Yahoo for years was the world’s most popular website — its ubiquitous portal has dominated the web since the 90s. Two years ago however, Google vaulted past Yahoo and became the Internet’s most popular destination. Last month, it became Facebook’ turn to knock Yahoo down another peg.

In December 2009, Yahoo drew 133.45 million visitors in the U.S. Facebook wasn’t far behind with 132.13 million uniques. In the first month of 2010 though, there was a role reversal: Facebook’s traffic rose to 133.62 million visitors, while Yahoo shrunk down to 132.00 million.

Facebook’s shown no signs of stopping its meteoric rise, either. It recently celebrated its 400 millionth user and that number continues to rise in rapid fashion. Now the only website standing between it and web domination is Google.com.

Post sourced from Mashable.com

Find out more about him here!

Amber is the Director of Community for Radian6, and produces really helpful, and insightful content on a weekly basis.

This week she’s written a post outlining the practical realities of Social Media Measurement: Practical Social Media Measurement: Awareness, Attention, Reach

I’d also recommend:

1.) Amber’s “Social Media Starter Kit”
2.) Getting a Foothold in Social Media

The launch of the iReporter enhances Newspepper’s existing offering to include coverage of events in real-time using a range of handheld device based apps. By giving the iReporter pre-organized access to a client’s existing online distribution networks on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Newspepper will be able to deliver live coverage of client events direct to their online communities via the Internet.

Using applications such as Tweetdeck, Twitvid, Audioboo, Facebook, Ipadio and Twitpic, the iReporter will upload a predetermined number of tweets, pictures, audio recordings and videos interviews, with key people throughout, as events unfold.

“The success of services like Twitter show that people want short stabs of information as it’s happening. Whilst it’s great having an event filmed, creating a video, even with low production values, takes lots of editing time, needing a one or two day turnaround. Some of your network, especially those wanting to join in online want to know what is happening in real-time, as the event is unfolding,” said Newspepper MD and Founder Hermione Way.

“I understand that social media and tech savvy companies will be able to do this for themselves, but organizing an event can be stressful and sometimes people neglect their online community and forget to update to their Twitter stream or Blog. This service is aimed at companies and organizations who want a dedicated social media reporter at their event, updating constantly to their online community”, she added.

Besides the iReporter, the company is providing new services including live-streaming, video newsletters and social media integration.

Newspepper is an Internet video production company with a unique model of training student and graduates in media by offering paid on-the-job work experience, whilst providing their clients with high quality, low cost media services. Newspepper’s existing clients include the BBC, Channel 4, NESTA and a number of government departments.

Keep up with Newspepper’s blog for up to date news http://www.newspepper.com/np/blog, Visit www.newspepper.com, or email info@newspepper.com

Luckily Ryan from digital agency Brands2Life sent me the NavMan Spirit 500 to review over Christmas.

Check out my review.

The fact that it went viral is also a testament to it’s genius!

The latest episode we’ve seen has the Comedy Central “Juggernaught” poking fun at Whaling, Reality Television, the Hiroshima Bombing, and Rock Band!

No sooner had we seen it, clips and comments on the whole episode were present online!

Trey Parker and Matt Stone do walk a fine line with South Park, however the fact that they poke fun at absolutley everything helps get them off the hook.

We just happen to love South Park too, so we’ll let them off!!

Now, TwitCritics aims to do the same with Twitter “reviews”, piling up positive and negative tweets about movies and creating a score and a top list of the most popular movies currently playing.

The idea is certainly not new; we’ve seen FlixPulse do pretty much the same thing before, but that site hasn’t been updated in a while. But we like it: it’s definitely an easy way to check out the pulse of the Twitter community with one glance.

Ideas are one thing, however, execution is another. TwitCritics probably parses tweets for certain keywords to determine whether a tweet is positive or negative, but it’s often wrong. For example, this tweet was flagged as negative: “ajawest: where the wild things are was spectacular. the soundtrack was perfect, and therefore must be shared: http://wearenowfloatinginspace.com.” Yes, the users have the option to fix wrong calls made by the algorithm, but we’ve found too many mistakes to call it reliable.

One also has to wonder whether tweets have enough information to be dubbed positive or negative. If someone says a movie was “scary”, is that a positive or a negative review? From what we’ve seen, TwitCritics is not really sure, and, frankly, neither are we.

If TwitCritics manages to tweak its algorithm to be a bit more accurate, and perhaps improves the (currently very spartan looking) visual aspect of the site, it might be a nice resource. Until then, take its scores with a grain of salt.

post sourced from mashable and twitcritics

Straight away people are trying to drill some cash out of the whole thing with merchandise.

This includes the “Go Falcon, Go!” t-shirt that is now available on Zazzle, featuring the floating jiffy pop popcorn bag that the US was following on!

College Humor has also churned out a clever take on the whole story, complete with references to the massive influence it had in the world of social media:

Fair enough it’s not the plane itself doing the Tweeting: it’s actually the airline. Lufthansa has set up a new service named MySkyStatus that automatically posts the current position of your flight to Twitter or Facebook so your friends can follow your travels.

Typical status updates read “flying over San Francisco Intl, California 94030, USA on United Airlines” or “flying over Grantsville, UT 84029, USA on United Airlines”. It seems the system posts the flight’s position around once per hour, pulling info from a database of flight information.