According to The Nielsen Company, global* consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year when users were spending just over three hours on social networking sites. In addition, the overall traffic to social networking sites has grown over the last three years.

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.

blog.nielsen.com

It was a big year for technology: Twitter and Facebook’s popularity exploded, while new smartphones, e-readers and a host of other gadgets cropped up to compete for our plugged-in affection.

But into each electronic life a little digital rain must fall.

We polled a handful of the most tech-savvy folks we know for their thoughts on the worst moments in technology from 2009 — the most epic “fails” of the year.

And now, in no particular order, our 2009 Tech Fails …

Y2-what? Zune gets off to a bad start

Technically it was a New Year’s Eve surprise. But many owners of Microsoft’s Zune media player started 2009 with little more than a paperweight with LED lights.

At midnight on December 31, all Zune’s 30-GB MP3 players froze up. Microsoft explained the problem as a problem with the way the device’s internal clock recognized (or didn’t recognize) leap years.

The glitch only lasted a day, but didn’t help a device that was already failing to gain ground on Apple’s iPod.

TwitterPeek fails to pique interest

The reaction of many in the tech community to the release of the TwitterPeek device was a collective, “Huh?”

Sure, there are some people who don’t have smartphones and don’t want to pay for expensive mobile plans. But is there really a market for a $199 device that does nothing but let you manage your Twitter feed?

“I already have a $200 device to update Twitter,” said one techie we spoke to. “It’s called my iPhone.”

The folks at Peek, makers of TwitterPeek, had already made the Pronto — a device that handled only texts and e-mails. Maybe a combination of the two gadgets is in the works. But even then, would enough people be interested? Probably not.

Facebook backtracks on owning your stuff

OK … so every time Facebook makes even the most minute changes, it sparks an outcry among its 350 million members, not to mention (irony alert) dozens of new Facebook groups geared at making the site change back.

But a terms-of-service change in February went further, implying that Facebook owned the rights to anything users uploaded to the site. Another change suggested that Facebook held those rights forever, even if people quit the site or took the material down.

Facebook responded that it simply needed those rights to be able to post information to other users. But when the backlash continued, the site eventually switched the terms back to their former wording.

Sidekick punts user info

In what one observer called “an almost incomprehensible data disaster,” T-Mobile told users in October that a server error at a Microsoft subsidiary had lost users‘ personal data it had stored for the devices.

All of it.

Phone numbers, contact lists, calendars and other information was gone — and even new data would disappear if users turned off or recharged the phone.

Users were offered free service and rebates in the wake of the mess, as T-Mobile scrambled to recover what little of the data it could. But that didn’t stop the lawsuits, Internet griping and ill will generated by the snafu.

Hacking Twitter

It started as a story about someone hacking the accounts of several Twitter employees. Then, after Twitter said the attack was limited to personal information, not sensitive, company-related stuff, the hacker behind the attack struck again — in a different way.

He sent 310 documents to leading technology blog TechCrunch. The blog published a small portion of them and sent the documents to Twitter, which is when the company learned that they included financial projections and notes from high-level executive meetings.

Twitter responded by reportedly closing the security holes that allowed the attack.

Enough with the updates, already!

This was the year that online social media exploded. That’s good news for the future of Facebook, Twitter and the like.

But sometimes it just got to be a bit too much.

Members of Congress abandoned any pretense of paying attention to President Obama’s State of the Union speech by updating their Twitter feeds as he was speaking.

There was the groom who updated his Facebook relationship status at the altar. And the women who tweeted during childbirth. [In fairness, the most high-profile tweeting new mom was Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams].

And that’s not even mentioning all those friend requests you got from your grade-school teachers and members of your mom’s knitting circle.

Hyped-up Conficker fails

This is a failure we’re glad to report.

The Conficker worm was, by all accounts, a serious bit of malware that infected as many as 10 million computers worldwide. Instead of attacking those computers, it was designed to control them, paving the way for later attacks.

When researchers spotted the date April 1 in the worm’s coding, speculation began mounting that a major April Fools’ Day attack was on its way. Instead, it was mostly quiet — a false alarm of Y2K proportions.

“I think the joke’s on us a little bit, which you would have expected, having an April 1 date,” Holly Stewart, threat response manager for IBM’s X-Force, a computer security service, said at the time.

Attacks cripple Twitter, Facebook

On August 6, the concept of computer addiction didn’t seem so silly.

A massive denial-of-service attack hit Twitter, Facebook and the LiveJournal blogging site. Twitter was by far the hardest hit, completely blacking out for several hours.

The attacks were believed to have targeted a blogger in the country of Georgia who had been critical of Russia. The attacks, the blogger said, coincided with the one-year anniversary of renewed violence between the two countries.

What was telling was how freaked out people became. Users described feeling naked, jittery and upset without the ability to post on Twitter. When the site came back up, the top topic of conversation was the hashtag for “When Twitter Was Down.”

Gmail crashes

We heard some different views on this year’s string of outages or slowdowns of Google’s popular e-mail system.

Some thought coverage was overblown.

But as more computing power moves “into the cloud,” people and businesses are relying on programs like Gmail not just for e-mails, but to archive documents, chat with friends or co-workers and store contact information.

Gmail went through several high-profile crashes in 2009, including one in February and two in September. While e-mail crashes are nothing new to any provider, 2009’s were the first since Google begain offering offline support.

Response to the crashes simultaneously showed how many people depend on Gmail and how easy it is to make fun of those people. Social-networking blog Mashable responded with a list of five things to do while Gmail is down (No. 1: “Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming, ‘Gmail is down!’ and inquiring, ‘Is Gmail down?’ “)

I got Google Wave — now what?

OK, so it’s a little early in the game to call this one a total fail. But after the breathless anticipation that greeted Google Wave and the hot rush to get an invitation for its beta testing, lots of users found themselves asking, “OK … now what?”

Google, for its part, released an 80-minute tutorial video — leading some observers to argue that if you need an hour and 20 minutes to explain what your product does, you might be in trouble.

It’s designed as a platform to allow users to communicate and collaborate in real time — a tool some predict will be used effectively by developers in the future.

But for now, it’s inspired the creation of a Web site — Easier to Understand Than Wave — on which users compare the online tool to other sometimes obtuse subjects (Both Ozzy Osbourne and the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia are easier to understand than Wave, users voted, while Sarah Palin and Scientology are both more difficult).

www.cnn.com

Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is “the great challenge of the age,” Schmidt said in an interview in front of thousands of CIOs and IT Directors at last week’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.

Gartner is the largest and most respected analyst firm in the world and much of what Schmidt said in his 45 minute interview was directed specifically at business leaders, but we’ve excerpted 6 minutes that we believe is of interest to anyone who’s touched by the web.

Highlighted comments include:

* Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.

* Today’s teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.

* Five years is a factor of ten in Moore’s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.

* Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance – and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

* “We’re starting to make signifigant money off of Youtube, content will move towards more video.

* “Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results.”

* There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.

* “We can index real-time info now – but how do we rank it?”

* It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that “is the great challenge of the age.” Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

There’s lots more in the full 45 minutes of Schmidt’s interview, including a statement that a Google OS Netbook will be here in 2010, with HTML5 local caching for offline use.

That’s the roadmap, though, that’s guiding much of what Google is doing today. From Chrome OS to Google Social Search.

www.readwriteweb.com

“Begun” will be the only advertising system on ru.yahoo.com. Financial and other details of the transaction or “Begun“, or Yahoo! not reveal.

According to the newspaper, formerly a partnership with Yahoo! discussed Yandex, the largest owner in RuNet content network Yandex.Direct. The deal did not materialize – the parties agreed that the audience ru.yahoo.com, consisting of expatriates, unattractive for Russia advertisers.

“Begun” – the second largest player in Russia’s market of contextual advertising. His ads displayed on the portals of Rambler, Mail.ru, a social network Odnoklassniki.ru on blog LiveJournal, the site “Афиша” and other major resources.

lenta.ru

- Ruslan, please tell me what the current audience of the Internet in Russia?
- Recent data of our study show that the average monthly audience of the Internet in Russia is 27 million, representing approximately 45% of the population. I want to emphasize that when we talk about these figures, we are not referring to all the inhabitants of the country, but Russians over 12 years living in cities of more than 100 thousand people. In Moscow, with a monthly audience of the Internet is 62% of the city, in St. Petersburg – 56%. Over the past 12 months the number of Internet users in Russia grew by 16%.

- Whether the crisis has influenced the growth of connections to the World Wide Web?
- I do not think that in the current economic situation increased dramatically slow connections. This is sufficiently inertial process. Far more, in our opinion, limit the growth of infrastructure problems – put simply, the possibility of laying the cable. On the other hand, in some age groups reach of the Internet has already exceeded 90%, and in this case to the audience simply do not have the physical capacity to expand further.

- How would you describe the new Internet user in terms of its affiliation to the social and age group?
- The main group of web users in Russia - people under 45 years. The largest increase in recent years was recorded in a group of 25 to 45 years, because a group of 12 to 24 years sooner mastered this medium. We assume that the audience of the Internet in the future in its composition will be more similar to the urban population of our country.

- How to change user preferences in this new situation? What resources are becoming more interesting to him, which are less so?
- We do not know what services or types of sites will dominate in the coming years. Rather – it is a question to the heads of major Internet projects. In my opinion, the main advantage of the Internet over other media is that it can provide a high level of focus, targeting services, advertising services on the narrow group of users. And on this basis will be based services of the future. Media will change the future of Internet companies will become more personalized.

- And what resources are currently the most popular in RuNet?
- In terms of audience leaders are portals (Mail.Ru, Yandex and Rambler), and social networks – «classmates» and «VKontakte». That is in Russia’s segment of the Internet is now leading service platform.

- Is a conflict between the popularity of social networks and the reluctance of advertisers place where they are not sure of the quality of content?
- Rather, in this case is to talk about the need to develop new advertising models. On the one hand, there are resources with great coverage – a social network ( «classmates», «VKontakte» and others), as well as blogservisy, such as «Learn» and LiveInternet. On the other hand – there are companies interested in promoting their goods and services on the web. The problem is that social networks and resources with User-Generated Content (content created by the user. – ВЗГЛЯД) differ from what the media used to seeing the advertiser. Advertising model that is applicable to other media, the Internet does not work. But, in my opinion, the removal of this misunderstanding – a matter of time. Advertising model is already formed and can be effective. To do this, overcome the inertia of the advertiser, as well as to develop the most appropriate technologies and tools from the owners of sites or sellers of Internet advertising. Note the last transaction to purchase DST 2% of Facebook. While this is an investment in the future. But the deal itself shows that the belief that a new advertising model will be found there.

- Nevertheless, the yellow press, for example, already more than a hundred years, but the important «brand» advertising on the pages of such publications are not. Granted, the subway you can see a lot of reading tabloids.
- I want to note that the scope of the audience itself is no longer a single value for the advertiser. An example of traditional media, which had in the past monopoly on information dissemination and advertising and then remained in the past. For those who wish to advertise their products today are no more problems with the report information to the consumer. There are many ways to communicate about themselves – from handing out leaflets on the streets to interactive advertising on the Internet. Today, advertisers can choose which channel of communication they use. They can decide what is more important – the ratio of «price-quality» (which means I will be cheaper) or a component of the image (as far as I want my brand associated with a particular news or visual side by side). And today it is – choice advertiser.

- Social networks have become to some extent a symbol of «fat years». Can I say that in the new economic situation, its peak of development they have already passed? Or they still potential for growth?
- I look at it a little differently: «fat» years were purely for the owners of these services for site owners who could afford to invest in resources that are not expecting to receive instantaneous income. Yes, in the last few years have seen a boom in social networking, but from the perspective of users, it has nothing to do with «fat» years, is largely a question of content and novelty pnternet services. So I think that social networks a great potential for quality development in the future.

- How to express these changes?
- Any media is fighting for his time listener, reader or viewer. Today, we see that the Russians began to spend more time on the Internet. There is a growing domestic use, the number of sessions in the evening. This means that the Internet already competently competes with other media. Before television, for example, was the subject of family viewing – can recall now, where the family sits together in front of a television in the evening in the living room. Now it’s already gone. Today we see multicontact Wednesday – no surprise the man sitting in front of TV with the laptop, and certainly almost certainly his next laptop will be based on a mobile phone.
Russia market is faced with two important trends in recent years: the dramatic growth of the Internet - the coverage, the number of users, time spent in the web, on the one hand, and on the other – the development of cable and satellite television, when the number of channels available to people, sharply increased. This is largely influenced the model of the electronic media.
It must be said that in Russia a unique situation – worldwide cable and satellite TV have coverage before broadband Internet access, but in Russia it happened simultaneously.
Against this background, active, a new model of media consumption, and for providers of electronic services an opportunity to personalize the services provided. In my opinion, this trend will dominate in the future.

- In this context, large Internet providers, began to make a single sentence «Internet + TV», caught the trend and decided to use it themselves or it formed?
- I think what happened here a combination of factors.

- How is the case with advertising budgets on the Internet? I wonder whether this medium for advertisers?
- Internet has left the position of «poor relation», where advertising money were given as a residual. The vast majority of companies, in our experience, are looking at the Internet as a very important and promising communication channel. Another thing is that, as I said, the original advertising model, which worked on the classic media, is not applicable here, requires new solutions.

- How will the crisis change the situation?
- I think that the crisis, paradoxically, would have a positive impact on Internet industry. The fact that the current economic situation has forced advertisers to more closely analyze the distribution of advertising budgets. At the same time period, when the Internet was considered as merely a newfangled technological toy was unclear how it can be used as an advertising platform, has gone. Everyone understands that this is an important channel of communication with consumers. Today it is becoming clear that the Internet in Russia as a media segment is still undervalued, that the amount of invested money in this environment of proportion to the volume of contacts that she can give. Therefore, I am sure that in 2009 many companies increase their online advertising investment.

- And as the crisis in general affect the media market?
- Today we are seeing two trends in the advertising market in Russia: first, to increase the share of television advertising budgets, because of the difficult economic period, TV - the most effective media for large advertisers. On the other hand, also increases the Internet. And the media such as outdoor advertising, press and radio, unfortunately, suffer from the worst of the crisis.

- Why is television in the crisis becomes so important to advertisers?
- First of all, television – is cheap in terms of the value of the contact. No other media provides the same coverage as television. TV at the moment of uncertainty at the end of last year, when market players do not understand what will be marketing the model in 2009, became a kind of money «vacuum» in the advertising market, dragging themselves advertising budgets from other media. This was due to the fact that advertisers in Russia continue to perceive the TV as a guarantor – «very foundations» advertising market.

- How changing TV using? What began to look more, that began to look less?
- Television in our country remains largely entertaining.

- Despite the crisis? That is not news began to look more?
- News consumption remains a niche, except, God forbid, emergencies, when they all rushed to see what happens. News ether component itself, its value for the viewer is not decisive. With the development of Internet television lost its monopoly on the news and on the speed of their delivery spectators. News, of course, must be on the air, but they do not attract the viewer. Television for the viewer today – is primarily a channel of entertainment. Hence the high interest in serials and entertainment programs. This category also includes programs and sports broadcasts.

- Why is the background of sporting success in 2008 television still remains «serial»?
- Due to the fact that the sporting event actually watching – once. FIFA Football spectators look on during the time of the meeting. Just like the Olympics. But there is always a question of filling the ether and attract visitors during periods when there are any high-profile events. Against this background, the charm of serials from the perspective of television – that you can during the season to maintain a more or less permanent interest of the audience.

- It happens all over the world?
- Yes, so the sports channels around the world, usually paid.

- What do you see the situation on the media market after the economic stabilization will occur?
- Competition for the time the consumer media content between the media will only increase. First of all, due to the emergence of new media, Internet development, satellite and cable television. Against this background will be the fragmentation of audiences, and the proportion of time that a user in the sum will be spent on each of the media, will decline. In such a situation, in terms of audience, inevitably a reduction in the proportion of leading players in media markets and a bigger share of the second and third tier. On the other hand, I am sure that during the crisis period, we will see a new wave of mergers and acquisitions in the media market and, consequently, will form the new media structure. Perhaps as strengthening the position of the leading players of today and the emergence of new companies.

vz.ru

According to one version, the stolen data could be collected through the so-called fishing pages. Outwardly, these pages are similar to known resources, it’s why people often take them for the same website and enter there username and password.

news.yandex.ru

Experts have determined that site where have been published passwords (83.133.120.252), known as fishingsite and will blocked when you try to access it.

According to preliminary data, the scheme of the abduction of a login and password for access to social networks are as follows: first, to computer users from installing malware Trojan.Win32.VkHost.an, which was distributed through the application of social network (now it is blocked). After installing the system this Trojan substitute the contents of the hosts file to the following: 83.133.120.252 vkontakte.ru and 83.133.120.252 odnoklassniki.ru.

Subsequently, when a user tries to open the site of one of these social networks, it redirected to fishing page, which was required to enter your username and password. Registration data left in the database on the same site, a user reported that his account will be blocked, and to unlock you need to send in a short number of SMS, the value of which amounted to $ 10.

Experts recommend that users of networks check your hosts file and if they find links to vkontakte.ru and odnoklassniki.ru, delete these files.

Also, all users’ VKontakte and Odnoklassniki recommended to change all passwords. In the case of falling in the Similar fishing Pages should not enter their login and password, and send any SMS.

Of course, social media is starting from a smaller base. Forrester estimates that $716 million will be spent on the medium this year, growing to $3.1 billion in 2014. At that point, social media will be a bigger marketing channel than both email and mobile, but still just a fraction of the size of search or display advertising ($31.6B and $16.9B, respectively).

Not surprisingly, some of this growth comes at the expense of offline advertising. Forrester estimates that online advertising will grow from 12 percent of total marketing spend this year to 21 percent by 2014, meaning that offline ad spend will fall. In fact, Forrester concludes that “overall advertising budgets will decline,” meaning efficiencies are being had by shifting money to the Web.

mashable.com

• interchange of experience between the leading market players;
• customer and industry advocating through developing Social Media Code of Ethics;
• promoting new approaches to PR and marketing;
• social media trainings;
• professional community building;
• developing industry standards.

“Social media market is growing in Russia,” said Anna Rokina, NetMind research director. “And we really need some quality standards and guidelines to be developed for those working here. We also need some measurement standards for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising and promotional campaigns being implemented in social media”.

The Social Media Association has its steering committee with:
Edelman Imageland Russia (Olga Rasulova), Netmind. Social Media (Anna Rokina), SK Content Group (Sergey Kuznetsov), Redkaya Marka interactive marketing company (Anton Popov), Comunica agency (Mikhail Umarov), IPSOS, Affect agency, BigIdea and ArtStyle MEDIA advertising & communication agency.

The Association will join Russian companies communicating with their customers through social media and blogosphere, agencies offering promotion in social media and doing it effectively, experts and freelancers working with social media and industry analysts and researchers.

www.runetreview.com