So it looks like Twitter’s still not catching on with the kids. While 99 percent of Gen Y respondents in new study are on social networks, only 22 percent use Twitter.

“This is a classic ‘glass half full’ scenario for Twitter because it’s clear that Gen Y has an appetite for social networking, but still hasn’t fully embraced micro-blogging,” said Michael Della Penna, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Participatory Marketing Network, which conducted the study along with Pace University’s Lubin School of Business’ Interactive and Direct Marketing (IDM).

“There is a tremendous opportunity now for marketers to develop strategies to get this important group active on Twitter too,” Della Penna said.

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It’s easy to forget how recently that video became the ubiquitous media of choice on the Web. Just in the span of 2005 through 2006 came the popular proliferation of YouTube in the US, DailyMotion in Europe, and Tudou in China. These sites set the direction of online video with Flash Player technology for streaming instead of downloading, with a simple interface where anyone can upload content, as well as convenient code for sharing and reposting on Web pages and blogs.

According to Lightspeed’s research released yesterday through eMarketer, video is bigger than blogging or social networking - 72 percent of US Internet users watch video clips at least once a month. 62 percent view at least one video per week, which Lightspeed translates to 97 million weekly viewers.

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Mobile sales dropped in Q1 2009, but smartphone sales surged, according to research firm Gartner.

Global mobile sales dropped 14.5 percent to 269 million units between 2008’s fourth quarter and the first of 2009. Year-over-year sales were down 8.6 percent.

“There were some signs of a recovery in markets such as North America and China, but overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since Gartner began monitoring the market on a quarterly basis in 2001,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner.

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With multiple copyright lawsuits against Google’s Book Search, and high visibility of Amazon’s Kindle, public interest in digital reading devices is gaining back the spotlight. According to Piper Jaffray, worldwide Kindle revenues will reach $405 million by the end of 2009, and more than double to nearly $1 billion in 2010.

In the study “eCommerce State of the Union: A Bright Spot in a Difficult Environment,” released April 2009, Kindle revenues were compared worldwide. In 2007, device and book revenues combined were $5 million, in 2008  they reached $117 million.

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Social network usage passed email in February, according to Nielsen. Social networking sites had a global reach of 68.4 percent that month, compared to email’s reach of 64.8 percent.

In a three-month period from December 2008 to February 2009, social networking sites grew 1.6 percent, while email reach actually declined 0.3 percent.

One of the key drivers to social media reach was mobile. Mobile social networking nearly tripled in 2008.

The report also gives hard figures on another trend which, like mobile, is based less on sociological whims than it is on the price of the technology needed to participate: the growing number of users of long-form video sites like Hulu.

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Social networks had a record number of unique U.S. visitors in April, mainly on the strength of Twitter and Facebook, comScore reports.

Social networks grew 12 percent last month to nearly 140 million visitors – nearly 75 percent of the total U.S. online population.

Incredibly, MySpace still has more visitors than Facebook, albeit by a slim margin of 71 million to 67.5 million. Last week, I visited my MySpace profile for the first time in at least six months and found it vacant, many of my friends having deleted their profiles.

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In the next seven months, the number of people using personal computers will pass one billion (compared to the nearly two billion who own TVs). Over half the global population owns a mobile phone, and there are over 5.5 billion external power devices for electronic devices.

Electronic devices account for 15 percent of household electricity consumption. From 1990-2008, electricity consumption from electronics grew 7 percent every year.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that, if energy use continues as it is today, the energy consumed by electronic devices will double by 2022, tripling by 2030 to 1,700 Terawatt Hours (TWh).

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Investment in cleantech companies is down 63 percent in Q1 2009, after a record year for funding in 2008.

$277 million in cleantech investments was raised in the first quarter of 2009, according to Ernst & Young. In addition to the decline in revenue dollars, there has been a 48 percent decline in deals compared to Q1 2008.

“This economic climate demands that cleantech companies think more creatively about resources and partnerships,” said Joseph A. Muscat, Americas Director of Cleantech at Ernst & Young.

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Piracy is always in the news, but, in the wake of the Pirate Bay ruling and France’s approval of a “Three Strikes” law for copyright infringers, international governmental measures against piracy are getting tougher.

Not so in the U.S., where anti-piracy efforts are lagging, according to a study by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC.

“Governments and software companies are making progress in slowing the illegal use of personal computer (PC) software products, but progress has stalled in the United States, posing serious challenges to the high tech sector and cyber security,” according to the report’s U.S. press release.

One-fifth of software used in the U.S. is pirated.

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Web-to-TV streaming will be be worth $2.9 billion by 2013, according to a new report released by the mobile internet and digital entertainment analyst In-Stat.

“Once Web-to-TV video becomes simple and convenient, mass consumer adoption will follow quite rapidly,” said Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “Our primary research shows that users want a variety of their consumer devices to enable a web-to-TV video experience.”

40 percent of young-adult households in the U.S. already view video streamed to their TV at least once a month, according to the report.

Other highlights include:

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