Facebook’s infamous purchase of Instagram caught all the headlines but its most recent purchase of Lightbox, and Google’s recent purchase of Milk, shows how the web giants are firmly focused on the mobile future.

The future, as we all know, is mobile, but Facebook and Google are not mobile companies. They began their lives as desktop PC services. As such, they feel it’s essential to bring on board companies and start-ups that are mobile natives – start-ups that understand the mobile user and how to create great products for mobile.

Below are five start-ups that have probably attracted the attention of both Facebook and Google. Whether they buy them or not remains to be seen, but if Facebook can buy Instagram for a billion dollars, anything seems likely these days.

Pinterest
Pinterest has over $137 million in financing from investors. Here’s why Facebook should be very interested in this new and popular visual, social network.

OnSwipe
If mobile is Facebook’s priority and Google’s new mantra is ‘We’re mobile first’, then OnSwipe should be of interest. The company’s service is simple, it claims to be able to “make your content look beautiful on tablet web browsers in under three minutes’.

Tictrac
This UK start-up has built a ‘personal analytics platform’ that allows users to aggregate data from all their social networks like LinkenIn and Twitter and even apps like Runkeeper. It’s a data mining tool that should appeal to any company in the social media space, including Facebook and Google.

Venmo
This start-up of 20 employees (most of them engineers) now processes over $10 million a month in social payments. It already has a high profile backer in Accel, an early Facebook backer.

Socialcam
While the Google+ app already has a good video sharing function, Facebook might want to boost its service for its own mobile apps. Socialcam has been described as ‘the Instagram of video sharing’ and already has a good Facebook app for people who want to watch a Socialcam video on a friend’s Facebook feed.

It's a platform agnostic guide

The site is also useful for people who have already built and launched apps. There are additional tips for developers and publishers as they grow their portfolios.

Google’s mobile ad platform, AdMob, also features and gives app developers two ways to grow their app user base through advertising. App publishers/developers can run a paid campaign to advertise within the tens of thousands of apps in the AdMob network or use Google’s House Ads tool to cross-promote apps within their portfolios.

A single software development kit (SDK) integration gives developers access to the combined network of AdMob and Google advertisers. As the site’s motto goes, ‘Don’t just build a mobile app, build a business’.

Michele Neylon of Blacknight wants to see more .ie registrations

“There are still 30,000 businesses in Ireland without a web presence and we have to continue to reach out to these companies to help them take the first step,” says Ronan Harris of Google Ireland. “But, if we are to generate economic wealth, the real objective must be to get companies transacting business online. This is the holy grail which will ultimately deliver for every business in every townland throughout the country.”

As a part of the Getting Business Online program, Blacknight created software that allows users to build a free website in under 30 minutes. While not intended to replace a professionally built site, it provides a gateway for “bricks and mortar” businesses to gain confidence while conducting business online.

“Looking back on twelve months of activity, we saw that Irish business are opting for .com domains. It would be great if they were registering .ie domains but we’ve seen that registrants prefer domains that are easier to register,” says Michele Neylon of Blacknight.

Based on Blacknight’s figures, during the first year, 60% have registered .com, 21% registered .ie, 13% registered .eu and 4.2% .biz.

Google has delved deep into the mobile planet and compiled reports on mobile phone and smartphone usage for many individual countries. (See full list here)

“Mobile search, video, app usage, and social networking are prolific. Smartphone users are multi-tasking their media with 89% using their phone while doing other things such as watching TV (59%),” says the report, compiled by IPOS OTX MediaCT.

Smartphones have changed the way people shop with 82% having researched a product on their device. 36% of smartphone users have made a purchase on their phone. 89% of smartphone users look for local information on their phone and 90% take action a result.
60% of Irish users say they search with smartphones every day.

The survey, designed to gain insights into how Irish consumers use the Internet on their smartphones, also examines how people respond to ads, offline and on mobile.

App usage is ubiquitous. On average people have 29 apps installed on their smartphones. 10 apps have been used in the last 30 days and people have six paid apps installed (on average).

78% watch video on their smartphones while 21% say they use video at least once a day.
Social networking is one of the most popular activities. 86% use their phones to visit social networks with 57% visiting at least once a day.

As for mobile commerce, it is growing and growing fast. 36% of people who bought something with their phone say they will use it more for purchases. 60% of smartphone shoppers are frequent buyers and make mobile purchases at least once a month.

Download the full report here.

Lightbox’s best-known app, Lightbox Photos, syncs photos on your phone with your social network. Photo blogs accessible from outside the app are automatically created for your friends to browse. The company also provides cloud hosting for the photos.

Lightbox’s seven employees will join Facebook, and parts of theircode will be open sourced in coming weeks. Details of the acquisition have not been disclosed but the sum paid is likely to be far less than Instagram’s $1 billion pricetag. Lightbox had to date taken $1.2 million in funding from a variety of investors.

In a statement regarding the talent acquisition, Facebook said “The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love. We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook.”

The acquisition looks to be timed to assuage investor’s worries about Facebook’s ability to move into mobile ahead of Friday’s highly anticipated IPO. The talented developers from Lightbox should help improve Facebook’s much maligned mobile apps.

Check out what Lightbox designed in the video below.

The iPad has revolutionised the way people are accessing the web

Adobe believes that tablets will generate more web traffic than smartphones by early next year, and says that the number of website visits from tablets more than tripled in 2011. It is thought that tablet browsing could yet come to account for 10% of all website traffic by 2014.

Despite the rise of the tablet, Adobe’s survey shows people still visit websites three times as often through the PC than they do on the tablet.

“As businesses rethink their digital experiences to include mobile strategies, tablets are emerging as the consumer device of choice,” says Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager, of the digital marketing business, at Adobe. “Digital marketers are wise to take a mobile first approach to optimise their digital content and marketing initiatives with a focus on the tablet experience because the consumer demands it.”

Adobe’s study is based on 23 billion visits to the websites of 325 companies in North America, western Europe and Asia.

D'Angelo and Cheever

Quora, the online Q&A knowledge community, has just raised $50 million in Series B funding, valuing the company at around $400 million.

Adam D’Angelo, a former chief technology officer of Facebook and co-founder of Quora, put $20 million of his own money into the company. Peter Thiel, an early Facebook investor has also invested.

D’Angelo co-founded Quora with Charlie Cheever in 2009. It currently has about 30 employees and is a go-to site for people looking for specific answers to specific questions.

So far the company has raised $61 million in VC cash. It’s $400 million valuation, however, is a little optimistic. There are many other Q&A sites out there and Quora is not very good on mobile. Its iPhone app is poor and the site itself is quite difficult to navigate.

What it does have going for it, is its connection to some Facebook glitterati and of course its contributors. It’s a must-use tool for people doing research of any kind, especially into the world of tech and digital culture. How the company can monetise its service is anyone’s guess, but it should start looking at LinkedIn’s business model for a few ideas … sooner rather than later.

Sky Media Ireland will begin selling advertising across channels, ‘Dave’ and ‘Gold’, from this summer.

Sky Media Ireland now sells for 20 channels with dedicated Irish advertising feeds. The new channels will be available to Irish advertisers from July.

Here’s what we have heard so far:

A new, awesome maps app
Apple will end its relationship with Google Maps and introduce its own mapping platform which will feature 3D Maps and an alternative to Google Street Maps. It may also feature a voice navigation system. Very handy for iPhone users who find themselves lost in strange cities.

Deep Facebook integration
Having already bonded with Twitter, Apple is said to be getting friendly with Facebook. iOS6 users will be able to share their stuff right away on Facebook. Again, a handy application for iPhone users who take a lot of photos or record videos and want to share them with their social networks.

Split-screen multi-tasking for the iPad
Currently, iPads users have to jump back and forth between apps that are open on the iPad, it’s not great for multi-tasking. Split-screen multi-tasking ability for iPad is rumoured to be featured in iOS6. Nice.

Siri open to app developers
It is thought iOS6 will now allow app developers to integrate their apps with Siri. This could be very cool, especially for apps that allow people to search for stuff.

Notification toggles
This is a feature of many Android phones. Notification toggles are rumoured to be on their way to iOS6.

In a blog post, Twitter announced that it will be sending users a weekly email featuring the highlights from their feed. This summary features the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.

The mail will have two sections, ‘Stories’ and ‘Tweets’. Stories will feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, featuring the most popular stories from your timeline and indicating who shared them. Tweets will list the ‘most engaged’ 140 character posts seem by the people you follow, even if you don’t directly follow the author. You can see who from your network retweeted or favorited these Tweets and click ‘View details’ to retweet, favorite, reply or view the conversation around them.

“We’re rolling out this new email out to everyone over the next few weeks,” says Othman Laraki, director, growth and international in the blog. Users will then be able to subscribe or unsubscribe to the service via their notification settings.