The latest report from Pew Internet confirms what many of us have known for a while now – our friends and socialgraphs are slowly diminishing the influence of the once all-powerful newspaper editors. In the study, Pew found that 75% of Americans who consume news online discover their news through social networking sites or through forwarded e-mail, and 52% of them share news with others through these channels.

This study confirms suspicions we have had for some time – our Facebook news streams and Twitter feeds are becoming our “homepage” for news consumption. NYTimes.com or CNN.com are no longer our browser’s homepage; and if they are, they are not likely the central hub for where we consume our news. The same Pew study found that only 7% of those surveyed are receiving information and news from a single media platform. Our news sources are more diversified than ever, but what’s more important is how we are being driven to this news content.

Before mass online news consumption, we were forced to consume whatever newspaper editors and TV producers decided we should read and watch. In the early years of online news consumption, news aggregation was not a necessity, as our sources for quality online news were slim. In these days, we could set our browser’s homepage to NYTimes.com and be satisfied with the flow of information we were receiving from the newspaper’s site editors. Today, we have the ability to create our own personalized news aggregation services from the news sources we trust most – our ‘friends’ and socialgraphs.

Gone are the days when a single newspaper’s website was the hub for all of one person’s news consumption, linking to various stories within that single hub of news. Today’s news consumption follows a hub-n-spoke model in which social networks are the hub that direct us out to the spokes of various news sources linked to by our friends and trusted news aggregation ‘editors’.

As more Americans rely on social networks as their primary source of news consumption, it will be increasingly important for news organizations, political campaigns and brands to find creative ways to convince individuals to spread news on their behalf. Newspaper editors will continue to have nearly exclusive influence over what is printed by their publications, but their power over driving eyeballs to this content is now in the hands of the masses. Every one of our friends is now a news aggregation ‘editor’ with the power to drive us from our social news hub to the various spokes of trusted news content.

The VAN Now Hosts Campaign Websites and Provides CRM Services for Dems

New addition to the “Winning in 2010″ discussion of website/CRM vendors — the Democratic Voter Activation Network (VAN) is now hosting campaign websites and providing CRM services to candidates, alongside such other Dem campaign packages such as Wired for Change/DLCCWeb. The VAN is much better known for its work behind the scenes providing voter-information databases to help candidates with phone-banking, block-walking and other grassroots outreach, but they’re now providing the additional site-hosting/mass-messaging services that most campaigns need.

This move adds to an array of integrated online campaign packages available to Democrats; Republican candidates seem to have access to such technological riches (they more often have to piece together a web presence using software and services from several vendors). Which R vendor will jump in and fill the gap? As a Dem, I can hope that the answer is, none of them…

Trackur = Reputation + Social Media Monitoring

Online reputation and social media monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages--including news, blogs, video, images, and forums--and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

YouTube Interviews: Pelosi, Boehner, Reid Answer your Healthcare Questions

For over seven hours yesterday, the nation's top leaders gathered in Washington for a unique conversation on the future of health care reform. Moderated by President Obama, the healthcare summit revealed disparate views on current legislation, with Democrats arguing for comprehensive reform and Republicans pressing for a more incremental approach (or for starting over entirely). We streamed the entire summit on CitizenTube, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all agreed to answer some of your top-voted questions from our Google Moderator platform during the event. (We also offered the opportunity to Senator Mitch McConnnell, the Senate Minority Leader, but he was unable to participate due to a scheduling conflict.)

Social Media, Huh?, What is it Good For: A Report

The non-profit IdealWare  surveyed more than 400 staffers at various non-profits back in November to find out what social media tools they're using, and whether they're finding those applications are meeting their organizational needs on three fronts: reaching new allies, fundraising, and deepening their relationships with existing supporters.

Keeping Out the Trolls: Relevancy in User-Generated Content

In the summer of 2008, J.R. Johnson sold Virtual Tourist to Expedia for $85 million dollars. While Johnson seems like the type of laid back Los Angeles entrepreneur that would take some vacation time, his quest for relevancy had him launching a new community the following March. Lunch.com is Johnson's attempt to cut through the noise that has proliferated since he first started in the user-generated-review space in 1999.

Social Media Reshaping Politics in Arkansas

The social media are changing the political playing field, and their impact has never been more evident in Arkansas than in recent weeks.

Twitter, Facebook and blogging have allowed anyone with a computer to be part of the political landscape, to immediately respond to events and to throw out facts, conjecture, gossip and innuendo.

Add Private Notes to Tweets and Group Emails with Bccthis

Quick Pitch: Bccthis is an innovative technology that provides new levels of communication for email, micro-blogging and social networking services.

Genius Idea: If you’ve ever worked in an environment that shares a group mailing list, you know that at some point, side conversations about a certain topic start to take place off-list with a number of the participants. Sometimes you might want to add more background details or make clarifications, other times you’re — we’ll admit it — making fun of something the author of one of the threads said.

3 New Ways to Measure the Social Web

When most people think of web analytics, they think about pageview tracking; basically, measuring which pages on a website are being viewed. Pageview tracking is a well-established technology, but it’s no longer meeting the needs of many of the most well-known companies in social media. Companies like Facebook (Facebook), Zynga, Slide, and RockYou are spending tons of resources building their own internal analytics tools.

There’s a reason for this: Social media is highly competitive, and the biggest advantage you can have is data. To improve and grow, these companies need to gather as much information as they can, and they need more than simple pageview tracking.

In the following sections I will cover three of the most important things to measure for social applications.

Seth Godin on Email Marketing

Seth Godin has an insightful blog post up where he very succinctly describes the fundamental difference between spam and permission-based email campaigns.

A spam campaign feels like a smart idea, but over time, the more you use it, the less your brand is worth. A permission campaign, on the other hand, only grows in value, until it gets big enough that you can build an entire business around it.

Earning permission is a long-term, profitable, scalable strategy that pays for itself. Think about how much better off a brand would be if it took the time to make promises, keep them and be transparent about its communications.

Yesterday, Edelman launched it's take on the upcoming decade in a presentation entitled, "Digital Visions: 10 Ideas For a New Decade" 

White House Launches iPhone App

Want to watch President Obama's State of the Union address on the go next Wednesday? The White House has launched a new iPhone and iPod Touch application that will make that possible for some.

In a blog post on Whitehouse.gov, the Obama administration said the application would allow users to check for updates, watch videos and Web chats, and do some research. The blog noted that mobile Internet use has doubled over the last year and has become a more important means to receive information.

HOW TO: Take Advantage of Social Media in your Email Marketing

You’ve most likely had an e-mail newsletter for your company for much longer than you’ve had a presence on social media sites. But now that you do both, the two can go hand-in-hand, with e-mail creating an opportunity to extend your presence on social media sites, and social media sites providing a way to get more e-mail subscribers.

At the moment though, most marketers aren’t connecting the dots. According to a recent study published by eMarketer, 48% of marketers include “forward to a friend” features in their e-mails, but only 13% include features that make it easy to share content on social networks. Here’s a look at how to close the gap, and why it’s so important that you do. 

Facebook Apps Can Now Email You

Just in case you were thinking Mafia Wars or Farmville weren't a big enough part of your daily life, Facebook has followed up on its promise and will now offer email notifications from applications. As we foretold in October, Facebook's roadmap for developers contained several key points that would restructure the ways in which applications would be allowed to contact users.

And the Winner is...Google

There's a pretty good chance that you've already seen evidence elsewhere of the fact that Google is rather thrilled with how aggressively Scott Brown's campaign embraced the suite of Google tools in his win. Google reps are reporting that the campaign dropped $145,000 on a "network blast" that saturated the Internet with Brown ads in the final days of the campaign, and all told the campaign spent some $230,000 on YouTube ads and overlays, visual ads, and in-search advertising. The result? Brown's ads were put in front of the faces of Massachusetts residents 65 million times in the months leading up to the election. A Google rep praised Brown's online ad effort as "very slick, very targeted, and very strategic."

At 9:45am, I heard the first explosion.

Minutes later I heard gunfire from automatic weapons that seemed awfully close.  I ran to take shelter inside my office and await the first reports of the incident.  After receiving word that movement on our base was restricted, initial reports had come across secured lines of communication of the ongoing attack. However, this did not seem like past attacks since the explosions from multiple bombs shook my office enough to knock me off of my chair. Also, the gunfire went on for several hours. I knew that this was a much more sophisticated attack and that reporting would be broadcast all over the world shortly.

This was the scene a couple of days ago here in Kabul, Afghanistan when armed insurgents attacked several government buildings. The violence in the streets is one way the Taliban intend to terrorize locals to not work with the international Coalition. We have had several attacks in the 7 months I have been here, but conventional wisdom stated that attacks would decrease during the winter. The snowfall in the many parts of the north would deter would be attackers from Pakistan to join up with their Afghan partners.

After ensuring the safety of my fellow team members and gathering what spotty information we had (minutes after a local attack are quite chaotic), I wanted to pass information to my loved ones that I was doing fine. Recently, I did not hear from a good friend after the earthquake in Haiti and for a couple of days agonized over the news to find out if she was safe.

The official Department of Defense server in Afghanistan has blocked all different websites known as “social media” such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. Since July 2009 the Pentagon has been reviewing the vulnerabilities of social networking sites such as those mentioned to see whether or not personnel may access them from government computers. For the military, like most organizations with information, security is paramount. Network security analysts must protect against state of the art cyber-attacks and viruses. However, financial institutions or large companies deal with similar threats from hackers or corporate spies.

In June, Secretary Gates was asked about social media and the fact that it is an important medium that young people use to stay connected. He posed a question, “How do we get reactions from them to things that we're doing? How do we get better plugged in with what they're thinking?” It is clear he understands the value in communicating to a wider audience. The use of social media and its global appeal was evident this past summer with the Iranian elections, where scores of young people were able to tell the world of the atrocities by sending Twitter messages. The 140 character social media site had real time messages with links to video feeds or personal accounts that were replayed by news outlets like CNN or BBC.

It was several hours after the attacks had subsided that I was able to move to my sleeping quarters where I could use my personal laptop, which is unfiltered by Department of Defense firewalls, and use Twitter to alert family and friends that I was safe.  Picking up the phone is a little difficult here in the mountains of Afghanistan. I immediately received notification from family that they were happy to hear I was not in danger.

With technology like social media at our fingertips, it is a shame that military personnel are not given the opportunity to take advantage of this medium. In our world of quickly disseminated information, our society has grown accustomed to communicating in faster ways. Furthermore, operational security will always be a danger that the Pentagon will deal with. Simply by accessing your Hotmail, Gmail or other email accounts, one is open to a virus or attack. However, we should be allowed to use social media sites to have access of messages from dissident voices like those in Iran. Moreover, allowing our messages of schools or hospitals re-opening will bring good will. By limiting this voice, we lose the battle of educating ourselves and those who we are trying to convince not to harm us.

Sergio Rodriguera Jr. is a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer currently serving in Afghanistan at ISAF Headquarters.  He is a former Counter terrorism Advisor at the Department of Defense and Treasury.

Republican Politicians Make a Social Media Push

After the Senate health care bill passed this week, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California made it clear in the weekly GOP radio address that Republicans aren't happy about the direction Congress is taking.

"Let's resolve in the new year to end misguided efforts to create new laws that will cost even more jobs," he said.

But that weekly GOP message is no longer just on the radio. Now you can watch it on YouTube, which is becoming a popular tool for Republicans — as are Facebook and Twitter, where Republicans are taking their message directly to the American people.

Facebook Guide Book: Mashable Launches Hub For Facebook Resources

Whether you’re new to Facebook or an old hat, the magnitude of features and functionality in the enormous social network can still be somewhat daunting. From personal profiles to brand pages and applications to groups, there’s a lot to get up to speed on — and even an expert might have occasion to want a primer on one of the lesser-travelled corners now and then.

We’ve put together a collection of some of our best resources, how-tos and guides to help individuals, businesses, organizations and non-profits get the most out of your experiences on Facebook (Facebook). Similar to the Twitter Guide Book before it, this single hub is intended as a one-stop shop for building your mastery and getting more out of the world’s most popular social network.

4 Ways to Use Social Media Cues to Engage People

As much as we (rightly) praise Google for having transformed our lives for the better, sometimes we all want answers that go beyond the right search query.  Sometimes we want to reach out to someONE rather than someTHING.

But engaging in a conversation requires trust.  And just as no newsletter sign-up form or invitation should be without trust-building assurances and privacy statements, no social media invitation or landing page should be without its own persuasive and trust-building cues.

Social Media Budgets

It looks like budgets for Social Media in 2010 will not be affected by the current economic climate. In a recent article on , there is a forecast saying that Social Media budgets will actually increase for 2010 instead of decreasing. What's the issue here? The issue is that companies will either increase their budgets to do it, or may decrease budgets for other methods of marketing to accomplish this.

The Drunk Side of the U.S. Senate

Gee, I guess addressing the issue of health care reform drives one to drink. Just ask Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.). All I can say is…Wow!

8 Things a Geek Needs to Do Before 2010

It's one thing to have resolutions for the new year. I, for example, plan to lose weight, learn Python and design the perfect handbag. But since nothing satisfies like the quick achievement of a short-term goal, here are eight things every good nerd needs to to before the ball drops later this week.

These tasks comprise a quick to-do list that will leave you feeling competent and prepared for the decade that approaches. Also, you can play the condescension chip and start chiding friends who haven't checked off these items yet.

Why Social Media is Not Ruining Search Results

Now if you’ve been trolling the web like me, you may have stumbled across a post on Search Engine Land that talks about how social media is ruining search. The author talks about how search engine results pages (SERPs) should return both relevant and timely results – with an emphasis on relevance, while acknowledging that timeliness has it’s place – for example it helps consumers determine that a product is out of stock on an online retail site. However (the author argues), user generated content is not always authoritative and compromises the quality of search results; and for that reason social media should not be included in SERPs.

I respectfully disagree. Here are three good reasons why.

Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics of 2009

Last week, Twitter revealed its list of the most-discussed topics of 2009, based on Twitter’s trending topics. Now Facebook has come out with their own list, based on data from the millions of daily status updates of its users.

While the world’s largest social network took a different approach than its upstart competitor (explanation below), it did match some of Twitter’s “most discussed” topics of 2009. However, it seems as if Facebook’s data analysis has revealed that people care a great deal about family (#5), Facebook apps (#1), Lady Gaga (#12), and, yes, even Twitter (#10).

Firefox 3.5 Takes the Top Spot Worldwide

Firefox hit a new milestone today, as version 3.5 overtook Internet Explorer 7.0 with nearly 22% of the browser market, according to statistics from web analytics service StatCounter. This comes on the heels of statistics we saw earlier this month, which showed Firefox overtaking IE for overall usage in Germany.

YouTube is the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade

As the decade draws to a close, there’s at least one thing we can say about the social media space with a fairly high level of confidence: it’s here to stay. That said, looking ahead to the next ten years, it’s incredibly hard to predict how we’ll use social media — let alone which services will still be relevant — when we get to 2020.

Listen to Me: Healthcare Video Contest

It’s time for Harry Reid and Democratic Senators to stop insulting, ignoring, and misleading and start listening.  Record exactly what you want those politicians to hear from you (while keeping it clean and respectful) and upload it to this group now!

HOW:  Only OurGOP members with active accounts are eligible to participate.  Sign up for OurGOP here.  To enter, join the OurGOP group “Listen to Me: Health Care Videos” and upload your video to the group page before Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:59 pm EST.  To upload video, just click on “Add Videos” under “Get Involved” in the column to the left, attach your video, fill out the form, and upload – it’s that easy!

Outsourcing Social Media: Good or Bad Idea?

One of the big concerns about using social media for business and marketing is time. Social media activities do pose a risk of drawing you in and taking up a huge amount of your day just interacting with people.

Add that the technology is changing all the time.  It can seem impossible to keep up with all the tools, software, techniques, etiquette, and social media best practices.

It’s hardly surprising that people are looking to social media consultants, agencies and contractors to take on their social media activity. But should you? Let’s explore this.

Where's Your Donate Button?

Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

This is useful for ensuring that important parts of a page's user interface are visible by a wide audience. On the example page that you see when you first visit this site, there is a "donate now" button which falls within the 80% contour, meaning that 20% of users cannot see this button when they first visit the page. 20% is a significant number; knowing this fact would encourage the designer to move the button much higher in the page so it can be seen without scrolling.

Facebook: Introducing the Preferred Developer Consultant Program

We often hear from brands, celebrities, companies, and organizations who are looking for the best resources to start building an application on Facebook.com, optimize a Facebook Connect integration or build a Facebook Page. To help you accelerate your efforts, we are introducing the Preferred Developer Consultant program to connect people to the resources they need to build with Facebook products and technologies.

Predictions for 2010

This post is partially a response to Rouli Nir of Games Alfresco who wrote five predictions for 2010 in Augmented Reality. My site isn’t Augmented Reality specific, so I’ve posted three separate lists of five predictions each.

The first list has five predictions for Augmented Reality in 2010, the second has five predictions for the Internet in 2010, and because we’re at the beginning of a new decade, I’ve made five decade-long predictions.

It's Official! 'Winning in 2010" Now an E-Book Ready for Download

As you might could tell from the promo graphics popping up all over the site, the just-concluded How Candidates Can Use the Internet to Win in 2010 series is now a single publication ready for (free) download.

With five chapters covering the essential online tools and tactics that state- and local-level campaigns can use to find supporters, raise money and turn out voters in next year’s elections, the PDF/e-book provides a straightforward guide to leveraging both new and old online tools to win in 2010. Download now or browse by chapter, and don’t forget to spread the word.

Why Does Google Search Love Examiner.com?

If you type the name of a celebrity — say, Angelina Jolie — into Google News, chances are that somewhere in the top five results, you'll get a story from Examiner.com. This is particularly true if the celebrity is in the news that day. For early December, that means searches for Tiger Woods, Sandra Bullock and Weezer on Google News consistently brought up Examiner.com stories in the topmost results. And in those stories, by the way, there was very little actual news.

The Reason Social Media is Difficult for Most Organizations

Dating is a process. So is losing weight, being a public company and building a brand.

On the other hand, putting up a trade show booth is an event. So are going public and having surgery.

Events are easier to manage, pay for and get excited about. Processes build results for the long haul. 

There's more to Barack Obama's Facebook Feed

Our colleagues at Slate have released the latest version of their hit satirical feature, "Barack Obama's Facebook Feed." This edition has updates on health care and Sarah Palin -- as well as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's iTunes playlist.

10 Tips for Integrating Social Media With Marketing

We had an excellent seminar this morning at Brandswag. The seminar was over the concepts of integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy. It is extremely important that every business drive social media through traditional marketing practices…. and vice-versa.

It's Not Easy Being Popular. 77 Percent of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans.

In this age of instant Internet celebrity, anyone can become famous for 15 seconds (to rework Andy Warhol's oft-quoted maxim). But what does famous mean exactly when anyone can have a Facebook fan page?those public pages on Facebook set up by brands, media outlets, celebs, and wanna-be celebs. As it turns out, being popular is not as easy as it looks. A full 77 percent of Facebook fan pages have less than 1,000 fans, according to an upcoming report by Sysomos, a social media monitoring and analytics firm.

Update: Twitter to Charge for Tweets Next Year?

An announcement this week from one of the investors in Twitter has managed to surprise the usually unflappable Web 2.0 crowd by revealing that the company will begin charging for some services in January next year.

Japanese firm DG Mobile, which is part-owned by Digital Garage, a Twitter investor, revealed that the microblogging site would charge users not to write tweets, as had been anticipated, but to read those of key users. 

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Iraqi Govt YouTube Channel

On a recent visit to Iraq, Google CEO Eric Schmidt shot this video to welcome the Iraqi Government to YouTube. See the channel at: http://www.youtube.com/iraqigov