ReadWriteWeb

It's often said these days that Google and Facebook are major rivals, but how could that be if one is in search and the other, social networking? Traffic analyst firm Hitwise provided one very clear clue tonight when it published new numbers for web user activity in Australia. For perhaps the first time ever, social networking sites have surpassed the traffic search engines receive, Hitwise says. There is reason to question the company's categorization of web traffic, but the trend is worth examining none the less.

Social networking climbed fast this year, and Hitwise says it just peaked over search for a few days during the communication frenzy of Christmas. Take that, Larry and Sergey - Mark and Ev are right behind you.

When we first looked at Spredfast, the social campaign management tool launched today by Austin, Texas-based Social Agency, we thought it looked like a less-flashy version of TweetDeck. Our first question to co-founders Kenneth Cho and Scott McCaskill was actually how the two programs differed and they took it in stride, given how far off the question really was. With big names like IBM, AOL, Cisco, Intel and Porter Novelli using the service, you better bet it does more than manage a handful of social networking accounts and microblogging services.

Spredfast wants to be a new player in the field of social campaign management, and it is set to compete with other big names like Objective Marketer and Radian6.

A third of all Internet users in the U.S. now post status updates on social networking services like Twitter and Facebook at least once per week. According to new data from Forrester Research, more than half of what the report calls "conversationalists" are female and 70% are 30 years old or older. Forrester's data also shows that 59% of all U.S. Internet users now use social networks and that 70% consume content on social media and social networking sites.

Although most of your friends may not be jumping at the opportunity to share their online connections with the likes of the U.S. Census Bureau or the local chamber of commerce, local, state and federal agencies alike have joined the ranks of parents, grandparents and others new to the social networking scene. That's right, the U.S. government is joining Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and any number of other social networking sites in droves and they want to be your friend.

And here we thought grandpa joining Facebook was really the death of its coolness.

One of the first social networking aggregators to take advantage of LinkedIn's brand-new API is Sobees, whose two client applications both now offer LinkedIn integration in addition to the other supported networks. A challenger to similar services like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and PeopleBrowser, Sobees is a social networking aggregation tool originally launched as a desktop app back in 2008 with a web app version added earlier this year. Like its competitors, Sobees' clients use a columnar interface to display real-time updates from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

Today at the DEMOfall 09 conference, Digitrad announced a new consumer voice service called OrganIP. Although the odd name conjures up ideas of a medical or musical application, we think that perhaps it's supposed to be a play on the word "organize." (Well...maybe.) Names aside, what this new application does is intriguing. It connects you with your social networking friends via your mobile phone or web browser, allowing you to place calls even if you don't know your friend's phone number. In addition, you can use the app to send voicemails or even voice-to-text messages and all you need to know is a person's name.

Dating sites haven't changed much over the years. Oh sure, there are new matchmaking algorithms that claim to have a better shot at connecting you to that "special someone," but a few basic concepts remain. You still have to upload a photo, fill out a profile, list your likes and dislikes, and so on. Doesn't everyone enjoy "long walks on the beach" and "playing with their dog?" How does that help you really get to know who someone is? Gelato thinks they have a better way. Using concepts happily copied from FriendFeed, the social site that seems to be the inspiration for all, Gelato brings the lifestreaming concept into the world of online dating. By connecting you with your social networks, site users can get to know each other in much more natural ways.

This is part 3 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 and part 2, we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication, creates a new body of content, is real time, is public, and has an explicit social graph associated with it. A final characteristic of the real-time Web is that it carries with it an implicit model of federation.

This is part 2 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

In part 1 we looked at how the real-time Web is a new form of communication and creates a new body of content. The immediacy of the Twitter channel is a third fundamental characteristic of the real-time Web and one of its prime currencies, not surprising given the name of the space. Because of demand within the eco-system, quite a bit of effort is being made on storing, slicing, dicing, and disseminating information as quickly as possible. The fundamental implication of this activity (without any explicit markers being laid down) is that the velocity of information within the Web data system has just increased by an order of magnitude.

This is part 1 of a three-part series on the fundamental characteristics of the real-time Web.

Like cloud computing less than a year ago and social networking two years ago, the real-time Web is the new black on the tech circuit. The trend has been publicly bandied about this summer, starting with a few industry get-togethers, followed by several enthusiastic testimonials from investors (notably angel investor Ron Conway's widely posted list of ways for Twitter to monetize). It was then capped by a glowing report in BusinessWeek in early August.

Google just rolled out 18 social gadgets for its iGoogle start page. These social gadgets turn iGoogle into a far more interactive and social experience, as users can now play casual games with other iGoogle users and share videos and to-do lists right from the iGoogle homepage. As Google's Marissa Mayer and Rose Yao, iGoogle's product manager, told us yesterday, while the first incarnation of iGoogle was about connecting people with information, the service will now also focus on connecting people to each other.

To most people, the term "open source" immediately conjures an image of two geeks sitting in a dark room (probably a basement) -- curtains drawn, McDonald's remains strewn across the desk, and 42 oz sodas within arms' reach -- coding away at their computers, listening to Linkin Park or a game soundtrack. People automatically associate it with endless lines of code, back-end technology, server rooms, computer science labs, and experimental (read: unsafe and buggy) technology.

In reality, open-source software provides stable solutions, created by people and for people and used by companies of all sizes. Use Firefox? That's open-source software. Google Chrome? It too is based on an open-source code. Ever look up a term on Wikipedia? The site is completely built on user-generated code and content. "In fact," says Allison Randal, Program Chair of OSCON, "chances are you're using a lot more open-source software than you know: on your computer or powering you favorite websites."

Read Part 1 of this post here.

In a recent study by Anderson Analytics, the demographics and psychographics of social networking users on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn were revealed. The ultimate goal was to provide marketers with information about users' interests and buying habits as related to their network of choice. The end result is a detailed look at the profiles and habits of social networking users on the web today. Here we'll delve into the details about the specific networks studied.

The year was 2013. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg was still the social network's public persona, but he had a young family and new-found loves of world travel, exotic regional cocktails and faux-native art. Facebook had become overgrown with spammy apps and awkwardly targeted advertisements. The company quietly gave Zuckerberg a huge salary to pursue those other interests and leave product development and the business in the hands of other people. There was no denying it - Facebook was on the decline as Social Network XYZ rose to global social networking supremacy.

But what in this future scenario will Social Network XYZ be? As the sands of time wash MySpace into obscurity, with a wave of hundreds of employees being let go this week for example, now seems like a good time to think about what comes next. What could kill Facebook, the MySpace killer? We've identified four possible scenarios - which do you think is most likely? Most desirable?

Today from AdaptiveBlue there comes a new version of the semantic browser extension Glue (previous coverage) which allows you to create a browser-based social network around the things you and your friends find online. This latest release, four months in the making, finally makes Glue compatible with Internet Explorer - a move which Glue's creators hope will allow them to tap into a wider, more mainstream audience.

Agency recruiters, employers and prospects now have a free online professional reference automation and collaboration tool to help them do their jobs better. ReferenceBot was launched recently and adds a "social 2.0" element to the headhunting market.

By now, we are all familiar with Mark Zuckerberg's success story. The explosive international growth of Facebook to over 200 million users continues to land the young founder and CEO in top news stories worldwide. Recently, Time Magazine named Zuckerberg one of the world's most influential people of 2008, and Fast Company named Facebook number 15 in its list of the world's 50 most innovative companies of 2009. At just 23 years of age, Zuckerberg even briefly made Forbes' 400 richest Americans list, temporarily giving him the title of World's Youngest Billionaire.

However we have heard very few stories about Zuckerberg and the inspiration behind Facebook during the period prior to February 4th, 2004, the day he launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. In this post we tell that story.

It is no secret that Facebook has Twitter envy. The number one social networking site is not content to win over rival MySpace. It is not satisfied being far ahead of Google on the social web. Facebook now has Twitter firmly in its crosshairs.

True, Twitter traffic has gone through the roof. True, Twitter is the new killer app, the new cool kid on the block. And yes, even Oprah now loves Twitter. But does this mean Facebook should be worried? Well, maybe yes, but likely no, because Twitter and Facebook are two very different services.

Can you believe that using social networking sites at work can increase your workplace productivity? A new study just published by Australian scientists found that taking time to visit websites of personal interest, including news sites and YouTube, provided workers a mental break that ultimately increased their ability to concentrate and was correlated with a 9% increase in total productivity.

Reporters are shocked by the findings. We're in shock that this is where the state of academic study is concerning social technology use vs. workplace filtering technology when it comes to productivity. A 9% increase in productivity? Try using these social technologies for on topic work and you'll see productivity increases that make 9% look like nothing.

Nielsen Online, an analytics firm that tracks time spent online at various websites, has issued a report finding that throughout 2008 social networking sites and blogs saw more time spent by users than personal email. While not shocking, the finding does mark an important point in the history of the web.

Youth watchers have long argued that for young people, email is how you communicate with elders in formal situations, while social networks and SMS are the preferred method of communication among peers. Nielsen found, however, that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.