Small businesses can particularly benefit from the increase by having a strong Twitter presence. SMB's could be missing out on many potential customers by not engaging on Twitter. Orange Business research revealed that the most popular searches for professional services were web designers, solicitors, accountants, architects and copywriters. "With 10 million people in the UK on Twitter, what business can afford to ignore that many potential customers?," asks Orange Business' Mike Tomlinson.

Reg Bailey, of the Mothers Union, said that parents were right to be concerned by what he called "stealth advertising" on social networks such as Facebook. "Parents are much more concerned about the whole virtual world than they are about broadcasting. I think they don't expect that their children's details are going to be picked up and the way advertisers are monetising that data to try to sell at children is really quite concerning," he said.

In an analysis of 55 representative UK websites, and drawing on its own work for clients, KPMG found that only 20% were complying with the EU privacy directive -- called the "cookie law" -- which came into force on May 26. The greatest progress in the last month has been among financial services and retail sites, KPMG found. These sectors hold a high quantity of consumer data and therefore have a greater incentive to demonstrate how seriously they take customers' privacy.

Oops. Starbucks has apologised after the coffee shop chain invited its nearly 2,000 Irish followers on Twitter to "show us what makes you proud to be British". The gaffe, which occurred on @Starbucksie during a misdirected Diamond Jubilee promotion, was hit with a backlash on the microblogging site. According to The Guardian, Twitter user Fergus McNally tweeted: "The ie stands for Ireland, awaiting the apology before I visit your stores again!!"

German news publisher and multimedia conglomerate Axel Springer is buying a position in Poland's most popular web portal, Onet.pl. Springer's Europe JV with Swiss Ringier is teaming with TV broadcaster TVN, which already owns the portal, to jointly own 75% of Onet.pl's shares, for 956.25 million Polish zloty ($273 million, EUR217.5 million). Ringier Axel Springer CEO Florian Fels, in an announcement, calls it a "milestone" for the two-year-old JV.

The acquisition is a sign of how consolidation in the sector is hitting aggregators, too. Counting flash sales and private buying clubs with daily deals, there are an estimated 105 sites in the UK alone, with 1,400 across all of Europe, and there will likely be more companies bought or cast by the wayside going forward. The UK-based deals aggregator Coupobox was bought by rival site DealCollector for a song: the price was in the "lower six figures," according to Stavros Prodromou, the founder and former CEO of the company.

The app is available on any mobile or desktop device running the newMicrosoft Windows 8 release preview. Tablets running the Windows 8 operating system are expected to go on sale in the autumn. Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com said the launch of Windows 8 tablets could be a game changer in the tablet market. The FT Windows 8 app, which can be downloaded from the Windows Store, is the "next phase in the FT's mobile development".

The magazine publisher behind Top Gear, Radio Times and Good Food, is also making a round of redundancies following the merger of its BBC Magazines, Origin and Magicalia operations, affecting sales and editorial teams. Tom Bureau, chief executive of Immediate Media, said: "The common theme in these proposed changes is that we are absolutely focused on digital growth, whilst maintaining our core print business." The review is also likely to impact the number of editorial roles within Immediate's Parenting team, as the market rapidly migrates online.

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has written the first release for Wonderbook, named The Book of Spells. Set in the Harry Potter universe, The Book of Spells has players working through wizard training at Hogwarts School, learning magic spells which are then cast using the PlayStation Move controller as a wand. "This is the closest a Muggle can come to a real spellbook," said Rowling. "I've loved working with Sony's creative team to bring my spells, and some of the history behind them, to life. This is an extraordinary device that offers a reading experience like no other."

The Queen may be celebrating her jubilee, but the Queen's EnglishSociety, which has railed against the misuse and deterioration of the English language, is to fold. For 40 years the society has championed good English - and hasn't been above the occasional criticism of the Queen's own pronouncements - but it has finally conceded that it cannot survive in the era of textspeak and Twitter. Among its findings, and which probably will only worsen, were that 80% of university undergraduates could not spell and use the word "effect" correctly, and 43% were unable to spell the word "miniature."