Facebook and Google Marketing Expert
SEO Website Marketing
Would you like to see your website on the first page of Google, Yahoo or MSN, creating more hits and sales?
SEO Web Marketing takes a different approach to optimisation, focusing not only short terms gains but long term visability and return on investment.
Need proof? Then check out our Client Portfolio List which includes Self Employed Tradesmen, Small Businesses to larger corporations
such as Probability PLC, Timpsons and Russell Grant.
If this sounds of interest send Susan, our Google Expert an email
with your web address and she will analyse your websites potential and let you know how to achieve it.
susan@seowebmarketing.co.uk Pro Bono work is also undertaken for
CAFOD and all worthwhile causes considered for free.
3 launches 'Facebook phone' for Christmas
Phone is aimed
squarely at users who find 'smartphones' such as the iPhone, Blackberry Storm and G1 too expensive
Mobile phone company
3 is hoping to capitalise on the success of Facebook with the release of a new handset in time for Christmas that integrates
the social networking site with all the traditional functions of a mobile phone, such as contacts book and message inbox.
The
INQ1 - pronounced "ink one" - is likely to be dubbed "the Facebook phone" as it puts users in touch with their social networking
circle at the touch of a button. The phone, unveiled today and available in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong from next month,
is aimed squarely at users who find "smartphones" such as the
iPhone, Blackberry Storm and G1 too expensive, but still want to use social networking, e-mail and instant messaging as well as surf the mobile web.
The
INQ1 will be free for anyone willing to sign up to an 18-month contract at just £15 a month. For that they will get unlimited
Facebook and Skype calls, as well as access to Windows Live Messenger and up to 1GB a month of web access, plus unlimited
texts, unlimited email, unlimited calls to other 3 customers and 75 minutes of calls to other networks a month. Paying £5
more a month brings the off-network calls to 200 a month. Pay as you go users can buy the phone for £79.99 and will need to
spend at least £5 a month on internet access.
The iPhone, meanwhile, is free for £45 a month on an 18 month contract
with O2 and starts at £349.99 for a pre-pay version. The G1, which includes Google's Android operating system, is £40 a month
with T-Mobile, also on an 18 month contract. The Storm, meanwhile, is £35 a month with Vodafone but that contract is for two
years.
The INQ1 is the first phone from INQ, the mobile device venture set up earlier in the year by 3's owner Hutchison
Whampoa which also includes the team that helped create 3's Skypephone. INQ's chief executive Frank Meehan said the new device
is designed to bring the mobile internet and especially mobile social networking, to a much wider audience.
"The 85%
to 95% of the market that did not buy the iPhone and cannot afford an expensive smartphone has been frankly forgotten," he
said. "The problem is we could not find anything under $500 that gave customers good access to the internet so we said 'stuff
it we'll do it ourselves'."
INQ is understood to have looked at using Google's Android platform to power the device
but the processing power needed made the chips that any device would have to include, prohibitively expensive. As a result
the INQ has been built from the bottom up. It is, however, based on an open platform - for instance it supports Flash Lite
- and the device can be updated 'over the air' meaning that if other sites such as Bebo wish to be integrated more fully into
the device that can easily be done.
At present the phone also has one-touch access to music site Last.fm while sites
such as YouTube and eBay can be accessed through the 3 mobile web portal. In future such sites could be added as "widgets"
to the phones main menu in the same way as Facebook and MSN Messenger will be there at launch.
But it is the attraction
of Facebook that has 3 most excited about the potential scale of the INQ1's appeal. Since the start of the year global users
of Facebook on mobile phones has ballooned from 5 million to 15 million as the company has added new features such as being
able to comment on friend's status updates as well as update one's own status. The introduction of that function saw over
a million mobile status comments created in the first 24 hours, according to Facebook.
There are currently two mobile
Facebook sites. One, m.facebook.com, works on any mobile device that can access the internet, while x.facebook.com works on
more powerful "smartphones". There are also downloadable applications - or widgets - which make Facebook far easier to use
for specific devices such as the iPhone.
Richard Wray
Communications Editor
Guardian.co.ukThursday November 13 2008 08.26 GMT - 24/11/2008
Copyright 2008