December 2010

Q: What happens when you let an intern loose with 10m lines of data and some processing power?

A: In the case of Paul Butler an intern with Facebook's data infrastructure engineering team, something rather special.

Expanding a business into a new country can be daunting. As we've discovered across the Digital Mission events understanding the market is critical, even when there's a (mostly) shared language like the US.

At first sight, the Indian market looks daunting, the numbers are mind-boggling, as is the pace of change. That's before figuring out how to tackle the business culture.

Step in UK Trade & Investment's London team, they've just announced a Marketing Strategy Scholarship with S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai. It looks like a fantastic opportunity to tap the brains of India's leading marketers in a five-day intensive course at their campus in Mumbai followed by executive placements at Indian companies.

As the year draws to a chilly close, we were wondering what your most significant thing of 2010 would be?  Just one!

Your thing could be an event, a moment, a launch or a technical development in the Digital sector that occurred during 2010.

Cyber Monday is traditionally THE day for cyber sales. The Monday after Thanksgiving is usually an online shopping free for all but this year the day beat the lot of for the number of online sales. Are things looking up or is it just a sign of online promotions and discounts doing the trick?

According to the latest figures from ComScore, online sales were up 16% on last year. The purchases taking place during those 24 hours generated a massive one billion dollars - for the first time in history and the greatest ever spent online in one day. At the same time, holiday spending increased by 13% over the same period in 2009.