2009 Redux Libraries, eBooks, and the Mobile Web: A Long Ways to Go According to a new report from Cambridge University (PDF), students aren't interested in being able to read eBooks and eJournals on their mobile phones. Instead, users are far more interested in opening hours, location maps, contact info, and access to the library catalog. Most respondents were also far more interested in getting alerts by text… Frederic Lardinois View comments
Twitter Twitter Trends in 2009: A Retrospective Although the daily trends on Twitter over the past year have often been silly or even obscene, hindsight has proven to be much more interesting. WhatTheTrend has compiled a great overview of Twitter hashtags and trending topics. Their Twitter Zeitgeist 2009 gives us food for thought as we move into a new, hopefully less gaming-prone era of… Social Jolie O'Dell View comments
Open Thread Open Thread: Mainstream Media Discovers Geekery, Is This a Good Thing? Facebook's getting its own movie, Ashton Kutcher is the social web's unpaid spokesman and now NBC is launching a show dedicated to mobile apps. What's the world coming to? Call me old fashioned, but where I come from, a geek is a geek and a mainstream actor with an iPhone is still just a mainstream actor with an iPhone. The Oprahtization of… Jolie O'Dell View comments
Blogging Imprisoned, Attacked & Dead Bloggers Increases Worldwide in 2009 According to a report released today [PDF] by Reporters Sans Frontières, the number of bloggers around the world arrested because of their online work jumped from 59 to 151 between 2008 and 2009, an increase of 155%. Additionally, one blogger died in prison and 61 were physically assaulted. The most infamous cases perhaps occurred during the… Abraham Hyatt View comments
Analysis Race Shapes Teen Facebook and MySpace Adoption, says danah boyd Two years ago, ethnographer danah boyd had the blogosphere abuzz with her look at class-based divisions between teens on MySpace and Facebook. The esteemed Microsoft researcher found that Facebook's collegiate origins encouraged a group of slightly more educated mainstream community members. Meanwhile, MySpace encouraged self-expression and the… Dana Oshiro View comments