We’ve all heard of Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, and Twitter.  Maybe you have an account on one or the other, or even all four.  You, with millions of other users, are along the ride of being available 24/7 to have friends, family members, and other networks to see your information, profile, and pictures.  Now being able to share posts on your daily life exercises and thoughts, we- as a social networking obsessed world- are now officially spend 82% more time on these sites compared to the amount of time we put just a year earlier.

So much time that some of us are putting in the number of hours equivalent to a full-time job – a full-time job that doesn’t take a break on weekends. If the average person spends around five and a half hours a day, seven days a week, that leads one to a little shy of forty hours. Didn’t think you spent that much time each week, did you?

And it’s not just the United States that is infatuated with social networking. Australia, Switzerland, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Spain, and the entire U.K is shortly behind us. In Fact, the US may have the most people belonging to these groups, but Australians have the lead for times-per-day visits. Around the globe, people are interested in having people follow them and have people interested in what they are doing; all day, everyday.  Are we in a self-obsessed world, or just a world that loves to communicate with each other? With social networking up by 82% from last year, how much longer will it be before all of our time is spent on the computer?

People have been concerned since the initial creation of social media that it will disconnect us – that the digital world will replace the “real” world and as such, relationships will suffer.  Here, Stefana Broadbent argues the opposite.  She’s an ethnographer who studies human interaction, and her research shows how communication tecnology is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.  What do you think – do you think the internet enables or prevents intimacy?  How has it affected the relationships in your life?

We posted on Friday about how YouTube is beginning to charge for content, starting with a selection of Sundance movies for a $3.99 rental.  The NY Times has been examining strategies that would allow them to charge for their content, either by adopting a Wall Street Journal model of having some parts of their site be free, while others are pay-for-access, or having users be able to view one or two articles before hitting a “pay wall” after which all content would need to be paid for.  Which all begs the question – how is the internet going to change as it becomes the primary source of content for most users?  After years of the internet being a supplement for magazines and newspapers, traditional media is nose diving at a peak rate – major magazine publisher Conde Nast is closing magazines and laying people off by the thousands, the book world is struggling with the gap between digital and print by introducing products like the Kindle, and newspapers are losing readership at rapid rates.  And yet, internet advertising still doesn’t pay enough to give on-line publishers viable revenue, leaving us in a strange gap where we get our content on-line, but the purveyors of that content haven’t yet figured out how to profit from it.  How do you think sites like the New York Times, YouTube, Hulu, Twitter, or blogs are going to start making money in large enough amounts to support them as companies? Given that one of the large advantages of the internet is the anyone can put thoughts out there for anyone to read format, do you think some content should remain free of charge?  How can we reconcile how the internet is different from traditional media while still having it retain the viable money making abilities of the traditional form?  Share your thoughts with us!

Oh, the power of YouTube.

We all know, watch, and laugh at videos on YouTube.  From the hilarious thirty-second home videos people share to the minutes long music videos and professional filmed broadcasts.  We all can agree, YouTube is America’s Funniest Home Videos of the Internet.  Now YouTube is coming from a whole new direction: movie rentals.  YouTube plans to sell five full-length independent movies drawn from the 2010 and 2009 Sundance Film Festivals in February 2010.  These five films include the award winning, “The Cove,” “Children of Invention,” as well as “Bass Ackwards,” “Homewrecker,” and “One Too Many Mornings.”

While movie rental competitors include Blockbuster, RedBox, and iTunes, YouTube is offering the bargain price of $3.99 for 24-48 hours per video rental. This small fee will be split between YouTube and the content provider. The viewer must use Google Checkout services to legally pay for the film and have it for the complete rental period.  This is all part of Youtube’s “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign which helps to attract more film makers from Sundance but to also broaden their client spectrum of the entertainment industry to having health and education sectors come on board soon.

The minimal selection of five movies may not be enough to grab your attention quite yet, but YouTube hopes to accomplish the idea of going global within the year; providing a plethora of movies to choose from in the comfort of your own home and on your lap.

We’ve talked a lot this week about how social media can help us in the event of a crisis, but today we’re going to talk about something else social media and the tools of the internet gives us that we’ve never had before:  access.  In the wake of the tsunami in Asia, or the earthquake in Eureka, sites like YouTube were bombarded with hand shot videos that gave us a first hand notion of what it was like to experience these events.  Before, we might see clips like this – after they were filtered through a news station or other traditional media outlet, if the media outlet even knew the clips existed at all.  Now, “normal” people all over the world can play news anchor, and the audience can get a much wider scope of all sorts of events – be them horrific or celebratory.  If knowledge is power, then social media has become one of the largest feeders of that power.  Below, we share two clips, one of the recent 6.5 earthquake in northern California, and one of the tsunami.  What has social media given you new access to in your life?

By now, everyone’s heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti: as we write this, over 100,000 are feared dead.  We posted on Tuesday about how social media can save lives, and suddenly, we’re given the opportunity to witness it in action.  According to CNN, a fundraising campaign done solely through text messages and networking sites like Twitter and Facebook has raised more than $3 million for the Red Cross’s relief work in Haiti.  Mass text messages went out on various carriers last night, urging users to text “HAITI” to 90999 in order to donate $10 to the relief effort, to be added to their phone bill at the end of the month.  IPhone developer Justin Williams jumpstarted the idea of Mac and IPhone developers decided to donate a day’s worth of sales to Haitian relief efforts.  He tweeted his idea, blogged about it, and got a bunch of developers behind him.   The result? IndieRelief, where companies and individual developers can choose an organization for a day’s worth of sales to go to.

The crisis in Haiti is heartbreaking, but it’s wonderful to see the tools we use to talk about our lives and promote our business to be used to spread widespread good in this way.  With the types of social networks we have in place worldwide, it hardly takes any effort to mobilize millions of people, and that’s an amazing thing.

For more information and updates on Haiti, click here.

As more evidence of the reach of social media, we leave you with some TwitPics of Haiti, taken by @CarelPedre and @MarvinAdy.  And if you have any more information on relief efforts through social media or otherwise, please share!

[via Mashable]

In the recent post by Twitter’s CEO, Evan Williams, he tweets: “Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever. (And today will be bigger.)” All well and good, but this raises the question:  why the concern? Why the defiance? Twitter’s doing all right… isn’t it?

Doing a bit of sleuthing, we uncovered the following social media trends over the past year:

Facebook’s number of visits, as perhaps expected, are on an upward trajectory. But Twitter and LinkedIn are a different story: the number of visits are completely flatling.  The website Compete allows comparison between various sites. Go to Compete‘s website > click the green “try it for free” link > create a login. Once thats done you can click on the link “compare sites” and fill in the boxes with sites you want to compare statistically. We put in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and clicked the one year link to see the data over the past 12 months.  This is what we saw:

What do you think are the reasons for this?  Are LinkedIn and Twitter simply trends that have passed their prime?  And what allows Facebook to be eternally popular – the increase in services, the changing interfaces, or simply the wider market?  Let us know your thoughts!

We spend a lot of time talking about social media’s many uses in business, but today we’re going to talk about a broader use for social media – a use that can actually save lives.  Erik Hersman discusses how texting can be used to deliver life saving information quickly.  Interestingly, he also discusses how people can be used to determine the veracity of information in order to filter it – an idea that, while generated in interest of saving lives, is entirely applicable for business.  Enjoy!

CES  – the world’s largest consumer technology trade show – just ended in Las Vegas, leaving the internet abuzz with the latest unveilings in technology.  Here’s a few of our favorites – the tech we’re most excited about for 2010:

Plastic Logic’s QUE has a touchscreen that lets you gestures through page turns, contracts with the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fast Company, and supports Microsoft Office.  It’s rich interface has a home page with drop down menus, calendars, and drag-and-drop features.  It is, in essence, a businessperson’s best friend.  While the QUE is going to start at $649, the additional features and gorgeous design make it high on our list.

The Lenovo Skylight Smartbook weighs 1.95 pounds, offers 10 hours of battery life, and has Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity.  The 10-inch screen has a HD-friendly 1280 by 720 resolution, and it costs less than $500.

The Zink Zero-Ink printer fits in your purse or briefcase, and prints startlingly clear 4″ x 6″ images.

Everyone’s buzzing about the as-yet-to-be-confirmed Apple Tablet, but Microsoft beat them to the punch by announcing this touch screen tablet PC.

The Ford Sync system lets you control everything in your Ford, Lincoln or Mercury car, from GPS directions to your iPod music, with only your voice.  It now includes Wi-Fi and apps like Pandora and Twitter with Sync, allowing you to have the full computer experience in your car.  Now you have no excuse to be disconnected – even on the road.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Other revealings included a transparent laptop,a case that waterproofs your Kindle, and the Tivit mobile TV.  What tech innovations are you excited about for the future?

Many people are attributing the success of Avatar to the influence and vast reaches of social media. At first, we shook our heads in denial. You see, having seen Avatar we would like to say that Cameron’s one billion dollar profit (one billion dollars!!) is directly related to the stunning visuals, thought-provoking themes and truly inspiring characters created in the film.

Nevertheless: It must be grudgingly admitted that the team at Avatar’s commitment to social media is almost as impressive as their commitment to pure awesome in the actual film. The facts are these: Avatar has Facebook, Myspace and a Twitter page. On Twitter they have 20,245 followers, and even more impressive they have 725,707 friends on Facebook. This allowed already fascinated more polite word for obsessed) fans to post, tweet and get involved in the geek event of of the season. Some might argue that Twitter, Facebook and Myspace accounts are fairly usual now as Hollywood has jumped on the bandwagon and realized the importance of online marketing – enter Avatar’s interactive trailer…

The piece de resistance, the straw that broke the camel’s back (or in Cameron’s case, gave the camel a gold saddle worth one billion dollars) is the interactive trailer. You need to download it but it’s worth it. The genius of this trailer is that there are 10 hotspots, where you have the option to click for further in depth information. such as cast interviews. Once you have had your fill of Jake Sully, you can click to resume the remainder of the visually stunning trailer. Not only that, but you can get all of the latest Twitter, Flickr and YouTube feeds right from the trailer.

In conclusion, the social media force cannot be underestimated, It is a powerful tool that even such powerhouses as James Cameron cannot ignore. But as cool as tweeting, Facebook posting and clicking on interactive trailers are, still go and see the movie.

And bring your 3D glasses. It’s an awesome look.