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With the recent increase in the use of social media, and the increase in mobile phone technology since the last election, the question has been asked many time – was the recent general election an Internet election? For me, the answer has to be an overwhelming no. Although there was great fervor around the use of Twitter and Facebook during the run-up to the election, it did not really do anything to influence voters, nor the politicians themselves. In fact, the only affect this had was to get social media addicts bickering amongst themselves online.

There was one thing that made me believe that the next general election (assuming that we can get out of being ‘hung’ without another election this year) might be more online. The disgusting fact that so many people were unable to vote at local voting stations leads to one obvious conclusion – allow people to vote online. We can currently do everything extremely securely online from shop, send videos and contact old friends, so why can’t we vote. This is something that must be in place in the future to avoid the debacle of queues of people past 10pm on election day!

Well, who would have though it? Google has recently changed the structure of its search results by including its search options in a bar on the left hand side of the screen. This has annoyed many people (see how many results you get by searching for “remove Google sidebar”!) and is even more annoying for users of iGoogle – with limited screen space, the forced inclusion of search options has proved to annoy most users.

This change has come as a direct copy of the Bing search structure. Bing have shown their search options to users since launch. Google has taken this and duplicated it in their latest version. I think that this shows one thing – that people fear change. Users of Bing have quite happily accepted the sidebar quite happily as it has always been like this. However, those Google users (who obviously number in their billions!) have reacted badly to a change in the appearance of their search engine of choice. The lesson here – if it ain’t broke….!

The austere and antiquated approach by the organisers of the US Masters Golf tournament means that most viewers cannot watch any coverage of the event until well into the day’s play. The restriction has been annoying me immensely for many years, with my excitement for one of the greatest tournaments in the world (most American’s would probably say THE greatest) being curtailed by the fact that I cannot watch every ball.

However, if the approach to television rights may be slightly antiquated, the approach to online coverage certainly isn’t. For a number of years we have been able to watch coverage of ‘Amen Corner’ live on the BBC website. However, this year I noticed that the official Masters site was allowing users to watch key moments very shortly after they happened live. They also offered the chance to follow certain players live around the course. All of this means that the various online teams should be applauded for doing their best to provide that which we have been missing for many years!

With Gordon Brown finally letting slip the worst kept secret of the year by announcing that the general election will be on the 6th May this year, it gave rise to a host of new plans to allow the leaders of the main three parties to go head-to-head. Following a distinctly average display by the three ‘Money-men’ in a recent TV debate, the three leaders have announced that they are going to hold the first ever UK digital debate with questions fielded over Facebook and YouTube.

Frankly, the thought of Gordon Brown trying to use Facebook is a bit like the thought of my dad asking me about the ‘hippity hoppity’ music that I was listening to. The hope is, of course, to open up the leaders to an entirely new demographic and convince this younger group to vote for them. However, the structure of the debate will only allow two questions each from a list of five main categories to actually reach the leaders themselves. So although it may be hailed as a great step into the online world, the reality is that it is merely a baby step!

As it was announced last week that Scottish Labour candidate Stuart MacLennan has been sacked for his abusive Twitter comments about politicians and voters, I could only think that there are still plenty of people who still don’t understand the reach of social media. Although many may question the intelligence of a man who tweets childish insults about his colleagues for the entire world to see, the man himself must have been fully aware of what he was doing. After all, this is a man who managed to get through law school to become a fully qualified tax lawyer!

However, the most delicious irony of this tale is that Mr MacLennan even went on to post a tweet that asked who the first person would be who gets sacked for tweeting comments about colleagues. With an almost perfect sense of foresight, this comment sadly did not go on to provide the answer to that question – himself!

Facebook are currently in discussions with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) agency to discuss the possibility of introducing a panic button on all pages within the social networking site. The proposed button will allow children, who may be feeling threatened by or suspicious anything on their own Facebook page. The button will link the child straight through to the agency where they can find information on how to deal with or report any threats.

Previously, Facebook have been open to introducing the panic button on main pages within the site, but not on a specific child’s profile page. These discussions have opened up the possibility of allowing any suspicious behaviour being reported. I imagine that it would still be difficult to fully track anyone following a button press, but anything that could present a deterrent to anyone planning on grooming or threatening children can only be an improvement to Facebook.

A recent report has shown that UK online advertising spending has bucked the general industry downward trend by continuing to increase throughout 2009. Surpassing £3.5 Billion for the first time, online advertising has not only survived the global cooldown on spending, but managed to increase over that time. To put this rise in perspective, in the past decade online advertising spending has increased by over 2000%! Almost two-thirds of this spend was through paid search.

There are many reasons for this increase. The most obvious include the fact that more people than ever are online, and with increased broadband speeds leading to more page views, the numbers of ‘eyes’ are greater than ever. However, one major reason for the increase is the explosion in social media – Facebook alone accounts for 20% of all UK time spent online. This has opened up a new, targeted and above all very profitable opportunities for advertisers.

Researchers have warned that the addiction that young people have with technology is having a disruptive effect on their learning. The effects of modern gadgets this were seen by pupils with poor spelling, poor levels of concentration, encouraged plagiarism and disrupted lessons. Out of 267 pupils surveyed aged 11 to 18, the report found that 63% felt addicted to the internet and 53% to their mobile phones. On average pupils were spending between one to two hours a day on social networking sites, 30% said they sued the internet between 1 and 2 hours and 26% spending unto six hours on it.

UK Psychologists have found that there is a strong link between depression and heavy use of the internet. According to a study in the journal Psychopathology, 1.2% of people who were surveyed were found to be internet addicts and were also suffering from depression. The team from Leeds university however couldn’t say for definite that one was linked to the other as many of the internet users did not suffer mental health problems.
The findings were based on 1,319 responses to a questionnaire set up on line via links to social networking sites. The respondents averaged a age of 21 answered a wide range of questions to assess if they suffered from depression.

Dick Durbin, a senator from the United States of America has approached 30 technology companies for information in advance of a hearing he has set up on Human Rights practices in China. This comes as Google makes an announcement to stop censoring search results in China as it discovered that their systems had been broken into by hackers in China. The internet search engine found that it had some of its intellectual property stolen but also some security breaches of the Gmail accounts of some of the activist supporting human rights in China. The senator asked companies to give details of their businesses and any steps they will implement to ensure that their products don’t penalise human right activists set by the Chinese government.