View car under orders of

National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) to inspect whether

Google was still collecting Wi-Fi data.

 Now, CNIL said that Google has pledged to erase the data it had collected, but it

found “that Google has not refrained from using the data identifying Wi-Fi access

points of individuals without their knowledge,” which prompted the fine.

 In July 2010, Google said that its “cars will no longer collect any Wi-Fi information at

all,” but the fallout from the incident is still a reminder of how unpleasant the

consequences of not respecting users’ privacy can be.

Microsoft Bing’s Giant Leap

 YouTube is still the reigning king of online video, but Microsoft has

very quietly jumped to the number 2 spot in online video watching.

 The leap from number 7 to number 2 only took a month.

 Bing is now ahead of rivals Hulu, Yahoo, Turner, AOL, and a few

others.

 In Comscore’s latest set of online video rankings, YouTube retains its

immense lead over everyone else with 141.1 million unique viewers.

 Microsoft leapfrogged YouTube’s competition with 48.8 million views.

Yahoo followed with 46.7 million viewers, and Facebook was close

with nearly 46.7 million viewers.

“The sole purpose of business is service. The sole purpose of advertising is explaining the service which business renders. “
–Leo Burnett