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The University of Washington’s World Information Access report (WIA) has shown that since 2003, at least 64 people have been arrested for blogging about political issues - for exposing corruption in goverment, the abuse of human rights or for just generally criticising governments. In 2008, it is likely that more bloggers than ever will face arrest as a result of the growing political importance of blogging. 

More than half of all the arrests have been made in China, Egypt and Iran with prison sentences given to many. The average prison sentence for blogging was 15 months and the longest sentence found by the WIA was eight years!

Its not just the Middle East bloggers though - in the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.  Arrests tend to increase during times of political uncertainty - so with upcoming elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US, arrests are predicted to high an all time high.

For more details about the report visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7456357.stm

Some very exciting news… our new website is getting closer and closer. We are going to release the beta version next Wednesday 28th at noon (GMT).

The new website will see a whole bunch of new features from day one but a program of development ensures that there will be some cool stuff being added each month. Don’t worry, the blog will remain - well, we couldn’t lose our little soapbox could we?

The case studies section has gone through a major overhaul and now has client quotes and pulled out stats. We have API’s, social bookmarking and more besides.

The most important thing for us though is the new visual design that it will bring with it. It’s different. Very different. But very ‘us’.

Check out the very small sneaky peek image and then go to our existing homepage and watch the seconds (minutes, hours, days) count down.

eBay are suing community ad site Craigslist to “safeguard its four year financial investment”. eBay believe that Craigslist’s executives Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster have adopted unspecified measures that have disadvantaged eBay and unfairly diluted their “economic interest by more than 10%”.  EBay’s general counsel Mike Jacobson has said “since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions”.

In response, Craigslist have said in their company blog that they are surprised and disappointed by eBay’s “unfounded allegations”, and that eBay’s legal action “came to us out of the blue”. It said “we have always treated eBay fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development. EBay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened - unless a hostile takeover of Craigslist, or the sale of eBay’s stake in Craigslist to an unfriendly party, is their ultimate goal.”

Read the full article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7362221.stm

This week has seen hi5 become a victim of their own success, as their runaway growth has come with some some growing pains.

Over the last month, third-party developers have launched over 400 OpenSocial apps on hi5’s network. These apps have has faster adoption rates than those on any other social network. The hi5 platform has averaged at around a million application installs every day and around half of hi5’s 80 million members have engaged with three or more installed apps.

Mashable spoke to hi5 developers to find out the secrets to their success - the short version being that they just put together a really solid service and happened to quickly tap into a broad cross-section of countries. Their really impressive application statistics are continually attributed to their uniquely international userbase.

However, their success has come with some growing pains and Justin Smith at Inside Facebook has told Mashable: “Hi5 for a brief period turned off all platform notifications. However, Hi5 has since restored platform notification service to developers by making some changes to the way notifications work. Specifically, notifications are now processed asynchronously.  Hi5 will be continuing conversations with developers that are using notifications the most.”

See the full Mashable blog and hear their conversation at: http://mashable.com/2008/04/29/hi5-growth/

There are two approaches to a consumer crisis.

1. Put your fingers in ears, close your eyes and repeat ‘la-la-la-la-la’. This is what we now call the ‘BA’ approach or ‘T5′ syndrome
2. The alternative is to actually engage with the consumers. This is the braver but ultimately much more competent approach. Look at American Airlines ‘Crisis’ blog: http://www.womma.org/blog/2008/04/a-look-at-american-airlines-crisis-blog/

We’re involved in yet another great Facebook Developers Garage event (for early March). The last garage had 120 delegates and is fast becoming the number one event for developers and others interested in the Facebook scene in London. Your welcome to come along as our guest but be sure we’ll be report back to our blog about what’s hot, what’s new and all the other goss too!