Almost every status update on Facebook can be interpreted as an indication of happiness (or otherwise) of the user. Since Facebook has over 300 million users and 40 million status updates, there’s a whole load of data about people’s wellbeing.

As part of a new prototype application called Gross National Happiness, Facebook engineers have tried to aggregate this data in order to gauge national happiness in the US.

As reported over on TechCrunch, here’s how the application’s developers describe it:

“…Grouped together, the status updates of millions of Facebook users from every demographic in the nation can work together to say something about how we as a nation are doing. Measuring how well-off, happy or satisfied with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement. This graph represents how “happy” the nation is doing from day to day, by looking at how many positive and negative words people are using when they update their status: When people are using more positive words (or fewer negative words) in their status updates than usual, that day is happier than usual!”

Here’s a screen grab from the graph that shows the peaks and troughs of happiness.

It’s possible to alter the view by using the slide bar along the bottom, By dragging it sideways you can see how happiness changes from hour to hour.

So what’s the big takeaway? Well perhaps unsurprisingly, happiness is lowest on Mondays and it then climbs throughout the week, peaking at the end of the weekend. Public holidays also generate large peaks.

For this year there is a drop around the start of June, which TechCrunch interprets as being associated with the death of Michael Jackson. Well, I know it almost took down the Internet, but that seems a bit extreme!

Have a look at the Gross National Happiness and let us know what you think!

Its been a few months since we talked about Phorm. The online advertising firm has raised controversy due to its technology which allows advertisers to target users based on their online behaviour.

Unsurprisingly, Phorm has met considerable resistance from online privacy campaigners, including the ‘father of the Internet’ Tim Berners-Lee. Big name websites such as Amazon and Wikipedia have also pledged to block Phorm from gather user data from them.

Whilst Phorm has to a certain extent faced down legal threats to its operation, the biggest challenge has been to convince an ISP partner to get involved. For the system to work, Phorm needs to install its equipment into the ISP data centre. No ISP, no Phorm.

Although Phorm convinced BT to run an early trial, it has since lost support from previously willing ISP partners. BT pulled the Phorm contract earlier this year, and TalkTalk has cut ties with the company. Virgin “continues to evaluate” the system.

For this reason, Phorm says that the UK was now just a “medium to long-term prospect”, adding that it will “deploy in other markets first”. The country which has been most open to this form of behavioural targeting is Korea, where Phorm is partnering with the largest ISP ‘KT’.

Nevertheless, Phorm has said that they will keep their UK operation running despite the challenges it faces here.

“Phorm remains fully committed to its operations in the UK. We continue to be active in the market and are confident of the opportunities domestically. Meanwhile, Phorm is also making substantial operational progress internationally”, it said in a statement.

Back in September Phorm released an update to its trading figures, which show that its had incurred a pre-tax loss of $15m for the first half of this year. This is a big drop in the same period last year, when it lost $24.7m.

What do you think of behavioural targeting? Are you willing to give up some privacy in order to get tailored advertising messages? Have we heard the last of Phorm? Leave us a comment below.

Have you ever reached a particular website and found it really hard to find the information you were looking for? Have you ever needed a bit of help from friends to work the checkout on a website? What about letting others know how great you think a site is – did you want share your feedback with other visitors?

Thanks to the Google Sidewiki, you can now do all of these, and much more besides. And you can also read the notes and comments left by other visitors to a website.

Launched a few weeks ago, the Sidewiki lets you add helpful information alongside any webpage. The Sidewiki looks like a browser sidebar, where you can read what others have said, and also write your own entries.

If a webpage has lots of entries they are ranked according to lots of ’signals’ which mean that those considered most useful stay at the top. The ranking system takes into account feedback that you and other users have given, and previous entries you’ve made. The entries are ranked in real time. You can read more about how they’re ranked on the Google Research Blog.

If you make a comment about a particular web page, the Google sidewiki will also display those comments against webpages that contain the same snippet of text.

Let’s say you were leaving comments about Gordon Brown’s party conference speech, on a webpage that actually included the text of the speech: your comments made on one website could also be visible on other websites displaying the same bit of Brown’s speech.

The sidewiki also pulls in posts from blogs and other websites that discuss the particular webpage, so you can see what other people are saying about it even if their comments reside elsewhere.

At the moment the Sidewiki is a feature on the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

If you’re interested you start using the Sidewiki by visiting google.com/sidewiki to download Google Toolbar with Sidewiki.

If you’re a website builder, this feedback is a potential goldmine of information. We’re going to be able to get live feedback from our website visitors about what they think of our website. They will hopefully point out where they think we’re going wrong, and what we need to do to fix it.

Do you think it’s a good idea to allow anyone to comment on any webpage? Would you be happy to read the feedback on your site? As an experienced web user, are you happy to share your feedback? Leave a comment below!

Did you know that there are 1.6 billion people in the world connected to the Internet? And did you also know that there are more than 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute?

If you’re a lover of these sorts of Internet facts and statistics then today is a happy day.

I seem to spend half my day hunting round for some stats to back up what I’m trying to say. And the other half trying to remember and find the Internet facts that I read about last week.

Thanks once again to Google, all these facts and statistics can now be found in one place. They’ve launched a microsite that brings together all the Internet stats and insights for the UK.

The statistics are collected from a load of other third party research organisations. They cover lots of different areas, but are strongest in broad brush economic trends and media insights. They also look at consumer behaviour and the influence of technology, and how that changes over time.

Here some interesting snippets that we’ve grabbed:

“Over 60% of online businesses are confident about the future.” (NMA, March 2009)

“In the UK, searches for “discount vouchers” grew by 94% between November and December 2008” (Google Insights for Search)

“By election day, fully 25% of people who pulled the lever for Obama were already connected to his campaign electronically.” (New York Magazine, January 2009)

“More than 1 in 5 adults in the UK, FR, IT, & US with Internet access had watched longer videos such as feature films or full-length TV shows online.” (Ofcom, December 2008)

“In May 2009, Google had over 4.0 billion search page views in the UK.” (Nielsen Netview, May 2009)

Have a look at the site and let us know which fact you found most interesting.

In a recent blog post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that for the first time the service is starting to turn a profit. This is ahead of Facebook’s self imposed target of being cash-flow-positive by 2010.

Of course, many have argued that with such a large number of users Facebook could hardly fail to successfully monetise their service. Although it has come in for a lot of criticism, Facebook’s business model of selling advertising against user profiles has meant that it has managed to turn users into dollars.

And with the financial news comes that of user numbers, which have now reached 300,000,000. That’s a three fold increase on this time last year.

Zuckerberg said that the financial news meant that Facebook was now a serious independent Internet company. And with such a large and fast growing userbase, it is being seen as a rival to other big Internet brands such as Google and Yahoo.

And he also has much bigger plans for the userbase: 300million, he said, was just a starting point.

Last month of course we reported on the news that Facebook is now the fastest growing search engine. And the site is also currently testing an online payment method.

Are you a fan of Facebook? Have you tried advertising your website using their self serve advertising system? Have you integrated your WebEden website with Facebook? Leave us a comment below

Can you remember the first time you watched a video clip on YouTube? For many of us, it was a web funny of someone falling off a bike / having an accident / singing with their teeth out…

Many of these become incredibly popular and end up getting watched millions of times, despite never appearing on television. The clips ‘go viral’ as links are emailed from person to person, since people are keen to share the humour.

The popularity of these user-generated clips isn’t new. TV shows like ‘You’ve Been Framed’ have been cashing in on home video calamities for the best part of 20 years.

I was always amazed that ITV managed to cobble together enough clips to fill half an hour of TV every week. Until I realized, that is, that every person sending in a video received £250 if the video ended up in the show.

Now YouTube has recognised the revenue potential of user generated clips like these, and - just like the TV show – want to reward people if their video becomes popular. They’ve decided to copy the ‘You’ve Been Framed’ model and pay users for the video clips they upload.

Users who upload a successful video clip will receive an email that includes a link saying ‘enable revenue sharing’, next to the video on the watch page. Once the user agrees to participate in the revenue sharing process, Google will place ads around the video, and pay a percentage of the money generated into the users’ Google Adsense account.

“To determine whether a particular video is eligible for monetisation, we look at factors like the number of views, the video’s virality and compliance with the YouTube Terms of Service,” said YouTube product manager Shenaz Zack.

There has already been plenty of news about how Google wants to forge closer links with TV production companies. But this shows that even successful individuals can get rewards from producing popular content.

Ever fallen into a hedge on camera? Fancy trying to cash in on it? Do you think that paying content producers is the way forward for YouTube? Leave us a comment below.

According to Accredited Supplier (a B2B research firm), more than 1 in 10 small businesses in the UK intend to stop using Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook. They’re looking to make the switch to ‘cloud computing’ versions such as Google Docs and Gmail.

Accredited Supplier polled 1,400 Microsoft customers and found that 13% plan to swap to Google Apps within the next 12 months, and another 22% are undecided. Just 36% say that they are definitely staying with Microsoft.

Following Google’s recent ‘Go Google’ campaign that targeted small business, Google say that around 1.75m businesses are using its applications. That of course is just a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of millions using Microsoft Office.

The main difference between traditional Microsoft office and Google Docs are that whilst you need to install MS Office onto every PC in your company, Google Docs can be accessed by any computer connected to the Internet.

Why Cloud Computing and Google Docs are good

It brings lots of benefits. To start with there is the cost. Whilst Office can cost up to £200 per PC, Google Docs are free.

Second, Google Docs allow more than one user to work on a document at any one time – no more emailing a single version backwards and forwards between you and a colleague.

The third main benefit is safety and security. Since all your documents are stored in Google’s DataCentre, you don’t need to worry about your PC crashing before you can save vital files. Google automatically backs up and stores any Google doc you have.

Why Cloud Computing and Google Docs ain’t perfect

Cloud computing isn’t all good news. To start with, it means that you can only access your documents when you are connected to the Internet. That’s fine if you work in an office, but if you ever take a laptop out and about, reliance on wireless hotspots and 3G dongles mean your connection is at best patchy.

Second, whilst Google Docs are good, there’s no doubt that you do lose some of the functionality of an excel spreadsheet. They’re just not quite as good.

And the third thing is in the nature of the system. Even the mighty Google has downtime occasionally, and this means that there will be occasions that you can’t get at and work on your files.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to Google docs is that they require you and your team to learn a whole new way of doing things. No more storing documents on your PC or local server. And when people are learning, they often make mistakes.

But the in the end Microsoft may well win this battle. The next version of office out next year is rumoured to be ‘cloud compatible’, which may well mean that users get all the benefits of a collaborative, secure online solution, with the ease of use of having the software on a local machine. It sounds similar to Microsoft’s email system ‘Hosted Exchange’ where your local emails are mirrored in the cloud.

Have any of you made the switch from Microsoft to Google Docs or another ‘cloud computing’ solution? Would you prefer to stick with the tried and tested Office software? Leave us a comment below.

As some of you will be aware the Google Map widget on your sites have come up with a zoom error.

This is due to Google changing it’s API (and failing to let everyone know) recently and throwing our maps into disarray.

Our tech guys are onto the issue and will update you soon with any info on when they are likely to be back on-line.

Earlier this year we talked about the Google Insights for Search tool. This can show you the trend for people searching with a particular keyword on Google, in all countries of the world. Google Insights for Search also lets you compare two or more search terms to see not only their trends, but which is the most popular. The data can stretch all the way back to 2004.

Google has now unveiled a new version of Google Insights which not only tells you about past trends of keywords, but predicts their future too. The intention of the tool is to give advice to advertisers about how much money to set aside for AdWords paid-search advertising, by predicting not only what people will search for, but how often too.

This means that the graphs produced by Google insights show search trends not only including past information but with future results too.

Google say they can do this by analysing past search query information. Google found that search query trends in more than half the most popular search terms are predictable from year to year.

There are some types of keywords, such as those in food and drink, travel and health, that are really easy to predict, tied as they are to particular sporting events and holidays. Other keywords, particularly those to do with social networks and other newly emerging topics, are more problematic

Google have also produced a new map which helps to visualise the way searches change as time goes by, in different regions. Google hopes that advertisers will use the tool to make better judgments about where to target their ads, and how much money to spend on paid search advertising.

For more information about Google insights, watch the Google video below.

Being about to predict when there are peaks and troughs in search volumes helps you make sure that your advertising is timed right. If you sell Valentines’ day cards, then it’s important to make sure you’re maximising your budget when people are actually buying cards, rather than just the day before Valentines day. Here’s an image from Google insights showing the search trend for Valentines day cards:

As you can see, you need to make sure your campaigns are in full flow on 11th February, to give yourself the best chance of maximising Valentines’ day card sales.

Google have admitted that it could not make perfect predictions about the future, but that they were continuing to work on more advanced forecasting models to ‘close the gap between reality and the future’.

Have a go with the new Google insights and let us know what you think.

A study published last week by market research firm Pear Analytics set out to discover the potential marketing angle for brands when it comes to Twitter. The main question was whether Twitter was merely a place to share comments and photos with friends, or if Twitter holds the potential of dialogue between brands and customers. Twitter themselves are keen to promote the service as a place to do business.

Over a two week period, the tweets were categorised into news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational and pass-along value.

Over 40% of tweets fell into the category of ‘pointless babble’. A further 37% were found to be ‘conversational’.

Lagging behind these two, ‘pass-along value’ (re-tweets) made up 8.7% of the total.

The rest of the list comprised of Self-promotion tweets – tweets made by individuals or companies about products or services - at 5.85%. The bottom of the list was Spam and News, with 3% each.

Any surprises there for you?  The study said: “The results were interesting, and not in the order that we anticipated. For instance, we thought that both spam and self-promotion percentages would be much higher.

“What’s also interesting is that pass-along value ranks 3rd in usage, albeit a far distance from the number one or two usage categories.

“Also, we thought the news category would have more weight than dead last, since this seems to be contrary to Twitter’s new position of being the premier source of news and events.

“Self-promotion was also less than expected at 5.85% of all tweets. This may be enlightening to some folk, as there appears to be a flurry of companies and businesses joining Twitter to promote products and services.”

Apparently, 11:30am and Mondays are the times that Tweets are made that have the most  pass-along value. Spam is consistent all day, everyday,. And News is heavier at 2pm and on Tuesdays. When it comes to conversational tweets, these were high between 2pm and 4pm, and heaviest on Tuesdays.

So, Twitter is full of pointless babble – anyone surprised by that? Is anyone successfully using Twitter to communicate to members of your website? Leave something of conversational or pass-on value below…