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Let’s look at what happened during the Oscars.

During this year’s broadcast, we used Nielsen’s “Convergence Panel” – a sample of homes in which we measure both television and Internet in the same households — to monitor the people in our panel who were simultaneously following the Oscars on live television and over the Internet. We saw some very impressive numbers. Of course, it’s important to note that the base sizes for this research are small - in the dozens of users, not the hundreds — so we can’t draw truly scientific conclusions from the data. That said, we did observe some interesting directional trends:

* More than 1 in 10 people (11%) watching the Oscars this year did so while logged onto the Internet. This is nearly four times greater than the normal rate of simultaneous usage we observe.
* While there was some expected surfing to places like IMDB for more information on movies, the true winner of the night was Facebook.
* People who used Facebook during the broadcast used it for an average of 76 minutes. This compares to a little more than 30 minutes on average for MySpace, and just a little more than 20 minutes for the major portals.
* People who used Facebook while watching the Oscars watched about 50% more of the broadcast than the average Oscar viewer.

Additionally, we estimate that more than 100,000 messages were sent via Twitter during the broadcast - that’s more than 400 message per minute, or nearly 7 per second.

What were people talking about? From my personal observations of Tweets during the broadcast, it was just what you’d expect if you had a living room filled with thousands of your closest friends.

There are still a lot phones that lack support for Internet browsing or Facebook applications and for mobile users of these devices, messaging is the easiest way to get access to the social-networking site, according to Vesa Lindqvist, development manager for Mobility Services at TeliaSonera Finland, Sonera's parent company.

Using SMS (Short Message Service), users will both be able to update their status and get messages from friends. The "Text Me" service lets users receive messages from friends. The first 20 messages per month are free, and users can buy an additional 50 messages for €1.90 (US$2.40), TeliaSonera said in a statement.

Using SMS and the "Text Your Status" service users can update their status by sending a message to a special number. In this case they are charged €0.79 per SMS, according to TeliaSonera.

Now that I have been a Kindle owner two weeks, I am sold. I believe the device and seamless user experience is a winner - particularly as it synchronizes across phones. However, more importantly, the Kindle 2.0's debut is a watershed moment for print media. You have one last solid shot to monetize your digital content - if you move quickly.

The iPod was the last digital great white hope. And thankfully, the music and movie companies (reluctantly) jumped on board.

The Kindle, like the iPod, is an emerging critical mass device that actually encourages people to pay for content rather than get it for free. When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, people were skeptical that people would shell out cash for music they could snag for free from file sharing networks. They did. The same was true when Apple, and later others, rolled out movies. However, today millions rent or buy movies online.

The Kindle offers a similar experience in a much larger market - text. This one is tougher to monetize. In the digital age books have managed to remain premium content. However, beyond books, magazine and newspaper content is available in abundance online for free. Yet, I still believe that people will pay to receive some of their favorites on their Kindles or their Kindle-enabled phones. Meet them there now while you can.

The Nielsen survey of users' habits found that 67% of all those going online were spending time at social network and blogging sites.

Interest in the category is growing four times faster than the other top four sectors, said the report.

In the UK one in every six minutes of the average web user is spent at a social site, it found. ...

HOW MANY USE THE TOP SITES?
1) Search - 85.9%
2) Portals/communities - 85.2%
3) PC software - 73.4%
4) Member Communities - 66.8%
5) E-mail - 65.1%

The young people in Putnam's sights were largely members of Generation X — those in their 30's and 40's today. I think most of you in this age group would agree that you are sustained by deep relationships with friends, particularly those formed through the high school years. San Francisco writer Ethan Watters coined the phrase "urban tribe" to describe Gen X-ers' tight relationships, and writes: "These may be the people you turn to discuss the absurdities of the day, share confidences, help each other define goals, fall in and out of love, and schlep couches and big-screen TVs from one apartment to the next." For many X-ers, friends become like family — they are your community and closest source of support.

Putnam correctly characterized Gen X's diminished interest in what we might call "institutional" social networks, but missed the role that friend-based "tribes" play in creating community.

... According to research by iStrategyLabs, over the past six months, the largest growing demographic of Facebook users has been 35-54 year olds, with a 276.4% growth rate. Not far behind was the 55 and over demographic with a 194.3% growth rate.

US Consumer spending on Subscription-TV, Broadband, and Mobile Services will be "about the same" for most consumers, but about 15% intend to cut back. As a result, In-Stat estimates that consumer spending across these three segments could see nearly a $5 billion decrease during the next 12 months. Yet In-Stat’s recent survey reveals that broadband service is among the most integral parts of consumers’ lives. Over 66 million consumers across demographic categories are using the Internet while camped out on their sofas watching TV.

“Some male age groups had 40% to 50% of respondents using a PC while watching TV, and about 30% of females under the age of 40 are also using a PC while watching TV,” says Gerry Kaufhold, In-Stat analyst.

If they haven't already, your CEO will join Facebook this year. That's according to a new digital outlook report to be released today by the marketing specialists at Razorfish.

"Executives are responding to social media and the real impact it's having on their brands," said Terri Walter, vice president of emerging media at Razorfish.

While older generations are experimenting more online, younger early-adopters are maturing with regard to online usage. Unfortunately for marketers, that means an increasingly sophisticated, selective, and even-harder-to-reach 18- to-25-year-old consumer.

What happened was something entirely different. When Asustek launched the Eee PC in fall 2007, it sold out the entire 350,000-unit inventory in a few months. Eee PCs weren't bought by people in poor countries but by middle-class consumers in western Europe and the US, people who wanted a second laptop to carry in a handbag for peeking at YouTube or Facebook wherever they were. Soon the major PC brands—Dell, HP, Lenovo—were scrambling to catch up; by fall 2008, nearly every US computermaker had rushed a teensy $400 netbook to market.

All of which is, when you think about it, incredibly weird. Netbooks violate all the laws of the computer hardware business. Traditionally, development trickles down from the high end to the mass market. PC makers target early adopters with new, ultrapowerful features. Years later, those innovations spread to lower-end models.

But Jepsen's design trickled up. In the process of creating a laptop to satisfy the needs of poor people, she revealed something about traditional PC users. They didn't want more out of a laptop—they wanted less. ...

By the end of 2008, Asustek had sold 5 million netbooks, and other brands together had sold 10 million. (Europe in particular has gone mad for netbooks; sales there are eight times higher than in the US.) In a single year, netbooks had become 7 percent of the world's entire laptop market. Next year it will be 12 percent.

"We started inventing technology for the bottom of the pyramid," Jepsen says, "but the top of the pyramid wants it too." This bit of trickle-up innovation, this netbook, might well reshape the computer industry—if it doesn't kill it first.

I wrote this story on a netbook, and if you had peeked over my shoulder, you would have seen precisely two icons on my desktop: the Firefox browser and a trash can. Nothing else.

It turns out that about 95 percent of what I do on a computer can now be accomplished through a browser. I use it for updating Twit

... the popularity of Facebook and other social networking sites has promoted the sharing of all things personal, dissolving the line that separates the private from the public. ...

Facebook says it is the world’s largest social network, with 175 million members. But in the United States, most members are still relatively young; Facebook offers advertisers a target of 54.4 million members of all ages. But if an advertiser wants to narrow its target audience to those 25 or older, the number drops to 28.8 million. Narrow it to those 30 or older, and Facebook has 20.3 million to offer. ...

David E. Evans, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Virginia, says he wishes that Facebook would begin with more restrictions on the information that outside software developers can reach. For 15 of 19 information categories, Facebook sets a default setting of “share,” which means the information can be pulled out of Facebook and stored on servers outside its control. These 15 categories include activities, interests, photos and relationship status.

“Facebook could set defaults erring on the side of privacy instead of on the side of giving your information away,” he said.

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, defends its current settings, saying it “gives users extensive control over the applications they choose to interact with.” He also said Facebook had removed “thousands” of applications that members deemed untrustworthy.

In Professor Evans’s view, however, banishment of malevolent software comes too late: “Once the application has got the data, it’s got it, stored on someone else’s machine.”

The defaults turn out to be crucially important, because few users go to the trouble of adjusting the settings. Asked how many members ever change a privacy setting, Mr. Kelly said 20 percent.

Killar som i 15-årsåldern åt fisk en gång i veckan var tre år senare sex procent smartare än sina jämnåriga. Fisk dubbelt så ofta innebar en fördubbling till tolv procent, visar undersökningen av nästan 4 000 tonårskillar i Västra Götaland.

Pojkarna hade i 15-årsåldern deltagit i en undersökning av matvanor i Västra Götaland. Resultaten jämfördes sedan med de intelligenstester som görs vid mönstringen i 18-årsåldern. ...

Resultatet stod sig även med hänsyn tagen till socio-ekonomiska faktorer, bostadsstandard, föräldrarnas utbildning, tonåringens hälsotillstånd, motionsvanor och vikt.

-Den yngre generationen använder nätet på helt annat sätt. De är uppkopplade hela tiden mot kompisar och kan hålla i gång flera chatter, lyssna på musik och göra läxorna samtidigt. Det är ett beteende som de sedan tar med sig till arbetsplatserna, säger Håkan Selg.

Äldre anställda kanske förfasar sig över att yngre medarbetare är uppkopplade mot Facebook på arbetstid och tycker att de borde kanske skilja på jobb och privatliv. Men i själva verket handlar det om ett nytt sätt att bygga relationer som kan ge resultat på jobbet på sikt.
- De ungas kommunikation kanske till en början handlar om att utbyta åsikter om exempelvis populärkultur, men några år senare kan de fråga sina kontakter om någon känner till någon bra designer för ett jobbprojekt, säger Håkan Selg.
En annan slutsats som dras av undersökningen är att tidningar och tv inte används på samma sätt av den yngre generationen. Följaktligen får annonsörer allt svårare att nå fram till dem via dessa media.

Statliga Teracom är i dag ensam aktör på marknaden för tv-sändningar i marknätet. Enligt rådande bestämmelser har bolaget därmed ensamrätt på det åtråvärda frekvensutrymmet 470 till 790 Mhz, som öronmärkts för tv-sändningar i marknätet.

Utöver en årlig avgift till Post- och telestyrelsen, PTS, på ett par miljoner kronor betalar Teracom ingenting för frekvenserna. Det trots att de sannolikt skulle inbringa hundratals miljoner kronor i licensavgifter i en öppen auktion.

Nu vill PTS avskaffa öronmärkningen. I samband med att Teracoms nuvarande licens löper ut i mars 2014 bör hela tv-mediets frekvensutrymme bli teknikneutralt och auktioneras ut till högstbjudande, föreslår myndigheten.

Available from April, the O2 Joggler is a device with a 7in touch-screen designed to sit on a table or desk. Its chief function is a calendar, showing at-a-glance what everyone in the family is doing, and it can send text message reminders for events to the phones of family members. ...

The Joggler will send reminders to family members' phones via SMS at the appropriate time, but only to handsets on O2's network. "We want to bring customers to our network," said Pickford.

O2 is considering adding support for email reminders in the future. Also in the pipeline is an internet radio player, and the ability for customers to send up to 50 free text messages per month from the Joggler.

The device uses its internet connection to receive news feeds from Sky, a weather feed, and traffic information from Trafficmaster.

It also doubles as a media player capable of showing digital photos and videos, and playing music. This can be loaded into the Joggler's 1GB of memory via a USB Flash drive, or streamed over the network from a Windows PC for more tech-savvy users.

O2 has launched a new initiative called o2 families that hopes to make life easier for busy families always on the go.

The spearhead of the new campaign will be a digital touchscreen photo frame that allows families to manage a diary that can be accessed via your mobile phone when you are out and about.

“We’ve developed the O2 Joggler with today’s busy families in mind. It has been purpose built to help families better organise their lives,” said Alistair Johnston, Marketing Director, Telefónica O2 UK.

Called the o2 Joggler, because family lives are constantly moving as if you are jogging, the core focus of the 7-inch screen, Intel Atom powered device made by Open Peak in the US, will be the o2 Calendar.

Although it doesn't yet support the iCal calendar open standard as used by Google and Apple, it is hoped that users will be happy to punch in their daily wearabouts so any other member of the family can see what's happening when.

People may still watch things they call "TV shows," but they'll watch them mostly on computers.

What decided the contest for computers? Four forces, three of which one could have predicted, and one that would have been harder to.

One predictable cause of victory is that the Internet is an open platform. ... So innovation happens at hacker speeds instead of big company speeds.

The second is Moore's Law, which has worked its usual magic on Internet bandwidth.

The third reason computers won is piracy. Users prefer it not just because it's free, but because it's more convenient. Bittorrent and YouTube have already trained a new generation of viewers that the place to watch shows is on a computer screen.

The somewhat more surprising force was one specific type of innovation: social applications. The average teenage kid has a pretty much infinite capacity for talking to their friends. But they can't physically be with them all the time. When I was in high school the solution was the telephone. Now it's social networks, multiplayer games, and various messaging applications.

The Corporation is developing its social media strategy with a set of online propositions, particularly around the areas of personalisation and socialisation.

Key to this is its approach to social discovery of content across BBC channels. This includes the creation of an activity page for every site user which would incorporate links to other social media sites, such as Facebook and MySpace.

Other plans include identity services, letting users personalise their experience across the entire BBC site, message boards, blogs and social networking features.

Meh. Kindle app for iPhone only US. Here we go again. Stupid publishers. Aaaaargh. It's 2009 people. Why don't they get it??

Meh. Kindle app for iPhone only US. Here we go again. Stupid publishers. Aaaaargh. It's 2009 people. Why don't they get it??

But Amazon said that it sees its Kindle reader and devices like the iPhone as complementary, and that people will use their mobile phones to read books only for short periods, such as while waiting in grocery store lines.

“We think the iPhone can be a great companion device for customers who are caught without their Kindle,” said Ian Freed, Amazon’s vice president in charge of the Kindle.

Mr. Freed said people would still turn to stand-alone reading devices like the $359 Kindle when they want to read digital books for hours at a time. ...

The developments also suggest that, true to his word, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has little interest in the market for digital books. Mr. Jobs once dismissed the Kindle by saying “the whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Unlike other forms of media like music and video, which Apple sells itself to iPhone owners through its iTunes store, Apple appears to be ceding the e-books market to Amazon and other companies that offer e-book applications.

“Apple is consciously skipping the e-book market,” said Evan R. Schnittman, vice president for business development and rights at Oxford University Press. “I think it’s pretty significant.”

But Amazon said that it sees its Kindle reader and devices like the iPhone as complementary, and that people will use their mobile phones to read books only for short periods, such as while waiting in grocery store lines.

“We think the iPhone can be a great companion device for customers who are caught without their Kindle,” said Ian Freed, Amazon’s vice president in charge of the Kindle.

Mr. Freed said people would still turn to stand-alone reading devices like the $359 Kindle when they want to read digital books for hours at a time. ...

The developments also suggest that, true to his word, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has little interest in the market for digital books. Mr. Jobs once dismissed the Kindle by saying “the whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Unlike other forms of media like music and video, which Apple sells itself to iPhone owners through its iTunes store, Apple appears to be ceding the e-books market to Amazon and other companies that offer e-book applications.

“Apple is consciously skipping the e-book market,” said Evan R. Schnittman, vice president for business development and rights at Oxford University Press. “I think it’s pretty significant.”

But now Mr. Bewkes, Time Warner CEO, has a plan to put all cable programming on the web in places such as Hulu, MySpace, Yahoo TV, or even YouTube. Of course, there's a catch. To get it you'll have to prove you subscribe to pay TV through cable, satellite, or telco.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes

"If you want to watch your favorite TV network or shows through broadband on any device -- PCs or mobile -- you can do it as long as you subscribe to any multichannel provider," Mr. Bewkes told Advertising Age. "It's a natural extension of the existing model."

The initiative, dubbed "TV Everywhere," is intended to be an industrywide effort, and Mr. Bewkes expects to ready a test of it this year. "This is not just for the cable industry," he said. "It's about keeping the health of all these fantastic networks while making them available at no extra charge on the online platform."

But now Mr. Bewkes, Time Warner CEO, has a plan to put all cable programming on the web in places such as Hulu, MySpace, Yahoo TV, or even YouTube. Of course, there's a catch. To get it you'll have to prove you subscribe to pay TV through cable, satellite, or telco.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes

"If you want to watch your favorite TV network or shows through broadband on any device -- PCs or mobile -- you can do it as long as you subscribe to any multichannel provider," Mr. Bewkes told Advertising Age. "It's a natural extension of the existing model."

The initiative, dubbed "TV Everywhere," is intended to be an industrywide effort, and Mr. Bewkes expects to ready a test of it this year. "This is not just for the cable industry," he said. "It's about keeping the health of all these fantastic networks while making them available at no extra charge on the online platform."

First, the sheer number of teenagers now using the Internet has transformed the technology into a true social networking tool. Even in the late 90s, only about one in ten adolescents were online, which meant that kids actually had to choose between online relationships and real relationships. There was very little overlap, so it was very difficult to maintain flesh-and-blood relations while exploring cyberspace. Today, Valkenburg and Peter say, the vast majority of teenagers in Western countries have access to the Internet, and most appear to use the technology to nurture their existing relationships rather than to forge new ones.

Second, the newer communication tools also encourage building on existing relationships rather than isolating. In the 90s, the few teens who did spend time on the Internet tended to hang out with strangers in public chat rooms and so-called MUDS, multi-user dungeons. The appearance of instant messaging and social networks like Facebook has changed all that, according to the psychologists. Today, more than eight in ten teenagers use IM to connect with the same friends they see at school and work.

Recent studies document the positive effects of these technological changes. But what exactly is going on in the minds of the teenagers to produce this greater sense of well-being? Valkenburg and Peter believe that the 21st century Internet encourages honest talking about very personal issues - feelings, worries, vulnerabilities - that are difficult for many self-conscious teens to talk about. When they communicate through the Internet, they have fewer sounds and sights and social cues to distract them, so they become less concerned with how others perceive them. This in turn reduces inhibition, leading to unusually intimate talk.

First, the sheer number of teenagers now using the Internet has transformed the technology into a true social networking tool. Even in the late 90s, only about one in ten adolescents were online, which meant that kids actually had to choose between online relationships and real relationships. There was very little overlap, so it was very difficult to maintain flesh-and-blood relations while exploring cyberspace. Today, Valkenburg and Peter say, the vast majority of teenagers in Western countries have access to the Internet, and most appear to use the technology to nurture their existing relationships rather than to forge new ones.

Second, the newer communication tools also encourage building on existing relationships rather than isolating. In the 90s, the few teens who did spend time on the Internet tended to hang out with strangers in public chat rooms and so-called MUDS, multi-user dungeons. The appearance of instant messaging and social networks like Facebook has changed all that, according to the psychologists. Today, more than eight in ten teenagers use IM to connect with the same friends they see at school and work.

Recent studies document the positive effects of these technological changes. But what exactly is going on in the minds of the teenagers to produce this greater sense of well-being? Valkenburg and Peter believe that the 21st century Internet encourages honest talking about very personal issues - feelings, worries, vulnerabilities - that are difficult for many self-conscious teens to talk about. When they communicate through the Internet, they have fewer sounds and sights and social cues to distract them, so they become less concerned with how others perceive them. This in turn reduces inhibition, leading to unusually intimate talk.