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Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such sites are – in general, anyway – doing quite well on a global basis, according to new stats from Nielsen.  Nielsen revealed this afternoon that people all over the world are dedicating a lot more time to social networks.

A report stated, "On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year."  Italians and Australians actually took the lead, too, beating the U.S. average of 6 hours and 3 minutes by 25 minutes and 22 minutes, respectively.

Then here are a couple more interesting findings: "Overall, the active unique audience to social networks grew nearly 30%, from 244.2M to 314.5M in the last year.  In the U.S., the average active unique audience grew to 149.M from 115M in February 2009" (which also works out to 30 percent).

Facebook made Nielsen’s last points of comparison anything but close calls, though.  It beat the other social networks by wide margins in terms of "% Reach of Active Social Users," "Sessions per Person," and "Time per Person."

Facebook, then, would appear best positioned to find advertisers and generate revenue outside the U.S.

CBS and the NCAA said Friday their March Madness on Demand (MMOD) live-streaming video player attracted record traffic for the first day of the men’s basketball tournament.

In total, there were 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio consumed, over 20 percent growth compared to 2009, with 3 million more unique visitors to the MMOD video player. Both figures represent the largest single day of traffic for a live sporting event on the Internet.

The MMOD "Boss Button" was clicked over 1.7 million times on the first day of the first round of the tournament. The "Boss Button" was redesigned for the 2010 tournament, it hides the live video on the screen and mutes the audio replacing it with a flow chart image. The 2010 Boss Button was designed by cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic.

"NCAA March Madness on Demand continues to regularly exceed our expectations," said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports.

"It is the perfect combination of programming and the Internet. Our ability to successfully develop the product alongside steady growth in streaming programming for the Internet and wireless content provides many options and truly maximizes the Network’s NCAA bundled rights agreement."

Other highlights from MMOD traffic include:

*The most watched game on 3-18 was the double overtime Florida vs. BYU game with 521k hours of streaming audio and video. That’s up 50 prcent over 2009’s most watched game from the first day of the first round (Washington vs. Mississippi State) which had 348 hours of streaming.

*The most watch hour yesterday day waas 2:00-2:59 ET with 533k streaming hours (16% of the total for the day).

The MMOD is also available on CNN.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, TV.com and CNET
 

It may sound painfully dumb to point out that Yahoo’s technology is important to the company, but there you have it.  Unfortunately for the organization, that connection also makes it seem somewhat problematic that Yahoo’s Chief Technologist has moved on.

Benchmark Capital announced today that Sam Pullara, who was Yahoo’s Chief Technologist, has joined it as an Entrepreneur in Residence.  That means Pullara, EVP Ash Patel, and SVP of Revenue Joanne Bradford have all left Yahoo in the space of a week.

It’s a hard to put that in a positive light; you’d have to look long and hard to find a company eager to lose that many senior people over the course of just a few days.

Things may not be as bad as they appear, though.  As we explained on Monday, Bradford’s something of a job-hopper.  Patel really intends to spend more time with his family.  And now, Pullara’s new job will be different enough from his position at Yahoo that it doesn’t look like he was just abandoning ship.

Then here’s one more fact Yahoo can take comfort in: Google lost an employee today, too.  Robin Wauters reported this afternoon that Senior Product Manager Gummi Hafsteinsson has gone to work for an app company called Siri.

Real-time search engine OneRiot has launched RiotWise Trending Ad Units, which automatically refresh based on what’s trending on the social web.

Previously, OneRiot’s Trending Ads were available only via OneRiot’s API, meaning developers had to create a customized user interface for their ads.

RiotWise Trending Ads link the latest published and relevant content from OneRiot’s network of media partners. OneRiot says the real-time relevance of the ads lead to click through rates at four times industry norms.

"RiotWise Trending Ad Units serve fresh content that’s relevant right now," said Tobias Peggs, GM, OneRiot.

"It’s perfect for social networks, realtime meme trackers and other social sharing services where users are primarily in discovery mode and rabidly consume content related to trending topics. Now those sites have a smart way to monetize with an ad product that makes sense to their users."

Publishers can call the RiotWise Trending Ad Units the same way they would call standard ad units.

Since its launch last December, OneRiot’s Trending Ads have seen exponential growth across Twitter apps, social messaging desktop apps and real-time search engines.
 

The Kentucky Supreme court issued a ruling Thursday that it will not lift the freeze by registrars of 141 Internet gambling domain names unless an owner of the names comes forward.

The ruling by the Court is not final, but the decision is being viewed as a temporary setback by the affected parties.

Joe Brennan Jr.
IMEGA’s chairman

"In the written decision, the Court clearly indicates they agree with our arguments, and are inviting us to refile, so that the technicality of the standing issue can be resolved," said Joe Brennan, Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (iMEGA) chairman.

"It’s unfortunate, but I can’t imagine that Kentucky’s lawyers will celebrate a ruling that says ‘bring us an owner, so we can rule in your favor’".

iMEGA and the other affected parties, Interactive Gaming Concil and Sportsbook.com, have up to 20 days to file a motion for reconsideration. In the ruling, the Kentucky Supreme Court indicated that no additional briefs or oral arguments were necessary for them to consider the case, and that a petition could be made to the Appeals Court to move the case immediately back to the state Supreme Court.

"All along, it seemed the Court wanted to go our way, and this decision today indicates that is still the case," Brennan said.

"The Court is telling us that all that is necessary is for one domain owner to come forward, and we likely win."

Brennan indicated iMEGA would immediately work with other parties to resolve the Court’s issue, and would quickly file a motion to satisfy the Court.

"We obviously would have preferred a complete, clean victory today, but reading the decision, it seems this is a technicality that is only delaying the inevitable," Brennan sai
 

As usual, this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference was a blur. Between the people, the parties, and purveyors of all things bacon, it was a twenty ring circus of the sublime and bizarre.

There was no shatteringly impactful takeaway from SXSW 2010, as it seems we’ve entered a (sure to be brief) innovation lull. But, I absorbed many smaller lessons that will help guide my thinking about the conference, technology, and social business in the coming months.

1. There is More Than One SXSW
As the conference continues to grow (interactive registrations up 40% over 2009, to more than 15,000 total), attendee segmentation follows apace. There seems to be a distinct collection of sessions, parties, and hang-outs for the social media crowd, and then a completely separate collection for developers, entrepreneurs (and of course film attendees). Several people I know who live in the developer or entrepreneur world frequently checked in on Gowalla at panels and parties that I had never heard of, and were completely off my radar. The feeling of community, and “we’re all in this together” is slipping away.

2. Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better
If registration climbs again, SXSW organizers will have a real dilemma. This year, nearly every session had a line to get in, forcing attendees to arrive meaningfully early to find a seat. Thus, if the session was a disappointment (see below), it was impossible to jump into another session. Further, it was unlikely you’d be able to attend back-to-back sessions unless they were in the same room. Realistically, you can only catch a session in every other time slot, and that’s a problem. Even with more and more sessions being staged outside the convention center in adjacent hotels, SXSW cannot get much bigger without serious impact to the attendee experience.

3. The Conference Isn’t That Good
Whether it was their fourth time or first, every person I spoke to within my social media bubble (and I asked about 50) said the same thing – “I was surprised by how bad some of the sessions were.” More so than any other event I attend, SXSW is conference roulette. Evan Williams’ (co-founder, Twitter) keynote was so disastrous that an anecdotally estimated 80% of those in the room left before conclusion. South by Southwest is distinct in its programming methodology, letting attendees vote (in part) for which sessions will be staged, which unfortunately makes for a lot of extra-pithy titles with weak content.

SXSW needs a much better vetting process if it’s going to retain even a modicum of educational value.

4. The Periphery Exceeds the Core
The best parts of this year’s SXSW largely took place outside the framework of the actual conference. The best parties are always those that are purposely kept quiet, and this year was no exception, with David Armano and Dell’s Richard Binhammer reprising the daytime All Hat party for social media types.

But now, even the best content is beyond the official SXSW boundaries. The best sessions I saw this year were at Get Ready to Live, a one day “shadow conference” put on by BazaarVoice, BlueClover, and Chris Brogan. I suspect we’ll start seeing much more of this parallel programming to meet the needs of advanced practitioners.

5. Location, Location, Location
The biggest story of the event was the widespread usage of presence services foursquare and Gowalla. Check-ins were plentiful (as evidenced by the many thousands of people noting that they had been at the airport), and sessions describing how businesses can take advantage of local social were numerous. While the privacy issues continue to be a stumbling block for some, the ability of these services to enhance your experiences in real-time by showing you who’s nearby, and insider tips for each location is enticing. Both companies (as well as a second tier of contenders) are working on new features and ramping up their business development teams. foursquare has a very interesting new dashboard that shows business owners data about how and when people have checked-in. I’ll write about that soon.

6. Twitter is so 2008
The buzz about location came largely at the expense of Twitter, as most of the social media brigade updated their Twitter status infrequently, if at all. As I wrote about yesterday in “7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket” as your number of Twitter followers grows, the percentage of those followers that care about your current activity plummets. Thus, to avoid boring their followers with #sxsw tweet barrages, many people bypassed Twitter in favor of foursquare or Gowalla.

7. Scan Me? Not Yet
I had high hopes for the emergence of QR codes (the newfangled bar codes that allow you to instantly access a Web site or rich media). At SXSW, each attendee had their unique QR code printed on their name badge. Smart phone-toting attendees could snap a photo of each others’ code, and instantly follow one another within the my.SXSW social network. Largely, it didn’t happen.

Whether it was the darkness of the bars, the dorkiness of pointing your camera at someone’s chest, or the limited shelf-life of following someone on an event-based social network, most folks at SXSW snapped a couple of codes, and then shrugged.

I maintain that QR codes will eventually be as huge in the U.S. as they are in Asia, just not yet. Start-up Sticky Bits exhibited at the conference, and their version of QR with custom content, integrated statistics, and crowd-sourced notes may have real promise.

8. Social Data Firehosing
In contrast to the conference at large, I was delighted by the exhibition this year. Larger space, more interesting companies, and better production overall. Several companies I visited are working in the field of social data collection and analysis, an area where we need to make much progress to fulfill the promise of universal social media adoption.

9. Social Integration
Maybe I just heard what I wanted to hear/preach, but there seemed to be a lot of chatter among returning attendees and experienced social media types about integrating social media with other marketing and/or customer service elements. Again, this is an incredibly positive sign, as we can’t treat social media as a unicorn when it’s really just a horse. Good news for my clients at ExactTarget, who got a lot of SXSW tongues wagging with their pre-conference purchase of enterprise Twitter management company Co-Tweet (whose CEO Jesse Engle I was delighted to meet).

10. Social Specialization
There was much talk among the social media consultant set about the need for the industry to deconstruct social media. As David Meerman Scott acknowledged in his session Tuesday, “What does social media even mean?” It’s become a fuzzy catch all for everything from customer service, to customer experience, to customer relationship management, to content marketing, to word of mouth. This level of vagary is useless.

We need to start getting specific about social media services and capabilities, and talk about the components of social media, not “social media” as a whole.

11. It’s About Retention
I was heartened to see that with a few exceptions, most of the conversations, exhibiting companies, and sessions at SXSW positioned social media as a way to engage with current customers, rather than as a way to drive awareness or first-time sales. I hope that we continue down this path, and focus more on the social, and less on the “media”. There was also a lot of talk (especially among the big brands) on operationalizing social media, and creating true best practices for how to thrive in a real-time world where every customer is a reporter.

12. Star Power
As the number of social media “celebrities” increases via book publishing, widespread acknowledgement of skills, or personal delusion, the difference between the good people and the assholes becomes codified. People like Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk are name-brand consultants and speakers because they have great ideas and articulate them well. But more importantly, both of them (and many, many more), genuinely care about people. Chris is incredibly kind and approachable. And Gary put on a mind-blowing display of people passion at his keynote, standing at the front of a cavernous ballroom, shaking hands, hugging, and thanking all of the many hundreds of attendees.

Conversely, there were several moments of high school flashback-inducing douche baggery that are more common with the conference getting so big, that VIP sections and secret invites have become the norm. I’d say “you know who you are” but obviously, you don’t.

13. Experience Trumps Interruption
If nothing else, SXSW is an experiential feast. Everything about it is super-sized and intense, like Hulk Hogan + Red Bull. But despite its many shortcomings, I’ll be back. And it’s not because of the parties, or the sessions, or the corporate sponsors. It’s not about anything that’s on your calendar or in any way tied to the norm of interruption marketing.

What makes SXSW special is the accidents. The kismet. The little things that you’ve never seen, and won’t again. Off the top of my head: Chatting with Julien Smith about the pros/cons of book co-authorship; being handed free bacon by a kid (also, free bacon soap from Sweet Soaps); being a Karaoke backup dancer; talking hockey with Marcel Lebrun; watching dueling theramins (one on fire) at the incredible Man or Astro Man reunion concert; and Mike Corak eating Habanero chili with jalapeno topping, and Jason Falls footing the bill.

If you come to Austin expecting it to be laid out if front of you, for it all to make sense in an orderly, pain-free fashion you’ll leave disappointed. But, if you embrace the randomness and connect your own dots, you’ll learn a lot about the industry, the people in it, and maybe even yourself.

See you next year.

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Just how big is the market for mobile apps?

Global mobile apps will be worth $17.5 billion by 2012, according to an independent report commissioned by app store GetJar. Mobile app downloads across all types of handset are also expected to increase from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012 – a year on year growth rate of 92%. 

This would mean that the value of apps sold would be greater than the projected $13.83 billion value of CDs sold in 2012.

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As with traditional media, it’s different strokes for different folks on social media sites.  And knowing your audience’s needs and preferences is just as valid in PR today as it ever was.

According to an analysis of social sites by online advertising network Chikita published by Mashable, people go to Twitter for news, MySpace for games and entertainment, Facebook for news and community and digg has a mixed bag.

Another post from Chikita shows that Facebook is far and away the best source of loyal visitors – over 20% of all visitors from Facebook visited the referred site four or more times per week.  Digg came in second place with slightly over 16%.

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