Digital Week in Review: Facebook is Driving Traffic to News Web Sites but Twitter Barely Registers

Facebook is Driving Traffic to News Web Sites but Twitter Barely Registers; The Inquirer
Facebook is becoming an important driver of traffic to the world’s top news web sites, while Twitter is having very little impact at all.
The Takeaway: The growing influence of social notworking media is becoming increasingly important, so much so that news agencies are beginning to craft news that caters for the burgeoning social audience. Pew Research believes that this will ultimately affect the economics of the news industry, because reporters will no longer simply write stories that readers want to know about, but rather they will write stories that they think readers will want to share with others.

Apple Tops Google as the Most Valuable Brand; NY Daily News
According to a study by global brands agency Millward Brown, Apple has usurped Google as the world’s most valuable brand. The report places Apple’s brand value at $153.3 billion, ahead of Google’s $111.5 billion, ending the search engine’s four-year reign at the top spot.
The Takeaway: The value of the Apple brand has also allowed it to take some different approaches in handling the consumer-electronics market.

Bing, Google, Yahoo Make Search More About Doing, Less About Searching; MediaPost
The Web is a vast collection of objects that digitally represent the virtual world. Search engines are still focused on looking at connecting links between pages and not the individual objects — but that will change.
The Takeaway: Search engines need to take masses of unstructured data found across the Web and make it actionable. The technology driving the engine should have the ability to identify a search intent past the initial act of the search and identify an action. For example, someone searches for a restaurant. The engine should also have the ability to identify what the user wants to book a hotel reservation. This makes search less about searching and more about doing.

Why a Facebook-Skype Deal isn’t the Stupidest Idea Ever; BNet
If you have a passing familiarity with the histories of Skype andFacebook, you probably chuckled at the report that the free social networking site might acquire the free video/phonecalling service. On second glance, however, a Skype-Facebook tie-up isn’t such a bad idea.
The Takeaway: Facebook is all about connecting people, but it only does so silently through text and photos. In a smartphone world, that seems so … 2005. It’s a natural next step to allow Facebook’s chat sessions to graduate into phone and video calling (Facebook Calls, anyone?). Rather than bear the development costs on its own, doesn’t it make sense to acquire a company that’s already making money doing it?