• On the right track? Google reportedly will be testing a new method of targeting mobile users, one which connects the company’s mobile web tracking mechanisms with its mobile app tracking mechanisms, thereby allowing Google and its advertisers to track mobile users as they switch between web surfing and in-app activities. Until recently, advertisers usually have had to treat a mobile user accessing the web as a separate person from the same user accessing a mobile app. Facebook, however, is able to accommodate such cross-usage tracking, putting pressure on Google to develop its own solution to this fundamental challenge.
  • Strange bedfellows. Although social media is often viewed as a threat to television, a recent study indicates that, in fact, social media has changed the way many people learn about and view television shows. Having a “second screen” at hand increases viewers’ involvement with their favorite shows.
  • For your “what were they thinking” file. A juror in a criminal case in Memphis allegedly sent a Facebook friend request to a defendant charged with aggravated assault. Court personnel discovered the communication after the verdict, which was a unanimous guilty verdict, and the “Facebooking juror” was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom.