19 billion messages were sent per day on chat apps in 2012, compared with 17.6 billion SMS texts = a loss of SMS revenue of $23bn (£15bn).

Source: BBC News

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Facebook is enabling one billion people around the world to comment live on their TV viewing.

The social network is giving its users a new social action, Watching, beginning with users in the USA.

This action lets them easily compose a post that says which television show or movie they are viewing. The post automatically incorporates an icon for the show, a link to the show’s official Facebook page and the page’s cover image.

A user’s Facebook friends will then be able to Like, comment on and share the Watching post, as in this example for Jurassic Park.

More here.

“Security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli estimate that Twitter, which has 200 million active users, has as many as 20 million fake accounts. The business for selling fake followers could be worth from $40 million to $360 million, they said.”

Having seen black hat software that can create thousands of Twitter accounts in minutes, we are left wondering whether the number of fake accounts on Twitter (and any other social network for that matter) is much higher - possibly closer to the 50% mark, and probably well known to the companies, as their perceived popularity boosts their stock price.

Our advice: keep your followers are as real as possible. Fake followers do you no favours.

So - Spotify is beginning to get even closer to Facebook; OK, I get it - they are a big source of traffic and accounts for the Swedish lovelies.

However, automatically shifting my non-FB encumbered Spotify account to a FB slave account is just bad behaviour - it is not what a good business does, nor one that claims to care about its customers / subscribers (£10 / month, thank you…).  Oh - and they didn’t have my permission to do this.

So - I got angry, actually, I got REALLY angry (steam out of ears, very sweary, etc.)

Did Spotify help? Nope - they kind of hid everything behind confusion and complexity.

However, a lovely man in the Spotify community (Peter -http://community.spotify.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/111097) jumped in to help me, and I am now fixed, de-coupled from FB, and listening to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds once again.

Spotify - FAIL!

Peter - you rock.

Troy Carter predicts Lady Gaga’s market will go mostly mobile, but in three to five years.

“You can’t shock the water in our business. It’s about gradual change. You still have to cater to the market that’s out there. The Market is still 60-70% CDs & 30% digital. The physical CD is still the driver from the industry & fan perspective.”

Right now, it’s still all about Walmart, Target and iTunes.

“Give the fans the experience, however they want the experience.”