Technology News Round-Up 3

by Startacus Admin

The tech world changes so fast it can be a challenge keeping up. That’s why the Startacus Technology News Round-up is here to keep your finger firmly on the pulse. So sit back and enjoy a quick trip through the latest UK technology news with marketing and technology blogger Justin Firth.

New .uk Web Address Coming 

The UK domain registry (Nominet) have announced that the new web address .uk will be launching in mid-2014. New addresses have already been launched in other European countries and Nominet deny that the new address will cause confusion with the standard .co.uk domain ending. To protect businesses from address hi-jacking, the owners of the current .co.uk addresses will have first choice to buy the accompanying .uk version. The price will be similar to current .co.uk costs.

The new .uk is part of much wider changes to global web addresses. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expanding top level domain endings (.net / .com / .org etc) from 22 to 1400. One of first new options will be the .london web address designed specifically for London based businesses.

ICANN’s aim is to create a much wider selection of available web addresses for businesses and individuals. One reason good web addresses are so scarce is businesses stockpiling strong domain names. Internet company Yahoo recently announced a sell-off of 305 of their unused domains including such gems as av.com, sandwich.com, jockeys.com and airtrafficcontrol.com. They expect to raise $4 million from the sale.

Twitter Opens To UK Advertisers

Following its debut on the New York Stock Exchange and £11billion valuation, Twitter have already introduced brand new UK services. For the first time UK small businesses will be able to advertise on Twitter using a self-serve advertising platform. Advertisers can create Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends and only pay if target users ‘engage’ with promotions.

To provide support for the new advertising service Twitter have partnered with O2 - who are offering £50 advertising credit to all new business users.

Small business advertising is not the only new UK service from Twitter. The new ‘Emergency Alerts’ service will send out tweets from official UK organisations in the case of a major national emergency. The service was developed following the Japanese tsunami and Twitter’s role as a vital real time news source.

Trying To Control The Trolls

Have you or your business been a victim of online abuse? According to a recent survey of 5,517 UK citizens, one in twelve have suffered trolling on social media with only 35% of those reporting the issue.

In a bid to clean-up the internet, many major websites are insisting that real names are now used for posting online comments. Google have also started tackling abusive comments left under YouTube videos by only allowing those with Google Plus accounts to post.

The official advice for dealing with trolls is not to feed them by ignoring and/or deleting any comments you receive.


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Published on: 24th November 2013