User-generated content (UGC) has permeated the Internet, for better or for worse. The stuff can be expected to make up sections of a Web site, such as news content comments, or is the basis for entire sites, as with YouTube. We expect that the number of user-generated content creators will climb from 83 million in 2008 to 115 million in 2013. Those content creators will make up 51.8 percent of all Internet users in 2013, up from 42.8 percent in 2008.

With the increase of creators comes the increase in Internet population consuming some form of UGC: from 116 million in 2008 to 155 million in 2013. With that huge number of potential consumers interacting on some level with this new medium, an eMarketer report from January 28 asks, “Can User-Generated Content Change Your World?”

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The top ten American online newspapers grew 16 percent in 2008, reports Nielsen Online. Online newspapers also saw a 27 percent jump in repeat visits.

“Despite the current troubles for the traditional newspaper industry, people are visiting newspaper sites more and more often to stay on top of current events,” said Neilsen’s Chuck Schilling.

The real problem is not that the Internet is killing the newspaper; it’s that advertising has not caught up to the paradigm shift in information.

“The challenge for newspaper publishers today is to learn how to capitalize on this active online readership and translate their increasing engagement into revenue,” said Shilling.

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Mobile dating services have yet to peak in user numbers or profitability, according to recent information out of Hampshire, UK. A recent Juniper Research report found that new revenue streams from event-based charging and advertising will help push the value of the mobile dating and chat room market to nearly $1.4 billion by 2013. This is only part of a burgeoning user-generated content (UGC) market that will reach $7.3 billion by the same time.

Most mobile dating service revenues will be from subscriptions over the next five years, but in the event-based charging model, free registration is supported with fees when users wish to contact each other, offer gifts to send to others, and any number of additional features.

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The total number of Internet users has surpassed 1 billion, says comScore.

“Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,” said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer of comScore.

The global population is estimated to be about 6.76 billion.

The comScore report does not include visitors under 15, as well as those accessing the Internet from public computers, mobile phones or PDAs, so a hefty amount of users likely went unreported.

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“The internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news,” says Pew Research.

40 percent of respondents to a December Pew poll got their national and international news primarily online, while 35 percent used newspapers as their main news source. The Web still has a long way to go to catch up to TV, where 70 percent got their news.

Internet news grew significantly in the last year. In September 2007, the amount of people who got their news primarily over the Internet was 24 percent. In December 2008, it had reached 40 percent.

The study also highlights the reader-end side of the death of print media. In the last seven years, the Internet as primary news source has gone up 27 percent, newspapers have fallen ten percent.

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I was more than a little astounded to learn about Cyber Monday, that buying stuff on the Internet the first day back from work after Thanksgiving had become so integral a part of life that it warranted a name. Now it turns out that the workday is also the time when the most videos are watched online, too.

“With a 96 percent broadband penetration among at work Web visitors in October and many employees spending nearly eight hours a day at their computers, workdays are prime time for online video viewing,” says Nielsen (pdf).

More people watch YouTube at work than at home: 65 percent of video viewing occurs between the hours of 9 to 5. When most people leave work, YouTube viewership falls: 49 percent watch between the hours of 5 and 8pm, 43 percent between 8 and 11pm. There’s less diurnal viewing during the weekend, as only 51 percent of online viewers watch videos at that time.

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Pew Internet & American Life Project asked technology stakeholders in an online survey to assess scenarios about the social, political, and economic impact of the Internet by 2020. The results keep separate the responses of 578 experts from the 1,196 total respondents.

Experts agreed that the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world. Increased computing power, lower price, and global protocol standards all account for the “bottom” three-quarters of the global population to make up fifty percent of all people with Internet access.

The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but experts were split on related developments. Such include ideas that personal damage due to posted videos would lessen, or people would prefer social data exchange over anonymity. It will also not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.

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Nielsen has just published its 2008 top ten list for various media. Besides the alarming fact that the top four TV programs were either American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, the lists give good insight into this year’s tech trends.

2008’s top ten web sites are:

1. Google (120,498,000 Average Monthly Unique Audience)
2. Yahoo! (114,872,000)
3. MSN/Windows Live (98,414,000)
4. Microsoft (95,479,000)
5. AOL Media Network (90,193,000)
6. YouTube (72,623,00)
7. Fox Interactive Media (68,780,000)
8. eBay (54,680,000)
9. Wikipedia (54,505,000)
10. Apple (49,303,000)

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Yahoo’s long-expected layoff last week of 1,500 employees marked the latest mass firings in tech. Tech losses, whether in the form of layoffs, companies closing their doors, or being bought-and-dissolved (e.g. Pownce), are still accelerating.

Tech layoffs have now passed 100,000, reports Techcrunch, who have been keeping a scorecard, which I first became aware of after Sequoia confirmed that the good times were indeed dead. In all, 109,629 people lave been laid off since August 27th (as of December 12th).

“After a lull around Thanksgiving, December has seen some of the biggest layoffs in the tech industry yet since the economy entered its tailspin in the fall,” writes TC’s Erick Schonfeld.

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Watching Google Trends can be strangely addictive, seeing how the top search terms change reacting to breaking news, upcoming holidays, fast-food hoaxes or celebrity scandals. What is especially fascinating is when day turns to night, when searches change from largely news-related to searches for things on that night’s TV, especially nights American Idol is on. It gives a strange insight into aggregated thinking.

Google just released its 2008 Zeitgeist, the year’s top search terms. [“S]tudying the aggregation of the billions of search queries that people type into the Google search box gives us a glimpse into the zeitgeist — the spirit of the times,” says the search company. Indeed it does. (Whether Hegel’s rolling or laughing in his grave is another question).

Worldwide, the fastest rising search terms were:

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