Deezer launched in Ireland in December 2011, reaching our shores well in advance of its chief rival, Spotify. Foster has spearheaded Deezer’s growth in Ireland and the UK, and the streaming platform differentiates itself from competitors through its focus on curated selections to promote music discovery, pushing out up to 60 editorial recommendations a week, and a localisation strategy that puts key artists at the forefront.

In the digital age, the music industry has both embraced technology and attempted to quash more harmful innovations. With music streaming becoming an increasingly popular form of accessing new music, the question of how artists are rewarded by these commercial services has come into focus.

The music industry has also been plagued by piracy enabled by new technology, but services such as Deezer offer both low-cost and free methods of listening to new music, tackling piracy by meeting users’ demands for easy-to-access digital music.

DAA 2013: Interview with Mark Foster, Deezer 

More on the Digital Agenda Assembly

Ireland's Innovation Minister Richard Bruton TD has today signed the Beijing Treaty on behalf of the EU at the headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

At the minute, the protection of performers in audiovisual media has not yet been established at international level.

According to WIPO, this lack of protection not only affects actors in different media such as film and television but also musicians such as in the case when a rock performance is recorded in a DVD.

Should it come into force, the Beijing Treaty is set to grant performers rights both for the offline and online exploitation of their performances, for example the distribution or rental of their performances.

The goal is that performers such as dancers and singers will be fairly remunerated when their audiovisual works are used.

Ratification

The Beijing Treaty, however must be ratified by 30 contracting parties in order to come into force. So far Syria has ratified it. The UK signed the Beijing Treaty on 12 June.

This morning, Ireland's Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD signed the Beijing Treaty on behalf of the EU at WIPO's headquarters in Geneva in line with Ireland's current presidency of the EU Council.

Bruton also signed the Treaty on behalf of Ireland.

The treaty remains open for signature at WIPO until 24 June 2013, although States can subsequently accede to the Treaty after that date.  

Moral rights of performers

According to the European Commission, the Beijing Treaty also recognises performers' moral rights, such as the right to object to distortions of their performance.

At the signing in Geneva today, Bruton said the Beijing Treaty would be is a significant step forward in granting performers international protection for their works when included in audiovisual form and performed internationally among contracting States to the Treaty.

"Most importantly, it will assist performers to get paid when their works are used in this way," he said.
Signature of the Treaty by Ireland will, as is normal, be subject to ratification and therefore signature alone will not impose on the Irish State any obligations under the treaty.

Impact for Irish performers?

At national level Ireland has already provided protection for performers in audiovisual performances under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.

Therefore, the Irish Government does not envisage that the Beijing Treaty will mean any change to the status quo in respect of the protection of audiovisual performers in Ireland.    

This new treaty in the area of copyright was initially adopted at the Diplomatic Conference on the Protection of Audiovisual Performance, which took place in Beijing last June after 12 years of negotiations.

It was the first such copyright treaty for performers to be adopted since the adoption in 1996 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

Magna Carta Holy Grail is Jay-Z’s first solo album since The Blueprint 3 in 2009, which was followed by a collaboration with Kanye West in 2011 dubbed Watch the Throne.

A three-minute ad for the album that aired during an NBA finals match-up between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday night showed Jay-Z in the studio with familiar faces such as Timbaland and Pharrell Williams, as well as some recognisable devices from Samsung.

The album’s website now reveals that Samsung Galaxy S4, S III and Note II users will be the first offered the chance to hear Magna Carta Holy Grail through a dedicated app to be released by Samsung on 24 June.

The app, which will be available on Google Play, will give users the opportunity download the album from 12.01am ET on 4 July, 72 hours before its on-sale release. The first 1m users to download the album through this app will get it for free.

So far, the campaign has only been advertised in the US, and the website is scant of information on whether or not the promotion is available worldwide.

According to The Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog, the deal cost Samsung US$5m, at US$5 an album. Promotion around the new release has focused on writing the new rules and Jay-Z is clearly eager to do so with this deal that offers him 1m record sales even before the album’s release.

There has been speculation, however, on whether these ‘sales’ will be recognised by chart-makers. Commenting on the matter via his Twitter account, Jay-Z said, “If 1 Million records gets SOLD and billboard doesnt report it, did it happen? Ha. #newrules #magnacartaholygrail Platinum!!! VII IV XIII.”

Google announced three months ago that Reader would retire on 1 July, but services such as iOS app Zite and social news website Digg swooped in to pick up the RSS pieces.

The latter solicited feedback from Google Reader users on what they want and need from an RSS reader and a team of five Digg engineers have been hard at it for the past 90 days, building a new service to meet these demands in time.

That time has come slightly sooner than expected and an update on the Digg Blog revealed that Digg Reader, version 1 will be released as a public beta on 26 June.

^{Image via the Digg Blog}

For this initial release, Digg focused on pleasing Google Reader’s power users, as these will be the most affected by its retirement. Digg, version 1 promises a simple, functional and fast web and mobile reading experience with a clean interface that centres on the content of the articles.

There will be a tool to elevate most important stories to the top and support for subscribing, sharing, saving and organising. Most importantly, it will be easy for users to migrate their data from Google Reader over to Digg Reader.

Digg Reader will be a ‘freemium’ product and, while the initial public beta will be free to all, a paid-for release will follow. However, Digg assures users that the features that arrive first to all users in the beta release will remain part of the free experience.

Collins is one of Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs, embarking on his start-up career while at Trinity College Dublin with Phorest, which is still in business today, and games middleware firm Demonware, which is also still active. Activision acquired Demonware in 2007 for an estimated US$15m.

Box of Awesome delivers a box of digital and physical goodies into the hands of discerning 8-14-year-olds every two months.

Kids can register for free or if they pay a subscription of €5 (plus postage and packaging) they get a physical box of goodies that includes books, videos, games, sweets, fashion items and more.

The average value of items in each physical box is €15 to €20.

A sister brand, Box of OMG, delivers a box of surprises including books, movies, music, make-up and fashion from big brands and start-ups to girls ages 8-14.

Some of the brands working with Box of Awesome include Topps, Moshi Monsters, Simon & Schuster, Kobots, One Direction, Predasaurs, Jelly Bean Factory, OiDroids and many more.

Collins told Siliconrepublic.com: “We’re now shipping almost 15,000 boxes a month to kids.

“The community (including our digital channels) is driving traffic of almost 8m uniques per month and we’re now the biggest kids brand discovery platforms in the UK and Ireland,” Collins said.

WPP hasn’t disclosed any financial details about the deal but the decision marks an acceleration of the ad giant’s involvement in start-ups and social media in particular.

The investment in Muzy Inc is being made by WPP Ventures, the ad firm’s Silicon Valley investment arm.

The deal follows a global strategic partnership agreement WPP signed with Twitter a fortnight ago covering data and analytics, media investment and social media, and spans several WPP units, including GroupM, Kantar and digital agencies like Wunderman.

Social networks image via Shutterstock

The Great Rocky Mountain mobile game challenges fans to pilot a customised sled through the Rockies, navigating various obstacles to win ‘power ups’ and go the furthest distance to win prizes.

The game has already attracted 6,000 downloads and 75,000 plays.

Fans can play to win one of 3,500 prizes (from paintballing and pouched hoodies, to bobbing moose heads) up for grabs every week. Pints of Coors Light that have been won can be redeemed in more than 800 pubs across Ireland, from 10 June to 31 August.

Coors Light has hundreds of pints a day on offer to thirsty players across Ireland – with a maximum of one pint per day, per player. Mates win, too, with Coors Light’s Gift it Fridays. Every Friday, for the duration of the campaign, winners are immediately awarded an extra ‘mate’s pint’ which can be gifted to Facebook friends through the app.

The app is available on the iTunes and Google Play stores, and Coors Light fans can register on Facebook.

Earlier this year, Netflix announced its first children’s original series, Turbo F.A.S.T., a collaboration with DreamWorks Animation. This show tracking the antics of a speedy snail will follow on from upcoming 3D feature film Turbo, which hits Irish cinemas in October.

Turbo F.A.S.T. will arrive on Netflix screens in December and, in 2014, users in all territories – that’s 40 countries worldwide – can expect a wide range of original series from the award-winning studio behind Shrek, Madagascar and The Croods.

Shows will be based on DreamWorks’ back catalogue and will be the first time the studio’s characters are introduced to the television market as a branded collection of shows.

Considering Netflix users streamed over 2bn hours of kids’ content in 2012 alone, the deal will have benefits for DreamWorks, which is seeking to expand its television production and distribution worldwide.

“This breaks at least one OED rule,” said John Simpson, chief editor of the OED. “Namely that a new word needs to be current for 10 years before consideration for inclusion.”

However, Simpson and the respected publication have conceded to redefine ‘tweet’ in its social networking sense because, “It seems to be catching on.”

New words from the ever-changing and influential world of technology often emerge in the OED’s updates, which occur four times a year with the next coming in September.

As well as a new meaning for ‘tweet’ on Twitter’s terms, ‘follow’ has been given a new definition to convey its use with regard to social media, while the noun ‘redirect’ has been give a new web-based definition, as well as the verb ‘stream’.

New additions to the OED include ‘geekery’, ‘live blog’, ‘mouseover’, ‘big data’, ‘crowdsourcing’, ‘e-reader’ and ‘flash mob’. New sub-entries derived from the tech world include ‘3D printer’, ‘3D printing’, ‘search engine optimization’ and ‘SEO’.

Pop culture also has an influential role in shaping the OED, which is why we are now seeing the word ‘epic’ being redefined with examples such as, “That’s epic, dude.”

TechCrunch today, quoting sources, reported that Facebook will reveal video support for Instagram on 20 June as a way of competing with Twitter’s Vine and successful services like Keek, which has amassed an audience of 45m users.

Twitter’s Vine app lets users record a six-second clip on video and share that out on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Keek’s service lets users record videos up to 36 seconds and in recent weeks the fast-emerging social network created a new feature that enables up to 36 users to chat privately in a group using text or video messages.

Press in the US have received invitations to an event on 20 June to discover what a “small team that has been working on a big idea” is all about. Enigmatically, each invitation came with a print of a coffee cup on the bottom right corner.

Movie camera image via Shutterstock

We’ve been tracking the progress of Soundwave and the Irish start-up of the same name for more than a year now. First came a second-place People’s Choice Award finish at Dublin Beta in late April 2012, followed by an out-and-out win at NDRC’s Lift Off competition in May, which earned the team a €50,000 investment.

In the year that has passed since, Soundwave has undergone beta testing with users such as high-profile early adopter Stephen Fry and is now complete and ready for a full public release on Thursday, 20 June.

The app will be free to download from the iTunes App Store and Google Play, giving Android and iOS users the ability to see what music their friends are listening to in real-time across a number of services.

How it works

Soundwave tracks what users are listening to in their native music apps, as well as through streaming services like Spotify and Rdio. This information appears in the Soundwave feed as it happens, providing a window onto what friends and others that you follow are listening to right now.

To listen back to these tracks, users can either avail of iTunes previews or purchase directly from the app, or they can listen for free through YouTube or SoundCloud where available.

The app also tracks listeners’ location and feeds this back to other users, so if you want to see what people in a selected area are listening to, you simply draw it on a map.

As well as taking a cut for music sold through the app, Soundwave stands to benefit financially from the listening data that the app generates and collates.

A special event to celebrate the app’s release will take place in Apple’s flagship store on Regent Street, London, on Monday 24 June, with Fry in attendance, and a separate Dublin launch party is also in the works.

The director of Google Giving Jacquelline Fuller said that while the internet has been a force for good there are dark corners of the internet where criminal behaviour exists.

One of the most heinous crimes is the increasing number of child exploitation images on the internet and Google says it wants to eradicate this forever.

It pointed out that in 2011 the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline received 17.3m images and videos of suspected child abuse – four times what was received in 2007.

Fuller warned that the number of images of child abuse online is on the rise.

“Behind these images are real, vulnerable kids who are sexually victimised and victimised further through the distribution of their images,” Fuller said.

“It is critical that we take action as a community - as concerned parents, guardians, teachers and companies - to help combat this problem.”

A global problem that requires a global solution

It is a sad and disappointing fact of life in the 21^st century that businesses and telecoms companies would spend billions of dollars in court battles over IP and illegal downloads but far less is being done to combat a real and growing problem, that of child exploitation online.

Fuller said that more than half of the images and videos reported to the NCMEC are from outside the US.

The NCMEC’s CyberTipline is accessible to 60 countries to help law enforcement agencies execute their investigations.

In 2006, Google joined the Technology Coalition of tech companies endeavouring to develop software and hardware to fight abuse images on the web and locate missing children.

“There is much more that can be done, and Google is taking our commitment another step further through a US$5m effort to eradicate child abuse imagery online. Part of this commitment will go to global child protection partners, like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation. We’re providing additional support to similar heroic organisations in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America,” Fuller said.

Google has used “hashing” technology to tag known child sexual abuse images to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere.

Every image is given a unique ID that allows Google’s computers to recognise them without humans having to view the same image again.

Encrypted fingerprints

Recently, Google has started working to incorporate encrypted ‘fingerprints’ of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database.

This will enable companies, law enforcement and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals. Google has also announced a US$2m Child Protection Technology Fund to encourage the development of more effective tools.

“We’re in the business of making information widely available, but there’s certain ‘information’ that should never be created or found,” Fuller said.

“We can do a lot to ensure it’s not available online - and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted.”

The Father’s Day doodle takes users to a search result for Father's Day.

Father's Day was created in the US in the early 20^th century to complement Mother’s Day.

The driving force behind the establishment of the special day was Sonora Smart Dodd who was inspired by a sermon about Mother’s Day to recommend to her pastor that fathers should have a special day too.

The first Father’s Day took place in 1910 but it petered out by the 1920s.

In 1938 with the help of the Father’s Day Council Dodd began promoting the day again.

It wasn’t until 1966, however, that the third Sunday in June became officially Father’s Day when President Lyndon B Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honouring fathers.

About 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 500 years of video watched on Facebook every day, and more than 700 YouTube videos shared on Twitter each minute, ensuring there is always video trending on the web.

With so much video available for viewing, we take a look at some of the viral videos that have caught our eye this week.

Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video

This week we had the war of the consoles breaking out at E3 as Microsoft and Sony went head to head with press events for their next-generation games systems. By most accounts, Sony came out on top for simply sticking with the status quo in terms of sharing permissions and connectivity, while Microsoft’s Xbox One has been criticised for introducing a restrictive licensing policy and the need for a constant online connection. Just one look at this video from PlayStation demonstrating how to lend games to a friend on the PlayStation 4 sums up why you shouldn’t over complicate things.

Uploaded: 10 June 2013

Racist B&B

When Tara Flynn visited her hometown of Kinsale, Co Cork, with her African-American husband, the racial slurs spouted from a small selection of individuals shocked her into video-making action. The lesson from this video is not that you shouldn’t be racist to a talented comedian’s husband whose backlash will come in the form of a scathingly funny viral video sending up our so called ‘Ireland of the Welcomes’, but really that you just shouldn’t be racist – ever – nor should you just turn a blind eye to it.

Uploaded: 10 June

Optical illusion dance

Somehow, this mind-blowing video passed under our radar following its upload in March, but we’re delighted to have discovered it being shared on social media this week. With nearly 3m views to its name, we can only imagine how much confusion has resulted from watching this dance designed to mess with your head.

Uploaded: 20 March 2013

Tiger just wants a drink

We all know that you should let sleeping dogs lie but this video teaches us to let thirsty dogs drink uninterrupted, too. Even if you are a bad-ass tiger, this pooch is having none of your guff.

Uploaded: 6 June 2013

Evolution of ‘Get Lucky’

This video is more of an aural sensation than a visual feast, as PV Nova covers fellow French musicians Daft Punk’s feel-good hit of the summer through the ages, reworking the track in every decade’s definitive musical style from the 1920s to the future. It gets a bit more animated at the end when PV Nova turns up to let us know of his plans to make a music video from fellow YouTubers’ contributions. We’ll be keeping an eye out for it!

Uploaded: 10 June 2013

Photoshop Live – Street Retouch Prank

To pull off this creative prank, AdobeNordic enlisted the help of ‘Photoshop magician’ Erik Johansson. The photographer and retouch artist is known for his incredible surreal imagery created using Adobe’s famed software, and here he put his skills to the test with a live Photoshop challenge – to the surprise and delight of these unsuspecting public transport patrons.

Uploaded: 7 June 2013

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The infographic by BT on Visual.ly indicates that tending to a business’ Facebook page is not a task to be taken lightly, considering 50pc of consumers value a brand’s Facebook page more than its website.

Among the tips the infographic offers are that Facebook business page administrators check for notifications and messages daily and respond to them quickly.

Weekly tasks can include posting an article that’s relevant to the business and asking happy customers to share testimonials on the Facebook page, according to the infographic.

At 8.30pm tomorrow (15 June) on the eve of Bloomsday (16 June), the Lord Mayor of Dublin Naoise Ó Muirí and Bob Joyce, the grandnephew of James Joyce, will speak with actors Michael Neill and Michael Hurst in Auckland in a Google+ hangout on air which will be followed by the first live reading from Auckland via the James Joyce Centre YouTube Channel.  All global readings will be streamed via the YouTube live event platform.

Following the sun, 25 worldwide cities are participating in the global readings - Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Moscow, Pula, Zurich, Trieste, Edinburgh, Bangor, Dublin, Derry, Cork, London, Sao Paulo, Santa Maria, New York, Boston, Chicago, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and San Francisco.

Across the globe, passages from Ulysses will be read live from James Joyce foundations, Bloomsday clubs, Irish arts organisations, schools, radio stations, public libraries, cafes and more. 

The O’ Brien Press recently published Dublin illustrated edition of Ulysses (1922 text) will be read from each city and all passages will be read in English.  Ulysses will be read in its entirety.

Global impact

Pictured on the occasion of the very first Bloomsday in Sandyford in 1954 were the pillars of the Irish literary establishent of that time: John Ryan, Anthony Cronin, Brian O’Nolan, Patrick Kavanagh and James Joyce’s cousin Tom Joyce.

“This is the first time that Ulysses has been read cover to cover across different time zones and different countries,” said Sophie Walsh, Google Ireland.

“The event will be launched with a Google+ Hangout between Dublin and Auckland – the first reading centre – and then every hour or so, new YouTube Live Events will go live. 

“Readings of Ulysses will be streamed across YouTube from places as diverse as Melbourne, New York, Singapore and Boston creating a unique online experience.  It’s fantastic that so many individuals and organisations have joined together to celebrate the impact that one Irish writer has made on the world,” Walsh said.

The charismatic young Irish-American president’s visit in June 1963 took place a year after RTÉ was founded. Tragically, Kennedy was gunned down in Texas just five months later in November 1963.

The JFK exhibition is broken into six parts detailing the preparation for the president’s visit right through to his untimely death.

The launch of the exhibition coincides with a National Library talk by chat-show host Ryan Tubridy on 9 July. A Twitter conversation has also been started using the hashtag #jfkhomecoming

“As broadcasters, we were instrumental in amplifying the events during this visit, which put us firmly on the world stage,” said Brid Dooley, head of RTÉ Archives.

“The visit occurred during an era which, according to JFK himself ‘saw Ireland moving into the mainstream of current world events’. 

“This exhibition will allow widespread access to this material and enable every generation to enjoy what was an extraordinary spectacle that captured both the heart and imagination of Ireland for four days in June 1963,” Dooley said.

Preserving Ireland’s memories

The RTÉ Archives is a central repository for all RTÉ broadcasts in TV and radio and is regarded as the largest collection of audiovisual material in Ireland.

The archive houses manuscripts, still photography and thousands of hours of moving images and sound recordings of moments that have shaped Irish history.

RTÉ is also working on a big data project with the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in Galway and the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to make sure all of this content going back over 60 years can be accessed digitally.

Those familiar with Netflix will know that the video streaming service provides users with recommendations based on their viewing history. The problem with that for users who share their subscription with other members of their family or household, is that you’ll log-in to find suggestions to watch Charlie and Lola, Breaking Bad, SpongeBob SquarePants and Dexter – quite the disparate mix, and not catering to a single user’s tastes.

Speaking to Yahoo News, Yellin explained that Netflix is readying a feature that will bring an end to its mish-mashed user recommendations. By enabling users to create multiple profiles under one account, the viewing history of one user won’t impact the recommendations of another.

The feature is still in development, but a prototype was demonstrated at E3 and showed how, after logging in, users would be brought to a screen with different avatars for each user of that account.

Yellin explained that five to six profiles can be created per account, and the feature should be ready by the end of August – though it’s possible this could only apply to the US market at first.

The feature might also be able to prevent shared users’ guilty pleasures showing up on the account owner’s Facebook timeline – or at least take away that excuse you used after watching a full series of Charmed.

Netflix is also said to have a remote control app in development and is working with TV manufacturers in efforts to have the technology needed for its streams implemented in television sets as standard in two to five years.

Previously, Twitter’s analytics service was only open to advertising partners through Twitter for Business. Now, users can log in with their Twitter account details via http://analytics.twitter.com or http://ads.twitter.com, The Next Web revealed.

This brings you to a set-up for Twitter’s advertising service, but instead of paying to promote your tweets, you can just click ‘Analytics’ in the navigation bar and check out ‘Timeline activity’ or ‘Followers’.

Clicking here brings up detailed information gleaned from your Twitter account. A graph of the previous month’s mentions, follows and unfollows appears on top in ‘Timeline activity’, and underneath is a breakdown of each tweet’s favourites, retweets and replies.

For tweets containing links, this list also tells you how many clicks they received.

The list of tweets can be filtered by ‘Best’, ‘Good’ or ‘All’, with ‘Best’ being the top 15pc of tweets for engagement and ‘Good’ being the top two-thirds. All of this data can also be downloaded as a CSV data file.

Twitter has not made an official announcement about its analytics service going public and, from my own tests, it doesn’t seem to be ready just yet. For both my personal Twitter account and @SiliconRepublic, I was told there wasn’t enough data to calculate stats on followers and mentions.

It could be that Twitter is still working out some kinks in the system before an official announcement is made.

The campaign entitled ‘What Makes Ireland Great – Makes Ireland Great for Business’ combines the rustic and traditional with the contemporary and energetic.

It highlights Ireland’s lifestyle, as well as the energy of its cities and citizens, and organisations like the global success CoderDojo make a cameo appearance.

The campaign will also draw parallels between the Irish brand of imagination and its litany of famous writers and the creativity required by the emerging organisations.

Fresh thinking and innovation

IDA Ireland will focus its media buying to reach C-suite executives in the areas of IT, financial services, life sciences and digital media.

The TV campaign rolls out across the US this week, starting with Bloomberg and CNBC, followed by tech-based media websites and a social media campaign.

“The advertisement aims to reflect the energy and vibrancy of the Irish population, as well as our openness to fresh thinking and innovation,” IDA Ireland CEO Barry O’Leary said.

“The advert concentrates on Ireland’s business-friendly environment and growing technology sector, and refers to many global brands with a presence here.

“The advert storyline focuses on the things that have always made Ireland great – creativity, friendliness, flexible thinking and warmth, and ties these attributes to making business work,” O’Leary said.

Four-time FIFA Ballon d’Or winner Messi – believed by many to be one of the greatest ever footballers – faces up to six years in prison if allegations of cheating the Spanish tax authorities out of €4m prove true.

The FC Barcelona player, who hails from Argentina, resides in Gava, just outside Barcelona. Spanish prosecutors have filed a writ there and it’s reported that Messi and his father Jorge – who took care of his finances before the 25-year-old came of age – have been charged with three separate offences that could land the footballer in jail and cost him a fine of up to six times the amount defrauded.

In response, Messi took to his Facebook page, which has accumulated more than 46.5m ‘likes’. Writing first in Spanish and following with an English translation, the statement reads: “We have just known through the media about the claim filed by the Spanish tax authorities. We are surprised about those [sic] news, because we have never committed any infringement. We have always fulfilled all our tax obligations, following the advices of our Tax Consultants who will take care of clarifying this situation.”

The post, which was published about 19 hours ago, has so far received more than 55,000 likes and nearly 6,500 comments, and been shared almost 3,000 times on the social network.

Lionel Messi image via Natursports/Shutterstock

The new hashtag feature is currently available only to a small percentage of users, as well as Pages on Facebook, but the service will be rolled out more broadly in the coming weeks to help users engage better with the 4.7bn pieces of content shared on the social network every day.

Hashtags are a common feature on services like Twitter and are integral to keeping up with the flow of commentary on subjects that matter to people.

For Facebook users, it will be potentially transformative; shifting the discovery of content from what happens to land in a user’s news feed to actively finding people discussing subjects that matter outside the friends list.

The new service will no doubt be a boon to Facebook’s advertisers, who will no doubt use it to more subtly and shrewdly find ways of inserting their brands into everyday conversations.

But then again, perhaps leery of errant marketing people who may try to take advantage of the service to cut corners or spam users, the social network has reminded marketers that hashtags will not impact their distribution or engagement in news feed on either desktop or mobile. “We recommend you continue to focus on your existing campaigns to drive your most important business objectives.” There.

The good news for users of Twitter and other social networks is any hashtags they use on these platforms that are connected to their Facebook pages will be automatically clickable and searchable on Facebook.

“Hashtags are a first step in surfacing relevant and important public conversations,” Facebook Studio said last night.

“Over time, our goal is to build out additional functionality for marketers, including trending hashtags and new insights, so that you can better understand how hashtags fit into your overall Facebook advertising strategies and drive your business objectives.”

Below: Facebook’s Studios’ example of hashtags in action

Hashtag image via Shutterstock

Sky reported that at the end of May Irish consumers made more than 1.3m iOS downloads, followed by 600,000 Android downloads.

The Sky Go app, which enables viewers to watch TV channels, such as Sky Atlantic and Sky Sports F1 HD, on tablets and smartphones, has been downloaded almost 400,000 times.

The Sky+ app, which allows users to discover content and remote record TV programmes, has been downloaded more than 300,000 times.

“We are continuing to see massive change in the way we are able to access content, with more and more people watching their favourite TV when and where they want with more and more news, sport and entertainment content being viewed on smartphones and tablets,” said Mark Anderson, director of sales and marketing, Sky Ireland.

Season 3, Episode 10 of fantasy TV series Game of Thrones has set a high for illegal file-sharing, according to BitTorrent. More than 170,000 people were sharing the episode simultaneously, just minutes after it was broadcast in the US on Sunday night.

Sky subscribers in the UK and Ireland were offered the show less than 24 hours after the US broadcast via Sky Atlantic on Monday, but apparently that wasn’t soon enough for some. The download was most popular in Australia, followed by the US, Canada and the UK.

Back in April, the series hit the headlines for reaching 1m downloads in less than 24 hours following the season premiere. BitTorrent then reported the largest swarm it had ever experienced with more than 160,000 peers sharing at once and, at that time, the US was top of the piracy lot followed by the UK and Australia.

Chip-maker AMD was founded in 1969 and is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture, behind Intel. Its initials form its brand name and its trading name on the New York Stock Exchange, and the company had been trying to get its hands on @AMD for two years now, according to GeekWire, offering Doppelt laptops and AMD processors in exchange.

Doppelt is the co-founder of Urbanspoon and new start-up Dwellable. But, as it turns out, he’s also quite the philanthropist. Happy enough with the computers and processors he has, Doppelt refused to give up those precious three letters unless AMD donated US$50,000 to charities in his hometown.

As of yesterday, AMD took on @AMD, and charities FareStart and the Boys & Girls Club of Bellevue are each US$25,000 richer. FareStart was selected by Doppelt and is a culinary job training and placement programme for homeless and disadvantaged individuals, while the Boys & Girls Club, chosen by AMD, is a youth outreach programme.

Now, Doppelt’s followers will find him over at @adamdoppelt, where he tweeted that the loss of @AMD was “a bittersweet day”.

Tweeting image via turtleteeth/Shutterstock

Following a survey of more than 550 senior executives at technology, gaming, publishing, film, broadcast media and social networking companies, Ernst & Young discovered that 47pc of all revenues in media and entertainment companies currently comes from digital products.

The professional services firm then forecast 10pc growth in these revenues over the next two years, reaching 57pc of overall income by 2015.

Be prepared

In this short time frame, media firms need to prepare themselves in order to stay ahead of the game. According to Ernst & Young’s survey, 50pc of these companies are willing to lose money in the short term in order to develop digital products and services and 64pc are already building up their digital staff faster than their digital revenue is growing.

“The media and entertainment industry has been on a digital journey for quite some time, but when you drill down into the data in advertising, in social media, in film and in broadcast and cable, you see that the digital transition isn’t this thing of tomorrow to keep in the back of the mind, it’s here,” said John Nendick, global head of media and entertainment at Ernst & Young.

Cloud, mobile and big data

Ernst & Young’s report suggests that firms form industry alliances instead of trying to go it alone and recommends focusing on trends in cloud and mobile.

The executives seem to agree on this, with 83pc of those surveyed predicting that smart mobile technology will drive revenue growth over the next two to three years, and 74pc saying the same for cloud.

The report also cites big data as key driver of revenue for these companies in the near future, but 41pc of those surveyed said they don’t currently gain any insight from their data. Those who identified themselves as embracing digital distribution, though, were three times more likely to use second-generation big data analytics techniques to improve relationships with customers.

Digital media image via ra2studio/Shutterstock

The social network allows users to create 36-second videos called keeks and share them via Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and desktop devices.

In the last four months Keek has been the number one social networking app in 45 countries with more than 667m visits.

The platform has served over 12bn pageviews and users have posted over 18m keeks and 2.2bn videos were watched.

Raichyk said that he believes Keek represents one of the most sophisticated mobile apps in the world today and cited a new instant private messaging feature that enables up to 36 users to chat privately in a group using text or video messages.

“The more engagement tools we give, the more engaged the audience becomes,” he said.

Raichyk is confident that keeks will very soon be as predominant in terminology as tweets are for Twitter.

“We have a unique platform and I believe that social video is going to become increasingly important and relevant in social media over the next two years.”

While Raichyk wouldn't be drawn on plans to include the platform on next generation smart TVs and consoles, he said that the key is to be where the users are.

“Right now we are entirely focused on building the community, adding features and enabling people to create a lot of content. We believe there is value in each of those areas and we are executing on those three fronts,” Raichyk said.

In January we reported that Keek had raised US$18m in investment, bringing the total amount of funding raised so far to US$30m.

Social video image via Shutterstock

The crowdfunding site was established on Snowden’s behalf by Facebook employee Dwight Crow and so far has raised over US$4,000 for Snowden.

Snowden asked to be revealed as the whistleblower who supplied sensitive documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post last week revealing the existence of a system called PRISM that spied on user activity on several websites, including those of Apple, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, YouTube and others.

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions but I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant,” Snowden told The Guardian newspaper.

The campaign is currently 40pc of the way towards a target of US$15,000.

Snowden is a 29 year-old, ex-Army security contractor who was paid US$200,000 a year to supply security services to bodies like the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI as part of his work with Booz Allen Hamilton.

Disillusioned by what he saw as attacks on privacy of individuals Snowden took it upon himself to leak documents to the media and prepared for the event by taking leave from his employers and setting himself up in a hotel room in Hong Kong.

He has said that he expects the US to fight vigorously for his extradition.

'The right balance has been struck,' says US President

In the meantime US President Barack Obama has defended the programmes used by the US intelligence community and said he believes “the right balance” has been struck in defending the US against terrorist attacks.

“When I came into office we had a healthy skepticism about these programmes.  We evaluated them, scrubbed them thoroughly , expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards.

“My assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. You can’t have 100pc security and also 100pc privacy and zero inconvenience.

“We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. In evaluating these programmes they make a difference in capacity to anticipate and prevent terrorist activity.

“In the abstract you can complain about big brother and say potentially the  programme has run amok, but when we look at the details I believe we have struck the right balance,” President Obama said.

YouGov said that the proportion of users who have stopped using social media sites due to being fed up with social media marketing promotions has risen by 18pc since April last year.

In addition, 20pc have stopped using social media sites during the last year because they don’t like the possibility of their information being used by third parties.

According to YouGov almost half of social media users have liked/joind the page of a brand or company while less than 22pc have followed a brand on Twitter.

Those who like or follow a company or brand are most likely to be current customers (33pc) whose motivation would be to get something in return (34pc).

Forty seven percent of social media users would follow a brand just to get special offers.

Forty percent of social network users would stop following a brand or company if it said something they disagreed with.

Up to 23pc of social media users have researched a product or service as a result of reading about it on a social media site – up 6pc on last year – while 13pc of all social media users have bought something as a result of reading about it on a social site.

Low click-rate for Facebook ads

The YouGov report claims that advertising on Facebook has a slow uptake among consumers with only one in 20 Facebook users having clicked on an ad in the last year.

Less than one in 10 feel that targeted advertising on social media is relevant to them.

Social media users look negatively towards marketing strategies by companies on social media sites with 35pc saying they often hid companies’ updates if they update too often.

Men between 25 and 39 are significantly more likely than average to state targeted advertising is relevant to them (21pc).

So has the social media marketing fad run its course?

“This report shows that reaching potential customers through social media is rather different from doing so through traditional media channels,” YouGov SixthSense research director James McCoy says rather diplomatically.

“The proportion of Facebook users who are tuning out brands’ marketing efforts clearly indicates that a savvier approach is needed. While there are significant challenges, this report identifies potential opportunities for marketeers to build on, such as the relatively high proportion of young men who respond positively to targeted ads on social media.” 

Dislike button image via Shutterstock

Today, the logo on the Google homepage has been taken over by Max, the young protagonist from Where the Wild Things Are, doing his best wolf impression. A speech bubble above his head prompts the viewer to press play, which opens up a rotating animation of not only the world of the 1963 picture book, but also 1970’s In the Night Kitchen and 2011’s Bumble-Ardy.

The latter was Sendak’s last publication before his death on 8 May last year from complications following a stroke, and is typical of the author’s subversive style.

All of the characters end their journey gathered around a birthday cake at a party worthy of the man who The New York Times dubbed the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century.