The acquisition frenzy continues this month with some of the world's biggest internet brands still in battle for taking over each other (and still finding time to buy more smaller internet companies along the way).
The economies of scale mean a service like email or photo-sharing once developed can be rolled out worldwide at very low cost, economics that pressure online services that are only national and trigger the race for growth.
At Digital we said that 2008 was the year television programming would hit the web, and here in the UK the BBC's iPlayer is making headlines with 2.2m people a month watching TV through the player. MySpace has launched video advertising (pre-roll and post-roll formats), helping create a framework for brands to reach video watchers, and with Joost and the IPTV pureplays growing fast, this year is the crossing point for television programming on the web.
For mobile telephony the middle of the year will a big crossing point as the volume of calls made on mobile networks overtakes those on fixed networks according to the latest predictions.
