Come On Over To My (Web) Place

30/6/2007

Britain used to be to full of shy retiring types; eager to be proud of oneself, but not really into advertising it to all and sundry. New usage figures for online community sites show that this has definitely u-turned. Sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and Bebo are soaking up people’s appetites to show-off.

MySpace has always been the online community’s mainstay – the site is the original and most well known with 6.5 million users in the UK. FaceBook and Bebo are catching-up though. They only have 4 million and 3.2 million users respectively. Granted it’s still a long way off to MySpace, however, research firm Nielsen/NetRatings state that both FaceBook and Bebo attracted more traffic in May while MySpace saw a drop.

FaceBook has grown by more than 500% in the past six months making it more popular in the UK than the US – interesting considering it originally was confined to US College students.

Apple + Who?

29/6/2007

Now that the Apple iPhone has finally gone on sale in America, we can almost smell the scent of it landing on our fair shores… ‘one small step’ and all that. Along with the anticipation, UK telephone companies are already locked in battle to own the crucial contract with Apple to be the network to host the iPhone telephone capabilities.

iTunes Movie Rental

12/6/2007

Plans of Apple launching a movie rental service have been published in the Financial Times.  Apparently Apple are already in talks with certain Hollywood studios to bring make films available 'on-demand' style within iTunes.

There's yet to be any feedback from Apple itself, however rumour has it that rental prices will be from $2.99 for a 30-day rental period.  It's unclear at the moment whether the service will be available in the UK, but the service is likely to be up and running in the US by autumn this year.

Also reported was the rental would allow buyers to transfer the films to at least one other device like an iPhone or iPod.  Digital rights-management systems would obviously be used to ensure films are not copied further.