Simon Spalding will lead the international expansion at Yummi Media Group, wherein a new game format proposition will be rolled out. It makes real contributors of audiences to on-screen action by interacting with a mobile app while the show is being broadcast. This is made possible by Yummi's in-house technology platform which integrates mobile, social gaming and live broadcast events. During his tenure at Fremantle Spalding worked on a range of TV franchises including Idol, The Price is Right and Baywatch.

The new smartphone and table app Currents, which helps readers explore newspaper and web content more easily, is now available for download in the UK. It was launched in the U.S. in December but has now been given a significant upgrade in line with its global release. The streamlined news service has added 400 new publishers and over 14,000 self-published editions to its line-up, as well as quicker syncing. Google expects the updated app to rival current market leader Flipboard.

A study of social media habits in 10 countries by Kantar Media finds that just 35% of Brits read the comments on online news stories and only 12% would considering positing a comment or submitting an article. Brazil, Argentina and Mexico were the top three countries, where between 41 and 47% of respondents said they read user-generated material and 25% said they'd post their own. At the bottom were Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Iwitness24 has generated front page stories in the Norwich Evening News and Stevenage Comet since Archant launched the platform in January. Richard Willner, who is responsible to the site, says the regional publishing group's audience has taken to iwitness24 "largely because of the ease of use of the platform." Archant launched the "community news platform" two weeks after cutting jobs at its Suffolk division when it pulled the plug on the Saturday edition of the Ipswich Evening Star.

Warning that failure to act responsibly online will lead to the government interference, the "Deal or No Deal" host called social media "an incredible communications weapon but, like all weapons, it can be used for bad as well as good." The YouTube video in which he issued his plea was posted after Edmonds met with the student who set up a Facebook page called "Somebody please kill Noel Edmonds". The TV presenter said he was glad to have met up with the student and called the event "very much a student prank."

After he was stopped by armed men and forced into the boot of his Golf 3, a man used his mobile to send a desperate text to his girlfriend. She turned to Twitter, posting, "Be on the look for DSS041GP. My boyfriend has just been hijacked and is in the boot. Please RT." One friend sent it to Twitter user PigSpotter, who has become a mini-celebrity in South Africa by posting about speed traps. PigSpotter's 110,000 followers took up the cause and, an hour later, K9 Law Enforcement tweeted, "We have co-ords."

A report from Ipsos finds that Internet users in the UK and the U.S. were more inclined to prefer email, at 87% and 86%, respectively. Internet users in the BRIC markets, however, were less partial to email-based marketing messages, with 76% of Brazilians preferring email, 68% of Russians, 66% in India and 57% in China. While respondents in Russia, India and China also preferred email over text, a greater proportion (32%, 34% and 43%, respectively) preferred receiving promotions via a text message.

The move is a step toward the Swedish company's embracing the web. With the Spotify Play web widget, playlists and song titles are embedded on pages by web authors and users can play corresponding tracks by clicking it. It means new streams for Spotify to serve and pay royalties for but it also means more ears will be exposed to the service's advertising and a new pool of free listeners to convert to premium. Already, Huffingti Post, MSN UK and Vogue. com are using the widget.

The publisher's UK wing is launching a new, designed-for-tablet women's lifestyle title on iTunes Newsstand and on print newsstands. The quarterly is an off-shoot of Good Housekeeping and has been created with "tablet-friendly features such as smaller articles, greater emphasis on visuals, smart phone-friendly typefaces and an interative contents page," says Hearst.

The WPP Group media agency holding company predicts digital ad spend this year will climb almost as much, to $98.2 billion, or nearly 19% of all measured media spending. North American last year had the highest level of digital ad spending, followed by Asia Pacific and Western Europe. The same pattern is expected to hold this year. Last year, digital advertising in the U.S. increased 12% to $32.2 billion, an amount that represents a 22% share of the overall domestic media market. In 2012, spending is expected to rise 10% to $35.4 billion, a 23% share of media dollars.