InSites Consulting surveyed the global online population on how they relate to social networking sites. "Social Media Around the World" was released late in March with findings regarding the ninety percent of respondents who had heard of at least one social networking site.

Globally, 83 percent of the online population know Facebook, with over ninety percent of North Americans. After Facebook, North Americans are most familiar with MySpace and Twitter. This corresponds to the top three penetration for membership, also.

72 percent of the internet population are active on at least one social network - 84 percent in the US. Of the 28 percent of global respondents that do not belong to a social network, 31 percent plan to sign up.

Of the 69 percent that are non-intentioned, non-users of social networks, the largest barrier is not wanting to share personal info - in North America this level reaches over eighty percent, as does the response "Any message can start leading a life online." Over half of North American non-users see no advantage in having membership, and around forty percent do not want to free  any time for it.

Those numbers are for non-members, but patterns are different for former social network site users. Of the online population, twelve percent are ex-MySpace members. Of the same population, seven percent are currently former members of Facebook and Hi5 (more popular in Romania and Portugal).

Despite these ex-members of Facebook, the most popular social networking site has more than half of the global Internet population as members. Nearly three-quarters of the online US is on the site.

Of social network members, 84 percent are members in a non-professional role. Three percent become members of a professional site without having a personal profile - these professional only memberships (on networks like LinkedIn or Xing) are more predominantly older or male individuals. Thirteen percent have both types of accounts.

Media and PR practitioners participated in the 2010 PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey, documenting the evolution of the media industry and its effects on journalists. While job security and ever-shrinking budgets are a major issue within the industry, the survey findings remain optimistic. As Sarah Skerik, vice president of social media at Newswire explains, "the rapid growth of online reporting and the continued adoption of social media make it possible to find and connect with audiences online, presenting journalists and communicators with many new opportunities."

Over seventy percent of respondents this year indicate a heavier workload compared to last year. 58 percent state that the number of stories that they are responsible has increased. The primary cause of this increase is due to the need for online reporting. While 62 percent must write for online news sections, 39 percent contribute to their publication’s blog, and 37 percent to their Twitter feed.

As for work environment, 31 percent of respondents have been affected by staff cuts or layoffs over the past three years, up from 22 percent in 2009. Smaller budgets was cited by 29 percent as impacting the work of those surveyed.

The shift from print to online is seen as the primary industry driver for the next three years, predicted to continue for the next three years. A key concern of magazine and newspaper journalists were "reduction in staff" at 28 percent. Reporters must be feeling more secure in their positions than last year, when that number reached 42 percent.

Respondents see educating and informing the masses as their success, as half of them indicated. One in five identify their primary goal to "break news and chronicle events as they happen," much more than 2009’s one in twenty. PR Newswire interprets this finding as indicative of a growing premium on being first with news, driven by online reporting growth and the "24/7 news cycle."

This year will be the first of double-digit growth after dismal 2008 and 2009, says eMarketer in their new report, US Retail E-Commerce Forecast: Room to Grow. Based off of US Census Bureau data, eMarketer projects that retail for 2010 in the United states will climb to over $152 billion, up 12.7 percent from last year. Online sales in the fourth quarter of 2009 grew by 14.6 percent from 2008.

Growth will continue into 2011, while the economy continues to recover and consumers begin to spend more, says Jeffrey Grau, report author and senior analyst at eMarketer. "But by 2012, e-commerce will resume its pre-recessionary downward growth path because of the inevitable maturation of the online sales channel," he continues.

162 million people will research products online this year, and much of this research will lead to in-store purchases. But over 82 percent of online researchers, 133 million people, will be online buyers. This already high number will rise as young Internet users replace older users. These younger consumers are more used to e-commerce and have a much higher adoption rate.

One of the covered e-commerce categories is retail, excluding travel, digital downloads and event tickets. This category is tracked to grow from $132.3 billion in 2008 to a projected $223.9 billion in 2014. As for online travel, 2008 saw $94.7 billion in sales, counting online leisure and unmanaged business travel sales. A rising category, travel’s growth is a nine percent compound annual rate from 2009 to 2014.

But the Internet is stronger at promoting retail through research rather than sales. “The Internet’s 7.7% share of total retail sales pales in comparison to its influence on store sales,” says Grau. Consumers honed their Web research skills by searching for coupons, comparing prices and focusing on getting the exact product that they need. Instead of going back to their old habits, Grau predicts, the public will keep using these tactics to save money even when the economy improves.

The Social Media Index, Wave V was conducted between January 6 and 22, 2010 by Toolbox.com and PJA Advertising + Marketing. Among its findings, IT executives and professionals spend more time consuming social media than editorial and vendor content.

The respondents, drawn directly from the Toolbox.com North American IT community, spent 4.25 hours per week on social media (profiles, blogs and communities) and user-generated content, compared to 2.75 hours of online vendor content (white papers, webcasts, etc) and 3.41 hours of online editorial content (InformationWeek, CNN, WSJ.com,etc). Of these hours spent on all surveyed media, 40.8 percent was spent on social media, most either staying current (75.3 percent) and networking with peers (66.4 percent).

The most important attribute for a social media expert is the quality and frequency of posting, followed by promptness and language proficiency. Using site tools, over half of decision-makers respond to peer questions, nearly half have posted their own questions. Being active and credible contributes to building reputation and a personal brand, which is important for 45.7 percent of respondents.

These professionals identify social media’s biggest impact on their career is to increase their level of expertise in current job position - 52.5 percent. A trailing secondary response was "increased confidence with a support structure through professional networking" at 33.7 percent, scoring closer to those that noted no impact on their career (30.6 percent). Additionally, nearly half of respondents say that a social media presence increases their value as a job candidate (42.7 percent).

Toolbox.com, a subsidiary of the Corporate Executive Board, is a network of online communities for professionals to collaborate with their peers. The site provide a platform with professional networking tools, blogs, groups, a wiki and a vendor research directory. The communities are grouped into IT, HR and Finance.

Mobile apps will be worth $17.5 billion by 2012, according to a GetJar study undertaken by Chetan Sharma Consulting.

The companies predict that mobile app downloads will grow from 7 billion downloads in 2009 to nearly 50 billion in 2012, a CAGR of 92 percent.

Mobile app sales will be greater than CD sales in 2012.

In North America, mobile app revenue will grow from about $2.1 billion in 2009 to around $6.7 billion in 2012. While Asia leads the world in downloaded apps, North America accounted for over 50 percent of app revenue in 2009.

The study forecasts that the biggest revenue generator in 2012 will be off-deck (not tied to carriers) paid-for apps. On-deck mobile apps sales accounted for 60 percent of revenues in 2009, but will fall to under 23 percent by 2012.

Advertising-based revenue models will more than double by 2012, rising from 2009’s 12 percent of revenue to 28 percent of revenue in 2012. The study also predicts that app prices will drop 29 percent from 2009’s average of $1.90 per app.

Currently, 27 percent of the world’s 5 billion mobile users subscribe to data plans. Penetration will reach 45 percent in three years, the study says, with North America expected to lead global data penetration at 60 percent.

While the amount of app stores more than quadrupled in 2009 from 8 to 38, GetJar predicts competition among app stores will be straight up Darwinian in the coming years.

“This report signifies a battle for survival of the fittest among app stores worldwide – with app revenue and growth opportunities growing significantly,” said Ilja Laurs, CEO and founder of GetJar.

“There is no way that this many app stores will survive in the long term and while the value of the global app economy is set to be astoundingly high by 2012, we think only a few app stores will share this revenue,” Laurs said.

Earlier this month, Anderson Analytics and the Marketing Executive Networking Group released a report (view here) conducted in January, 2010 on members’ marketing plans for this year. Two-thirds of executives are more optimistic about business opportunity than in 2009.

• More likely to increase market budget - planned increases rose from eleven percent in 2009 to 24 percent in 2010
• Less likely to reduce staff and more likely to hire incremental staff - keeping current staff reached 44 percent this year from 34 percent last year
• More likely to increase spending on innovation and R&D - 36 percent of executives in 2010, compared to 21 percent in 2009

The most important marketing concept for this year was “Marketing ROI,” which MENG members selected 58 percent of the time. This surpassed “Customer Satisfaction” at 49 percent and “Customer Retention” at 53 percent. These two concepts were the top two placed in both the 2009 and 2008 report, while Marketing ROI was number three last year and number six in 2008.

“Social Media” made the top ten list for the first time this year, selected by 42 percent of respondents.

Social Media is accepted as even more important now than ever, but is one of the buzz terms that marketers are most tired of hearing (placed number one at 29.1 percent). More specific frustrations with Web 2.0 terms focused more on social media, especially Twitter at number 2 (14.8 percent).

Other most oversaturated industry buzz words were Social networking (7.9 percent) and Web 2.0/3.0 (3.9 percent). “Web 2.0″ seems to be losing traction from its previous two years as number one term, giving way to the less vague Social Internet terms.

As for strategy, marketer budget still favors traditional marketing over online 55 percent versus 45 percent, with smaller companies edging more towards an even split in their budgets. Seventy percent of marketers are planning new social media initiatives in 2010.

A University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research study on Fortune 500 Companies social media usage show how the largest corporations of the United States use blogging and Twitter to create a public online presence. This study, "The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies," was conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite.

Of the Fortune 500 of 2009, 22 percent of the corporations (108 altogether) had a public blog with a post in the last twelve months, their criteria for the analysis. In 2008, only 81 companies, or sixteen percent, had qualifying blogs. Of the top five this year, only three had blogs: Wal-Mart, Chevron and General Electric. The remaining two that did not are Exxon/Mobil and Conoco Philips.

The 108 corporations of 2009 represent a cross-section of the industries with the greatest blog presence. The distribution of these industries from the last two documented years follow (2008 vs 2009):

• Computer Software, Peripherals, Office Equipment: eight versus eleven
• Specialty Retail: four versus seven
• Telecommunications: five versus six
• Food Production, Services and Drug Stores: five versus six
• Commercial Banks: four versus five
• Insurance: four versus five
• Semiconductors: four versus five
• Motor Vehicle: four for both years
• Information Technology: three versus four

93 (86%) are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account, more than three times as many as members of the 2008 list. Many more of these corporations have Twitter accounts, but do not have a link from their blog to it. Either way, 173 (35 percent) have used the service for their corporation in the thirty days before the survey took place.

While the number of blogs from Fortune 500 corporations has risen from 2008 to 2009, they are much lower than the Inc. 500 numbers. While 22 percent of the Fortune 500 have qualifying blogs, 45 percent of the Inc. 500 do.

I count myself among the growing number of people who are dissatisfied with netbooks.

Wrist pain, poorly formatted and slowly loading web pages, sound so low that watching films just doesn’t work, lack of a DVD drive, the “Pez-dispenser” keyboard . . . all work to offset the device’s low price and portability.

Maybe consumers are starting to see this.

Fifty-five percent of consumers don’t view netbooks as viable replacements for a laptop, according to Pricegrabber.com (PDF). The main reason is the cramped computing area: fifty-four percent replied that this is the primary reason they wouldn’t replace their laptop with a netbook. The other major reasons are lack of a CD drive (50 percent) and minimal storage (49 percent).

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PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that 2010 U.S. technology sector deals will increase steadily, following the surge of activity in the second half of 2009.

That said, PwC does not expect a return to 2006-2007 levels.

Deals dropped 53 percent in 2009, valuing just under $36 billion – less than half of 2008’s $77 billion.

Most of last year’s activity occurred in the second half: 64 percent of the year’s volume and 85 percent of its value occurred in the final six months’ activity. Almost 50 percent of that activity happened in November and December.

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Recently it was revealed that the most popular password for online sites is ‘123456.’

Not exactly Dan Brown-level cryptography.

Even more eye-opening is that consumers aren’t even careful with the stuff that’s really vulnerable – their bank passwords.

Seventy-three percent of people reuse their bank passwords on other, non-financial, sites, according to online security firm Trusteer (PDF). Forty-seven percent use both their banking password and user ID on nonfinancial sites.

This just makes it too easy for criminals, who can hack into less-secure sites like email or social networks to get bank passwords or other sensitive information.

While some institutions try to increase users’ protection by choosing unique IDs for them, 42 percent of those users end up using that unique ID with at least one nonfinancial site. Sixty-five percent of users who create their own unique user name use that name on at least one nonfinancial site.

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