How are we going to cope with the Buzz?

Time, not the sky, is the limit for people using social media. The new Google Buzz is trying cut into our daily life and attract us to spend more time Buzzing.

As a result, this means less time for Facebook, Twitter and many less populated social medias.

We still need some time to take care of our daily works and even traditional emails.

Time management is becoming an issue again. Mobile tools makes it possible to socialize while on the move, but there is still a limit to all of this.

Australia leads world in time spent socially online

Mike Bantick  writes in his blog iTWire Sunday, 24 January 2010 that Facebook, Twitter and other social based internet systems saw massive increases in usage through 2009.  Despite having some of the best weather for getting outside, Australians lead the world in spending time on social networks according to The Nielsen Company.

Helge: Let’s have a look what they are doing online. Need to call my brother Helmer in Sidney to learn how he thinks about the local online activities.

2009 was a big one for social networking online.  The latest Nielsen Company numbers showed the continuing trend for social networks has not waned in the past two years.

 Helge: We can see the same trend in Finland. The average person in street suggests “let’s get connected over Facebook". Twitter is still a little geeky.

Figures just released for December 2009 showed an increase of 82 percent in time spent in social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter over the previous year.  On average in December 2008, social networkers spent just over three hours, this increased to more than five and a half hours in December 2009.

Helge: Do people have more time for online engagements and activities due to the global recession. Are we looking for new jobs, contacts and opportunities?

According to The Nielsen Company: Globally, social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent in December, followed by online games and instant messaging. With 206.9 million unique visitors, Facebook was the No. 1 global social networking destination in December 2009 and 67% of global social media users visited the site during the month. Time on site for Facebook has also been on the rise, with global users spending nearly six hours per month on the site.

Helge: I guess we are moving in the same direction. I don’t have comparable figures. Maybe they can be found through the reference information.

In the battle(!) to see which countries population spends the most time online socially, Australia topped the table with a average time per person of 6 hours 52 minutes and 28 seconds racked up during December 2009.  Perhaps it is the tyranny of distance for a small population spread over such a vast geography that entices Australians to keep in touch online.

Helge: I figure that big countries with long distances between villages and people lead to increased online activity. USA and Canada are big as well. Finland has a small population in a large country.

By comparison US folks hit 6:09, the United Kingdom notched 6:07 and Italians came in fourth spending just over six hours Facebook’n, Twittering or Myspace’n at the end of last year.

Helge: We’ve national platforms as well so the figures aren’t comparable with English speaking countries.

Of the popular social networks, using US based data, The Nielsen Company charted the rise of both Facebook, and in particular Twitter over the past year: both Facebook and Twitter.com, outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200% and 368%, respectively. Among, the top five U.S. social networking sites, Twitter.com continued its reign as the fastest-growing in December 2009 in terms of unique visitors, increasing 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009. However, month-over-month, unique visitors decreased 5%.

Helge: I guess both Twitter and Facebook are growing here as well. Qaiku is a better service for online collaboration but it’s still a local / national thing.

“Top Tech Bloggers Define Web 2.0″ « socialTNT

“Top Tech Bloggers Define Web 2.0″ « socialTNT: Top Tech Bloggers Define Web 2.0.″ Last week, all eyes were on San Francisco. Up north in Sonoma, the NewComm Forum debated how to incorporate social media technologies with communications. Down in the city, the tech community rallied around the Web 2.0 Expo. But two years after Tim O’Reilly defined the emerging technologies, many are still left scratching their heads and wondering what the eff Web 2.0 is.

In 2006, Tim O’Reilly, founder of top tech publishing company O’Reilly Media, gave his compact definition of Web 2.0: “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I’ve elsewhere called “harnessing collective intelligence.”)

Helge: It's easy to understand the benefits of Web 2.0 and being better connected. Interactivity is a great advantage. We spoke yesterday with a C-rep about the "platform" dimension that is "integrating the various tools into one". Networking is they key. It's much easier to keep in touch with the other guy at the other side of the globe...maybe at the dark side of the moon. The crowd is improving the tools and platforms, the networks become better when there is more people using and developing them.

How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It - Faceboogle - Google vs. Facebook - Popular Mechanics

How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It - Faceboogle - Google vs. Facebook - Popular Mechanics: "The larger the Web grows, the more important search becomes, right? That’s probably so, and as a note of clarification, he changed his statement slightly to say, “Search, as we know it, is dead.” What he means is that, with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

Helge: That looks like a great change.

Actually, the issue is even larger than searches and social networks. The Web is, in a sense, maturing into a different medium than the one that search engines were originally designed to tackle. Allow me, for a moment, to oversimplify the issue in the interest of making a point: Until now, the Web has largely been a resource for information organization and consumption, with the user functioning as a consumer. In this scenario, a search engine is an ideal tool—you need some information (a restaurant address, the name of a song stuck in your head), but you don’t know where to find it, so a search engine is the natural first stop in your online journey."

Helge: The net is becoming a space, a journey...

Working Webware: Ning, king of custom social networks? on ZDNet.com

Working Webware: Ning, king of custom social networks? on ZDNet.com: "Working Webware: Ning, king of custom social networks? Ning CEO talks about company's DIY social-network platform

On Working Webware, ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber and Webware.com's editor Rafe Needleman sit down with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini to find out about the company's social-network platform strategy and how the CEO plans to compete against other social-network enablers. Farber and Needleman then analyze the company's viability in the crowded social-networking space."