Reuters: Multitaskers of media activities like watching YouTube, writing e-mail and talking on the phone are not very good at any of their tasks, according to a Stanford University report on Monday.
"Heavy multitaskers are lousy at multitasking... The more you do it, the worse you get," said Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass.
Ars Technica: "A rehab center has opened in Washington state that aims to treat Internet Addiction Disorder with counseling, psychiatric help, and other activities geared toward getting patients back on track with normal life. If you believe in the disorder, then this is a great first step—but not everyone does."
Inside Radio / M Street Publications: "For the first time, digital media use exceeds that of radio, newspaper, television and other traditional media among small and medium-sized businesses. BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor study shows 77% of local businesses are doing some form of digital marketing. At the same time, traditional media usage slips to 69%."
San Antonio Business Journal: "After randomly sampling a public timeline of tweets — 140 character comments on Twitter — for 10 days, Pearanalytics found that 40.5 percent of the updates fell in the “pointless babble” category. An example: “I am eating a sandwich now.”
Other findings:
• 37.5 percent of the comments were conversational — a back-and-forth discussion on a topic
• 8.7 percent had pass-along value — tweets that were re-broadcast or re-tweeted
• 5.8 percent were self promotional
• 3.75 percent were spam — the equivalent of junk mail
• 3.6 percent were news"
Read the original research report
Media Life Magazine: "Twitter earns a big thumbs down from more than half of the media planners and buyers who responded to a recent Media Life survey on new media advertising and the areas of promising growth.
Asked to finish the statement: 'Twitter is,' 52 percent agreed with this statement: 'For twits. I predict we'll look back on this silly craze as the Friendster of 2009. It holds little promise for advertisers (or anyone else).'"
ClickZ: "Izea launched Sponsored Tweets this week to connect popular tweeters with advertisers -- who, in turn, pay tweeters to tweet. And reaction is mixed. Some experts say this is a natural progression of Twitter and that paid tweets are no different than any celebrity using their clout to endorse a brand. Others go so far as to say paid tweets are the end of Twitter as we know it."
FT.com: "The proportion of British 15- to 24-year-olds with a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace fell for the first time last year from 55 per cent to 50 per cent"
