In the latter parts of the study, the company looked specifically at social network membership data for users of the AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services. Not surprisingly, the study found that Facebook was the most popular network across the board. What's more interesting is how well MySpace fared in some cases. On both the Hotmail and Yahoo webmail services, Facebook only had a small lead. Here, around 20% of all Hotmail and Yahoo webmail users were found to be on Facebook and MySpace. What does this reveal about the Hotmail and Yahoo user base? That they're a little more behind the times? Or that they've been around on the net longer and at one time had created (and possibly now abandoned) their MySpace pages? Unfortunately, the study can't provide us with these sorts of answers.

The study also showed that Twitter is far more popular among Gmail users than anyone else. In fact, on the other services, it's 4-5 times less popular than Facebook. We would like to think that's because Gmail users are just more web-savvy and cool, but it's possible that it's because they're just younger than everyone else.

Not surprisingly, LinkedIn is the least popular social network, but as Rapleaf points out, many LinkedIn users may have registered with their business email instead.

Participation Levels - Hotmail Users have Most Profiles, Gmail Users Better-Connected

When it comes to how the webmail users participate on social networks, Rapleaf found that the majority of the users have only one social media profile. But the service where the average number of profiles is the highest might surprise you - it's Hotmail. There the average is 2.5 profiles per user. Hotmail is followed by Yahoo, then AOL, and it's Gmail users who have the least number of social media profiles. That finding seems odd considering that Gmail users are younger and more likely to use Twitter in addition to Facebook. In fact, it almost seems like this data doesn't even fit with the rest of the study.

However, the discovery that Gmail users are better-connected than the other users makes more sense. On average, Gmail users have the most friends on social networks with 46.2 friends while Yahoo users have the least with 40.0.

Since again, Gmail users tend to be younger than the rest, it goes to reason that they would be in a demographic where their peers are more likely to have social membership profiles. Older webmail users, meanwhile, are still signing up for these sites. Although baby boomers and other middle-aged folks are joining sites like Facebook in droves these days, social networks are still dominated by the young.

Methodology

For the Rapleaf study, the company sampled 120,000 webmail accounts from users with @aol.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses. They then looked into the users' age, gender and social networking data by collecting information from public social media profiles. Obviously, in doing so, they've skewed their findings a bit, as the company notes in their original blog post. However, the sample size is large enough to form some conclusions about the members of these services, even if it relied on a particular subset of users.

Rapleaf says that despite their collection methods, their findings can offer insight into these different userbases. To some extent, that may be true, but we're left wondering how different these findings would be if they hadn't relied on public social media data and rather went with a true random sample.

Gmail Skews Young, AOL Older

That being said, here's what Rapleaf came up with. In terms of age:

It's not all that surprising that Gmail users tend to be young. After all, the service was established years after AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo. Some of those who already had webmail accounts on other services were hesitant to switch at first (and some still are) since the process of changing email accounts is never entirely painless and often leads to months of checking dual inboxes for emails that may have been missed. Instead, Google's growth likely came from more webmail first-timers looking to set up their brand-new online accounts in addition to the braver "email switchers," a group that also probably skews younger...especially since an effective switchover often requires a bit of technical savvy involving setting up forwarding, auto-responders, etc.

As for AOL being comprised of older users, that too, is relatively unsurprising. Where Google is the newest service, AOL is one of the oldest. Its core user base has aged with it over the years and those who haven't jumped shipped yet are bound to be the older members who don't stay as current with changing technology trends. Still, setting the bar for "old" at 36 is a little humbling - especially for those of us getting up in our years. (That's not old, is it?) It would be interesting to see further breakdowns of this demographic into age segments including 40+, 50+, and so on, but that data was not available.

Gmail Has More Females, Hotmail Has More Males

Perhaps more interesting is the gender variations between the services. Gmail, for instance, includes more females (53%) than males (47%). If those were election poll results, we would call it "too close to call," but in terms of tens of thousands of users, these percentage point differences have meaning.

Why would Gmail attract more females? And conversely, why does Hotmail have more males? (It's 57% male.) Is there something about the aesthetics, workflow or features in those services that appeal more to women than men or vice versa? And if so, what? Unfortunately, raw data can't provide these sorts of answers, but they're definitely intriguing to us. We would imagine they are intriguing to the user interface designers and engineers behind the products, too.

Do women like Gmail's drag-and-drop features or its themes? Do men prefer Hotmail's efficient "quick adds" which allow for one-click additions of Bing content to messages? We doubt those are the reasons for the discrepancy, but it makes us wonder what are. Try as we might, we can't come up with an easy theory to explain this. (If you can, please share in the comments.)

Future details about the study will focus on other data including online activity, friend counts, and social network memberships. Stay tuned to Rapleaf's site for more information.

"The site will be a combination of curation and original reporting," Golis wrote this morning on his personal blog, "with gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing. In other words... I'm going to be building a team to bring the most popular news site in the United States into the news link economy."

Golis is currently the Deputy Publisher of Talking Points Memo. He joined the company in 2006, has a Harvard degree and lives in Sunnyside, New York. He's married to prominent feminist author Jessica Valenti.

News found via the fabulous Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard.

At once rich and simple, the new homepage is accessible by more than 1,900 different mobile devices, which Yahoo! says represents a 500 percent increase since the mobile site launched in April. We checked out the site on a BlackBerry Storm tonight and were impressed by the features Yahoo! is offering for discovery and filtering of content. From tech-related videos to dynamically refreshed news feeds, Yahoo! gives mobile users plenty of room to play.

One of our favorite features was the site's enhanced mobile video integration. Video clips were quick to load. As previously mentioned, we got to browse through the Tech Ticker, which, as it turns out, is stocked with Yahoo!-produced video content all about tech, business, and financial news. Other mobile video feeds include Prime Time in No Time, a recap of the previous night's TV shows, and general news, entertainment and sports videos from the Associated Press.

Users can also use the "My Favorites" tab to integrate content from nine social networks, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, as part of its Social Pulse feature. From this tab, users can also pull in any RSS feeds or other types of content, such as email, weather, and theatre information.

And speaking of theatres, Yahoo! is also nearing perfection with their newly revamped movie results. Users can get results on what films are showing at nearby theatres; they can watch movie trailers; they can read reviews from multiple sources. Best of all, users can buy tickets from participating theatres all directly from their mobile devices.

In short, the new Yahoo! mobile homepage is a well executed, updated version of the portal that ruled a much younger Internet. It's accessible, fast, full of interesting content and infinitely customizable. In an age of Y!-bashing, dare we admit to liking a Yahoo! product?

We encourage our readers to take the site for a quick test drive and leave opinions in the comments. Can you see yourself using this feature-packed but still lightweight homepage on a regular basis?

Writes Marquez, "Tom Curley did not clarify how a product that provided some news earlier would work or specify the target customers for the potential new service." However, more than anyone, we know the value of this service.

Independent bloggers continually struggle to scoop rival outlets to the point that embargoed releases are often broken. Some outlets have even chosen to forgo embargoes all together; however, ReadWriteWeb makes every effort to honor them. To a tech blogger, a 30 minute lead may mean the difference between the front pages of Digg, Techmeme and major traditional outlets, or appearing like a pack journalist. The groups that purchase a 30 minute lead on tech stories will solidify a huge influx in feed subscribers and mobile app downloads and as a result, gain more favor with advertisers.

Photo Credit: Marina Campos Vinhal

In yesterday's attack, the list of comprised Hotmail accounts were limited to those where the usernames started with the letter "A" or "B." However, that seemed to imply that the posted portion might actually be a part of a bigger list containing even more login/password combinations. At the time, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company determined "this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts." Instead, claimed the spokesperson, those users whose credentials were revealed were likely to be victims of an online phishing attack where a third-party website was involved.

Phishing attacks are typically carried out via email messages where the attacker tricks the recipient into revealing their username and password by pretending to be some sort of trustworthy entity such as the user's bank, IT administrator, a popular website, or an online service. In the case of the stolen Hotmail passwords, it's possible that the attacker sent emails which claimed to be from the end user's email provider. If the user then followed the link contained within the malicious email, they would have ended up not on the actual email provider's site, but on a third-party site whose sole purpose was to capture their username and password when entered.

Beyond Hotmail: More Webmail Providers Affected

According to a story in today's BBC News, the most recent list of compromised accounts, which includes login credentials for Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, and Comcast users, contains some accounts that appear to be old, unused, or fake. However, many others listed are, in fact, genuine.

There's no way to be sure at this point that the new list is a part of the same phishing attack as yesterday's or if it's a new and separate scam.

The website where the accounts were posted - pastebin.com - is now "down for maintenance." Visitors to the site today will receive a message that reads:

Pastebin.com is getting an unprecedented amount of traffic due to a news story in which some leaked Hotmail passwords have been pasted on this site

Pastebin.com was intended as a tool to aid software developers, not for distributing this sort of material. Filters have been put in place to prevent reoccurrence, but the current traffic level is unsustainable.

Pastebin.com is just a fun side project for me, and today it's not fun. It will remain offline all day while I make some further modifications

Paul Dixon

Regardless of whether or not you think your account was compromised, today would be a good day to change the password on whichever webmail service you currently use. Better safe than sorry!

Apps are to be built using Yahoo!'s proprietary development platform, YAP. The YDN post further noted, "We're working on an array of additional developer monetization opportunities - these will be available soon." The gallery's inaugural class includes YAP-built applications from Mint, Lumosity, Flixter, Target, and WordPress.

For users, the benefit is a slew of widgets to make the Yahoo! portal more intensely personal, whether that experience is one of entertainment, education, practicality, socialization, or information. The apps pop into a lightbox-style layout, called "Small View," on scrollover and go to a full-page "Canvas View" when a user clicks through.

Yahoo! has made conscious and ever-increasing efforts to open themselves to the developer community in what many see as a struggle to remain interesting and viable in the age of the open API. Tools such as YQL, their proprietary query language which we covered in depth, and their YAP application development platform help to foster a sense of relevancy for the aging web giant.

Last month ReadWriteWeb covered a number of Yahoo updates to Mail, Search and Messenger. The most notable items appear to be the ability to monitor friends and status updates from a single dashboard. Being the singular entry-point for multiple services including Flickr, Mail and Messenger is likely to be a major facet of the Yahoo campaign. Nevertheless, while the company remains a leading advertising and email player, critics argue that these recent life streaming features do not offer the same ease of use as sites like Facebook and Friendfeed. It will be interesting to see if the new campaign can convince users to stay within the Yahoo ecosystem for all of their communications and business needs.

Photo Credit: Franco Follini

Says Ask spokesperson Nicholas Graham, "Health and reference are already two of our strongest verticals. It makes sense for Ask to team up with Komen and increase awareness amongst our 50 million monthly visitors."

According to the American Cancer Society, there are about 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States and women have a 1 in 8 chance of developing invasive breast cancer. While there are a number of breast cancer-related corporate partnerships, only a few are fully embraced by health advocates. In recent years, environmental health organizations have formed the Think Before You Pink campaign as a backlash movement against companies that work on pink ribbon campaigns but manufacture products linked to the disease. Because Ask specializes in delivering information to its consumers, a public information campaign on breast cancer seems like a great fit.

Says Graham, "When you engage a community of users, the service becomes more robust. It makes a positve difference in the online and offline world." To change your skins and support Komen for the Cure visit the Ask Skins gallery.

The Yahoo Finance app gives users access to all the data one would typically expect from a financial app, including stock tickers and financial news stories. In addition, users can also follow their own personalized portfolio on Yahoo Finance. Another neat feature is that the app can display streaming video from Yahoo's Tech Ticker.

Unlike other finance apps, Yahoo also made its own app very customizable. In the 'Quotes' section, for example, you can simply press down on a ticker symbol and a menu will pop up that allows you to reorganize the page, move stocks around on the page, or display them as a full-sized graph.

While the app isn't necessarily revolutionary, it does give users access to the wealth of information available on Yahoo Finance and displays this information in a more customizable format than most other finance apps, including the CNNMoney and Bloomberg apps.

Fantasy Football

Yahoo's Fantasy Football '09 app gives players access to all of the features they would probably expect in a mobile fantasy football app. Users can manage their teams and view matchups, standings, and player stats. The app also gives users access to live scores. Users have obviously been waiting for this app for a while and it climbed into the top 10 of free sports apps in the App Store within hours of its release. The only complaint these users seem to have is that the app doesn't display data from players on other teams but their own.

Flickr Has Lots of Competition

For a long time, it seemed as if Flickr was going to be satisfied with having an iPhone-optimized website and not a "real" app when it came to their iPhone/iPod Touch offering. That left the door open - wide open - for a number of developers to create their own Flickr tools. Do a search today for "flickr" in the App Store and you'll see a page filled with thirty-some results for alternatives to the official app. Although not all the apps are uploaders or photo browsers (some just mention "flickr" in their descriptions), many are. From Flickup to Flickr Sendr to Flickr Search and one of our personal favorites, FlickIt, the choices for interacting with Flickr from your iPhone are plenty.

But Flickr doesn't just compete with other Flickr-based apps, they also have to deal with the multi-site uploaders...which some could argue are even more useful than Flickr's own official app. For example, Pixelpipe supports uploading to social networks, micro-blogging services, photo and video sharing sites, blogs, online storage sites, and much more. It's an incredibly useful tool for anyone who shares photos on multiple sites or just feels more comfortable knowing the data is stored on more than one service in the cloud.

Why the Delay?

There have been rumors that an official app has been in development for some time, as noted by this VentureBeat article back in December 2008. Yes, 2008.

We have to wonder why Flickr decided to wait so long to develop something for the iPhone platform. The app itself isn't all that complicated and it could have flown through the app review process, so it seems to be a case of the company just not feeling it was a top priority. That's an odd business decision for a company who reported that the number one camera used on their site is the iPhone. Not to mention the fact that after releasing the iPhone-optimized site, they saw a 50% increase in mobile users year-over-year. In fact, it's not just an "odd" decision - it was a bad one.

Although we're sure the company will gain plenty of users for their app in no time - the simple app is well-designed and does a good job - it is somewhat funny that a universal search in iTunes for "flickr" today doesn't even return the official app in the top four results displayed in the "Applications" window. And considering the large number of Flickr competitors, it's possible that it never will.

In June, ReadWriteWeb covered the Google toolbar's translation feature in Internet Explorer. Worldwide Lexicon's browser-based toolbar seems to improve where the Google toolbar leaves off. One of the great features of the Worldwide Lexicon project is that you can correct translations or suggest that a translator improve upon a particular page.

A Russian friend once mentioned that he had a hard time getting entries accepted into Wikipedia because he had a hard time depoliticizing his words. Rather than removing cultural nuances from an article, the Universal Translator gives us a window into an authentic perspective often unlike our own. While no human or machine translation is perfect, this effort is a great step towards bridging truly global dialogue.

Mobile analyst firm MSearchGroove has just published the results of a series of tests which show that the mobile search service ChaCha beat out two other voice-enabled search applications on the iPhone when it comes to search query accuracy. [Update, Ed: a commenter points out that the report was actually sponsored by ChaCha] To test this, the researchers used Google's own mobile application and Vlingo for iPhone, an app that lets you search both Google or Yahoo. Oddly, they ignored Yahoo's mobile app, which also has voice search built in.

The results of their study aren't entirely shocking: if you want to be understood, ask a human, not a computer.

ChaCha's mobile search service can be accessed both by SMS and by calling a toll-free 1-800 number. Since these tests focused on voice search, the phone-in method was used. When using ChaCha, the service identified the queries accurately in 94.4% of the cases and delivered accurate search results 88.9% of the time. Vlingo, which the researchers used to test Yahoo search, only interpreted queries correctly in 72.2% of the cases and delivered accurate results 27.8% of the time. Google, surprisingly, fared worst of all. Their mobile application only understood spoken queries in 16.7% of tests and delivered accurate results 22.2% of the time.

To test the applications, the researchers conducted two rounds of tests using both keyword search and natural language queries where they asked questions using sentences. The queries represented a cross-section of typical mobile searches in categories like navigation, directions, local search, general information, social search, and long-tail search.

It's not all that surprising to find that ChaCha outperformed the other voice-enabled applications - after all, they have real, live humans on the other end of the line to interpret the spoken questions. What is surprising, though, is how wide the gap is in between the human-powered search and the speech recognition apps, especially when contrasting ChaCha with Google.

Did Google Just Get Beaten at Search?

When you think of search, you tend to think "Google." When you use Google, there's a certain expectation that your queries will be interpreted accurately and your results will be relevant. What these tests show, however, is that when it comes to the mobile platform, all bets are off. Not only was Google outperformed by a mobile application whose name few mainstream users have probably heard of (Vlingo), they were also outperformed by a crowdsourced workforce who answer ChaCha queries in their spare time. Could this mean that mobile search is an area - perhaps the only area - where a competitor could actually get a foothold and steal away a bit of Google's market share?

Well, not so fast. Google could still dominate on mobile thanks to brand recognition alone. Mainstream users aren't going to seek out new alternatives to search, even if they're better. That's precisely why companies like Microsoft have to spend millions of dollars on advertising campaigns just to gain a percentage point or two of search market share.

Then there's the fact that tests which compare human-interpreted queries to machine-interpreted ones seem a little unfair. We all know that people can still understand each other much better than computers can. (Well, for now at least). ChaCha wins this round, but only because this was never a fair fight to begin with. Speech recognition and natural language processing are technologies still in their infancy. But if we know Google, they're coding away right now to improve them as we speak.

The daily deals section is by far the most interesting feature as users can check for deals in the verticals of their choice and be redirected to daily sale sites like Smart Bargains and Woot via Sellout.Woot. In this case, Yahoo finally gets a chance to really showcase their 2007 Woot partnership in a shopping experience that isn't a maze of click-thrus. For those readers who are already following Woot on Twitter, you may want to also follow Yahoo Deals and increase your chances of scoring cheap computer equipment or stereo gear.

As for the coupons section, if Yahoo Deals gains real momentum, coupon clippers might be found abusing office supplies (namely toner cartridges and paper) across the country. One great way to combat the waste of old school coupon clipping would be for Yahoo to offer a mobile version complete with scannable bar codes. This way a deal finder could simply load up their mobile phone with the correct bar codes and cashiers could scan the jpegs.

Searching for local businesses on Yahoo now brings up a nice interface containing reviews, an overview, photos and driving directions inside a drop down box you can access without leaving the page you're on. It's a smoother user experience than Google or Bing offers and Yahoo may have more local business information than either of those two competitors can offer in-house as well.

The new Yahoo local search presentation is much more informative than what Bing offers and it's more graceful than what Google offers. Even on local searches where Google does have a lot of information, you often have to click over to a Google Maps page to learn more about a particular business. Removing that one pageload makes a big difference in a single user's experience - multiply that by millions and millions of people searching and this little change is a pretty big deal.

Presumably it will be replaced with Bing soon. Bing will no doubt improve, perhaps it will leverage some of what Yahoo! has already, but on face it seems like another loss of innovation and quality user experience due to trouble with monetization.