What would we do without search engines? Seriously, just imagine life without Google, Bing, Yahoo! and others… How could we begin to make sense of the billions of pages that are indexed on the web?

Each day around the globe, hundreds of millions of searches are carried out and 80% of internet sessions begin with an online search – but how meaningful are the search results given? You can be sure that the internet 'heavyweights' will be featured – but will these pages and pages of search results tell you which is the best website for what you’re looking for, as rated for by real people? That’ll be a no, then!

Unless you’re using Finday, that is. Finday is a social search engine and we’re passionate about making our users’ search experience a nicer and more meaningful experience.

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Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has said that he will, at ‘some point’, challenge the law that currently prevents children under the age of 13 from using his social networking website. Currently, children under 13 aren’t supposed to become members (but we all know that they do). America's Consumer Reports suggests that 7.5 million of Facebook's 600 million users are under 13 and, each day, Facebook closes the accounts of 20,000 underage users. But this begs the question, is Facebook really suitable for youngsters? While some under-13s are responsible and appreciate that the internet must be treated with care and caution (and not to infect the home computer with all manner of random malware), others don’t. And it’s this second group that set the alarm bells ringing.

Should children under the age of 13 be allowed to use Facebook?

Zuckerberg argues that Facebook is a great educational tool for children (Is it? How so? What do you think?) but there are some people who feel that he simply wants to add to his already enormous coffers by tapping into the hugely lucrative pre-teen market. Wouldn’t a Facebook spin off, especially for pre-teens be a better idea? That way, they’d be protected from more adult content (‘Is that a photo of a totally plastered Aunty Rita wearing her knickers on her head, mama?); and adults would equally be sheltered from tedious tween updates (‘I love Justin’, etc).

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After fulfilling our entertainment needs online (listening to music, streaming TV series or downloading movies), the second thing we most like to do on the internet is shop. And according to official stats, we do it in huge numbers…

A report published by Nielsen on global online shopping trends revealed that more than 875 million consumers have shopped online at some time or another, and the number of internet shoppers rises steadily year on year.

Who are the biggest online shoppers?

1) South Korea
2) UK
3) Germany
4) Japan
5) USA

What are people shopping for? The most popular items bought are:

1) Books
2) Clothing (including accessories and shoes)
3) Videos, DVDs and games
4) Airline tickets
5) Electronic goods

So, the number of e-commerce sites on the web is staggering – but how to get the best out of online shopping?

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Some friends of mine have a new dog. No big deal, to be honest. I’m very happy for them. But I wasn’t so happy to receive a Facebook friend request from aforementioned puppy. No offence, Scruffs (or whatever your name is), I don’t want to be your friend. Call me old fashioned, but I think that Facebook profiles should only be created and maintained by those who are able to do so for themselves (so that pretty much rules out puppies, kittens and babies). But the sheer amount of dog profiles on Facebook is staggering. According to (an admittedly small) survey, there are potentially millions of pet profiles on Facebook. Of the people who took part in this survey, 14 percent had created a social networking profile for their dog. So, what’s on your mind, Rover?

Maybe befriending dogs isn’t such an issue for some, but for me (evidently) it is. I don’t like dogs. I do, however, tend to keep my dislike of dogs under my hat because there are many, many people who adore their four-legged friends with a passion (some would say borderline obsession). Almost 40 percent of households in the US own (at least) one dog, which equates to there being approximately 77.5 million owned dogs.

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