An open connection is one which requires no password when joining. Many pubs and cafes, unwilling to provide wifi to passers-by unless they spend a little money, require users to request a password – but of course, unless they have the patience to change the password regularly, word can soon get around.

Under the proposed bill, this situation need not change, but it would no longer be permitted to have a completely free network available. Would this cut down on the number of paying customers, or increase them? The obvious conclusion might be that if you have to ask for a password, you are far more likely to purchase – but one might also argue that humans tend to take the easiest path, and would happily buy from a cafe where they knew they could access the wifi without the need for instruction.

ZDNet also makes the point that businesses will be required to capture and keep details of those who log on, adding unwelcome amounts of administration to what was previously a simple service.

It’s possible, too, that a crackdown could see a reduction in the number of on-the-go searches, as those users without a paid connection (eg, those on iPod Touches) would no longer be able to look up local businesses simply by piggy-backing onto an unsecured connection for a short while, as they stand outside the providing establishment. Whether this would have a large impact is difficult to know – and my feeling is that more and more of us are opting into paid data packages on Smartphones, making the lack of free connections less of an inconvenience, but more of a cost.

Take, for example, the cinemas who engage with their customers on Twitter, announcing forthcoming movies and warning regulars when booking may be necessary. Then there are the cafes, reminding customers of their presence by announcing the day’s specials on Facebook… just around lunchtime, when stomachs are rumbling. Councils announce new policies; pubs put out their list of upcoming gigs; bus companies warn of delays or changed routes. The list is endless, and for many of us grateful subscribers to local twitterstreams and Facebook feeds, the benefits have made a small but palpable improvement to daily life.

Facebook recognises this local trend even if we users are less aware of it. It now allows you to advertise within a very tight regional area. So, for example, if you are located in Nottingham, you can choose for your ads to only appear to that city’s residents. Got a branch in Sheffield too? No problem – you can pick and add as many cities as you wish. What’s more, you can choose to advertise within a 10, 25, or 50 mile radius, thus reaching as many outliers as is practical for your own individual business.

Check which cities are available on the Create a Facebook Ad page: it may be time to seriously consider investment in this area of marketing now, even if it never seemed worthwhile before.

It’s a funny story, really, but it teaches us a lot. In a nutshell, ReadWriteWeb wrote a workaday blog post one day, about a new log-in function of Facebook. Now, ReadWriteWeb is a high-ranking well-respected blog, and before long, that post had gained a high Google position for the term “Facebook log-in”.

So far, so good, until the post starts attracting a disproportionate number of irrelevant comments, all saying things like “What’s going on? I just want to get to my Facebook page!”. Yes, you guessed it, these were people who habitually get to Facebook by going to Google, typing in ‘Facebook log in’ and selecting one of the top results.

Having reached that page, though, they don’t think, hmm, this doesn’t look like Facebook. No, they quickly look for a log-in box, enter their details, find they’re still on the same page, and leave a bewildered or angry comment.

At some point during this process, more savvy web-users pick up on what is going on, and start to comment too. The resulting effect is a string of these discontent comments, interspersed with comments saying – with varying degrees of politeness – ‘This is not Facebook! Try typing Facebook.com into your address bar!’.

Amusing or sad as this whole event might be, it does underline a couple of pertinent points. Number one, there are a lot of users out there for whom the internet feels like an irrational arena, prone to springing unwelcome surprises upon them. Longterm users have, without knowing, picked up an understanding of interfaces and vocabulary that not everyone shares.

Number two, everyone skims. There is so much irrelevant stuff on every webpage these days – ads, invitations to register, alerts, and so on – that skimming is a vital skill if you want to actually get anywhere. Can we blame these people for skimming what, at first sight, may just look like an announcement for a new piece of functionality? Goodness knows the ‘real’ Facebook does enough of that.

There’s a take-away learning from this incident. You cannot underestimate your audience. Make your website as simple as possible, and when you’ve done that, make it twice as simple again. Remove unnecessary clutter. Don’t expect people to read your lovingly-crafted six paragraphs of text. Signpost the way. Your users will follow.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, consumers are becoming increasingly worried about the amount of personal information required – albeit retrieved by algorithms and bots, rather than humans – in order to deliver these oh-so-relevant ads.

While Google puts out a lot of PR to let us know just how it is refining our general search results day by day, I was surprised to see how openly Yahoo is trumpeting its research into Computational Advertising. It calls it “a new scientific sub-discipline”, and has its latest papers online for all to see. Fair enough, it’s a fascinating subject – and, just maybe, this degree of transparency will overcome the doubters and engender trust.

Meanwhile, as small business owners, of course, tailored ads – both content-wise and geographically-speaking – will only benefit you. Oh, and those search engines, of course.

Integration is also set to go further in the near future: comment on an article within the Yahoo sphere, rate something or contribute to Yahoo! Answers – and you’ll have the option to update all your friends via Twitter and Facebook as you do so. Like Google, Yahoo are trying to synthesise your online experiences into one place – and, of course, like Google, they want that place to be their own domain.

As a user, the question is, perhaps, at what point does all this synthesis result in a big fat Too Much Information? But meanwhile, as a small business owner, you need to be sitting up and wondering whether it’s going to benefit you if customer interactions and reviews are appearing in ever more places across the internet – and what you can do to ensure that those messages are positive ones.

Perhaps not – and, if that’s the case, you need to come and have a word with us. Meanwhile, something else I found interesting about this article was the quote:

Google makes one or two changes to its algorithm every day, on average.

That adds up to a lot of changes every year. Indeed, this Financial Times article further clarifies:

Google’s algorithm draws on 200 factors and is tweaked 400 times a year by an army of engineers.

To me, it’s just one more compelling reason why it makes sense to outsource SEO: if you’ve got time to keep up with that level of change, then who’s running your business?!

A recent study by Rice University in Texas attempted to quantify the exact ROI of a Facebook page for a small business – in this case, a bakery and cafe chain in Houston. Having no previous social media presence, they were an ideal subject, since they were able to precisely measure the difference to a number of metrics.

These included new customers, customer loyalty increases, number of visits per customer, and amount spent – all compared with a ‘normal’ customer who had not signed up to the Facebook page. The result was that a Facebook presence had a positive effect on all of these aspects – but note that the bakery was diligent about frequent updates, with special offers and photo galleries.

The message is clear – it could also work for your small business, if you are willing to put the time in – or outsource to people like us.

Mattel, the well-known toy company, have brought out Puppy Tweets. It’s basically a collar which is triggered by certain doggy events – barking, say, or chowing down – to send an automatic message to the dog’s Twitter account.

Which does rather beg the question, who (beyond its adoring owner, I suppose) is going to want to read those tweets? As some wag remarked as Twitter announced that 50 million tweets are sent per day, yes, and at least 1 million of them are actually read.

Recently, I visited the Your Move website on my iPod: it’s an aggregate site bringing together many estate agents’ data in one place. The site, detecting that I was on a mobile device, asked if I’d like to download the app – for free – and, out of curiosity, I did so.

Now, the building of apps is not going to suit every business, but it is perfect for those, like estate agents, where the user is likely to come back again and again before they complete a task. Your Move’s canny developers have clearly thought through exactly what it is the average housebuyer needs, and provided it on a plate.

Enter the postcode of the area you’d like to search in, and filter the results by number of bedrooms, price, etc, and you are served a list of the latest properties. If you see one you like, you can flick through an image gallery, save it, and even send a request to the estate agents to receive more details. It’s basically all the functionality you get on a main website, but compacted handily to fit onto your pocket device.

The result? Well, I may only be window shopping these days, but when the time comes to start house-hunting in earnest, I’ll turn first to the app that’s already right there on my iPod – and that is the sort of return a business wants from an investment like this.

Our advice? Wait a little. There’s already been quite a strong backlash in the press (and, ironically enough, on those existing social media platforms), mostly predicated on the way Google introduced its new product. As it’s integrated with GMail (Google’s email service) and switched on by default, many are complaining that it breaches privacy by scanning your contacts and setting them up as your followers with no input required.

If negative feeling reaches critical mass, we may see the service fade away into the background, at least for a while. Remember all the excitement about Google Wave? That receded, once people had gained an invitation, logged in, and found it… well, a little more visionary than they could cope with, shall we say. How about Lively, Google’s virtual world? I’d forgotten that so thoroughly that I just had to Google it to remember its name, and yet, at the time of launch, it was going to be the next great thing.

So don’t launch your Buzz presence yet – if you’ve even worked out how to yet, which would put you a step ahead of the big boys. If you feel brave, click that ‘Buzz’ link in your GMail, and watch, and wait. Then you’ll understand the interface and be ready to leap in when it starts looking like a viable way to promote your business.