How Alike Are Android and iPhone Users?

eMarketer: "Usage patterns for Android and iPhone owners were very similar, and tended to differ from those of other smartphone users as well as from those of feature phone owners. There was a notable gap in e-mail usage, with Android users far behind iPhone owners, but mobile media consumption and browser and app usage tracked very closely."

NYC Lost Nearly 60,000 Jobs In Communications

wcbstv.com: "The report says San Francisco lost a third of its information industry jobs. Phoenix, Atlanta and Dallas lost more than one quarter."

Cashing In on Interactive TV Advertising

WSJ.com: "As Comcast gets close to a deal for control of General Electric's NBC Universal, the big cable operator and Madison Avenue think the merger could lead to some major changes in the $65 billion U.S. television advertising market."

Trouble At Twitter: U.S. Visitors Down 8 Percent In October

TechCrunch: "Twitter is obviously committed to making its service better on its own Website (these numbers do not measure usage on mobile or desktop clients, which is easily half of all Twitter usage). But while it fiddles, rival Facebook keeps moving further and further ahead."

Interview with Ken Auletta, author of Googled - the end of the world as we know it

I Want Media: "Google is not composed of cold businessmen; they are cold engineers. The difference is that Google is not obsessed with killing competitors; they're obsessed with eliminating inefficiencies. They're not trying to harm the New York Times with Google News or NBC with YouTube. In some ways, they help them. A reason NBC's 'Saturday Night Live' is reaching a younger audience is because it winks as YouTube downloads its skits.

But Google and the Internet do disrupt traditional media business models. More than a few traditional media executives fervently believe Google aims to conquer the world. By obsessing about Google's 'evil' intentions they spend too much time playing defense and not enough time figuring out their own digital offense."

Is Facebook a Paradise for Scammers?

Newsweek.com: "This week, Silicon Valley blogger Michael Arrington caused a ruckus by suggesting that Facebook itself has been turning a blind eye to the scams because it is sharing in the spoils. Arrington, who runs the influential TechCrunch blog, is on a crusade to pressure Facebook to clean up its act.

“Ultimately this is Facebook’s fault,” Arrington says. He says the social-networking site isn’t enforcing its own rules against scam ads. “It’s like with Major League Baseball and steroids. If the rules aren’t enforced, which is what’s happening on Facebook, then people are going to break the rules. Facebook needs to stop this.”"

Google Declares War on Facebook

The Daily Beast: "Google announced this week that it is putting a few new bells and whistles on its Friend Connect software. Users visiting sites that have the application installed will be able to fill out little profiles of themselves and see the profiles of others who have been there. Presumably, regular visitors of the same sites will seek each other out based on shared opinions and preferences. And make friends. Think of it as Facebook functionality without the Facebook."

Study: Internet use leads to more diverse networks

Yahoo! Tech: "Online activities such as e-mail, blogging and frequenting Internet hangouts can even lead to larger, more diverse social networks, according to the study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The study refutes research earlier in the decade suggesting that people's growing embrace of technology has come at the expense of close human connections.

'Social isolation has not changed that much since 1985,' said Keith Hampton, the main author of the study professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. This means that very few adults — 6 percent of the population — say they have no one to talk to about important matters in their lives."

As Facebook Ages, Gen Y Turns to Twitter

ReadWriteWeb: "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."

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"