YouTube Mobile is growing rapidly. With a 160% increase in mobile traffic through 2009, Google have been looking at ways to increase advertising revenue through this channel.

After some initial advertising trials with brands including KIA and the launch of District 9 DVD, today sees the launch of mobile ad sales in the US and Japan.

Taking a leaf from the main YouTube platform the principle form of advertising will be banner ads, like the example on the right. The benefit of banner advertising is the cross marketing from the main channel.

So, if Mazda run a banner campaign on the main YouTube channel, it is an easy and logical extension to roll it out on the mobile platform. Again, like the main site, advertising will be sold in daily chunks, rather than per thousand impressions.

This roll out will no doubt include the technology Google picked up with the late 2009 acquisition of AdMob. With Gartner predicting mobile advertising to be worth $1.56 bn by 2013, it is high time Google got in on the act.

Twitter is in the process of enabling geolocated tweets on Twitter.com.

If you have the feature enabled you should notice a “Tweet with your Location” option that uses the Google Maps API to map the tweets. The option gives Twitter users the option of tweeting their location on Twitter.com and then allowing others to view the precise location on Google Maps.

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You knew that the Droid was selling well, you have been seeing them in your daily life for months now, but do you know how well Android was doing as a whole?

It’s always hard to get a good pulse on things from your one-man view. Thankfully, we have the data: Android shot from 2.8% of the smartphone market in October, to 7.1% in January.

Of course, that market share had to come from somewhere, and it came predominately from Palm and Microsoft. Palm lost over 2% of the smartphone market share, and Microsoft lost a massive 4.0% in the quarter past.

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Google Reader is pushing out a new feature called Play to some of its users. If that link brings up a 404 error, bad news, you don’t have access yet. You can read the official Google announcement here.

The new Google Reader area found at http://google.com/reader/play is designed to give feeds rich in visuals a place to be browsed. This will only move to cement Reader as the best, and most popular RSS reader in the world.

The market reaction the product is very, very positive. If you check out the Twitter search surrounding the product, people are getting hooked in left and right.

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I’m always fascinated by new releases, as design changes offer the outsider a glimpse into a company’s strategy.

Foursquare and Gowalla have just pushed out major releases to their iPhone applications.  When the two leaders of a brand new industry offer updates on the same day, it gives the rest of us a wonderful opportunity to reflect on where each company – and the social geoloaction space – is headed.

Here is a side by side comparison of the primary screens:

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So Foursquare’s and Gowalla’s updated iPhone Apps have been released at almost the exact same time – and right in time as promised for SXSW – we wonder if this is some inside joke at Apple or something?

UPDATE: Foursquare’s update is now the new v1.7. Below is a picture we took of the update page in the App Store, and check out our side-by-side UI review of both Foursquare’s and Gowalla’s updates.

After being in trial mode since last summer, Microsoft is set to officially launch its MSN video player in the UK tomorrow.

The video on demand service competes directly with recently-launched SeeSaw in offering a range of commercial TV shows for viewers to watch for free in their browser. The service is monetised using 30-second preroll ads.

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Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, has just launched its first UK TV advert aimed at dethroning the mighty Google.

The three-month, multi-million pound campaign kicks off today with three TV ads. More details here.

Online giants Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo and a number of UK internet service providers (ISPs) have signed an open letter to the Financial Times objecting to an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, a measure currently being put before parliament.

Originally, parliamentary ministers had sought to extend powers allowing them to amend existing copyright law and penalise copyright infringements with tougher penalties and hefty fines. These were overturned by both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, replacing them with a more specific and damaging proposal.

Amendments to the Digital Economy Bill look set to hand power to courts to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites. Signatories of the letter believe the Bill and it’s associated measures will threaten “freedom of speech and the open internet” and would not tackle copyright infringement as intended.

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After days spent preparing their website, their vehicle and their tools, The Startup Bus is rolling, taking the startup weekend format on the road from San Francisco to Austin, in time for the SXSW festival.

The plan is simple – get 25 entrepreneurs on a bus for 2 days and get them to create 5 startups that will be pitched to investors when they arrive in Austin.

The website the team has created is great, showing, amongst other things, exactly where the bus is at all times and displaying geo-located tweets from the trip

You can also keep up to date in real time by following the Startup Bus’ Twitter account.

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