ReadWriteWeb

When you think of social media, two products immediately come to mind: Facebook and Twitter. If you're in the technical world, you'd probably also mention Digg and Slashdot. A product that is rarely talked about among social media products, but has a surprisingly large footprint on the Web, is StumbleUpon. It now has 10.6 million users and regularly pushes big traffic to online publishers.

According to a new analysis by Web analytics company Woopra, StumbleUpon drives nearly twice as much traffic than Digg. StatCounter uncovered a similar trend recently, with StumbleUpon second only to Facebook among social media traffic drivers.

Marketers take note: a new study from research firm Gartner has discovered that a majority of today's consumers rely to some extent on social networks to help guide them in purchase decisions. Despite this fact, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and others, while critical, are currently an underutilized aspect to the marketing process, the report says.

But not everyone using social networks is worth targeting equally, as it turns out. Instead, there are three types of online personalities that make up just one-fifth of the consumer population but are the key influencers in the purchasing activities of 74% of the population. Gartner calls them Salesmen, Connectors and Mavens.

Miio is a new microblogging service which is a bit like a mashup between Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and an RSS reader. Now typically, we don't like describing services as a "it's like a this plus a that," but Miio is precisely the kind of service that needs a little help in the "what this is" department.

Don't get us wrong, the concept itself isn't bad: a discussion board built around interests as opposed to popularity. It's just that the execution makes the service seem a little confusing.

So what is miio? That's what we're trying to figure out today.

This blog was founded in 2003 on the philosophy of a read/write Web - a Web in which people can create content as easily as they consume it. This trend eventually came to be known as Web 2.0 - although others preferred Social Web - and was popularized by activities like blogging and social networking.

It would be easy to say that the 'social' element is still the primary part of today's Web, since the popular products of this era enable you to say what's on your mind (Facebook), what's happening (Twitter), or where you are (Foursquare). All of these are mostly social activities. But more significantly, these and other products output data that will increasingly be used to build personalized services for you.

How do you take the social web by storm in a day, winning over even the coldest of hearts and gaining international acclaim - with commercials?

A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. They leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. They dared to touch the wild beasts of 4chan and they lived to tell the tale. Even 4chan loved it. Everybody loved it; those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that's just over 7 minutes per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now. Here's how it's going down.

The new version of Digg has changed the playing field for two of its biggest constituents: power users and publishers. We discuss this with a long-time Digg power user.

The latest version of social news site Digg is currently in restricted beta, with an additional 20,000 users added at the beginning of July. The new version adds the ability to "follow" people or publishers via a feature called "My News." This will be the default Digg home page, and it's prompted many to compare the new Digg to Twitter and Facebook. Another big change is that publishers may now automatically submit their content. This changes the game for both power users and publishers, because previously the secret to getting onto the Digg front page was for a power user to submit the story. That's no longer the case.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released its report on Internet-based socialization. The conclusions in The Future of Online Socialization segment of the survey are positive.

The online world, according to most of the Internet specialists surveyed, is going to add to the texture and mood of social interactions, not detract from them.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is now the most popular event in Web history. Record usage began last Friday before the wins and losses. Not since Obama's election day victory has the Web swayed under a greater burden of Internet-connected hope.

A company called SocialShield has launched new technology aimed at keeping children and teens safe on social networking sites like Facebook. Using patent-pending "Safety Engines", the service scans a child's social networking profile to look for inappropriate, dangerous or otherwise suspicious content or behavior. When it finds questionable material, parents are alerted immediately via email.

Social media is going to rule the Web until at least 2012 - according to a post by Justin Kistner, a Social Evangelist at web analytics company Webtrends. Kistner also claims that Facebook has become the king of social media. In a panel at a Portland event today called Lunch 2.0, Kistner said that the current era of the Web "is Facebook's game to lose."

Data from Google Trends suggests that the term 'web 2.0' became popular in 2005 and peaked in mid-2007 (as measured by how many times the term was entered as a search term in Google). Towards the end of 2008 'social media' started to get popular and then rose steeply in 2009.