A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active. The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By tha..   show all text

This year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is rapidly approaching. Beginning with the Interactive Media events on March 12th, Austin, Texas will be the place to connect with the brightest in tech and media and get the scoop on some exciting new ventures. Whether you plan to physically attend or not, social media will be critical to how people connect and share ideas at this world-class event. If you want to keep in touch with all the goings-on, look no further than these tools that you..   show all text

Facebook may have secured a patent for its news feed technology, and Google for location-based ads, but that doesn’t make the two companies immune to other patent challengers. In fact, both Google and Facebook are being sued by Winksite over mobile social networking technology. The complaint, first reported by Bloomberg, was said to be filed by Winksite yesterday in a Manhattan federal court, and points to patent infringement claims around Facebook Mobile and Google Buzz. The company is lo..   show all text

Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley isn't afraid of big bad Facebook. At least, that's what he's telling us. Read the rest of this story » See Also: Foursquare Gives Businesses New Analytics Tools, Flirts With A Business Model CONFIRMED: Facebook To Launch Foursquare-Killer In April Catch Up On Foursquare, The New York Startup Everyone's Talking About

You think the iPad will be the only tablet we’ll talk about in 2010? Not even close. According to Arm’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager Roy Chen, we can expect as many as 50 tablets before the year’s end. “The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers. You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter,” said Chen. He declined to name specific companies that will launch the tablets, but he did say some of the top 10 telecoms will launch a tablet. Ar..   show all text

Today at the Google’s Campfire One event at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View the Internet search giant is launching its new app store for business, known as the Google Apps Marketplace. Last week, we broke the story that Google Apps Marketplace would launch today, reporting that it would be an app store integrated within Google Apps that would allow third-party developers to sell software directly to Google’s business consumers. Now, with developers gathered at the Googleplex, w..   show all text

Spam and phishing have been ongoing problems at Twitter for some time, and tonight the company announced that it is stepping up its efforts to stop them with some new features, described as being able to “detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links.” In a blog post, Twitter writes that the protection works by “routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service … even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able ..   show all text

Facebook’s move into location has seemed inevitable for some time, and it now appears that the company will officially reveal its plans at next month’s Facebook developer conference – f8. According to The New York Times, the social network will incorporate location in two ways: (1) its own features for sharing location and (2) APIs to let other apps – like Foursquare and Gowalla – offer location services to Facebook users. Presumably, Facebook will make sure to address privacy issues with ..   show all text

Foursquare, a location-based social network, is rolling out new tools that will give businesses more information about their customers and allow them to target special offers.

Today at the #140tc Twitter Conference in Seattle, Washington (which I keynoted this morning), HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes announced that its popular Twitter application will be integrating with both MySpace and Foursquare, starting this week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. HootSuite is one of the more popular Twitter applications, one specifically geared towards power users and businesses. It has been on a roll recently, launching integration with Wordpress and rolling out..   show all text

As some of you know, I have a close relative came down with cancer last year (he chooses to remain unnamed, but his cancer is now in remission). It turns out that my Cousin Paula (photo below) also came down with breast cancer last year, too (also in remission). That’s why I have decided to donate a little piece of my body to fundraise for cancer research with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. If I successfully raise $5,000 by midnight on Sunday, I will literally get the LIVESTRONG brand tat..   show all text

Facebook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundamentally changes who we, as a society, discover and share information, and in turn, where our attention is directed and driven. Source: Mashable Make no mistake, attention is shifting away from traditional destination sites and instead, it is fixated on personalized attention dashboard..   show all text

This is deceptive. You don't rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it's a self-defeating goal. You can't do it. No, but you might rock five minutes a day. Five minutes to write a blog post that changes everything, or five minutes to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone. Five minutes to invent a great new feature, or five minutes to teach a groundbreaking skill in a way that no one ever thought of before. Five..   show all text

    The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional world. You see, no matter how skilled you are as a designer, unless you are equally prepared in professional matters, your prospects will be limited and your circumstances compromised. This is true whether you work..   show all text

The iPad is breaking out in a very mainstream fashion: an ad for the Apple device just aired during the Oscars. The ad explains why Apple CEO Steve Jobs was spotted on the red carpet earlier. We’ve got a screenshot and we’ll post video as soon as it comes in (update: video added below). Apple iPad Commercial During the Oscars [img credit: TheFullM0nty] Steve Jobs on the Oscars Red Carpet [img credit: Wayne Sutton] Tags: Apple iPad, Commercial, ipad, jobs, Oscars, steve jobs, tre..   show all text

The Twittersphere is in love with Justin Bieber. Once again the young pop star tops our top 10 Twitter trends chart, even in spite of the devastating Chile earthquake that also peaked this week as a topic of Twitter conversations. The fresh data, which comes courtesy of the folks at What The Trend, highlights the most popular topics on Twitter. Hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart given the topical nature of the list. In looking at the trending data, common themes are s..   show all text

Cliff Atkinson is author of The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever (New Riders, 2009). What do you do when you’re giving a presentation, and notice that your audience is looking down, busily typing on their laptops and smartphones? And what about when you get the sense that they are turning against you? When audiences use Twitter and other tools to communicate with one another during live presentations, they create a new “backch..   show all text

It seems hundreds of Twitter accounts have started to Tweet out “weight loss” product spam today. Specifically, users who have had their accounts hijacked are Tweeting the message “I lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks!” and links to diet sites. Our source counts over 200 rogue tweets so far tonight. It’s not just new users getting caught out: famous tech pundit John C. Dvorak (@therealdvorak) got caught up in the attack, and was none too pleased. At this point we’re unsure of the cause: Access coul..   show all text

I don’t often use my blog as a drum skin to bang. This is my space to entertain myself and share my life with the people who choose to read it.  But today, I’m picking up my drumsticks and banging away, hoping one person will hear my words and choose their own more carefully the next time they speak. I’ve written before how using the word retarded affects me. I’m tired of hearing people use the word retarded as their go-to word for stupid or lame* defective and I’m even more annoyed with the p..   show all text

For complete SXSW coverage, check out Mashable’s SXSW channel. Popular music magazine SPIN is going geeky for South by Southwest’s music festival, integrating custom Foursquare badges into its event presence and rewarding the most adventurous users of the location-based game with free tickets to their annual music showcase at Stubb’s. Festival goers who check-in at music venues can earn points and collect the four custom SPIN badges. Each badge — should you attempt to unlock it — offers a ..   show all text

The battle for social geolocation domination has expanded to Google’s Android platform, as Gowalla, the primary competitor to Foursquare, has just made its debut on Google’s Android app store. The new Gowalla 1.0 app isn’t some secondhand version of its iPhone counterpart — it’s completely packed with an array of features that allow you to check into locations, view friends, access details about specific locations, and check out your progress completion for trips (a Gowalla feature that le..   show all text

A new version of Foursquare for the iPhone is on the way and it will feature a revamped interface, a brand new user tab, and a new checkin history view. This version of the app – v1.6 – should be heading to the App Store soon. Nick Starr shared screenshots of it with us and we’ve included a few below so that you can see some of the new features. Looking at the images from Foursquare 1.6, the first thing you’ll notice is that the interface has been totally revamped. The colors, icons and me..   show all text

Mat Fogarty is the Founder and CEO of Crowdcast, a leading provider of collective intelligence and prediction market solutions.  You can read more of Mat’s posts on the Crowdcast blog or follow @crowdcastinc. Collaboration and crowdsourcing are the realities of today’s public Internet, and the trend is now gaining real traction in the workplace.  Smart companies increasingly understand that their richest source of insight, ideas, data, and information is within their own employees. They ar..   show all text

Microsoft has announced that it has changed a controversial policy for its Xbox LIVE service that banned people from expressing their sexual orientation in their user profiles. Said to have been originally put in place to prevent the use of such terms “as insults or slurs”, it was a step too far for many, including Richard Gaywood, a gamer who was banned from the service. However, an update to the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use and Code of Conduct will now allow members to, in Microsoft’s words, “..   show all text

If you were ever frustrated by the lack of iPhone/iPod Touch pocket on your jeans, here’s a treat for you: wtfJeans. This freshly launched indie jeans brand was just a blueprint 3 months ago, but things happen fast on the Internet, and now you can order them from the online shop, in boy/girl varieties. What’s so special about these jeans? Well, they have an iPhone/iPod Touch pocket with micro-fiber interior protection, as well as a hidden, high security USB stick pocket. These should be a ..   show all text

It’s official: Twitter has surpassed 10 billion tweets. While Gigatweet’s counter is down due to over-traffic., you can tell by the actual tweet ID numbers that we have crossed the magical threshold. The milestone shows that Twitter’s still growing at a rapid pace: it broke 1 billion tweets in November 2008 and 5 billion tweets just four months ago. So who was the lucky person that sent out tweet 10 billionth tweet? We’re checking now and will let you know ASAP. Update: Tweet #10 billion a..   show all text

OMG, Its Here, Its Finally Here! Our List…that should have been done by Dec 31st. Hey, it’s not my fault the blogosphere got bigger. This takes a while. Before you groan at me, “oh trisha, some of these bloggers are on ALL the lists“, the reasons they make those lists in general is because they are doing an excellent job either marketing or standing out. Its not democracy…it’s blogocracy. Get over it. So here they are: MomDots Top 100 Mom Bloggers [...]

For the moment, the valuations we have for private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are based mostly on what we know from venture capital investments. SharesPost, however, is a company that lets owners of shares in private companies sell them to prospective buyers, and they’ve just released an index detailing valuations of some of the most prominent companies in the social media space. Here’s what they report: Facebook: $11.5 billion Zynga: $2.6 billion Twitter: $1.4 billion..   show all text