The world of smartphone-distributed social media nearly tilted on its axis last October when an investment deal between Facebook and China’s stratospherically successful mobile handset maker Xiaomi came close to getting inked.

Mobile chat apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp, Kik, Line and WeChat are being taken up by millions of people every day. But do they figure in the labours of traditional publishers in their ongoing efforts to move toward online platforms? Recent developments in the US and UK suggest that they do.

A quiet revolution is underway in the world of search engine optimisation (SEO), and at long last it seems that it will favour good quality content writing above those dodgy tactics deployed under “old SEO” to manipulate crumby sites to rank better with search engines.

The start of the New Year is as good a time as any to speculate about what’s going to be big in the world of social media in 2015. And several top pundits (including Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans and venture capitalist Fred Wilson) believe that they know the answer: messaging apps, which they think are set become ‘the new social media’ this year.

One of Apple’s most loyal supporters, programmer, writer and former CTO at Tumblr, Marco Arment, has kicked off something of a Twitterstorm by suggesting that the tech giant’s software is “nosediving” in quality. Maybe he’s got a point.

Even those of us immersed in the world of digital content occasionally need to use a humble pen to jot thoughts and ideas down before they disappear into the mists of your mind. Now thanks to Apple, it’s going to be possible to inscribe your precious mental gems into digital and pen-and-paper media at one and the same time.

December turned out to be a pretty good month for Twitter, despite its earlier plunge in share price. The analyst firm Argus decided on 22^nd December that it was a good time to buy Twitter shares, even though their price had fallen to not far off the lowest point in the company’s dramatic 52-week share range ($29.21 to $74.73). Argus set the target price at a relatively healthy $44.

The term “amicus curiae” might not mean much to content creators; but it could be the means by which the US Government has its plans to force social media and other internet companies based in Europe to intercept and hand over private and commercial data to its security services thwarted.

An established era may be coming to a close amongst marketers: the age of YouTube exclusivity is waning as Facebook’s video player begins to snap at its heels.