Yesterday, Twitter launched a redesigned homepage, which shows a shift in focus towards search (rather than specific users, as the old homepage highlighted). It seems that this new homepage could be a recognition, on Twitter’s part, of how users have shaped the microblogging platform - it’s now the place where you can find up-to-the-minute information on what’s happening NOW (rather than depending on search engines that are increasingly appearing to post more dated content, dependant on the slower nature of crawling the web and indexing content). Just look at the trends to see what people are talking about right this second (um…M&Ms and William Shatner? Really?). So does this poise Twitter to take on the search behemoths of Google and bing? Only time will tell…

Last month a social media analytics provider called Sysomos published a in-depth report on Twitter usage. Here are the 10 conclusions that might help a brand to  better understand the potential uses of Twitter:

• 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009.
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

And now some great eye candy to go along with your daily stalking of Twitter: Visible Tweets. Just check out what it did to the 4C tweets: By the way, are you following the 4C team on Twitter? If not - you should! @4cornersdesign

Twitter just launched a new architecture to help streamline some of their navigation, featuring a simplified top nav, and a tab-base right navigation for moving through tweets. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but check it out at Twitter!

I'll admit it - I'm a complete internet radio junkie. I love it, listen to it constantly, and rely on it to introduce me to new stuff. Up until now, I've been a solid last.fm girl, but I recently stumbled upon blip.fm. Blip is an odd combination of Twitter and internet radio, that allows you to become a "DJ," to "blip" what you're listening to, and to listen to other DJs who have similar tastes to you. I'm still trying to get a feel for how it all works, but it seems pretty great. Check it out here - and add me as a DJ - my DJ name is "isureamheather."

According to a new Nielsen Online report (and reported here by Wired), Twitter users have shot up 343% since September 2007 - making it the fastest growing social network in the United States. In growth rates, behind Twitter came Tagged.com and Ning. While Facebook has experienced a 116% growth since last year, MySpace still rules with themost members (59.4 million in September, compared to 39 million for Facebook), despite it's measly 1% jump from last year. See more on the Nielson Online report here.

Twitter has just passed the One Billion Tweets mark, according to GigaTweet!

Pink may or may not be the new black, but [I'm hoping that] Plurk may, in fact, be the new Twitter. Taking Tweeting up a few notches, Plurk displays your Plurks (140-character messages), as well as the Plurks from your friends and those you follow, in a really great visual timeline, taking status/Twitter stalking up to a whole new level. It also allows you to formulate your message with a variety of qualifiers (allowing others to see what you need, like, say, wonder, feel, etc.) at any given time (don't worry, there's also the option for the freestyle Plurk for you more free spirited folks out there). With an overall better design and layout, and a little bit more of a fun factor, I'm hoping Plurk will catch on over Twitter. I'm definitely a convert. Now if only I can figure out a way to integrate this with my Tumblr...hm...

It might seem like a bit of an overkill with all of these Twitter clones, but Yammer seems to fall into a bit more of a niche. Creating a network solely for you and your coworkers (based on your email addresses), Yammer lets you microblog what you're working on, and check in with your colleagues as well. You can also post updates directly through an IM service. Seems like it could be handy in a company where lots of people work offsite. Check it out here.

From former Google employees comes Cuil, the newest super engine to hit the net. I took a quick look around, and so far I really like what I see. It has a great clean design (including the option to view your search results in 2 or 3 columns), and great smart options for sorting your data (a search of the term "Olympics" presented me with tabs for Winter Olympics, Special Olympics, Summer Olympics, and categories such as "2012 Summer Olympics" and "IOC Members"). Cuil also presents a much cleaner summary of each page (in a small paragraph) than its competitors. I wonder if this will prompt enough people to make the switch over from Google...I think I'm convinced.

Finally, something for us [few] PC users [left] out there to get excited about! The Beta version of Google Chrome has launched today, and it's only available for those of us fortunate enough to be running Vista. My initial test run of it here is looking pretty good so far - I'm loving the visual representation of your most visited websites as the default homepage. Check it out here!

A wise man once said, "Wherever you go, there you are," and now with Geode, announced today from Mozilla Labs, your web browser will know where you are as well. Geode will be available in the upcoming beta releases of Firefox 3.1, and will allow users to fire up their computers from any location, direct their browser to their favorite review site (like Yelp, Citysearch, etc.), and have customized location-specific information surfaced. But the potential expands beyond just fun - imagine an RSS reader that knows the difference between Home and Work, or a news website that is truly local. Read more at the Mozilla Labs blog.

OMG I love robots. Seriously. (About as much as I love David Bowie.)

That's why I have to go check out Wakamuru who is "interning" at the NYC Uniqlo flagship store. I found this all out through his blog. Man, even robots have blogs these days. Check it out here. Apparently he also has a Facebook page. And a twitter page is in the works. So social-networky those robots are. So cute!

Wakamaru is "The robot designed to live with humans." "(the) design concept was to create "an object that can approach its user." "Wakamaru" is designed in the shape of a human being so that it is not considered simply a "machine" or a "terminal," but rather an "independent personality." Its cute expression and form make it appear friendly to everyone from children to elderly people, and suggest a possibility of human growth and development. "

Among his technological accomplishments, he can recognize faces (up to 100 people), respond when spoken to, meet a person's gaze, and offer up subjects of conversation. As "wakamaru" freely moves about an area he can decide for himself when to recharge – requiring no human assistance. He can also check your email, read you the news (from various feeds), schedule things for you, and take pictures and video for you that you can check remotely.

Read more about Wakamuru here.

Rumor has it there are people out there in Internetland that subscribe to several social networks/microblogging platforms. As a confirmed and (varyingly) active member of (ready for it?) Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Pownce, hi5, and Plaxo (phew!) myself, I've often been hit with the annoying inevitability of having to update my status up to 9 times over and simultaneously lead a life outside of the Internet! Sound familiar? Enter hellotxt. Super simple in concept, the site allows you to easily update your status (and check the status of your friends) on 24 different Social Networks and microblogging platforms. Being active and alive online just got that much easier. Check it out here.

No need to fret - turns out all that time spent trawling the search engines for the latest and greatest gossip...er...important news items is in no way detrimental to your brain functionality. On the contrary, a recent study shows that this activity among seasoned internet users actually promotes brain activity. Check out the full article at USA Today.

Last week the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint released a study that analyzed the 100 most valuable brands (according to BusinessWeek/Interbrand) and how they engage across 11 different online social-media venues. The result of the study was published as  "engagement database" that critiqued the brands on not only their breadth of engagement across these channels, but also their depth, such as whether they reply to comments made on blog posts. Each brand was given a numerical score. The top 10 ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie - Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The full report is available at http://bit.ly/KRGNt. Personally, it's questionable to assume that  a company's social engagement can be correlated with its financial performance.   But, in Steve Rubel's words "good use of social media could be seen as a proxy for an innovative culture, eagerness to engage with consumers and take risks, a net positive for any business." Much more interesting then this is however to take a look at what the social media strategy of those brands have in common: All top brands weren't afraid of innovation, did so early, often (also after set-backs) and incrementally:

• Starbucks and Dell were early to leverage their fans for corporate crowd-sourcing.
• With Nikeplus.com, Nike was early in the game to use an innovative technology in order to connect its worldwide fan base in early 2006.
• Quite a few of the top 10 brands embraced Twitter early and in innovative ways. Amazon started offering deals on Twitter back in 2007 and EBay started to live-tweet earnings in 2008.
• Microsoft encouraged their employees to blog as early as in the late 1990. Yahoo and Google started and actively promoted their corporate and product blogs in 2004
• Other top brands were building out communities to connect customers and employees early on. Microsoft, for example, launched its inventive Channel 9 platform for developers back in 2004

Jacqui Cheng over at Ars Technica writes...

"How many times have you stumbled home after a long night out with
friends, only to plop down in front of the computer and start sending
e-mails that you would wake up regretting the next day? ..."

"Called "Mail Goggles," the Gmail add-on makes sending e-mail from Gmail
more difficult during certain times that you can set manually (while
sober, that is). How does it do this? If you have Mail Goggles
installed—which you can do by going to the "Labs" tab under your Gmail
settings and turning them on—it will force you to answer a series of
math questions before sending out any new messages..."

Read the full article here.

"Even the smallest changes can make a huge difference in performance!" 10 Best Practices: 1. Use Headlines, Subheadings and Breadcrumb navigation to show shoppers where they are. 2. Make sure contact information and a phone number are visible above the fold and easy for shoppers to see. 3. Keep the site search function above the fold and in plain view so shoppers can query the catalog anytime. 4. Consider adding a search by category refinement into the site search for easier access to site sections. 5. Allow shoppers to show a designated number of items per page anytime with a “show per page” sort option. 6. Show related products and cross sell before the checkout process and after items have been added to the cart. 7. Allow shoppers to add items to their cart before making them register for an account. 8. Make sure shoppers can easily access their cart contents and that it can easily be modified or adjusted. 9. Use “add to cart buttons” with larger font, that are easy to see and consider different wording like “proceed to checkout.” 10. Allow shoppers to add items to a wishlist using appropriate wording like “add to wishlist” rather than “buy now.” We could actually go on and on, but we will save that for the next entry. Cheers