Digital Week in Review: Facebook, Twitter see record number of visits in July

Miramax Launching Multi-Title Facebook Movie App In U.S., UK & Turkey; Paid Content
Miramax is launching the largest-scale Facebook streaming movie venture yet, the latest in a series of moves to make the most possible from its rich catalog. The Miramax eXperience is now live first on Facebook with 20 titles for rent in the U.S. and 10 each in UK and Turkey; France and Germany are due in the near future.
The Takeaway:  Facebook users can rent the films for 30 Facebook credits, the equivalent of $3; the rental is active for 30 days but the viewing window is 48 hours once you start to watch. But is there a “desire” to watch films from within Facebook? We can’t wait to see the stats on how successful this program is.

Facebook, Twitter see record number of visits in July; CNET
Facebook and Twitter each broke a record last month with the highest number of visitors seen by the sites, according to data released Friday by ComScore.
The Takeaway: The most interesting part of this stats is where Google+ fell.The latest social network on the block, Google+, wasn’t listed separately by ComScore but is likely factored into Google Sites, which was the most visited site for the month with 182.2 million visitors. Earlier this month, ComScore said that Google+ had seen 25 million visitors through July 24, making it the fastest Web site to reach such numbers. The social network launched at the end of June.

Google adds weather layer to maps; Christian Science Monitor
Google on Friday added a weather widget to its Google Maps feature, allowing users to monitor meteorological conditions around the globe. The functionality, which includes a “cloud layer,” as well as a bunch of colorful icons, is powered with information from two Google partners: the U.S. Naval Observatory, and the Weather Channel’s Weather.com.
The Takeaway: Not everyone is satisfied with the new Google functionality. “Google’s weather layer is surprisingly less exciting than Bing’s weather maps, which have taken a much more serious approach to displaying data,” Regina Sinsky on Venture Beat. “For example, Bing maps visually show temperatures changes, as opposed to Google’s static visualization.”

Hulu bids due this week; The Washington Post
Bids for streaming video site Hulu are due this week, and speculation is running rampant about who will make an offer for the popular service.
The Takeaway: Since Google is already being scrutinized by antitrust officials for its search business, it may not want to expand it’s top-of-the-market video offerings. The comScore report shows that Google video sites — predominately YouTube — got about 158 million unique viewers in July.