I am just on the way out the door but I caught this (opens in PDF) excellent news release by Nielsen/NetRatings stating that "one in four members of UK social networks use their phones to network." Now considering that Europeans tend to be dramatically ahead of North Americans in cellular adoption this statistics release seemed worth of attention.

Here is a chart that really drove home the popularity of social networking via mobiles (click the image for a larger version):

The December 2007 figures from Nielsen//NetRatings show the US search market share for Google declined from the previous month.

Suppose you’re promised one reward, and then often given two. Or promised two rewards, and sometimes given one. Studies have found that both humans and monkeys prefer the first scenario, but in the world of online advertising, execs expect to know exactly what’s going on.

Canadian revenues from online advertising hit C $1.01 billion (US $894 million) in 2006, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, a jump of 80 percent in one year.

CNET’s Elinor Mills reports on a Nielsen//NetRatings and WebVisible study today that indicates that a whopping 92% felt that receiving local business ads on their cell phones would be “irritating.” This doesn’t bode well for mobile marketers, many of whom are hoping to bank on the hyper local third screen.

Other key (non-mobile-related) findings:

$10 billion is a lot of money, but some say that’s how much Facebook is worth.  $15 billion is, of course, even more, and the social network’s value has also been connected to that figure.  Believe it or not, this isn’t total lunacy.

The latest rumors being reported that Microsoft might invest a 5 percent stake in Facebook worth up to $500 million that would give the social networking site a valuation of $10 billion the question becomes is Facebook really worth that much money?

An impressive piece of news came out of the UK today: Facebook has overtaken MySpace in terms of unique visitors.  But strangely, Facebook was overtaken by a network called PerfSpot in terms of growth.

U.S. Internet users between the ages of 12-17 who visit both MySpace and Facebook spend more time at each site than those who visit just one or the other according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Google does well in just about every comparison, and the newest data from Nielsen//NetRatings doesn’t contradict that trend.  Microsoft and Yahoo also performed admirably, however, and in some ways, beat the boys from Mountain View.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama is attracting more visitors to his campaign Web site than any of the other presidential candidates according to the Nielsen Company.

Nielsen//NetRatings has announced the leaders in three Web categories. Search, career development and multi-category travel have had high month- over- month visitor retention rates from June to July, but also had audience overlap with other competitors in their categories.

If it’s a well-known social network, and it’s not owned by AOL, it’s probably in okay shape.  That’s what I’m starting to conclude, anyway, after viewing the latest numbers from Nielsen//NetRatings; among the top ten sites, everything other than AOL Hometown and AOL People Connection is going up.

Nielsen//NetRatings and Mediamark Research have launched a single source database of consumer’s off-line and online media usage.

We’ve said it time and time again: in the 2008 presidential campaign, the Web will play a major role.  But as new numbers come out concerning Web ad buying, we’re getting a clearer idea of how the candidates have responded to the online world.

Nielsen//NetRatings plans to bid adieu to page views, a long-time site metric that has been made obsolete by online video and Ajax page technology.

MySpace has long been the UK’s leading social network (in terms of traffic), but the site seems to be losing its touch.  Conversely, two competitors – Bebo and Facebook – are starting to show strong gains of their own.

Friday is the end of the workweek.  The day should move along quickly, smoothly, and without any surprises.  In that spirit, then, we bring you the results of the latest Nielsen//NetRatings search share rankings: in May of 2007, Google was still on top.

There is a science behind feeding your data to the search engines. It has become a complicated specialty. As the search engines and the internet have become more and more complicated to avoid spam and clutter, the criteria for placement on the first page results of coveted search terms has become more stringent and the competition has increased. 

YouTube is often thought of as a powerful political tool, and, well, it probably is.  But new statistics indicate that YouTube users gravitate towards mainstream candidates, and that “negative” videos are among the most popular political clips out there.

Australia’s online population may be the smallest in the Asia-Pacific region, but in terms of Internet penetration, Australia has a solid presence.

In their new Australia Online report, eMarketer estimates that 66 percent of Australians will use the Internet in 2007, which is on par with more populated countries in the region such as Japan (69 %) and South Korea (72%).

eMarketer believes Australian Internet penetration will reach 72 percent in 2011.

UK women between the ages of 18-34 are now the most dominant group online according to Nielsen//NetRatings.