A year ago Bill Gates described social networking websites as ‘way too much trouble’. Some people took this to as an indication of his disappointment that Microsoft has failed to make any effective play in the Social Networking space.

But in January Gates u-turned and signed up to Twitter. His account became verified (certified as officially his) and a Tweet quickly followed: “Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter – publishing on 1/25.”

And then the mad rush to follow @BillGates started. By the end of just half a day, Gates had smashed all records and had amassed 140,000 followers.

Now of course he’s up to 469,723

He’s used his @BillGates account so far to raise awareness of Haiti, and other activities that the Bill and Miranda Gates Foundation is getting up to. Supporting thousands of causes in hundreds of countries, this is no doubt an effective way to publicize their activity.

Gates is not without celebrity followers though. He said to Ashton Kutcher: “thanks to you and all the other people who have welcomed me.”

At around the same time Gates signed up to Facebook too. Since Microsoft have a small stake in the business it’s a surprise that this hasn’t happened before. The first links added to his Facebook page were for his foundation and to Microsoft.

The previous first day follower record was by Oprah Winfrey who notched up 130,000 followers on day 1.

Interested in what Bill Gates is up to? Why not follow @BillGates on Twitter. And whilst you’re at it you can follow @webeden too ;-)

How many followers did you amass by the end of your first day on Twitter? Got any good tips of how to increase your follower base? Leave us a comment below.

Another day, another statistic about how big and popular Google is. This time its ComScore, who have just released the research that total internet searches are up by a colossal 41%.

And you’ve guessed it: Google is the search engine that has driven most of that growth.

What’s amazing about this statistic however is that the change is so huge in what is considered to be a fairly mature market.

Its one thing to grow massively in your early stages, when any change represents a big percentage. But when you’re already very big, which search engines are (using search engines is by far the most popular online activity), then even significant absolute growth is usually just a few percentage points.

Here are the specifics: Global searches went up from 80 billion to 114 billion between July 2008 and July 2009. And Google grew from 49 billion searches to 77 billion. That means Google has hovered up 67% of the global search market.

Elsewhere, Yahoo grew just 2% with searches rising from 8.7 billion to 8.9 billion. That gives it 7.8% of the global search market. Chinese search engine Baidu went up 8% from 7.4 billion to just under 8 billion. Even though Baidu draws it user base from just one country, that still means it has 7% of the global market.

Microsoft, by contrast, saw very healthy growth of 41%, but this was from a fairly modest base of 2.35 billion searches.

In terms of a global break down, most searches happen in Europe, which produced 32% of searches. This was followed by Asia Pacific (31%), North America (22%) and Latin America (9%).

Where will it all end? Is this just the tip of the iceberg, or the top of the hill? No wonder new entrants want to grab a piece of this market. Leave us a comment below.

Last week the Millward Brown Optimor’s BrandZ Top 100 list was published. This is a list of the world’s biggest brands, and their associated ‘value’.

This year the list is topped for the third year running by Google, whose brand worth has gone up a whopping 16% over the last 12 months. This means that it is now ‘worth’ $100 billion.

As to how this value is calculated, Millward Brown Optimor (MBO) say that it is the sum of all future earnings that brand is forecast to generate, discounted to what that value is today. Some have suggested that a brand’s ‘value’ is arbitrary; for MBO, it’s all about a brand’s ability to ‘generate demand’.

One reason that Google’s brand may be so much higher than its fellow technology companies is that it always calls its products ‘Google’. This contrasts with Microsoft who run many secondary brands such as Hotmail, Windows, and Bing.

Microsoft attracts the second highest valuation, at $76.2bn (up 8 % on last year).

Others in the top 10 include Coca-Cola, IBM, McDonald’s, Apple, China Mobile, General Electric, Vodafone and Marlboro.

The two fastest growing brands were Amazon (up 85 % to $21bn) and Blackberry (up 100% to $16bn).

Despite the economic downturn, the total value of the most valuable brands rose by 2 % to just less than $2 trillion.

So what does ‘brand’ mean?

The word ‘brand’ means many different things to different people. For me, it’s what thoughts and associations people have when they think of your company. Do they think ‘good service, nice people’; or do they think ‘cheap products, fast delivery’. Do these thoughts and associations mean that people will pre-decide to buy from you before buying from your competitor? Apart from your products, ‘brand’ is what your website visitors and customers take away with them, in their minds, having visited your website or bought your products.

So how do you improve your brand’s value?

There are two ways to do this. The first is to make you customers and website visitors have as positive an experience as possible with you, your website, and your products. That might be by having a rich, well designed site; it might be by giving them easy to find information, great service, and a good feeling from their interaction with your website and your business.

The second way is to expose this ‘experience’ to as many people as you can. When it comes to building a website, that means getting as much traffic as possible to your website.

The first obvious was to do this is to work on your Search Engine Optimisation so that you can boost your website up the Search Engine Results page. Secondly, you need to make use of the Social Networking features available within WebEden to start building a community around your website. It’s this community who will recommend your site to others, and ultimately build a loyal base of frequent visitors.

Do any of you have a brand that you think is of value? What value do you think it has? Have you got any brand building tips you could leave for us here? Leave us a comment below.

We reported previously that Microsoft’s newest search engine Bing had had a strong entry into the US market. And early data from Hitwise indicated that in the UK too it was do(b)ing pretty well, despite that lack of advertising support.

But more comprehensive data from Neilsen out this week shows that far from taking the UK market by storm, Bing is making little headway this side of the pond.

Whilst Bing reached 7 million unique visitors in May, that figure had dropped to just 6.4 million in June, down 7.7%. This decline reflects research published earlier this month by JP Morgan indicating that whilst users were prepared to try Bing out, they were far less likely to make a permanent switch away from Google.

In terms of ranking by unique users, this puts Bing 5th in the UK market behind Google, Google Image Search, Yahoo and Ask.com.

“While it’s very early days, Bing has no impact on the UK search results and hasn’t caused a ripple effect. The market remains very stable and hasn’t changed much in the past couple of years” said Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at The Nielsen Company,.

Google continued to dominate, increasing its user base by 2.2% in June, with 31.6 million unique visitors.

In the UK we are yet to see the impact of Microsoft’s’ planned marketing activity for Bing, due here in the new year. Whilst it feels like we’re been talking about Bing for a while, ask your non-techie friends if they’ve ever heard of it – I bet you the answer would be no. And now of course with Microsoft and Yahoo combining their search business in the next few months, maybe Microsoft is less concerned about Bing standing on its own two feet, since it will become the default search engine on Yahoo too.

Have you been tempted away from Google? Does Bing have a feature you particularly like? Leave us a comment below.

Anyone following the news last week will have noticed the proposed hook up between Microsoft’s search business and Yahoo.

The two companies have been dancing around each other for the last 18 months, ever since Yahoo rejected a $45billion take over bid by Microsoft.

Since then of course Yahoo have had a change of leader with Carol Bartz stepping in to fill the shoes of departing founder Jerry Yang.

The last 18 months has also been filled by the ever expanding influence of Google, coupled with little or no innovation from Yahoo.

Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft’s new search engine ‘Bing’ will become the default search engine on Yahoo under a revenue-sharing deal.

For the first couple of years, Yahoo would keep 100% of the revenue generated, plus a further 10% – all according to tech blog AllThingsD. In the third year, Yahoo’s share would drop to 90%

The deal would give MicroHoo / YahSoft a combined market share of 30% of the US search ad market. This compares to Google’s 65%.

The US Department of Justice may well stand in the way of any deal, possibly seeing it as a collapse of competition. Last year a search ad deal between Yahoo and Google was blocked by the regulators. .

All this is probably a bigger deal in the US than it is in the UK, were Google’s market share is nearer 90%.

What does this mean if you’re trying to drive visitors to your website? Well it’s quite interesting. If you’re using sponsored search advertising (PPC), then it means that Microsoft’s AdCenter will be used more and more. That brought a collective groan in our office since it’s hardly the easiest thing to use.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), things may get more complicated. At the moment all SEO optimisation efforts are made to boost a website up the results pages on Google, since that is where the vast majority of traffic comes from. If a second powerful player emerges, website owners will have to optimise for both. And since they have different ways of categorising and indexing web pages, that could be complicated. You don’t want to have to have two websites – one that you boost up Google, and the other that you boost up Bing!

What do you think of the deal? Will it have an influence on your website building? Leave us a comment below.

The big three search engines all reported their quarterly earnings last week. No guesses for who came out top of the heap.

Microsoft online ad revenues, the part of the business in which their search engines sit, were down 14% for the quarter. Even further behind, Yahoo figures were down a whopping 16%.

And Google once again confounded the critics and the recession by revealing revenues up another 3%.

This is as much about what Google does right, as what the other two do wrong. When it comes to Microsoft, as we mentioned previously, Bing has gone down very well with both consumers and experts, although some have questioned whether bing will end up being a has-bing…

Microsoft is making other moves to boost its online advertising revenue, with a recent announcement of an online version of their desktop based Office Suite. Although that might be as much about pressure from the likes of Linux based Open Office and of course Google Docs.

Google has recently made further inroads into areas previously dominated by the other two. This month they announced the launch of ad exchange where banner inventory can be openly traded. Yahoo are already in this space, and Microsoft say they too will enter next year. The company that gets it right is ensured another huge revenue stream.

Who is going to win the race? Well from a users perspective I think few can doubt the ease and depth of searching on Google compared to the other two. And the rate of innovation at Google means that anyone else is going to have a hard time catching up. Of course as any advertiser will tell you, Google’s tools far outstrip the others for ease of use and for results too.

Google’s dominance looks pretty set. But I wonder for how long will we put up with a single big company occupying our online experience? Leave us a comment below.

Anyone with an interest in computers can’t have failed to notice the announcement last week about Google’s plans to develop their own operating system.

The operating system (OS) is the basic software that organises the circuit boards, transistors, wires and chips in your computer into something that we can actually use. For example, it turns your monitor from a blank screen into a series of windows and icons. It is the building blocks upon which other programmes (such as Word, Excel, and Firefox) can sit.

It’s long been the area of the PC where Microsoft completely dominates the market. Microsoft’s OS – called Windows (until 2004) and then XP, and now Vista – is installed on over 90% of all computers. It makes Microsoft the gatekeepers to computers the world over. Nothing can happen on a computer until the Microsoft OS is installed. And as a consequence, it comes pre-installed on 99% of all PCs sold. You can’t imagine a market more dominated by a single company.

Microsoft isn’t the only option. Macs run on their own OS called OSX. And the super nerdy can choose to download and install Linux. But for the rest of us, there’s just Microsoft.

So there has to be a few people at Microsoft HQ who were a little perturbed by the news that Google plans to develop their own OS, to launch in 2010. Its long been thought to be in the pipeline, especially since Google launched an operating system for phones, called Android.

Google have said that initially their OS is going to be tailored to smaller ‘netbooks’, computers that are designed purely to access the Internet, and carry out few other tasks.

But since Google’s vision for the future of computing is in the ‘cloud’ – where all the applications that normally go on your PC actually sit on the Internet – the netbook OS is the perfect fit.

Google reckon there is no point in having loads of software installed on every PC in the world, necessitating all PCs to have loads of storage and processing power. Far better, they say, for there to be a single version of the software on a server on the Internet, and allow users to access it whenever they need to.

The Google OS will be called the same name as their browser – ‘chrome’ – and is supposed to be as ‘fast’ and as ‘lightweight’ as possible. It’s supposed to have no bells and whistles, similar to both their browser and search engine.

The news will be hugely welcomed by PC owners frustrated by the slowness of their PCs, and by the frequency with which they crash. Microsoft software has also been criticised for slow loading times and their vulnerability to viruses.

Google reckon that the problem with current OSs is that they were designed in an era when there was no such thing as the Internet. They’ve been adapted and developed, but that fundamental design flaw still exists.

The other key thing about a Google OS will be the fact that it will be open source, which allows other developers to create applications that will run on it.

To help developers, Google said the source code for their OS would be released at the same time as Microsoft launches its new OS Windows 7. This will give developers a chance to start working with it so as to have applications ready for the launch date.

Would you make the switch to a Google OS? Or are you a big fan of Microsoft? Are you worried that Google is going to end up dominating all things computer led in the same way that Microsoft always has? Leave us a comment below.

Last week Microsoft announced the beta launch of a brand new search engine called ‘Bing’, To those in the know this comes as no surprise, since there has been lots of chat amongst the Twitterati of a Microsoft search project with a code name of ‘Kumo’.

Whilst the search engines is now fully available for anyone to use, Microsoft are saying that Bing is very much in Beta, and that there is still a lot more to come.

Bing has a few new features, some of which are complete innovations and others which appear to be recycled ideas tried by others in the field.

There’s something called ‘Best Match’ which shows you the best result for popular search queries that other people are performing, And another one called Instant Answers, which gives you the answer to a question actually in the content of the results page, rather than referring you to other websites that might contain the answer,

This second one at least appears to be very similar to the kind of thing recent upstart Wolphram Alpha has been trying to perfect.

Microsoft for its part is anxious to stress that Bing is still only in early stage development, and that there is still much more to come. Bing will be building data based on what consumers search and click on, and then using that data to refine the results it shows. A Microsoft spokesman said that they wanted “to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision.”

Have you tried Bing yet? Give it a go, find out if its any good, and leave your comments below.

Earlier this week I posted some news about Microsoft and the EU coming head to head over anti-competition issues. I also made reference to the question of whether or not Microsoft products are all that good anyway.

Nowhere more so than in online, websites and Search Engines can we see how far Microsoft lags behind. With a measly 4% share of the UK search market, people are voting with their mouse in opting (mostly) for Google instead.

What’s interesting is that Microsoft have just released their trading figures, which have been analysed a great deal in lots of places.

And it appears that not only do we, the users, not like Microsoft’s search products. They’re also costing the company money. Lots of it. In fact, Microsoft have lost $500m in their online business in the last 3 months, and that’s off the back of revenues of more than $850m.

Do you think that they should cut their losses and stick to desktop software? Or do they need to make online work because the next generation of software will be ‘in the cloud’, just like this website builder?

Update 23.01.09: Interestingly, Google have just released their trading figures too. Their revenue is up 18% year on year, at $5.7bn for the quarter. Now there’s a company who knows how to make money online! 

Leave us a comment and let us know.

Microsoft is making headlines again, for all the wrong reasons. EU politicians are protesting about the perceived anti-competitive nature of bundling Internet Explorer (IE) with the Windows operating system.

Its not the first time Microsoft and the European have come head to head. Only last year, Microsoft was fined almost £700m by the EU over other competition issues involving desktop PCs.

But is it really anti competitive for Microsoft to try and get you to use their browser over any others? Well not really, except for the way they do it. By making IE the default browser on any PC that runs Windows, Microsoft are guaranteeing them $bns of future revenue generated by you, the user. This is because IE includes certain standard settings which means when you search the web you will probably search using a Microsoft search engine, and they will make money from every ad you click on. And it also means they get a direct line to your PC, making sure that they can market their latest products to you. At its worst case, your computer automatically updates to their latest product, without you necessarily knowing it.

Maybe that would be OK too, if it meant that you were getting the best product. I remember a time in the 80s and maybe even the early 90s when I was glad to get all the Microsoft products by default on my PC. It meant that everything fitted together, and there was only once place to go to get updates or to sort out problems.

But then an operating system came along called Linux. Linux was (and is) a free version of Windows, built by thousands of contributing developers and constantly updated, modified and enhanced. It sounded great, but for a home user it was also a bit scary. What do you do if it breaks? Who can you call?

In the last four or five years, however, Linux or ‘open source’ free products have really hit the mainstream. One of the biggest is the web browser Firefox. Even if you haven’t heard tried it, you’ve probably heard of it. (You can download it for free from Mozilla here). There’s also the open source version of Microsoft Office from OpenOffice.org. It does all the things that MS Office does, only its free.

For probably the first time in the history of the home PC, the general public are using the alternatives to Microsoft. And if my experience is anything to go by, the alternatives are actually a lot better. If you don’t believe me, then let me ask you: which search engine do you use? If you’re using Microsoft’s Live.com, then you’re in the minority. In fact just 4% of UK users opt for a Microsoft search engine. The reason is that the rest of us think that Google and Yahoo’s results are more relevant, easier to read, and are therefore more trustworthy.

The EU’s argument is that “Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice.”

There seems little doubt that by controlling the operating system of most PCs, Microsoft have been able to ensure that most of the software that most of us use are Microsoft products too. But seeing as when we use alternatives (Firefox, OpenOffice) they seem much easier, quicker, and crash less, it makes you wonder how much better PCs would be if the EU had got involved 20 years ago.

You’re a website builder, and are therefore by default an ‘influencer’ of Internet opinion. Do you use Microsoft software on you PC? Or are you a Linux diehard? Leave us a comment below.