A study released this summer from King Fish Media showed that an overwhelming proportion of companies have social media strategies. The study, titled "Social Media Usage, Atttitudes and Measurability: What do Marketers Think?" covered US marketers and managers, over half of which were in the publishing, media, advertising and marketing industries. Most of the respondents’ customers were B2B or B2C or a mix of the two.

72 percent of these companies have a social media marketing strategy, and if they do not, eighty percent will in the next year.

Three-quarters will increase social media investment in the next twelve months. Of that majority, around a third have tied the budget to a specific project or custom media program, another third will add an incremental increase to their marketing budget.

Social media is categorized as a marketing responsibility - seventy percent delegate social media campaigns to that department, and only 23 percent to management. Very few consider managing such campaigns to be a full-time job within itself, and ninety percent add it to an existing job. Very little outsourcing is done by companies - 85 percent handle social media internally. Of the thirteen percent that outsource, 41 percent of work goes to freelancers, 26 percent to an ad or marketing agency, another 26 percent to a social media agency and nineteen percent to a PR agency.

Companies have different goals when it comes to what they are promoting using social media. 67 percent focus on the company as a whole, and 41 percent spotlight individuals who work at the company. Less than a quarter showcase a specific brand of the company. These efforts strive to promote both new customer acquisition and customer retention.

Most often strategies currently include LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. The most popular sites that these companies plan to add are YouTube, news aggregate sites and bookmarking sites.

Americans spend much of their time online visiting social network sites and blogs when they are in front of a full sized screen, but on mobile devices their activities are very different. A Nielsen study released this month, "What Americans Do Online: Social Media and Games Dominate Activity," breaks down US online time on personal computers and wireless devices.

Social networks took up 22.7 percent of online Internet time in June 2010, an increase of 43 percent from June 2009. Online games increased ten percent from last year to 10.2 percent of total time - playing games online overtook personal e-mail as the second most used activity this year. E-mail’s share was 8.3 percent, down 28 percent from last year. Other activities, such as visiting portals, instant messaging and other categories, decreased in usage. Watching video or movies, as well as conducting searches, were the only other categories that increased from last year.

But on mobile devices, US consumers spend much more time on e-mail than any other activity. While mobile Web users increased their social networking behavior on mobile 28 percent, e-mail rose from 37.4 percent last year to 41.6 percent. Second in heaviest activity was portals at 11.7 percent, and mobile music and video consuming rose twenty percent. Social networking only took 10.5 percent.

To illustrate the proportions of Internet usage, Nielsen organized the categories around a stopwatch. If all mobile Internet time was condensed into one hour, each category took up a certain number of minutes and seconds.

• e-mail- 25 minutes
• portals - seven minutes
• social networks and blogs - six minutes and eighteen seconds
• Search - four minutes and twelve seconds
• news - two minutes and 42 seconds
• entertainment - two minutes
• music - one minute and 54 seconds
• weather - one minute and 42 seconds
• sports - one minute and 24 seconds
• time spent on video- and movie-specific sites (YouTube, Hulu, etc) or movie-related Web sites (IMDB, Netflix, etc) - one minute and twelve seconds
• other remaining online sectors - six minutes and 42 seconds

The US added more power capacity from renewable sources in 2009, as shown by reports released today from the United Nations Environment Programme and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. Power collected from wind, solar and other sustainable sources accounted for more than fifty percent of newly installed capacity last year. Predictions for this year or next indicate that the world will add more capacity to the total supply from renewable rather than conventional, non-renewable sources.

According to the report release statement, "investment in core clean energy (new renewables, biofuels and energy efficiency) … suffered a fall in investment [in North America], to $20.7 billion from $33.3 billion." But in general, green power weathered the economic crisis better than expected. Though investment dropped seven percent globally, there was record investment in wind power, as well as an increase in spending on solar water heaters and installation costs for rooftop solar PV.

UNEP’s Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2010 and the REN21’s Renewables 2010 Global Status Report, were released by UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director, and Mohamed El-Ashry, Chair of REN21. Steiner comments on the resilience and frustration that defined the sustainable energy industry in 2009. The UN climate convention in Copenhagen did not deliver the results that many had hoped for, but there were industry actors and governments that are still transforming the financial crisis to deliver green growth.

In 2009, renewable power sources represented one-quarter of global electrical power and eighteen percent of global power production. By 2011, the world should reach half or more in newly-installed power capacity from renewables. In the same year, Asia and Oceania private sector green energy investments exceeded that of the Americas - $40.8 billion compared to $32.3 billion.

Booyah does not yet have the brand-name hype of Zynga or Foursquare in Silicon Valley, but if we talk about their two first apps, MyTown and Nightclub City, it’s clear Booyah is already becoming a serious force.

Booyah was created one year ago in Palo Alto with the goal of “creating new forms of entertainment for the masses by bringing together elements of the real world and the digital world.” The team has a strong background in the gaming industry: Keith Lee, CEO of Booyah, was formerly lead producer at Blizzard for Diablo III, one of the best known game franchises, and other members of the team worked on World of Warcraft.

Booyah has already succeeded on two platforms everybody has dreamt of: the iPhone and Facebook. That’s not just in terms of active user number (2.5 million for MyTown and 4.5 million for Nightclub City), but also in terms of engagement (time spent and user activity) and revenues generated through virtual goods and advertising.

MyTown is “monopoly for real life,” as Booyah has branded it: you can check-in on your iPhone at real places, manage them by getting revenues from people who walk into your virtual “locations,” and upgrade them. MyTown has only been released in the USA on iPhone and iTouch and has reached 2.5 million users in 6 months, which is great in comparison to the other location-based services startups.

Nightclub City was launched 2 months ago with little advertising (Booyah just published a blog post today to make it official) and has already reached 4.4 million active users. The game is simple: you’re the manager of a club and you can choose the music, change the decor, pay for celebrities coming into your club and go to your friend’s virtual club to mix and refuel their bar when they are not online.

Keith Lee’s passion is DJing, which has something to do with Nightclub City. Booyah would love to involve the entire electronic music scene in the game: it could be a new distribution channel for indie music. And it pays, as Nightclub City was awarded best social game on Facebook for 2010, according to Inside Social Games late June.

Booyah raised $20 million from Accel in May, so you can be sure they will grow quickly. As Google just invested in Zynga last Friday, maybe next time it will be Microsoft who’ll invest in Booyah.

Research and analysis group Latitude looked to children in their recent study to provide an unfettered view of what people see their devices doing for them in the future. Led by Jessica Reinis, the project asked kids under the age of twelve a single question: “What would be really interesting or fun to do on your computer or the Internet that your computer canʼt do right now? Please draw a picture of what this activity looks like.”

While there were both variety and patterns in responses, fewer than expected were deemed impossible to tackle by developers today, like time-travel or teleporting. The rest fell into the realms of device interface, communication and creativity.

A high level of requests centered around the immersive potential of digital media - 38 percent more of this type of media content, in fact. An example of such content is three-dimensional functionality, which concerned ten percent of respondents. Other types of responses in this vein included devices that can create physical objects like food, or that can somehow bridge the digital and physical spaces.

Human- or personality-synthesis capabilities also won a large majority of inspiration, with 83 percent of kids wanting interactivity advances. Advances like "responsive virtual environments, 3D games, “homework help” computers, etc." were popular ideas.

Another popular theme is more direct interfaces - 37 percent of children had technology innovation dreams that did not include keyboards, mice or other traditional input devices. As alternatives, twelve percent incorporated touchscreens, eight percent favored visual controls, and four percent hope for telepathic connections. Half of respondents depicted themselves in their drawings, the device being thought of as an extension of oneself, according to Latitude.

Older kids were more concerned with social tech: 56 percent of ten-to-twelve year-olds contributed ideas in this category, such as ways to better connect not only with close friends and family, but to kids far across the globe.

Nearly one-third of proposed tools were meant to create something, be it a "a Web site, a game, a video to be shared, a physical object, etc." Kids selected creative pursuit a close second to gaming for favorite online activity.

Media usage by children and teens has increased, with healthy growth in mobile and Internet usage, as shown by this year’s Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 -Year-Olds is the last of three surveys from 1999, 2004 and 2009 tracking publicly available information on the role of television, print media and Internet on the lives of young people.

In this age group, mobile device ownership has grown in the last five years “from 39% to 66% for cell phones, and from 18% to 76% for iPods and other MP3 players.” With functionality diversification within these gadgets, time has increased in their usage: “young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33).”

Ownership and functionality play these pivotal roles in usage increase, but parents’ rules regarding media is extremely influential. “Only about three in ten young people say they have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV (28%) or playing video games (30%), and 36% say the same about using the computer.” But any limit makes a big difference: any time limits cause kids to consume nearly three hours less of media per day than those with no rules at all. Regarding content, less than half of kids surveyed have rules about what TV shows they can watch (46%), video games they can play (30%), or music they’re allowed to listen to (26%). Half (52%) say they have rules about what they can do on the computer.

Most popular online activities are social networking, playing games, and visiting video sites. Most 7-12th graders have a profile on a social networking site. New media usage differs significantly by gender - girls spend more time social networking, listening to music and reading. Boys spend more time playing console and computer games, and visiting video sites.

The increase in media has upped time for music, TV, computers and video games. One reason for the large amounts of media that kids consume is multitasking - about forty percent of 7-12th graders use another medium “most of the time” when they are listening to music, using a computer or watching TV.

More workers than ever may be packing their work Blackberry or laptop on their way out of town, show multiple studies on the habits of US vacationing employees. The second annual Mobile Messaging Study conducted by Osterman Research illuminated how the general population conducts work activity even while on vacation.

According to the vacation study, commissioned by software maker Neverfail, 79 percent of respondents take their work-related device with them.

41 percent identify themselves as "e-mail packrats," and many workers check their e-mail to avoid an insurmountable inbox upon their return.

In a CareerBuilder vacation survey from 2009, referenced in chiroeco.com, findings showed that "nearly one in five workers fear losing their jobs if they go on vacation or feel guilty being away from the office, and the recession is another factor pushing workers to go to extreme measures to check email." This was consistent with the Mobile Messaging Study, where in order to check e-mail while on vacation, over one-third hide from friends and family, and nearly half travel up to ten miles.

While the gender gap for those who stay connected to work through the weekend is rather small, age brackets make a large difference. 31.9 percent of men and 28.2 percent of women check-in, and thirty percent of the general population of respondents do so. By age group, the categories are as follows:

• under thirty: 35.6 percent
• 30-39: 37.8 percent
• 40-49: 33.7 percent
• 50-59: 28.0 percent
• over sixty: 18.8 percent

IDC survey respondents use new technologies outside of work, and their "always-on lifestyle" also includes social media. For business purposes, 34 percent use consumer social networks and nine percent use microblogging sites.

But the additional time spent does not correlate to perceived productivity. Of employees surveyed by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), 52.3 percent feel social media helped them learn more efficiently. 37 percent say they get more work done.

The biggest boon to economic recovery may be in startups, according to a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation study released last month. Fast-growing young companies, or "gazelle firms," account for the generating of approximately ten percent of new jobs each year. Job creation is key to steering the economy back into the black, first because by nature it improves employment rates, but this in turn spreads to most other growth-ready categories. Unfortunately, most policy discussions concentrate on expanding job growth in already-established companies.

But instead of new jobs at old companies, the study confirms that it would be more productive to encourage a more friendly environment for  entrepreneurship - "and particularly high-growth entrepreneurship—because top-performing companies are the most fertile source of new jobs." Dane Stangler, author of the study and senior analyst at the Kauffman Foundation, confirmed that the top-performing one percent of firms generate approximately forty percent of all new jobs. The gazelle firms mentioned above comprise less than one percent of all companies, each on average contributing 88 jobs per year. The average company in the economy as a whole adds only two or three new jobs per year.

Young, fast-growing firms account for a disproportionate amount of job creation, explains Research and Policy VP Robert E Litan. Policymakers would be better served to support gazelle firms rather than go gray over unemployment rate projections. Some will fail, but "the more quickly they are launched and in larger numbers, the faster both output and employment will grow."

The study continues by advising policymakers on strategies to foster such firms:

• Encourage the creation of new firms - statistically increasing the likelihood of increasing the number of successful firms
• Remove entry barriers - blocked access to capital and prohibitive taxes or regulations
• Target immigrants and universities, often the best sources of high-growth firm projects

Even with the massive push generated by the iPad, touchscreen adoption will be slow and mainly a generational thing, says Gartner. The biggest challenge will be weaning older users off the mouse-and-keyboard computing model that they are used to. Which means that enterprise adoption will be slow.

“What we’re going to see is the younger generation beginning to use touchscreen computers ahead of enterprises,” says Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner.

The analyst firm’s prediction is that by 2015 more than 50 percent of computers purchased for kids younger than 15 will be touchscreen. Which, if true, probably means that the mouse-and-keyboard will be all but extinct in fifteen years.

Or, at best, be like print today.

Gartner expects touchscreen adoption to first happen among consumers and in education, with enterprise adoption falling on the molasses side of the spectrum. Gartner predicts that less than 10 percent of enterprise computers in 2015 will be touchscreen.

“The ‘muscle memory’ of mouse users and the potential problems of moving a user’s hands from the keyboard to the mouse will create particular adoption barriers for knowledge workers,” says Gartner.

What will begin as use of the device for entertainment and casual gaming will eventually warp into full-on computing. While older computers will continue to do the bulk of their computing with the traditional input methods, Gartner expects that younger users will be trained to feel more at ease with touchscreen computing, as they will begin using it at school at an early age.

“An entire generation will graduate within the next 10 to 15 years for whom touch input is totally natural,” Firing says.

(Image: seekis)

Nearly 6 billion mobile apps will be downloaded globally this year, up from an estimated 2.4 billion in 2009, according to ABI Research. Not surprisingly, more than half of these will be for the iPhone OS.

“The iPhone will continue to be the leading app platform, with a database of over 125,000 applications offering niche and localized content,” said ABI wireless research associate Bhavya Khanna. “Other platforms are still playing catch-up, with Android being the fastest gainer among them. ABI Research expects that with over 30,000 applications now available, over 800 million Android applications will be downloaded in 2010.”

ABI expects the global volume to peak in 2013, reaching 7 billion downloads.

While total downloads will grow, revenues will decline by 2012, the effect of market forces continuing to drive prices lower, as happened last week when Wolfram Alpha dropped the price of its knowledge engine, released as an app in October, from $49.99 to $1.99, with a refund for those who paid the initial price.

In addition to falling costs, ABI predicts that more “must have” apps will be available in free or ad-supported versions, as well as provided in handset bundles.

“As competition heats up, app makers are both dropping prices and ‘going free’ to stay on top of the download charts,” said ABI Vice President of Forecasting, Jake Saunders.

In March, the Yankee Group predicted that U.S. mobile app revenue would reach $11 billion by 2014. The group predicts that 2010 mobile app revenue will reach $1.6 billion in 2010, more than three times 2009’s $537 million. According to ComScore, 27.5 percent of U.S. mobile users used downloaded apps in Feb 2010, up from 25.7 percent in Novermber 2009.

(Image: Sigakalos’ flickr)