Google Accounts for 6% of All Internet Traffic

NYTimes.com: "Now, instead of traffic being distributed among tens of thousands of networks, only 150 networks control some 50% of all online traffic. Among these new Internet superpowers, it's no surprise to find Google listed. In fact, the search giant accounts for the largest source (6%) of all Internet traffic worldwide."

The PC is becoming the new TV, survey shows

latimes.com: "A survey by the nonprofit Conference Board released Tuesday showed that nearly a quarter of households in the U.S. now view television programs online. That's up from 20% last year."

Social networking sites grab big slice of Web ads

Reuters: "The study by comScore, released on Tuesday, said social media sites represented 21.1 percent of U.S. Internet display ads in July, with MySpace and Facebook accounting for more than 80 percent of those ads."

Facebook Sets Sights On Online Payments Business

SmartMoney.com: "This month, the company revealed it is testing a system for users to buy physical merchandise, like real roses, through Facebook's payment platform. It also launched a test to let some users buy Facebook Credits by billing their mobile phones."

Media multitasking doesn't work say researchers

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.

Addicted to the Internet? $14,500, please, at first US rehab

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."

Milestone: Local online tops traditional

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%."

Study shows there is not a lot of news on Twitter

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 buyers: Twitter is for, well, twits

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).'"

Celeb Endorsements Come to Twitter

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."

Social sites losing popularity with young

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"

Microsoft, Yahoo to Take on Google With Search Deal

Advertising Age: "Through the pact, Bing will become the default search engine on Yahoo, creating a search player with close to 30% market share of search queries, compared with Google's 65%, according to ComScore data.

One of the most interesting wrinkles involves who takes ownership of search sales: Yahoo is likely to take on exclusive representation of Bing inventory to eliminate channel conflict and complexity for advertisers, but not before both sides unwind the thousands of advertiser relationships and proprietary systems through which many large advertisers buy search ads. Microsoft's AdCenter is expected to be the sales-technology platform."

Best Buy/TiVo Partner To Push Home Entertainment

MediaPost: "Part of the new agreement will have the two companies developing a new cable set-top box, sold in Best Buy stores, that allows the retailer to deliver its own advertising message to TiVo subscribers."

Mainstream media failing to make news understandable to public, says new report

Journalism.co.uk: "We were struck by the confidence that people expressed in the internet generally and Google specifically as the most trusted resource of explanation and analysis"

Pew Center illustrates how Craigslist is killing newspapers

CNET: "Not that this is big news but the Pew Center helps to illustrate just how devastating online classifieds has been on newspapers. A graph of newspaper classified ad revenue since 1980 to last year ... shows that the industry saw a high in 2000 with about $19.6 billion. Last year, newspapers recorded $9.9 billion."

Hulu's tug of war with TV

Los Angeles Times: "But in making a bid for the next generation of Internet- attuned viewers, Hulu's owners have strained their lucrative relationships with cable and satellite operators. Companies like Time Warner Cable Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. pay cable networks billions of dollars each year to carry programming. Believing that they should have exclusivity because their payments support the enormous cost of producing TV shows, such companies have been pushing back against the Hulu freebies."

How the next internet revolution will save your favourite TV shows, newspapers and magazines

Times Online

Brand Mentions Preferred over Ads

eMarketer: "Compared with banner ads, pop-up ads, e-mail offers and sponsored links, articles that include brand information were most likely to lead US Internet users to read—and act."

Bloggers: America's Newest Profession

WSJ.com: "In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers, firefighters or even bartenders."

Techmeme founder: WSJ, NYT are aggregators

CNET: "'All successful Web publishers want their content quoted and linked,' Rivera wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. 'The benefits are clear. Some prefer that the quotes remain short...these are precisely the kind that Google and Techmeme use. So for AP and News Corp. to discourage quoting is a clue that they don't really get the Web and are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot.'"