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Tuesday 22 December 2009

The highs and lows of 2009 and the potential for 2010

If one thing is certain it is that recovery is far from certain… we’re not out of the woods yet!

With house prices on the up, Quantitative Easing measures seemingly working and consumer confidence in their ability to accrue savings climbing for the third consecutive month in November there are reasons to be cheerful.

But, given the irrepressible march of RDR and impact on adviser/provider business; ongoing uncertainty about the impact of personal accounts and continuing brittleness of investor sentiment (as evidenced in the immediate aftermath of the Dubai revelations)… 2010 could well have some interesting twists and turns in store!

Monday 21 December 2009

The Year in Digital

It's that time of the year when we're forced to face the fact that the year's whizzed by and we can't actually remember what on earth happened. So at Teamspirit we thought we'd take you back through the year's biggest digital events. It's undoubtedly been the year that social media/communications/ideas/interactions or whatever you prefer to call them have been on the tip of everyone's tongue. Facebook passed 350 million users, there are now 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, and of course Twitter has been this year's biggest story, a fact verified when it was officially confirmed as 'Top word of the Year'.

However there were plenty of other stories breaking. There have been huge moves in the search arena with Microsoft launching Bing, Yahoo! seemingly giving up and jumping in with Bing and Google trying to take over the world and all the while real-time search partnerships being announced by pretty much everyone along the way. It still wasn't quite the year of mobile despite the fact that HTC's, iPhone's, N97's and Palm Pre's all faced off against each other.

It wasn’t all good news either. Geocities finally closed down, Microsoft lost a ton of staff, Myspace had to completely reinvent itself and E-bay's profits fell hugely as the recession bit. And all of this against a backdrop of the Digital Britain report in which the government attempted to encapsulate Britain's approach to Digital over the coming years.

So all in all a real rollercoaster and here it all is, in links

January 2009







One billion unique users on the Internet

February 2009






Facebook changes terms of service creating big frustration with user community
Speculation about Twitter charging brands for commercial use

March 2009







Many e-mail campaigns alienate customers
Facebook beats Google in steering niche traffic
Google Releases Behavioural Advertising
Social Networks Pass Email in Usage

April 2009








Over 60 percent of people who sign up for Twitter do not return to using it the following month
Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads
Google releases Google Me
Internet surveys combined with traditional research methods are becoming the norm

May 2009







Microsoft announces Bing.com
Google reannounces Google Wave
Online Video Usage Up 53 Percent in ’09
Forrester Predicts Huge Growth for Social Media Marketing


June 2009








Facebook beats Myspace traffic in the US
Time spent on social networks doubles in a year
Facebook user names for user profiles and Facebook pages
The government releases the Digital Britain Report
iPhone release the 3GS against the Nokia N97

July 2009








Social media use soars among b-to-b marketers
Microsoft now powers Yahoo! search
Google announces their own operating system: Google Chrome OS
Facebook gives users more control over their status updates

August 2009








Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index is unveiled
Facebook announces real-time search
Twitter announces an API to help control, standardise and mainstream retweeting
Facebook up their challenge to Google with the purchase of Friendfeed

September 2009







Twitter gets an (unofficial) app store
Brands become mainstream on Twitter- mentioned in 1 in 5 Tweets
Companies increasing spend in web 2.0 technologies
Google releases Sidewiki

October 2009








Geocities goes out of business
Bing announces Tweets to appear in search results
Technorati release their State of the blogosphere
YouTube is routinely serving more than a billion video views per day
Yahoo stops using meta keywords for search

November 2009








Linkedin and Twitter integrate
Twitter creates Twitter Lists
Salesforce.com announces Chatter, social computing for enterprise companies

December 2009








Twitter Starts Testing Features for Businesses
MySpace and Facebook sign real-time search deals with Google
Facebook Pushes People to Go Public
Time spent on Facebook by 18-24 year olds declines
Google Announces New Offerings in Real-Time, Mobile and Social Search
Morgan Stanley state 'Mobile Internet Market Will Be Twice The Size of Desktop Internet'

Thursday 3 December 2009

Teamspirit hires new digital team


Teamspirit has hired a 5-strong digital team to join its existing digital team and strengthen its offer to clients. The new team comes from Peterborough-based Lightstone who announced they were closing last week.

The team headed by David Simpson have worked together on brands such as Alliance & Leicester, BGL, Ascentric, Yorkshire Building Society, NestlĂ© and the BBC over the last 6 years. David joins as Digital Director to work alongside Teamspirit’s Crispin Heath. All of the team will be based in Teamspirit’s office in Farringdon, London.

Commenting on the news, Jo Parker CEO of Teamspirit said “The digital work we do for clients has nearly doubled in the last 2 years and we see that growth continuing next year. What we really loved about David and his team is not only their experience in developing great websites both b2b and for consumers, but also their passion for integrating what they do with the offline world so that the customer experience of the brand is seamless. This is an exciting addition for us at the end of a successful year.”

David added “Financial services has been our focus for many years, so joining Teamspirit is a perfect match and an exciting new opportunity for all of us. We’re looking forward to working with the rest of the team to deliver great, results for clients across a wider range of channels.”

For enquiries please call:
Jo Parker, Crispin Heath or David Simpson on 020 7360 7878