INTERNET


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China: The mirage of the ‘new economy’

SHANGHAI | By Andy Xie via Caixin | The current Internet boom and the new economy, centered around social networking, e-commerce and online gaming, has not produced a significant productivity boost for the economy and likely will not in the future. The boom is mostly about redistributing existing demand from offline to online.


The Battle Lines Are Drawn for Alibaba and Tencent

China: The Battle Lines Are Drawn for Alibaba and Tencent

BEIJING | By Zhu Yishi at Caixin | The war between the country’s two Internet giants, Tencent Holding and Alibaba Group, in the mobile Internet arena has escalated. The Internet giants enter the mobile Internet industry with different strengths but a similar determination to come out on top.




SMEs online

UK SMEs missing billions under digital austerity

LONDON | By Victor Jimenez | That the CBI has aired a word in favour of their smaller colleagues reveals the extent to which the real economy strives to free itself from the anti-pro austerity meaningless conflict.


twitter

Twitter’s bird makes its nest in Spain

Like other American tech giants such as Facebook, Google or Microsoft, Spain is the new gate for Twitter’s international expansion… although all of them go to Ireland to pay taxes.


twitter portada

Twitter’s underground economy: are you being followed?

Students and politicians know it: a remarkable number of followers make a Twitter profile shine, look cooler or more credible. And not all of them need to be real. They can be purchased with a simple click: on average, 1,000 followers cost a mere $18. At some webs like BuyTwitterFollowers it costs $77 to buy 5,000 Twitter follower bots. Research Scientist at Barracuda Labs Jason Ding made an interesting study…


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Friday’s chart: Spanish advertising cares about the Internet

Infoadex published this week the advertising investment data in media in Spain during the first quarter of 2012. To most financial analysts, the figures are in line with their estimates about advertisement spending in general television broadcasters and continue registering massive drops in the daily press and radio stations. It surely is the consequence of a depressed domestic market and the country’s economic travails. But on a more contextualising note,…


privacy

Google does not care what the European law says

NEW YORK | “It’s the same Google experience that you’re used to, with the same controls,” said the company about its new privacy rules on Thursday. Really? Announced in January 24 and despite warnings from the EU earlier this week, Google’s highly controversial privacy changes took place on March 1st. European justice commissioner insisted they are in breach of European law. France’s regulator CNIL expressed its deep concern about the…