“In mid-2008, eMarketer calculated that UK social network ad spending would reach £175 million ($322 million) in 2009. Changes in the market have led to revisions of the 2009 estimate downward by about 20%, although that would still be a healthy increase over the £115 million ($212 million) total estimated for 2008.”
washingtonpost.com gives a selection of best viral video on 2008
funny, silly videos quite some of us received and watched in the last months
“If it was not for the credit crunch and economic downturn that has dominated the news since September, 2008 would be remembered as the year of social media.
The year saw a presidential election driven in part by social networking, the rise of Facebook as an interactive platform and the rapid spread of mobile interactivity through the popular iPhone.
IAB rolled out a slew of initiatives in 2008, including campaign measurement guidelines, e-mail data management best practices, a digital video ad-serving template and more. “
a very nice and detailed article on widgets – something we’ll soo more of and do more often in our online marketing communication in a few years
here in Bulgaria it is not very popular, even it is very unknown, but the first to introduce it will gain, as always 
“Wanna get away … from the Old Model? Look no further than widgets, the mini software applications downloadable to browsers, desktops, social-networking pages, home pages and mobile phones. The widget may not be the holy grail, but it’s arguably pretty damn grail-ish — maybe the highest expression so far of online marketing in the Post-Advertising Age. And though it is very much on the cutting edge of Web 2.0, it is based on the hoariest of principles. In fact, to be properly visionary on this subject, you must begin by looking way back to the future.
For the past half-century (and for about five more minutes) TV advertising has been at the apex of marketing communications. Then, in no particular order, newspapers, magazines, radio, out of home, direct mail, point of purchase, collateral (brochures, for example) and — in the murky, mucky darkness at the very bottom of the deepest abyss of marketing prestige — advertising specialties. ”
the whole article is here, go for it
quite some nice exampleas in the article too. enjoy them. some inspiration could come.
“American youth may appear to be up to their eyeballs in new technology, but in terms of Internet access they are surpassed by 12- to 14-year-olds in Britain, Israel, the Czech Republic, Macao and Canada, according to a new report by the Center for the Digital Future. Only 88% of that age group in the U.S. accesses the Internet, compared to 100% in the U.K. and 98% of Israelis, the report found.”
how about Bulgarian kids? no exact data, but for age 15-19 – 70% are online, which is OK, compared with 33% overall penetration
The next two days I am anout to teach / have lectures on Online Marketing Seminars in Stara Zagora (mid Bulgaria) and Varna (the sea side) – first time to talk out of Sofia about Web 2.0 and new things in online marketing
curious to see how it will be accepted, is the pucbic there ready to know it and to practice it
will see
for a few days I am at Glasgow to work on a European project on web sites evaluation and science and Internet
we come from 7 European countries and everyone deal with science, University and Internet
and it is so so hard to understand each other, to know everyone understand the same under the same word
we talk about “websites” and what is website, should be a blog be considered as website, is a portal site website, is an online tv website? … hard.