Mike Butcher

Brands buying advertising space inside virtual worlds are free to do so in the UK, since the Advertising Standards Authority state that only ads in the 'public realm' – for example, those placed on a virtual billboard – would fall within its remit. In other words there are basically no restrictions.

The world's biggest yellow pages publisher, Yell, has threatened to shut down Yellowikis, the wiki-based yellow pages directory, accusing it of of "misrepresentation", "passing off" and suggests that using the name Yellowikis could "constitute an 'instrument of fraud'. It's contacted Yellowikis co-founders Paul Youlten and Rosa Blaus (his 15 year-old daughter) demanding they shutter the website, transfer the domain names to Yell and agree to pay damages to Yell for loss of profits. Yell made $2.4bn in 2005. Yellowikis had a loss of $500 last year. Youlten is contesting the action, and, somewhat reasonably, argues that people find small businesses via Google these days, not Yell. Perhaps Yell should sort out it's search engine marketing, rather than picking on tiny Internet starups. Yellowikis has reportedly been growing at 8.7% month-on-month and has 494 editors and about 5,000 articles listed – Yell, by contrast has classifieds running into the hundreds of thousands, if not more. Yet when was the last time you saw a search result with Yell in the URL? Perhaps that deal with Google Maps in April last year wasn't so great after-all…

Technorati Tags: Mediabites

Hugh Macleod, spoke about how he had worked with Thomas Mahon, bespoke Savile Row tailor, to launch English Cut.

He says having a blog was much easier to "control the conversation" than going through mainstream media – especially after being strung along by some national newspaper journalists, attempting to get media profile.

Since they launched the blog, inside 6 months he saw a 300% rise in sales.