Happy July! This week’s roundup runs the digital gamut — from the engines (is Google working on its own social network?) to Facebook (guess which beloved cookie brand is launching a global Facebook page?) and everywhere in between. Find full recaps of these and other stories in the post below. And of course, you can follow 360i on Twitter for insights from our team all week long.

‘Google Me’ Rumors Swirl as Details of Facebook Competitor Take Shape

A tweet from Digg’s Kevin Rose (since deleted), a confirmation from a former Facebook exec and a story on TechCrunch were all it took for rumors to fly that Google is working on its own social platform to go head-to-head with Facebook. This week several outlets began speculating about Google Me, which according to former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo (he’s now heads up Q&A service Quora) is a very real project to build a “first-class social network” modeled off of Facebook.

Though none of this has been confirmed by Google, the company did begin integrating Google Buzz updates within Google Social Search this week (via Search Engine Land). Social Search, launched in January, displays search results based on individuals you’re connected to per Google.  As Danny Sullivan notes, if all this represents a larger overhaul of Google Profiles and/or Google Buzz, we can expect that Google Me (if and when it exists) will also be integrated into Social Search.

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Headlines from this week included promising news about the online ad industry, the launch of Twitter’s Business Center and a new mobile strategy from Starbucks that utilizes location-based social network Brightkite. We recap these stories and more below.

Report: Online Ad Market Rebounds in First Quarter of 2010

New comScore data signaled a display advertising rebound in early 2010, with U.S. Internet users receiving a record-high 1.1 trillion display ads during Q1. This figure reflects a 15-percent jump year-over-year. ComScore estimates that total display ad spend reached $2.7 billion in Q1 at an average CPM of $2.48.

In a press release, comScore Senior Vice President Jeff Hacket said he sees a strong resurgence in the online display ad market. “The first quarter of 2010 posted strong volume in online display ads, coinciding with increasing expenditure from advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers,” he said. “This pickup in activity should bode well for the online advertising industry as we move forward in 2010.”

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The biggest news this week came out of Facebook’s F8 Conference, where the social network announced plans that will change the way content is shared across the Web. Other top stories include Foursquare’s new local business initiatives and the announcement of AOL Ad Desk. Read our roundup for a summary of these stories and more.

Facebook Rolls Out Social Plugins and Open Graph

At the F8 Conference this week Facebook unveiled new features that have instantly made the Web more social. The world’s largest social network – now 400 million users strong – rolled out its Social Logins and Open Graph across dozens of sites, empowering site owners to make any content on their site more personalized and sharable.

Social Plugins – such as a Like Button, Recommendations and others – make it easier for site owners to add social components to any site and empower visitors to share content via their Facebook activity streams. The Open Graph connects websites with Facebook users’ profiles, and allows publisher to reach such users through their News Feed streams.

Pandora is one of 75+ publishers that have already integrated the new Facebook features into their sites.

Though there have been some early privacy concerns, Facebook’s initiatives are primed to help brands increase engagement on their sites, drive traffic, encourage consumer advocacy of their content and products, and potentially improve conversions due to increased personalization.

For a full recap of the news – and what it means for your marketing efforts – read our POV.

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Yesterday, AOL announced the beta of the Advertising.com Ad Desk, their new self-service display ad platform that provides marketers and their agencies with direct access to AOL’s inventory. At 360i, we’ve been working with AOL on their beta for some time, providing feedback on the platform and helping to enhance its benefit to marketers and their agencies.

Ad Desk is one of the best buying experiences AOL has delivered to date, and fulfills some major needs for ad buyers today – control, transparency and flexibility. With Ad Desk, performance-driven campaigns can be managed and optimized on the fly. We can set up campaigns, add and edit targeting and bid prices with the speed and efficiency needed to effectively run high-performing campaigns for our clients.

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This week Twitter (finally) unveiled its ad offering, a new report presented promising findings for the search market, Google explored which innovations will lead us into the “new frontier of display” and Twitter released some impressive stats regarding its red-hot platform. Check out our complete roundup of these top stories below.

Twitter Announces Promoted Tweets Ad Platform

On Tuesday Twitter unveiled it’s much anticipated advertising platform, called Promoted Tweets.  The platform will allow marketers – preliminary users include Bravo, Red Bull, Starbucks, Virgin America and Sony – to purchase special tweets atop Twitter search results. Promoted Tweets will be ranked by a “resonance” metric, which accounts for user engagement in the form of re-tweets, favorites, responses and clicks.

Bravo is one of the first brands to use the Promoted Tweets platform.

Sarah Hofstetter, SVP of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, told the Wall Street Journal that Twitter’s resonance metric is compelling and distinguishes it from Google’s search ad-system. The platform’s biggest challenge, she added, will be convincing marketers to continue investing. “Its challenge is longevity,” she said. “It gets exciting for a while and then you might move on the next shiny object.”

For a complete recap of the news, download our POV or head over to Ad Age and read David Berkowitz’s latest Digital Next column.

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SXSW week brought us more news from Twitter and Facebook, as well as new Hitwise traffic figures that might surprise you and a statement from Google on the future of display. Revisit all of the excitement from Austin by checking out our behind the scenes interviews, which were made possible by the sheer tenacity of David Berkowitz and some cool technology from Kyte.

Twitter Unveils @Anywhere at SXSW

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="470" caption="The publishers above have already signed up for @anywhere."][/caption]

Twitter announced a new platform at SXSW this week, which will allow publishers to integrate the service deeper into their site and create “open interactions” with readers directly from third-party sites (instead of Twitter.com). Early publishers to get on board include Amazon, Yahoo, Bing, Digg and the New York Times. For publishers, this means better interactions on their site and opportunities to accrue more followers.

In a Digital Connections post this week, David Berkowitz posed two questions that marketers should ask when considering how @anywhere will pan out in the future.

1. How important is Twitter for helping me achieve my marketing objectives?
2. How important do I want Twitter to be?

If Twitter’s an important communications channel, traffic driver, or a sales channel, then you need to follow @anywhere (literally, by following the account, and figuratively, by following related updates) and consider integrating it when it’s live.

If Twitter isn’t as essential yet, but you’re investing more resources into using it effectively and you see its influence rising (such as the share of traffic it sends to your site), then you can probably afford to be a fast follower – or a not so fast follower, where you can learn from how other sites use it before deciding how deep you want to dive in, if at all.

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Image via Computer World

Google dominated industry chatter this week with its announcement of Buzz and swirling rumors of its plans to acquire social search service Aardvark. Foursquare also made headlines for its new partnerships with Zagat and the New York Times. We’ve summarized these items and more in the recap below.

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