Cox & Kings in £450m takeover of Holidaybreak

Holidaybreak, who specialise in adventure travel, education and weekend breaks, are the subject of a 450m takeover from the luxury travel company Cox & Kings, who are listed in India. Holidaybreak have confirmed the takeover discussions on their website, following press speculation. The statement reads: "Further to the announcement on 25 July 2011 and recent press speculation, the Board of Holidaybreak confirms that it is in discussions with Cox & Kings Limited which may or may not lead to an offer for Holidaybreak at a price of 432.1 pence in cash per ordinary share."

 However, they also added: "At this stage there can be no certainty that any offer for the company will be forthcoming." Travel Weekly reported that Holidaybreak shares climed 15% on Monday, after the company, which makes it's money through school trips and weekend breaks, admitted that the discussions may lead to a takeover. Last month, Holidaybreak reported pre-tax losses of £19.2 million, and in the same month it sold it's theatre ticketing agency, West End Theatre Bookings, to Encore Tickets for £10.9 million.

Microsoft Slammed for Social Media Cash-in on Amy Winehouse Death

News of the tragic death of Amy Winehouse has been impossible to avoid since Saturday, with the social pathways of Facebook, Twitter and now Google+ providing a forum for commentary, whether it takes the form of praise and mourning, or whether it be of a rather more distasteful tone such as the Amy Winehouse death scams that appeared on Facebook, or the generally poor 'rehab' jokes that most of us are bored with now.

 Another regrettable social media tactic has been companies trying to capitalise on the Back to Black singer's untimely death, and no one failed more spectacularly in this regard than tech giants Microsoft. The company's X-Box PR company in the UK tweeted: "Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune…" After recieving hundreds of irate replies, @tweetbox360 was forced to rectract its statement, and it apologised for the 'commercially motivated' tone of the message. Esquire Magazine were also rounded on for their tweet which linked to their latest article: "Meet the stylish man who inspired Amy Winehouse". That man was non other than Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy's ex who was seen as central to her descent into drink and drug addiction. The article states that Fielder-Civil will: "...be great, even if he's still a bit fked-up."

Although Microsoft and esquire have taken most of the flak, a number of tweeters underlined that fact that Apple are running a 'remembering Amy' advert on the front page of their iTunes store. One could also point out that Amy's record label, Universal, could be in the firing line, as rumours circulated that an album was being cobbled together from rough demos she had been working on.

Binghoo! Now Provides Major Challenge to Google

 Bing-powered Yahoo searches, or 'Binghoo!' if you're that way inclined, are creeping up on Google and may pose the first serious threat to their search monopoly in many a year, according to some new research by the Rosetta agency. The research measures the percentage contribution of organic clicks and splits the results into vertical markets such as financial services, retail, B2B and healthcare. Whilst the study showed that Google is still dominant in many respects, generating up to 75% of clicks in some markets, there were surprising results in some areas. Google's dominance was as low as 54% in the financial services vertical market, and came in as 60% for retail. Binghoo! clicks were as high as 37% in retail, and TechCrunch have reported that Bing's year-on-year market growth is an impressive 41%, whilst Google's growth is at 6.4%. 

Rosetta also created a 'search success' variable, which measured the number of searches that led to a click on website, and Binghoo! won out again, with a conversion rate of 81% compared to Google's 66%. Adam, our London SEO specialist, thinks that learning Bing/Yahoo SEO techniques could put you at an advantage in the job market: "Although there's no sign of Google's dominance ending, the amount of money that is being pured into Binghoo! search means its imperative to understand the subtle differences between Google and Bing in terms of SEO, if you want to compete for the top SEO jobs." Adam is currently recruiting for an SEO manager and SEO specialist at two of the top digital agencies in London. The job details can be found here and here.

Google+ adds further layer to Google's SEO monopoly

There has been much fanfare about Google+, mostly revolving aroung how it has trumped Facebook and Twitter is a series of ways, but many in the SEO world have known all along that one of the major reason why Google have invested so much into their social networking layer is because of the advantage it gives them in terms of social rankings.

As BD blogged earlier this month, Google+ has an advantage over Facebook in terms of both privacy and video conferencing, and it is primarily its better handling of privacy that is a key factor in the SEO advantage. The 'circles' strategy, where users can split their friends into different circles, which each have differential levels of access, may mean that users are more forthcoming about what content and websites are being shared socially.  The Econsultancy blog have pointed out that this could be a great addition to Google's search algorithm. They have noted that what some call the 'linkerati' - those who own their own websites and blogs, and have the ability to make multiple links to sites - have been the main early adopters of Google+, giving a boon to Google's new '+1' API, which has been designed to compete with the Facebook 'like' and the Twitter 'follow'. This concentration of webmasters and bloggers may see Google generate data on social trends faster than its competitors.

Meanwhile, Reuters have reported that Google+ is beginning to face it's first challenges, as some loopholes in user creation are beginning to be discovered, leading to an acceleration of 'spam' accounts and spam links. Google have been insisting on people using their real names, using the bizarre analogy of people wearing shirts in a restaurant (!). The way Google handles these teething problems will determine how successful it's social networking layer will be, with many groups such as the LGBT community slamming Google for not letting people hide behind pseudonyms for self-protection.

Facebook's iPad app Revealed by Blogger

Facebook is yet to release it's official iPad app, but the tech news website TechCrunch has found a loophole in the latest Facebook iPhone app that reveals what it will look like. TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler wrote: "Hidden in the code of Facebook’s iPhone app is the code for something else. Something everyone has been waiting over a year for. The iPad app." Siegler went on to reveal some of the details of the app, stating: "In particular, the navigation system is great. Unlike the iPhone app…the Facebook iPad app uses a left-side menu system that can be accessed by the touch of a button or the flick of the iPad screen...When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook. The photo-viewer aspect looks great — similar to the iPad’s own native Photos app. Places exists with a nice big map to show you all your friends around you."

 Jemima Kiss from the Guardian's PDA blog was so impressed with the app that she wondered what might be holding it back from release: "With the app this finished, you have to wonder what finishing touches are worth holding back for. Or, what kind of opportunity Facebook is looking for to time this launch." It is thought that Mark Zuckerberg will announce the app during the forthcoming Skpe press conference.

The Booming Promotional Marketing Industry: Going Digital?

The growth of voucher schemes such as Tesco's Clubcard and Sainsburys Nector Card have led to promotional marketing occupying a key position in retail, and not just amongst budget shoppers. The coupons and vouchers industry is worth around £36 billion and is growing fast, according to the Institute of Promotional Marketing. In particular, the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector, dominated by the supermarkets, is experiencing a boom. According to a recent survey by Valassis, 61% of people regularly use coupons, up from 51% in June 2010. Furthermore, 37% of consumers are actively looking for promotional deals, up from 28% the previous year. Although coupons and vouchers have traditionally been perceived as the reserve of the lower social groups, the research indicates that shoppers from the top two social groups use them just as much as others, with 61% of consumers reporting use.

BD Recruitment are currently offering a digital accounts director role at the top end of the promotional marketing industry, specialising mainly in the FMCG sector, with a salary up to £60k + benefits. Research earlier this month indicated that consumers are increasingly looking for online offers, vouchers and coupons, and are particularly keen to see their 'liked' and 'followed' brands offer them deals through Facebook and Twitter. This tendency can be seen through top-line digital reshuffles in the major supermarkets. Tesco recently poached direct marketing agency EHS 4D chief executive Matt Atkinson in order to bolster its social media and digital operations worldwide, whilst Sainsburys poached Ocado's head of retail John Rudoe to ramp up its digital and multi channel business.

Google+ sets the agenda for Facebook and Microsoft

The clamour for invites to Google+, the company's new social networking application, was huge last week, and it wasn't just us Average Joe's who were curious:  Mark Zuckerberg has a Google+ account and has been looking around, gaining over 30,000  followers in the process. Although the Facebook CEO is guarded about who he befriends on Facebook, and is fairly quiet on both Twitter and LinkedIn, he has very publicly shown his hand on Google+, following its opening last week, as he sizes up the competition on an application that is widely considered to be the strongest competition that Facebook has ever faced.

Whilst Twitter differs quite significantly from Facebook in terms of structure and networking, the Google+  layout takes a similar approach to the 'profile' and 'wall' pages on Facebook, but has clearly been designed to usurp Facebook in two key areas: privacy and video chat. The inability of Facebook to provide flexibility in terms of privacy, particularly the lack of a user-friendly option to split friends into groups with different levels of access, has been remedied by Google+'s 'circles' function, where friends can be dragged and dropped into interlinking groups or 'circles' that have different levels of access to your information. The 'hangout' option in Google+ also enables webcam chats with multiple circles of friends, and is widely thought to have provoked Facebook's partnership with Skype, which will enable free voice and video conferencing through Facebook.

 The Facebook-Skype deal is perhaps most telling of Microsoft's move to strengthen itself against it's longtime search-rival, Google. In 2007, Microsoft bought a 1.7% stake in Facebook for $240 million, and it recently purchased Skype for $8.5 billion. Skype SEO Tony Bates revealed to CNET that for himself and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, better linkage with Facebook was the key behind the deal: "The day we announced, we definitely came to see Mark [Zuckerberg]...It was for both of us, Steve and I, the most important strategic relationship." The Guardian reported that Zuckerberg chose to play down the extent to which Google had prompted the Facebook-Skype deal, saying: ""I'm not going to talk too much about Google. Lots of companies that have not traditionally looked at social networking apps – not just Google – will be trying apps. I view a lot of this as validation of how the next five years will play out – every app will be social."

 Early indications are that Google+ has been a massive hit during it's week-long 'invite-only' test phase, and has certainly wowed the early adopters in a way that Google Wave spectacularly failed to do. Whether Zuckerberg sees Google as his main competition or not, he is clearly aware that Facebook needs to up its game in view of strong challenges.