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SA land infrastructure gets R100m boost from Seacom

Written on July 27, 2011 – 12:15 am | by Ashley Johnson

Seacom, a provider of wholesale broadband services, said on Monday that it had invested R100-million in additional South African infrastructure to meet the continuous growth in demand for broadband services and applications.

The investment included the purchase of physical optical fibre links from Dark Fibre Africa as well as installing the equipment required for Seacom to manage the network linking KwaZulu-Natal’s coast where the group’s marine cable landed to two redundant points of presence (PoPs) in Gauteng.

Initially, 100 gigabit per second (Gb/s) of the fibre would be lit (using 10Gb/s technology) and a further 20 waves were expected to be lit within the next 12 months, it said. Read more…

Tags: R100m Boost, Seacom

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Why removing tracking tags is not the answer to speeding up websites

Written on July 26, 2011 – 6:10 pm | by Ashley Johnson

With tags seen as the bad guys and blocked entirely from sites, how would a retailer ever be able to switch analytics provider? 

What level of customer service and innovation could they then expect from the incumbent suppliers?

Most retailers we speak to have a very clear view of the precise impact of an extra second of page load time on traffic and conversion rates.

What we thought was less known was that tracking tags are often the heaviest and slowest-loading assets on their pages and that dealing with them would be a crucial part of any plan to optimise the speed of their site, protect customer experience and drive more sales.

But, our latest survey showed we were wrong. After conducting an online survey of 60 digital marketers, we found that 71% claimed to know how optimising loading of marketing tags could reduce overall load times. What was less surprising was that only one in three have taken steps to address the issue.

However, the problem with raising awareness of the threat of tags to page speed is the reaction of marketers.

Read more…

Tags: Tags, Tags Answer

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Stats: Latin America for marketers

Written on July 24, 2011 – 5:10 pm | by Ashley Johnson

Recent updates to the Latin America edition of our Internet Statistics Compendium over the past few months have highlighted the exciting digital growth across the continent.

One really notable change to the data coming from the region is that it is frequently less focused on Brazil, a market which has understandably dominated headlines and reports during 2010.

That’s not to say that growth across any of the Brazilian digital sectors is slowing, but with the country now well-established on the global leader board for internet use, and boasting 40m web users and sitting comfortably between the UK at 38.6m and India at 41.6m, perhaps we’re more interested in whether any of its neighbours are likely to expand in a similar way.

So what should marketers be considering when looking to Latin America?

The “New Digital Middle Class” is fuelling the digital economy

In a report titled The Stampede, Joe Crump from Razorfish calls for a re-labelling of Latin America’s “Classe C,” instead opting for the “New Digital Middle Class” in an effort to make marketers ‘rethink their fundamental assumptions’ about who is connected in the region.

Alongside Brazil, the NDMC in Argentina and Mexico is growing fast and makes up the biggest portion of each population (60% and 61.7% respectively).

They are most

Read more…

Tags: America, Latin America

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Social search: is it links or ‘likes’ that drive authority?

Written on July 24, 2011 – 3:23 am | by Ashley Johnson

It’s official: social media has taken over every aspect of our lives, from brands we interact with, to sharing content, so it was only a matter of time before the likes of Google and Bing began taking the medium’s influence into consideration when deciding on authority of content.

Search algorithms are now evolving in response to the social media revolution, with ‘human authority’ now very much a part of the mix in SERPs.

No longer is it simply a case of pushing your way to the top of the tree with link building and clever keyword integration, but just how does social search differ from more traditional SEO techniques?

Realtime search and social search

Google and Bing already have similar social search features, which show you results based on what your friends are ‘liking’ on Facebook or sharing across the web.

And up until July 2011, users could see realtime tweets in SERPS. But with th

Read more…

Tags: Social, Social Search

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No denouement in sight for Greek saga

Written on July 23, 2011 – 4:39 pm | by Ashley Johnson

This week German Chancellor Angela Merkel quashed hopes of finding a lasting solution for Greece at the crucial summit of European leaders, even as the International Monetary Fund warned of the repercussions for global economic growth if the eurozone’s debt crisis was not tackled quickly.

Amid suggestions that banks could be slapped with a levy of €10-billion over three years to raise €30-billion for another bailout of Greece, the German chancellor insisted that there would not be a “spectacular event”, such as a restructuring of Greece’s debt.

“Further steps will be necessary and not just one spectacular event which solves everything,” Merkel said. Economists warned that indecision after this week’s summit could cause severe tension in the markets.

Gabriel Stein, of Lombard Street Research, said: “Ministers must come up with some solution that does not involve postponing once again the difficult positions that alone can solve the fiscal crisis. Oth Read more…

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