Has Oxford Dictionary made the right selection? ReadWriteWeb's Founder Richard MacManus thinks not. I disagree with him; I think this is a very valid Word of the Year. We make our cases below and invite you to cast your vote in a poll.

"I think that's an odd choice for word of the year, as all the trends indicate there has been more social networking activity this past year - not less, as 'unfriend' implies. Facebook and Twitter have both rocketed in popularity in 2009. I'd suggest that more people have left MySpace and migrated to Facebook, than unfriended people on Facebook.

"I also think that 'unfriend' is an ugly word, so for that reason it shouldn't be Word of the Year. What's more, I don't think my Mum or Dad would be familiar with the term 'unfriend.' Perhaps my father will pop into the comments and tell us for certain. But I look forward to the results of the poll!"

I think "unfriend" is a very appropriate word for the year as it fits with the way people are becoming more sophisticated in their social networking. People are deciding to do some editing of the friends lists they rushed naively into.

7 out of the top 10 searches performed on the Facebook Help Center page are about getting rid of your own social network profiles or your friends. Admittedly "unfriend" isn't one of those words, but you get the idea.

It's easy in this new web to sign up for things, getting overwhelmed and ignoring streams of information is par for the course. But choosing to cancel receipt of a person's updates? That's a meaningful move.

People fall for those "see who's searching for you" ads on social networks all the time. You'd better believe they appreciate the control that unfriending gives them. I'll bet that just about anyone online, no matter their level of technical knowledge, could tell you these days what it means to "unfriend someone."

What do you think?

Over the course of the year, there have been countless reports - some more substantial than others - but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. The reports generally cited members of this demographic as saying Twitter was "pointless" and "narcissistic."

Apparently, that's beginning to change. Well, maybe not their perception of Twitter, but certainly their use of it. Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace's is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.

When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network.

Why is Gen Y Now Flocking to Twitter?

So what gives? Why has Gen Y seemingly changed their minds about the social microblogging network that only months ago they avoided? A recent AP article offered up some ideas including the influx of celebrity tweeters, pressure from teachers or bosses, and it even hinted that Gen Y'ers entering the workplace have found value in the network for business-related purposes. That same sentiment was shared by Meredith Sires of Gen Y trend-watching site, YPulse. She theorizes that the rapid growth in the 18-24 demographic has to do more with the recent college graduates segment of that group finding ways to build entirely new online contact lists and create new identities more closely tied to information-sharing.

However, there have not been any in-depth studies that detail all the various reasons that Gen Y has chosen to adopt the microblogging network. To date, everything cited consists of just theories and speculations based on anecdotal evidence. But while all the ideas have merit, the theory that rings truest to our ears is the one put forth by Craig Watkins, a University of Texas professor and author of the book "The Young and the Digital." He says that what we're seeing is "...a kind of closing of that generational gap as it relates to technology." In other words, young and old alike are joining the same networks and socializing in the same spaces.

At this point, we would have to agree. After all, Gen Y (or Gen Z for that matter), hasn't all of a sudden flocked to some new social networking site where the majority of the online user base mostly consists of their peers. Although some niche sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporcle have apparently attracted this young crowd, their numbers are dwarfed by those of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. It seems as if Gen Y is simply content to join the older adults on the top social networks of today and not strike out on their own...and vice versa. The older social networking users, in turn, never really set up shop on networks designed just for them like the (now "hibernating") Boomj, a social network for baby boomers, or the online old folks home eons.com. They, too, have gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter.

Will this ever change? Will there ever be another network dominated by the digital youth? Of course no one can know for sure, but odds are that unless it's a closed-off network where entry is barred to those over a certain age, any new social network will have trouble keeping the grown-ups out these days. And even if some such network ever sprang into existence, it may struggle to attract the Gen Y members it desires - especially since they're so content to socialize on the sites they already use. And now that they've added Twitter to that list, the challenge to draw them away to yet another social networking site may prove even more difficult than before.

Note: statistics in this article are from Pew Internet's Recent Report on Twitter for Fall 2009

Internet Use and Social Media

That's not to say that there aren't some technology addicts that aren't social isolated - around 6% of the adult online population would fit in this category, having no one with whom they can talk about those important matters and who say they don't have anyone "especially significant" in their life. However, this figure (the 6%) has not grown as access to technology has grown over the years - it has remained virtually unchanged since 1985. This points to the fact that perhaps those who are socially isolated individuals would be so anyway, regardless of what sorts of tools are provided to them, be those mobile phones, PCs with internet access, etc.

For the majority of the online population, technology - and especially social media - has led to more diverse networks than we've ever had before. The report notes that those who participate in social networking services such as Facebook for example, are more likely to interact with people from different backgrounds, different races, different political parties, etc. Specifically, blogging and general internet use was tied to having more racially diverse networks while online photo sharing was tied to having more diverse political discussion partners.

Those who use the internet tend to have 15% more network ties who aren't family members and those who use instant messaging services have 19% more non-kin members in their core networks.

Mobile Phone Use

Along these same lines, the ubiquity of mobile phones hasn't led to decreased face time with family and friends, but just the opposite. On average, a person spends 195 days of the year having mobile phone contact with others, but face-to-face interactions occur on about 210 days per year. In addition, mobile users have around 15% more family members with whom they can discuss important matters and tend to have 25% more core network members who are not family members. Overall, those who use mobile phones have core networks that are 12% larger than those who don't.

Despite all this good news about how technology leads to having larger, more diverse networks, the researchers also found that our networks' size has actually shrunk over the years. Since 1985, there has been a decrease of about 1/3 in their size. The researchers don't suggest any specific reasons for this shrinkage, but they do point out that they can now rule out one possibility for sure: technology.

According to Experian, nearly 59% of all the social networking visits were visits to Facebook while only 30% were to MySpace - a 55% decrease in market share over the past year in terms of visits for the one-time king of social networks.

Looking at just the year-over-year percent change may give you the impression that Twitter's popularity is through the roof. After all, they posted an increase of over 1000 percentage points. But the truth is, their percentage of visits still remains relatively low. Only 1.84% of visits to social networking sites in September were to Twitter, bringing them in at #4 on the chart.

What? Tagged Beats Twitter?

Facebook and MySpace beat Twitter out for the top two spots, but you may be surprised to see who came in at #3: Tagged. Yes, Tagged, the social networking site that's best known for getting busted in an email invite scam is beating out Twitter.

Although we like to think that spammy marketing tactics don't pay off, it seems that for Tagged they have. Their aggressive methods in the past involved having new registrants add their contact lists to the service which Tagged then used to send out "invites" to everyone in the user's address book. The worst part is that the invites looked as if they came from the individual users when really, most were completely unaware anything had been sent out. Tagged has also been known to send out emails that force users to sign up for accounts in order to see shared photos from other users, even going so far as to guilt-trip recipients into signing up with messages that read: "If you don't click, [the person] may think you said no :(".

As despicable as these tactics are, they've helped Tagged grow and remain profitable. ComScore reported the site had 32 million visitors in April of this year, up from 14 million the prior year. And once there, the visitors are staying engaged, generating over 5 billion pageviews during that month.

Believe it or not, the company is still growing according to the Hitwise data, albeit at a slower rate than it did a couple of years ago when it was adding more users per day than MySpace. In September of 2008, the site received 1.62% of social networking visits and this September, they received 2.38%. Although those numbers are small, they're still larger than Twitter's who came in at 0.15% last year and 1.84% this past month.

Even worse, when calculating the time spent on the social networking sites, Tagged has shown an increase there as well. They're up from 23 minutes in September of 2008 to 25 minutes in September 2009. Meanwhile, Twitter is showing a decrease from 36 minutes to just under 16 minutes year-over-year, a loss of 56%.

Although Hitwise focuses on U.S. traffic only, these findings go against everything we've heard about Twitter and its popularity - in fact, they seem to confirm that there may be more media hype surrounding the microblogging network than there is actual engagement among its users.

It would be interesting to compare the number of users each network has with the visits, but that would be hard to do since Twitter refuses to release those sorts of statistics. Meanwhile, we're left wondering if Hitwise has had some sort of massive system glitch in their system or if we've just seen proof of how Twitter's supposed popularity is just all talk.

Mix-ins Add Social Networking Sites and More to Your Contacts

The AddressBook application isn't just one app - it's a combination of the core application and additional, optional apps called "mix-ins." Depending on your own personal preferences, you can download and install any of these mix-ins to integrate the social networking services of your choosing with the main AddressBook. After adding a mix-in, the app also helpfully auto-matches your phone's contacts to your friends on the social networking site you selected. The option to manually match your friends is available as well.

For the most part, this feature worked as advertised, but with Twitter there were some issues. The mix-in didn't pull in my complete friends list and when viewing the mix-in itself, contacts were listed as "null" instead of by their Twitter username. It's hard to say if this was an issue with the AddressBook itself or something that was going on with Twitter at the time, but it could point to a few kinks that need to be worked out.

Each social network has its own mix-in, but you can also find other mix-ins for social games like "AngelChess" for example. And because anyone can develop these mix-ins, the company hopes that developers will create even more to choose from in the future.

In addition, updates from your social networks will appear along with your other standard notifications in Android like new voicemails, new emails, new text messages, etc. You can finely control which networks and friend groups you receive notifications for, too, so you don't get overloaded with updates.

Similarities to Other Social Contacts Apps

At first the AddressBook application may bring to mind another mobile contacts app for iPhone - the newly launched Gist. However, although Gist's app also lets you keep tabs on what your contacts are up to through social networking integrations, Asurion's app is more of a consumer offering. There's currently no focus on integrating with CRM systems like Salesforce or even the business-focused social network LinkedIn.com.

Another great feature in the AddressBook app is "Smart Contacts." These are location-based business listings which provide quick access to maps, addresses, store hours, phone numbers and more. With these unique contacts added to your address book, you're able to find that company's nearest location with just a few taps. This feature somewhat resembles the "RingPages" feature in the upcoming iPhone app CallSpark. Those, too, are location-aware business listings which can be added to the main contact application.

Business Plan: App to be Free, Affiliate Model in the Future

For now, the company isn't as focused on their business model as they are on just increasing the adoption and the app's user base. However, they do say that the AddressBook app will remain a free download and will never include in-app ads. Instead, the company may eventually be able to generate revenue by sending traffic to the businesses included in the Smart Contacts section. Though the details of this affiliate model still need to be sketched out, it's clear that the company's goals don't involve having app owners pay for its services.

If you're an Android owner looking to try the AddressBook beta, you can download it here.

Update: The company now reports that the Twitter bug described above has been fixed.

A new report by Openwave provides more evidence of this trend. Their findings show that four of the top ten domains accessed via mobile devices are social networking sites. Facebook and MySpace, of course, featured prominently on that list.

The company's Fall 2009 report highlights mobile Internet use trends in North America and uses data from an unnamed tier-one mobile operator who offers services to both consumers and business. The data sampled represents a five-day period in September of this year.

Among the top ten domains by page impressions are four social networking sites: Facebook, MySpace, Myxer, and Plenty-of-Fish, the last two being a ringtone creation and sharing site and a dating network, respectively. The inclusion of those two under the banner "social networking" is a little iffy, at best. Dating sites could be considered a category of social networking, we suppose, but Myxer seems more like an entertainment destination than a social network.

The other top domains making the list included about.com, accuweather.com, craigslist.org, imdb.com, wap.aol.com, and calltunes.operator.com. While we have no reason to doubt the accuracy of this study, we find it odd that google.com didn't make an appearance. It seems like we google something on our mobile phones on a daily basis - don't you?

Still, despite these questions, it's clear from the findings that social networks are a popular destination for mobile users, even if you only count MySpace and Facebook. Those two sites alone racked up the impressions as both the number one and number three sites visited.

MySpace Beats Facebook? Really?

Oddly, the chart shows that MySpace beat out Facebook, another questionable finding given that once popular site's rapid decline in traffic as of late. Recent numbers from the U.S.-centric analytics firm Compete, for example, showed MySpace traffic dropping from 55.6 million unique visitors in August to 50.2 million in September. Given such a sharp decline, you would expect to see a similar drop in mobile visits as well. 

Meanwhile, Facebook announced that they saw 65 million visits from mobile phones in the month of August, a huge rise from what was only 20 million back in December of 2007. Could they really be beaten out by that much on the mobile web according to this particular carrier? According to Openwave's report, they are.

While this recent report left us wondering, we have no doubt that social network use via mobile phones is trending upward these days. As the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported last month, there has been a one-year increase of 179% in subscribers accessing social networking sites from their mobile devices while those same sites only saw a 10% increase on the PC versions of the sites. And they're just one of many other outlets reporting similar trends. Social networking via the mobile phone is obviously a hot trend these days and one that hasn't peaked yet.

According to new figures from Nielsen, the amount of time spent surfing social networking and blogging sites had tripled since last year, suggesting "a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used," says Jon Gibs, VP of media and agency insights at the company's online division.

Advertisers Taking Notice

While for consumers, hitting up Facebook for a daily dose of socializing is just par for the course nowadays, this change in consumer behavior has had dramatic impact on the online advertising industry. Where before, advertisers were somewhat wary of social media properties, they're now spending more than ever for prominent spots on social networking sites. Even as companies decreased their overall ad expenditures, they increased their spend on top social networks and blogs - up 119% from last year. ($108 million in August 2009 up from $49 million in August 2008). And when broken down by category, the increases are even more dramatic. The entertainment industry, for example, has increased spending by 812% year-over-year on social network sites and the travel industry increased spending by 364%.

When it comes to which sites advertisers choose, there's no doubt that Facebook is currently the king. Ten out of thirteen industries analyzed by Nielsen listed Facebook as advertisers' number one choice when ranked by display ad impressions. The only industries where MySpace still ruled were Entertainment, Financial Services, and Hardware & Electronics.

Those findings seem to mostly support what a study from earlier this year said about MySpace's demographics. Namely, MySpace users are more focused on entertainment than those on other networks and have the lowest average income (hence the need for financial services). However, it's LinkedIn users who are the most interested in gadgets said the study, so the Hardware and Electronic ad spend on MySpace is a bit surprising. We suppose that's simply because the number of MySpace users dwarfs that of LinkedIn. Well that, and the fact that these days "Entertainment" means TVs, game consoles, and other techie gadgets.

For a full look at the dollars spent by category, check out Nielsen's full report.

In 2003, people spent 46% of their time online using sites which fall into the "communications" category - that is, sites whose core capabilities are email and instant messaging. By 2009, that usage dropped to 27% or a 41% decline in overall use.

Although "community" sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn weren't measured back in 2003 when the first analysis was performed, OPA introduced the new category in 2008 at which point they were able to see the impact the social networks had on the habits of online users. While obviously it's not just Facebook which is to blame for the declining use of email and IM, there's no doubt that the world's largest social network plays a more significant role than the others here.

Why Social Networks are Replacing Email

As to why social networking sites have led to declining use of other communication tools, Pam Horan, president of the OPA, speculates that it's because people can conduct the same activities on the social networks as they did before via email, IM, and other communication properties, but now they can do so more efficiently.

While we would argue that in the business world, emailing is still an essential, "can't live without it" tool, it's not so far-fetched to say that Facebook and the like have changed mainstream users' online behavior. Want to share a funny video? Post it to your profile. Have new pictures from your vacation? Upload them to an online album. These are precisely the sorts of online activities that only a few years ago took place primarily via email messages. Social networking has undoubtedly changed that.

And Gen Y Hates Email, Right?

Then there are the constant news stories about how the younger generations, specifically Generation Y and Z, don't use email. "Email is unfashionable and outdated," claims a recent ZDNet headline pointing to a recent story about Boston College's decision to stop handing out email addresses to incoming students. These types of stories are barely even news anymore as the common perception is that communication among these younger groups takes place via social networks (and, of course, text messaging).

Oddly enough, the belief that Gen Y hates email seems to be somewhat contradicted by the late-breaking news that, out of all other demographic groups, it's Gen Y which is most likely to opt-in for email marketing messages. Still that doesn't show that email is their preferred medium, only that they're more open to using it for less-than-personal types of communication. That trend makes sense as they probably don't even think of email as the place to connect with friends and family - that's what social networks are for - so why not use it for collecting coupons instead?

Other Findings

OPA's research also revealed that visits to content sites have increased over the past five years - up 24% since 2003. Time spent on these sites has increased dramatically, too, with an 88% increase since 2003. Today, Internet users spend an average of 6:58 hours on content sites per month. Search and Commerce round out the categories OPA studied with search seeing an increase from 3% to 5% and commerce seeing a slight decline from 16% to 13%.

OPA's Internet Activity Index (IAI), as the research is called, is conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings. It tracks usage across all the above mentioned categories but excludes .gov and .edu domains as well as adult-oriented sites.

An interesting side note here is that the IAI shows the time spent using communications sites is 4:54 hours per month while community sites are at 3:01 hours. That actually contradicts Nielsen's earlier findings from March of this year which claimed that social networks and blogs were now more popular than email based on time spent. This discrepancy in data means we're taking these latest findings and those that came before it with the proverbial grain of salt and you should too. However, what we can take away from both reports is that, numbers aside, email is definitely being impacted by the social networking trend.

Security researchers at Symantec recently uncovered a backdoor trojan whose spread is being dictated by commands hosted in Google Groups, Google's online discussion forums. The backdoor trojan, named Trojan.Grups, appears to be the first ever malware to use an online newsgroup as the "command and control" center for botnet communications. It's certainly the first time that Google Groups specifically has been compromised in this way. This new discovery points to what appears to be the latest trend in what you could call "Web 2.0 malware," that is, nasty computer programs that don't just spread in social networks, but actually use the infrastructure of the social networks themselves to do the spreading.

Botnets are groups of computers compromised by malware programs, often called "zombie computers," which are controlled by "bot herders," the person or persons responsible for remotely controlling the infected PCs, unbeknownst to the PCs' owners. Traditionally, a centralized server of some sort would issue the commands that instruct the computers what action to perform. In many cases, the zombie machines are used to send out spam, to perform click fraud, to aid in identity theft, or are directed to attack another web server on the internet, as was recently seen with the Twitter/Facebook/LiveJournal attacks of last month.

With this particular new trojan, the command-and-control center for issuing the botnet commands is not a single server on the internet. It's Google Groups itself. Using a private newsgroup, the trojan executes a command which logs it into the newsgroup and requests a specific page. The page contains the encrypted commands the malware is to carry out. The responses from the compromised machines are then sent back to Google Groups and are uploaded as posts to the newsgroup.

According to security company Symnatec's analysis of this new trojan, it appears that it is a prototype implementation meant to test the feasibility of using newsgroups in this way. The trojan is attempting to remain discreet and undetected, being used to subtly gather information and potentially determine its future attack targets. The researchers think that the trojan may have been developed for targeted corporate espionage where anonymity and discretion are priorities.

Using Web 2.0 as the C&C for Botnets

This latest trojan isn't the first to use a social network to aid in its spread. What is unusual about it, though, is that it actually uses the social network that is Google Groups to host the commands which control the malware's actions. This is a different sort of scenario than your typical social networking-based malware which simply uses popular online networks as the vector for the attack. This is using the network as the brains.

Another recent example of this sort of Web 2.0-controlled malware involves the recent discovery of a botnet which used Twitter.com to issue commands. In an arguably ingenious move, Brazilian identity thieves created a Twitter account for the sole purpose of sending out commands to its associated malware. Each command was posted as a status update to the Twitter account. As researchers noted at the time, this sort of setup could have used any number of web sites or services on the internet to do the same - all that was needed was an RSS feed. In fact, the same malware was later seen on both Jaiku.com, a Twitter-like service acquired by Google in 2007, and Tumblr, a simple blogging platform.

Given the open, "anyone-can-post" nature of Web 2.0 and social networking services, the online communities that have become the de facto standard on today's web, it was only a matter of time before that openness was compromised by hackers wishing to use the services for more nefarious purposes than just "sharing with your friends."

For now, there are still relatively few incidents where a botnet has been discovered as using a Web 2.0 service as the command-and-control center for operations. However, the idea must surely appeal to botnet operators as hiding these sorts of messages in the larger social networking infrastructures that house valid communications makes the botnets harder to identify and shut down. You can't simply blacklist the IP or URL once discovered - you have to rely on the social networking vendor to remove the malicious accounts. If any of these recent efforts at web 2.0-controlled malware are successful (and the Google Groups trojan has been - it's been around since November 2008!), then it's likely we'll begin to see even more programs like this in the future.

A far more interesting statistic is that 15% of all Internet users have left comments on websites about political or social issues, or posted images or written blog posts related to politics or social issues. What is even more interesting, though not surprising, is that young adults between 18 and 29 are far more likely to use social networks as a venue for political and civic engagement than older users. These younger users who engage in political activity online are also far more likely to participate in politics offline.

Social Media Might Level the Playing Field

Social media is mostly the domain of younger Internet users and while young adults (18-24) are, as a group, less interested in political activities online, they are far more likely than any other group to use blogs and social networking sites to engage in political discussions. About 34% of young adults make political use of social networking sites and 34% post political material on the Internet.

Users under 35 represent 72% of those users who make political use of social networks. In addition, the income and education gap for those who engage in political activities on social networks is far less pronounced when compared to those who use other forums.

Will These Trends Continue?

What will be interesting to watch, the Pew study points out, is how these younger users will use these existing networks as they get older. It will also be interesting to see if these developments will mean that socio-economic status will become less of an indicator of civic engagement, or if these new technologies will create new barriers of entry for those with a lower income and education level.

Given that the US just experienced a highly contested election cycle and is in the middle of a heated debate about health care right now, we have to wonder, though, if these numbers will continue to hold true over the next few years or if they were just a blip on the radar.

As the Burst Media survey notes, boomers actively look for different things online than younger users. Young adults look for entertainment news (49%), games (41%), local and national news (37%), and social media sites (36%). Boomers, on the other hand, are far more interested in local and national news (55%), shopping info (41%), and health info (40%).

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Boomers make up 34% of Internet users in the US, and as a recent report from Forrester Research pointed out, this group is quite comfortable with creating and consuming social media. Social networks, however, still haven't quite found the right angle to draw these users in.

Bonus: Would Your Life be Disrupted if You Couldn't Get Online? 83% Say So

83% of respondents to this survey say that their daily routines would be disrupted if they couldn't get online. 41% even say that their lives would be 'significantly disrupted.' Interestingly, slightly more women (43.9%) than men (39.3%) think that their lives would be significantly disrupted without access to the Internet.

These are pretty impressive numbers, though we have to keep the methodology of this survey in mind. All of the respondents were Internet users, and this was an online survey. If Burst Media had also surveyed offline users, these number would probably have been slightly different.

At one time, FriendFeed clones like Lifestream.fm and Socialthing! looked like promising alternatives, but neither of them offered the same rich and innovative features that FriendFeed does - the very features which made FriendFeed the standout service that it is today. However, there is one service that may have an opportunity to capitalize on the FriendFeed exodus: social media aggregator Streamy.

When we looked at Streamy back in March of this year, we were more than impressed with what it had to offer. For some reason though, the service's social networking aspects never really became heavily used by the early adopter crowd. Everyone had their own reasons for this decision of course, with complaints which ranged from the service feeling a little too raw for everyday use to its RSS reader which couldn't (and still doesn't) provide a viable alternative to Google Reader. However, we think the main reason for the lack of uptake has more to do with the fact that Streamy's core audience was already busy interacting, commenting, and "liking" items over on their social media aggregator of choice: FriendFeed.

Now, with FriendFeed out of the way (or soon to be, that is), it may be time for us to give Streamy another look. There are a number of features which should appeal to today's FriendFeed users if they decide to make the switch. However, there are still some issues with how Streamy implements these features, and we'll make note of those too.

1. FriendFeed Friend Import

When you sign up for Streamy, you have the option to find your friends on other services. One of those services is FriendFeed. By clicking on the "People" link at the top of the page then selecting "Find Friends" you can import your friends from Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Google, and even Flickr. This is at least as good as FriendFeed's own friend import process which only imported from email, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, it gives you the ability to easily re-create your FriendFeed social graph on Streamy without having to manually seek out your friends and re-add them.

What Streamy needs to work on: One thing Streamy needs to improve in this area is the ability to "select all" the friends it finds and let you follow them in one fell swoop. At the moment, you have to click "Follow" next to each individual who you want to add. It's also really hard to see who's following you and then reciprocate. Although new followers appear on the homepage in the "new from friends" section, you have to "remove" each person from this box after following them only to have more new followers appear in their place. And there's no way to tell whether or not you were already following these people, which leads to confusion. There should be a centralized way of managing this activity and the homepage widget definitely needs to sync with your following choices made on the backend.

2. Comment on Stories

On the Streamy homepage, a section called "Stories for You" delivers personalized news based on your site activity like stories you and your friends are sharing and commenting on. However, since at first Streamy has no activity to go on, it simply recommends "popular" stories to you and those may not be stories you actually enjoy. Like FriendFeed, you can comment on these stories and those comments will be seen by others reading the same story. Also like FriendFeed, undesirable stories can be hidden from your view with the "hide" button. However, unlike FriendFeed, Streamy actually introduces a great feature here: threaded comments. Each comment has a "reply" button next to it, letting users reply to each other's comments as opposed to simply creating a new one.

What Streamy needs to work on: Although FriendFeed's river of news was also personalized based on who you followed, the site offered a number of ways to surface popular content. When your friends commented on an item, it "bubbled up" to appear at the top of your stream, for instance. FriendFeed also had a "best of day" feature which displayed the most active stories that day. Streamy doesn't have anything like this so content with comments could easily become lost. For now, the best way to see stories your friends comment on is in the "New from People" homepage widget (also available in the "People" section) which is an activity feed of your friends' comments among other things.

3. Groups: Streamy's Version of FriendFeed Rooms

Streamy has a feature which lets you create groups which is somewhat reminiscent of FriendFeed's Rooms feature. As with Rooms, groups can be topic-based so you and your friends can discuss the news. You can browse through your own group memberships to see which groups you're a member of and you can access the admin features for the groups you own. Also like FriendFeed, groups can be public or private as you choose and you can invite members simply by typing their name.

What Streamy needs to work on: Unlike FriendFeed, groups can't be auto-populated with content like RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, YouTube videos, etc. Everything needs to be manually entered through a text box or shared with the group via Streamy's sharing features. However, sharing items from your subscriptions or recommended stories is more difficult than it should be. Despite Streamy's cool drag-and-drop interface for posting to external services, sharing with groups or individuals still leaves a lot to be desired.

When you first grab an item to share it, icons appear letting you save it (the star icon), share to other services like Facebook or Twitter (green arrow), or share with a friend (people icon). When you select the share with friends option, though, only a limited number of people appear and they're only identified with their avatar, not by name. Also missing is a way to share with the groups from here.

Instead, to share with a group, you have to click on the story's headline then access the share button from the top right of the article. Once here, it's very easy to share with either people, groups, or services. It's the sort of option that should be available directly from the homepage without any extra clicks.

4. Your Shared Stuff

Another sharing feature in Streamy is the one where you're able to share items by posting them to your profile. This feature is activated through the drag-and-drop interface and dragging the content to the Streamy service from the available list of services to post to (green arrow icon, once again). This posts the story to your profile which your friends can then see when they click on "Shared Stuff" from their own Streamy homepage. It also appears in the "New from People" homepage feed. In a way, this is a lot like FriendFeed's home feed which is comprised of all the shared items from your FriendFeed friends.

What Streamy needs to work on: Unlike FriendFeed, your own "Shared Stuff" isn't populated with the dozens of social media services that FriendFeed supports. Instead, Streamy displays all your site activity, including friends you added and groups you created or joined. Your friends will then see your Streamy status updates, shared stories, and stories you commented on mixed in with these other activities in their "New from People" feed. We're not sure that we want to see people's site-wide activity (like who they just friended) - we're more interested in the actual content they're sharing.

5. ...And So Much More!

What Streamy really has going for it, though, is what FriendFeed didn't - the dashboard aggregator, integration with other social media services, and built in chat. Streamy's layout is a lot different from FriendFeed - or from Twitter for that matter - and that may be good thing in some people's opinion. As opposed to a real-time "river of news" the site's homepage is a widget-filled dashboard with updates from your feeds, Facebook, and any other services you add. It also includes a friend list showing your IM buddies from Google Chat, AIM, or MSN. The Status update box lets you post to Facebook, Twitter, Streamy, or (for now) FriendFeed. As you delve into the dashboards for the other services using the small buttons at the top, you'll be surprised to find things like a full-on Twitter client complete with replies, DMs, and trending topics, for example. Digg's dashboard is a nice, consolidated view of what's hot on that service... and so on.

If you don't like the dashboard, you can also choose to have Streamy load up directly to your feeds or one of the other social media services Streamy supports.

What Streamy needs to work on: Adding widgets to the dashboard needs improvement. You have to first click on the widget (+) button from the top of the page to select the additional widgets. While simple enough in theory, there were some bugs when testing this out. For example, adding a Digg widget for the topic "Technology" was a dead-end. After you get the drop-down box to select a topic, there's no "go" or "add" button to actually complete the process.

Conclusion

In the end, Streamy shows a lot of potential for becoming a great service and they could certainly capitalize on FriendFeed's impending shutdown if they so desired. However, there's still a bit of work to be done to make the service as usable as it needs to be for ex-FriendFeed users. In Streamy's defense, however, they originally never had the goal of competing with FriendFeed which is why things are the way they are. Like us, they never imagined FriendFeed would be acquired and shut down. Now that it has sold, though, the company is interested in seeing how they could appeal to the community of early adopters who originally made FriendFeed their home.

Will Streamy be able to make the necessary changes in time before someone else lures the ex-FriendFeeders over to their service? Perhaps. The company, currently a small 3-person team, has made amazing strides so far and is currently looking into getting additional funding. In the next couple of months, if things go well, we may see a lot of changes happen very quickly - specifically to the social networking aspects of the service. The company also sees a lot of potential to incorporate new features which aren't simply FriendFeed dupes. Hopefully, we'll be able to update this post someday soon with details as to what those may be.

The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that their online friends knew more about them, and so, in a sense, were closer than offline friends because they all knew what was going on in each other's lives.

Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.

It's not entirely surprising that the younger generation feels this way. The teen years (and young adulthood to some extent) are a time when kids start exploring and experimenting with many different aspects of their personalities as they attempt to solidify who they are and who they will become as adults. What's interesting, though, is how social networking is having an impact on this traditional coming-of-age process. Instead of simply feeling disjointed, confused, and lonely, today's younger generation has an outlet for connecting with their peers which previous generations did not: the internet.

Says Rebekah Horne, MySpace Europe managing director, the study provides insight into how this generation is "using online as a way to explore and settle into their burgeoning identities."

But at what cost?

Will the younger generations remain awkward and shy in the real world as they age, only finding comfort in their interactions that occur online? Or does having an outlet for their feelings simply lessen the blow delivered by the otherwise often harsh process that is growing up?

In many ways, easy access to technology can be seen as both a blessing and a curse for this young group of digital natives. These days, you'll often encounter teens having text message conversations or posting status updates while ignoring the very friends they're present with in the real world. Behavior like this could certainly send a message to the others that they are second priority to whomever else has engaged their friend's attention. That could easily lead to feelings of being "left out" as reported in this study.

And yet, at the same time, it's this very technology that's allowing the teens and young adults to feel like they have friends who know them and care about them.The issue is balancing that online life with the one out in the real world.

The question as to whether this sort of behavior is healthy is one best left to psychologists to analyze and report, but there's no doubt that at the very least, it is having an impact.

Image credit: flickr user Paulo Fehlauer

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, director of the Information + Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore, argues that "the over-abundance of connections through which information travels reduces diversity and keeps radical ideas from taking hold."

Other factors to consider though, we would contend, include the positive impact of collaboration, serendipitous social discovery, rapid news dispersal, interdisciplinary cross-pollination and the increased scalability of support for ideas that living large on social networks enables.

A "good or bad" analysis may be too crude for evaluating the effect of extensive social connections online on innovation: it seems true that both extended periods of uninterrupted work time are essential to innovation and that online noise is good for you. Is participation in large social networks a net positive or a net negative? That probably depends on the person, but smaller networks are probably an important option to consider as well.

We would post a poll asking for your opinion on the matter, but in writing about group-think online that would seem too ironic.

Science magazine subscribers can read Mayer-Schönberger's article here. MSNBC's science blog and New Scientist have additional coverage.

The new report also found that social networking is not a niche activity. Nearly two-thirds of internet users have spent time managing their online profiles. Also, 96% of active social network users have visited their friends' pages. And these numbers can be taken to the bank. UM questioned 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and March 2009 to deliver what is the largest global analysis of social media we have seen to date.

As you can tell by looking at the chart below, interacting with social media remains an important part of users' internet experience. Several activities have seen increased growth since last year, most notably those involving social networks.

Surprisingly, the only activity to see a dip is uploading videos to video sharing sites. Still, video watching is now seeing a high penetration rate among active internet users at 83%, a number consistent with last year. But when you look at how many people are uploading video to social networking sites, it's there that you see the growth. 33% upload videos to their social network profiles, up from 16.9% last year, as previously noted.

Blogging also has reached a saturation point, it appears. UM notes that 71% of users report reading blogs - an increase of only 1% since last year. This seems to correlate with recent findings from Forrester Research, who also reported that no increase in blog reading was reported over last year.

The most interesting finding, though, is that social networks are seeing the most growth globally while other social media platforms stagnate or decline. Users are still sharing photos and videos and posting blog entries, they just tend to do this within a social networking site these days.

Social networks are an extremely popular destination right now. Two-thirds of active internet users have managed an online profile and 71.1% have visited a friend's social network page. When you look at active social networkers instead of just active internet users, that figure is even higher: 96% of that group has visited a friend's page. Even though these figures represent an average across 38 different countries, UM says that the figure has increased in every market except Brazil and Mexico.

The report also notes that the U.S. is a dominant player in the social media space with 60% of active internet users in this country managing a social network profile - a number up from 43.2% last year.

These continued increases in social media activity may partially be thanks to a coinciding increase in mobile internet access since nearly a fifth of active internet users have mobile access today. However, speculating as to why social media usage is on the rise goes beyond what this report aims to do.

For more information about the worldwide social media growth, including country spotlights and best practices, check out UM's report here.