It gets worse: the more times you check your smartphone, the higher your stress levels. The study also suggested people who are used to getting lots of text messages and push notifications on their phones will feel stress levels rise if they hit a stretch where their phones are silent. In the worst cases, study subjects experienced "phantom" vibrations when, in fact, they had not received an alert.

Balding, the study's author, recommended that companies help employees address the problem.

"Smartphone use is increasing at a rapid rate and we are likely to see an associated increase in stress from social networking," he told the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology Conference in Chester, England last week. "Organisations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people's temptation to check their devices."

While other researchers stressed more studies are needed, they agreed the advice that Balding and other experts give is reasonable.

"Now, certainly it's good to keep connected," Balding told USA Today. "But everyone needs a break. Some time on your own. Otherwise there's a risk that the stress and tension that builds up from keeping engaged can end up having a negative impact on relationships."

This is a step in a direction that might make advertisers, brand managers and marketing people feel a little uneasy, because it means they may have to start thinking deeply for their brand rather than just counting hits.

Facebook pages are now like a revolving door. That means they allow many more people to come into the page and write on it, creating a catalyst for building a brand culture on the social networking site.

People can come in and leave a comment and can never be seen again. But the move could mean greater things for marketing, and one social media manager told us that the emphasis on "Likes" has really hampered proper brand interaction and conversation on the web.

"If a social media manager is using likes to measure the impact of a Facebook page or brand, they are measuring the wrong thing," says Stuart Tracte, Social Media Strategist at Definition 6. "They should be measuring conversions. How is Facebook impacting you overall business goals? THAT'S what I want to know."

We had already reported that just over 41% of people who Like a brand drop that brand page by "disliking" it after any type of marketing or advertising campaign ends. Facebook seems to be putting a crimp in the assumption that sites like Facebook make it easier to run marketing campaigns because they are social and that numbers alone actually mean something.

They do not. Semantics mean something, obviously.

Facebooking for, and engaging with, a brand is now about meaning and resolving issues. It's about quality of posts, tone and managing the creativity of the brand's image and its engagement style.

"A comment requires some level of thought and engagement. Measuring likes is a simple way to measure potential reach, but means very little when it comes to the bottom line of any brand," says Tracte.

Of active Internet users in particular, 65% are social networking users, a number that continues to climb. To put things in perspective, only 29% of adult American Internet users reported using social networking tools in 2008.

Although the report doesn't break down usage by site, it's safe to assume that the majority of people are partial to Facebook, which has 750 million users worldwide and recently surpassed 1 trillion pageviews in a single month. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects the site to reach 1 billion users before long.

Not only do lots of people use social media, they have generally positive attitudes toward it. Reports Pew:

Overall, positive responses far outweighed the negative and neutral words that were associated with social networking sites (more than half of the respondents used positive terms). Users repeatedly described their experiences as "fun," "great," "interesting" and "convenient." Less common were superlatives such as "astounding," "necessity," and "empowering."

Why did MySpace fail? Why have Facebook and Twitter stolen its thunder? That will be a question for the ages, but one contributing factor may be the incredible hostility that MySpace had for outside application developers. MySpace thought, and said publicly, that all the rest of Web 2.0 was a leach, a monkey on MySpace's back. Below, an excerpt from a TechCrunch post I wrote about this five years ago. It looks pretty amazing now in retrospect and is a good reminder that today's leading companies should remember their humility.

Almost five years later, can you imagine Mark Zuckerberg saying things like this about, for example, Zynga?

News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin told company investors today that, "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Flickr, whether it's Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace." MultiChannel News is reporting that Chernin said there is no reason why News Corp. couldn't build parallel businesses, targeting YouTube in particular. "Given that most of their traffic comes from us," he said, "if we build adequate if not superior competitors, I think we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them."

What didn't get discussed in the coverage of Chernin's talk to the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference today are the steps the company has taken that have made it more difficult for outside companies to spread their presence inside MySpace, like blocking external links in Flash widgets. Could more hindrances like that be forthcoming? [To clarify, this is the context in which Chernin's comments were made, he did not discuss blocking other company's widgets.]

While competitor Facebook won accolades for opening an API to outside developers, it's understood that there is probably zero chance of such openness from MySpace.

It's unclear what more MySpace could do by way of features alone to compete with YouTube. The MySpace video player has embedding, related videos, top videos and viewer comments. Chernin said that MySpace's video efforts have been small so far and estimated that between 60 and 70% of YouTube's traffic comes from MySpace. That may become less the case as the YouTube community develops its own stars who use MySpace pages as static points of reference, at most.

Chernin also said that the company was looking to put more of its own commercial video on MySpace. "You're going to see us starting to play more aggressively on the entertainment side of that site," he said. Commercial video on YouTube has been a big gamble, with some of it well received and some of it eliciting a very hostile response from users.

To summarize: the COO of News Corp. says that Web 2.0 is leaching traffic off of MySpace, that they can build their own services to compete with any of it and that there's going to be an increasingly aggresive commercial push on the site. That sounds both dangerously arrogant and like a real validation of fears that MySpace dependency is too risky for outside developers.

One of the newest kid-friendly sites is MiniMonos, a New Zealand-based company that, just six months after its launch, already has over 250,000 users. That's dwarfed, of course, by the popular Disney-owned Club Penguin, with over 6 million monthly active users. While MiniMonos is similar to Club Penguin and other virtual sites with its emphasis on fun avatars, games, and virtual goods, MiniMonos, which means "little monkeys" in Spanish, is unique in a couple of ways.

Flinging poo may be a game that appeals to young boys more than young girls and MiniMonos certainly seems to be aiming at that demographic more than some of the other fashion-focused virtual worlds.

But what makes MiniMonos different may well be its commitment to linking the online world with the offline world. The site hopes to demonstrate that sustainability isn't just about maintaining the virtual environment and in-world actions on MiniMonos lead to real-world results. MiniMonos has partnered with a number of environmental groups: supplying clear water in India, adopting two orangutans through Orangutan Outreach, and supporting WWF's international Tiger Initiative.

It isn't simply linking gaming with a social cause - that's pretty common for kids' and adults' sites. MiniMonos also has launched an "EcoMonkey" program that provides kids with in-world rewards for their real-world eco-actions, such as setting up recycling programs at their schools.

Although there are plenty of other sites that have environmental science education components or that encourage kids to get involved socially, MIniMonos integrates this eco-sensibility throughout the gameplay and it ties kids' actions offline to their online presence. That commitment to offline activism is crucial to the startup's founders, many of whom, including CEO Melissa Clark-Reynolds, have been trained as Ambassador for Al Gore's Climate Project.

MiniMonos recently announced that it has been accepted into the Springboard accelerator program in Cambridge, England.

To access the new feature, click on the "Ping" icon in the left-hand sidebar in iTunes to be taken to the social networking site. From there, look for the "Ping Playlists" section on the right side and click on "Create a New Playlist."

On the Playlist creation page, you fill out a title, description and can check a box that reads "Allow people who follow me to add songs" if you want to create a collaborative playlist with friends. However, in typical Apple fashion, the songs for your playlist can only come from the iTunes store - there's no option to add your own MP3's from your music collection.

Ping: Dead in the Water?

While this update brings what's now one of the only notable features for Ping, as a whole, the social network is incredibly unremarkable. Although iPad integration and Twitter connectivity was added last month, Ping still lacks Facebook connectivity for finding friends or sharing music socially. And even the Twitter integration did not seem to pay off for Ping - our analysis of Twitter revealed a low volume of tweets and no re-tweets shortly after the feature was launched.

As our own Marshall Kirkpatrick described it, the Ping user experience is "totally focused on commerce not community."

The new social playlists feature again confirms Apple's stance on "social" once again is about money, not users. Without options for users to add their own esoteric, indie tracks from unsigned artists, Ping isn't serving as a place where music fans can find the next big thing, it's serving as yet another pointer to the virtual cash registers on iTunes.

What's more, according to a recent article from music technology blog Hypebot, Ping to date only has around 2,000 artists on board, an incredibly low level of participation considering the network's potential to reach iTunes' 160 million users. At launch, Apple said artist profiles were invite-only but "any iTunes user can create a profile on Ping, artist or otherwise." Distributers like Tunecore and CD Baby who serve indie musicians are now helping artists create Ping profiles. So why haven't more done so?

Where are the Artists?

According to a comment on Hypebot from Peter at TuneCore, the company has set up more than 1,000 of its artists with Ping accounts...which begs the question, if half of the 2,000 are from TuneCore, then how many has Apple actually "invited?" Where is everyone?

MySpace?

Perhaps. Fast Company said that the flailing News Corp-owned social network hosts eight million artists currently, while Apple is slowing adding "worthy" artists one-by-one. Meanwhile, Apple also posted a 9-page rule book for any other artists interested in joining the Ping network. The book includes a bizarre list of no-no's for artists on Ping like a ban URLs in the About section of a Ping profile (artists can't mention their own website?) and no posting links to other content providers or ads for sites outside of iTunes. It even recommends artists don't recommend only their own songs to their fans. It's likely that the limitations put into place have discourage some artist participation, but ultimately, it's Ping's overall lackluster appeal that is dragging it down.

91% of the girls in the study said they used Facebook regularly, while only 28% said the same about MySpace. Demonstrating that teens do not eschew Twitter, 38% said they had a Twitter account, and averaged about 8 Tweets per day.

Girls' Self-Image, On- and Offline

The study also found that girls see a disparity between their online and their offline image. 74% of girls agreed with the statement that "most girls my age use social networking sites to make themselves look cooler than they really are." And 41% admit that this describes themselves.

But many girls also indicated that they think they portray a more well-rounded image in person than they do online. In person, girls say they come across as smart (82%), fun (82%), funny, (90%), kind (76%), and cool (55%). But when they describe how they come across based solely on their online profiles, they describe themselves as fun (54%), funny (52%) and social (48%). These results suggest that girls downplay positive characteristics about themselves online, particularly their intelligence and their kindness.

And the study also found girls who have a low self-esteem are more likely to admit that their social networking image doesn't match their offline image. Furthermore, girls with low self-esteem are more likely to claim the image they portray online is sexy (22%) and crazy (35%).

"Safe" Social Networking

Although the vast majority of girls say they've talked with their parents about how to be safe online (85%), 50% admit they aren't as careful as they should be. And only 59% said they think they have complete control over what happens with the videos, photos and other information they post online.

Many girls said they're concerned with how things they've posted online may hurt them in the future. 42% say they fear they won't get into the college of their choice, 40% say they worry they might miss out on a job opportunity, and 40% fear they'll get in trouble with parents or teachers based on their social networking posts.

Girls' Online Reputation

68% of girls have had a "negative experience" on a social networking site, such as being bullied or harassed. And nearly half of the girls in the study - 46% - said they think that social networking actually damages their personal relationships, causing jealousy among friends. 40% said they'd lost respect for a friend because of something she or he had posted online.

But the news isn't all bad. 56% said that social networking does help them feel more connected to their friends. And 52% say they've gotten involved in a cause they care about through a social network.

But overall, this research suggests that social networking does not necessarily boost girls' confidence and self-image, and girls online are (often knowingly) taking risks - with their reputations and their self-esteem.

The 2010 report was recently released by EDUCAUSE, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology in higher education. The report is based on a survey from the spring of 2010 of over 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions.

EDUCAUSE has been conducting these surveys for almost a decade now, so the results offer an interesting look at how students' attitudes to technology have changed - and haven't changed - over time. Consistent with previous years, for example, about half the respondents say they consider themselves to be mainstream adopters of technology. But about half of the male respondents see themselves as early adopters while only a quarter of females described themselves that way.

For the past four years, the percentage of respondents who own computers has stayed roughly the same: around 98%. But desktop ownership has declined by more than 25% over that period, with laptop ownership increasing accordingly. In 2010, 89% of students said they owned either a laptop or a netbook. More than half of respondents said their computers were less than a year old.

Despite the prevalence of laptops, eReaders have yet to make much in-roads with the college set, with only 4% owning a dedicated eReader. But two-thirds of the respondents say they own an Internet-capable handheld device.

Students' Use of Technology (For Social Networking, Not for Studying)

Students report they use technology primarily to study. OK, not really. Communications - especially via text-messaging and social networking - is the primary usage (and daily usage) of technology.

96% of students said they were on Facebook. 23% said they were on MySpace. And of students active in social networking, fewer than 7% said they had no restrictions as to who could see their online profiles. 59% of women and only 40% of men said they'd put some restrictions in place as to who could view their social networking information.

Dissatisfied with Learning Management Systems, Students Turn to Social Networking to Collaborate

Despite the very high percentage of students who said they use social networking for personal reasons, very few said they use these sites as part of their coursework. Only 3 in 10 said as much, most of whom said they did so to collaborate with fellow students in their classes. Only 8% of respondents said they used social networking sites to interact with their instructors.

When asked if they would like to see more social networking in their classes, slightly more than 25% said they would.

And while 90% of institutions said they used online Learning Management Systems, students' participation was not that high. While most students said they had used an LMS at some point, only two-thirds said they were using one during the semester when this survey was taken. And their experience was not positive. Over the last few studies that EDUCAUSE has undertaken, the percentage of respondents who feel positive or very positive about the LMS experience has dropped from 77% in 2007 to 51% in 2010.

In terms of other technologies being used by students, 36% said they used web-based productivity tools like Google Docs, 12% said they used blogs, and only 4% said they used microblogging services like Twitter in their courses.

As far as how their college experience is preparing them for their future technology usage, slightly fewer than half of the students agreed with the statement "By the time I graduate, the IT I have used in my courses will have adequately prepared me for the workplace."

This is a breaking story. We will update this post continuously as we get more news.

New Features

Among the new features that Microsoft will launch today are Facebook results for name queries (4% of all queries on Bing are name queries) and personalized results based on what your friends liked on Facebook. Thanks to this, you can now see what restaurants your friends liked on sites like OpenTable, for example, or if your friends liked a certain movie. Microsoft will roll these new feature out later today.

The new personalized search results are based on what your friends "liked" across the Web. These results will appear in a box on the search results page. Results for name queries will now highlight people in your social network in a separate box. Thanks to this, results for common names like "Bob Smith" will now highlight people in your social network or within your friends' networks.

In the near future, Bing also hopes to be able to find topic experts among your friends and highlight relevant search results from sites and stories that they liked.

At the beginning of the event, Microsoft's president of its Online Services Group Qi Lu noted that Bing wants to go beyond just the basic search experience that today's Internet users are familiar with. With this new partnership, Bing will be able to offer better search results for name queries, for example. According to Lu, by being able to connect search to your social graph, Bing will be able take search to the next level, and today's announcement is only the beginning of this new partnership.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg called it "one of the most interesting partnerships we have done recently." Based on their past relationship, Zuckerberg noted that Microsoft is a good partner for Facebook. Facebook likes to work with underdogs (like Bing) who want to innovate and "push new things."

So far, these new capabilities in Bing look quite similar to Google Social, which also integrates results from your Twitter and Google Buzz friends on the search results page.

As you may imagine, the Internet is already abuzz with its reactions.

Gladwell's Tipping Point book described the power of "Connectors" - those people whose knack for making friends and acquaintances amass them social networks containing over a hundred connections. Connectors link us up with the world, he said. Others with special "social gifts" were described as either "Mavens" (aka "information specialists") or the powerful persuaders known as "Salesmen."

And yet, in his current essay, Gladwell doesn't apparently seem to think that those same types of personalities can impact the world when they use their "gifts" on social networking sites in order to enact social change. Revolutions, activism, protests and the like that take place via social media are not like those in the past, he says, because "the platforms of social media are built around weak ties." 

Weak ties aren't necessarily a bad thing, though, Gladwell explains:

"Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That's why you can have a thousand "friends" on Facebook, as you never could in real life. This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties...," he says.

"But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism."

High-Risk Activism Won't Come from Tweets, Facebook

To illustrate this point, Gladwell pitted historical protests , like those from the Civil Rights era against modern ones, like he "Save Darfur" Facebook movement and the Iranian elections with its accompanying "Twitter Revolution."

In the Civil Rights era, says Gladwell, the high-risk activism that took place was based on strong ties and close relationships. It was rife with danger and often met with violence. 

But today, the so-called activism that takes place on social networks isn't nearly as risky nor impactful. For example,  the 1,282,339 members of the "Save Darfur" Facebook page have committed an average of 9 cents each to the cause.  The next biggest Darfur charity on Facebook has 22,073 members, who have donated an average of 35 cents. "Help Save Darfur" has 2,797 members have have given, on average, 15 cents, Gladwell writes.

He explains that "Facebook activism" succeeds by "not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice."

As for the Twitter revolution surrounding the Iranian elections? It was more of a product of shoddy Western journalism than any real activism. Gladwell cited Golnaz Esfandiari's article in "Foreign Policy" which stated, "Western journalists who couldn't reach--or didn't bother reaching?--people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection. Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi."

There are many more examples in the article itself, but they all point to the same conclusion: activism that takes place on social networks just isn't the real thing.

"We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro," says Gladwell, referring to the historic moment on Monday, February 1, 1960,  when four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina and ordered a cup of coffee - the example that kicks off the lengthy essay.

Do You Agree?

In the article, Gladwell takes on social media activists, including Clay Shirky, author of one of the social media movement's bibles "Here Comes Everybody" plus Andy Smith and Jennifer Aaker, whose new book called "The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change" tells the story of how a Silicon Valley entrepreneur used social media to find a bone marrow match when he came down with leukemia.

Gladwell says that social media enthusiasts don't understand the distinction between this latter scenario and real activism:  "They seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960," he writes.

The article is already being criticized for missing the mark, most notably by David Helfenbein on The Huffington Post, who says the piece is "generationally insulting." Gladwell is saying that "older generations knew how to create real, palpable movements; younger generations simply know how to push buttons," says Helfenbein. "But Gladwell, younger generations can do both," Helfenbein explains. "They have: they were in the Facebook groups for President Obama and then they showed up by the thousands to the rallies and then they voted for him. And in the end, whatever you believe politically, Obama won. This was one significant, high-risk movement."

Of course, one could argue that voting for president isn't really all that dangerous - it's a movement, sure, but was it "high risk?" Perhaps it's Helfenbein who is missing the point?

For those that only skim headlines, the article and the accompanying analysis makes for a nice tweet: "Gladwell gets it wrong (link)." But to those who still read longer articles like Gladwell's essay (or heck, this blog post summarizing), there's definitely food for thought here.

Feel free to share yours in the comments.   

The dips in each region may not seem like a lot - usually only a percentage point or two - but Forrester analyst Jacqueline Anderson says there's still reason to be concerned.

Over the course of the past year, the Creator audience dropped from 24% to 23% in the U.S, went from 15% to 14% in the E.U., 44% to 41% in metropolitan China and 23% to 22% in Australia. The only country where content creation is on the rise is Japan, which saw an increase of two percentage points, going from 34% to 36%.

Fewer Creators Means Fewer Ideas

What this means, says Anderson, is that new content creation is now limited to existing Creators. "Creators are the elite group who power social content," she explains. "A lack of growth in this area translates into a lack of fresh ideas, content and perspectives."

Using YouTube as an example, she says that one third of U.S. consumers regularly watch user-generated videos on sites like YouTube, but only 10% say they've uploaded videos to public sites. It seems that interest in becoming a creator of content has plateaued.

Another group on the decline is Critics, the group responsible for posting ratings and reviews. In the U.S., Europe and metropolitan China, the percentage of Critics either remained flat or declined.

Meanwhile, the group known as Spectators, those that serve as the audience for Creators and Critics, is on the rise. In Japan, the number of Spectators grew by 6%, in Europe 4% and Australia 3%.

Some of these trends can be accounted for by the fact that social networking itself is on the rise. The group of new users joining social networks ("Joiners") has grown across the board, up from 51% to 59% in the U.S., going from 30% to 41% in the E.U., 26% to 29% in Japan, 50% to 61% in Australia and jumping from 32% to 50% in metropolitan China. These new users aren't likely to jump in head first with content creation, we would argue, but are more likely to sit back and watch. Whether that will change in the future as they get more comfortable with these new platforms is still unknown.

And more and more - 2000 a day - are joining ResearchGATE, a startup that hopes to connect scientists, researchers, and scholars worldwide.

Meeting the Communication and Collaboration Needs of the Scientific Community

Initially, says Madisch, ResearchGATE offered merely profiles. But as more scientists joined - the site now has 500,000 registered users from 200 countries - features were added so that scholars could present their research and participate in Q&A groups. On ResearchGATE you can list what projects you're working on and what literature you're reading, making it easier for scholars to see what others in the field are thinking and, in the words of Madisch, making "discovering papers social."

Unlike a site like Facebook, scholars have followers, rather than just "friends," which makes sense as, say, a grad student might want to follow a prestigious scholar in her or his field, but might not be able to claim the person as a direct contact. In addition to fostering communication and collaboration among researchers working on similar projects, ResearchGATE also fosters cross-discipline collaboration, as a scholars in a variety of fields can share research results and methodologies. And it's not just "hard science," either. According to Madisch, philosophers make up one of the largest disciplines represented on the site.

ResearchGATE announces today that it has secured a Series A round of financing led by Benchmark Capital with participation from Accel Partners' Silicon Valley office and prominent investors from the UK and Germany. With the funding, ResearchGATE plans to expand its team and add new features to meet the needs of users, including calendaring and virtual conferencing.

"After many presentations on social networking around the World, I found myself getting the same questions all the time so I decided to share everything I learned in a series of 30 HD videos," writes Le Meur on his personal blog. "They aren't aimed at experts but rather anyone who would like to learn from scratch how to make the best from social networking and building their brand."

The video series itself serves as an example of how social media has transformed the way we market ourselves and our companies on the Web. Le Meur could have simply blogged these ideas in a few lengthy posts, but instead he's being more interactive and providing a richer personal experience by creating a daily video series.

Companies and professionals can do this too, so check out Le Meur's video series for what should be a fun month of branding tips!

The Pew report also notes that the number of older adults (50-64) who use Twitter or another status update service doubled from about 5% to 11% over the last year. Seniors (65+) are still lagging behind in the use of status update services, but while only about 1% of them used Twitter regularly in 2009, this number has now grown to 6%.

No matter the growing popularity of social networking services among older users, email and online news sites are still far more popular than Facebook and Twitter among this age group. Overall, 92% of all older adults and 89% of all seniors send or read email daily. With regards to online news gathering, 76% of older adults get their news online and 42% say they do so daily. Among seniors, about 62% look for news online and 34% say that they do so daily.

You're probably know about the AddThis button even if you don't realize it - it's the orange "Share" button that's nearly ubiquitous across the Web these days. Acquired by the widget creation platform company Clearspring in late 2008, the button was already the most popular of its kind on the Web. The acquisition, said Clearspring, would allow AddThis to reach 300,000 publishers. That number has long since been surpassed. Today, AddThis is installed on 1.5 million websites.

Implementing the button is easy, which is partially why it's been so successful. It's also incredibly easy for the end user to access as well.

From the company's website, publishers need only select their service and style of button in order to get embed code ready for copying-and-pasting onto any website or blog. Those who choose to register with the service can also get built in analytics, too.

What's New?

Prior to today, however, AddThis was not well-designed for mobile use and touchscreens, which is what makes this new release all that more exciting for dedicated mobile users like ourselves. On many websites, it's been more difficult than need be to find an easy way to tweet a link to an article we just read or post a link to Facebook, for example. More often than not, the link simply wouldn't get shared if the publisher didn't have some kind of built in, touchscreen-enabled tool for doing so already installed.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, one less link posted to Twitter is not a major issue, but it did make the mobile Web feel more clunky and less developed than its desktop counterpart.

AddThis aims to change that with the button's new mobile functionality, which automatically opens Web browser windows for you, with default (but still editable) text filled in. (And don't worry, there's no auto-tweeting/sharing here!) It also now integrates with the built-in email clients on the mobile devices themselves, allowing you to privately share the link with a friend whose address is stored in your contacts list instead of publicly broadcasting it to the Web.

Try it Now: No Code Update Needed

You can see the demonstrations of the new AddThis in these two YouTube videos here and here.

Alternately, you can try AddThis yourself by tapping the "Share" button below this post from your mobile device. We didn't even have to update our code to make this happen - it just works.

This is only one of the many upcoming "new features, experiments and products that help to tackle the problem of mobile sharing," reports Clearspring's Justin Thorp via email. Dare we hope for dedicated native apps next?