Online retailers are following under-30s shoppers to social sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. “Generation Y online buyers” participate in Internet activities more than any younger generation, and this influences their online spending habits.

The Society for New Communications Research study entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” confirms the importance that this demographic holds for online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs.  These sources of information seem to be divorced from traditional marketing strategies, and therefore have more credibility.

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This morning, Michael Arrington, co-editor of TechCrunch.com, started his blogging day by complaining and mixing up the meaning of “interest into someone’s content” and “friendship” on a post. He claims the need to fake being someone’s friend to better use Twitter. Not to worry, this is very common in online social networking, especially with egocentric personalities.

The website talked about is the popular Twitter (www.twitter.com), which provides a way for people to express themselves about anything, as long as the message fits into 140 characters maximum. You can choose to follow anyone and monitor all of their messages.

So what Arrington complains about happens a lot in social networking sites. It’s when “following” someone or “subscribing” to someone’s list equals for a lot of people the same thing as being “friends” with this person, taking the true meaning of friendship to the bottom level. If it is not reciprocated, frustration and pressure come into place.

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NowPublic.com released Tuesday its second MostPublic index, showing the 50 most influential people in Silicon Valley/San Francisco. “The MostPublic Index is a detailed (and transparent) barometer of who’s [sic] voices are most heard in the digital landscape as new channels—Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the like—transform how media is created and spread.”

The Vancouver-based participatory news network rated the individuals based on four measures: online visability; presence on user-generated content and social networking sites; interactivity and accessibility; and what they call The “R” factor, presence on microblogging platforms like Flickr, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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On Tuesday, search engine giant Google Inc. [GOOG] announced the beta release of its own free 3D virtual world, Lively. Unlike Linden Lab’s popular virtual world, Second Life, to which it is similar, Lively is an internet plug-in, not a stand-alone program. Users create various locales and personalized avatars, create rooms that are embedded within websites, chat and interact with the environment. Integration with social networking Web sites like Facebook and YouTube – as well as the Google name – will very likely make Lively the most visible 3D virtual world.

Lively will also feature unique branded content. The first, “L.A. Hard Hats,” is a tie-in with National Geographic Channel series of the same name debuting August 3, 2008. Users will be able to visit a virtual version of a building being built on the show. This points to future possibilities in virtual narrative and advertising. As an immersive advertising platform, Lively should be especially effective.

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Internet expression has a double restriction: obviously, governmental censorship, but also, and a grayer area, corporate censorship. Internet providers and social networking sites can apply their own standards of taste when judging whether or not something on their site is offensive.

It is also difficult for websites to discern which are indeed the sites at fault. In New York, thousands of newsgroups were disbanded in an attempt to shut down child pornography sites. Many of these sites had nothing to do with pornography, but it was easier to disband them, for administrative reasons. Photographer Maarten Dors had a photo of a Romanian street kid removed from the photo-sharing site, Flickr, because the child was smoking a cigarette. Yahoo Inc., owner of Flickr, had the picture removed, as depicting adolescent smoking went against company policy. Yahoo later apologized and reposted the photo.

One of the difficulties in the debates over internet censorship is

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Missouri governor Matt Blunt signed a bill that changes the definition of harassment after 13-year old Megan Meier committed suicide in 2006 because of messages sent over social networking site Myspace, as we previously reported.

The updated harassment law takes into account communications via text messaging and online, whereas the previous version was limited to written or verbal, such as over the telephone.

The signed bill comes almost two years after Megan Meier killed herself after receiving demeaning and antagonistic messages on Myspace. The messages were between Meier, 13 years old, and a fictional teenager named Josh.

According to the Associated Press, Meier’s neighbor Lori Drew along with her daughter and an employee set up the fake account in order to see what Meier said about Drew’s daughter.

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Although new versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox have taken the spotlight, Flock and Opera are two other Web browsers worth considering that connect users to their online habits.

Flock 2 is similar to Firefox 3, unsurprisingly so because they are both part of the Mozilla open-source network. They have similar functionalities in their menu bar, but the unknown browser lends itself to the mass content sharing users go online for better than its well-known counterpart.

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With Internet use on the rise in all demographics and the rapid development of user-friendly Web 2.0, online banking is growing into a more common online activity.

A survey conducted by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future shows that almost 40% of Internet users conducted some degree of online banking in the last year, and with developers creating better applications in the Web 2.0 wave, that number is expected to increase.

The survey shows that the majority of time spent online is email-related, on top of general Web browsing and news reading.

Online banking has existed for a number of years, though many have slowly received it.

With the number steadily increasing, banks and developers are looking to popular Internet sites to expand online banking, especially to a younger audience.

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A professor of government at Bentley College in Massachusetts, Christine Williams (picture right) has been asking herself the same question since 2000: “Is the Web improving public debate, the political process and the campaigns?

Back in 2000, she studied the web sites created by candidates for the senate and concluded that they “failed to employ a relationship marketing strategy that would create repeat “customers” for the services of candidates for public office and raise the level of political discourse for voters.” With the advent of the Web 2.0, are political hopefuls doing a better job of engaging with potential voters on the Web?

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We have come full circle. When Tim Berners-Lee created the Web in the early 90s, his intention was to offer a communication tool to physicists and other researchers around the world. That is a niche audience if there ever was one. After the success of free-for-all social networking sites, the trend is now swinging towards boutique sites where people over 50, hip women or cat lovers get together.

MySpace’s domination is not over. In September 2007, it drew 82% of visits among the top 20 social networking sites, the Web’s fastest-growing category, according to a report by research company Hitwise. One in 20 Internet visits went to social networking sites during the month, nearly double the amount of traffic from a year ago.

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