Users that click on over to The Pirate Bay to satisfy their torrent needs will notice that the site has been renamed “The Research Bay.” This temporary change is an effort by the popular torrent site to help researchers learn …

Millennial Media released its latest Mobile Mix report, looking at the impact the Verizon iPhone has made, as well as the growth of tablets/connected devices. In addition, there is some data on apps, and a comparison of different platforms, based …

Last week, we asked if you were addicted to social media.  A new report by Edison research suggests that we are all consuming social media, as well as traditional types of media at skyrocketing rates. Obviously, the proliferation of internet …

I can’t remember the last time I went without my smartphone. Camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains, miles away from civilization, I still walked far enough out to get a signal and some edge service. Don’t judge, I really wanted …

In figures released today, technological researchers Gartner predict that by the end of 2012 almost half of all smartphones purchased worldwide will run on Android OS. Gartner projects that 2011 sales of smartphones worldwide will jump 57.7% from 2010, topping …

Techlightenment, a division of Experian, has partnered with performance-based ad network Adknowledge, to launch as social research platform on Facebook. The Social Research Platform (SRP) can layer opt-in social data of a user’s interests and demographics on top of survey …

It doesn’t seem like too long ago when tiny phones were all the rage.  They were all touted as lightweight and super thin – and the closer to the size of a Zippo, the better.  Well, according to a new …

I just saw a short online article summarizing results of a survey sponsored by CareerBuilder.com. The article had the provocative headline “Survey: Cutting business travel cuts business.”

It opened with two bullet points in bold face on a highlighted background:

SiteKreator, a small business website builder, has just released the results of their study in which they analyzed 5,000 random websites through 2010. The results revealed that small businesses who update their site content more often receive more traffic on a monthly basis vs sites who make less frequent updates. Additionally, sites which leveraged social media in their online strategies also received more traffic than sites not using social media.

HP has released an interesting report looking at where Trending Topics come from on Twitter. It claims that mainstream media are responsible for a lot of them. 

Millennial Media released its Mobile Mix report for January, looking at trends for connected devices, mobile manufacturers, operating systems, and apps. "Last month we saw significant OS and Manufacturer growth on our network," a representative for the firm tells WebProNews. "iOS outpaced all other operating systems experiencing a 47% increase month-over-month. HTC claimed the number two spot on our Top Manufacturers ranking and is quickly closing the gap with Apple for the top manufacturer spot."

According to the latest post on the Hitwise blog, the volume of visits to Quora nearly tripled in January due to considerable coverage from technology news websites. Below are highlights from the post:

Here is the latest in the very useful series of longitudinal studies on social media use by The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth led by Nora Barnes.  This one covered Social Media Usage in the Inc. 500.

Many are claiming this year as the year of "social mobile".  Even Facebook’s CTO announced that one of the primary objectives for Facebook this year is mobile, a statement that is backed with increased emphasis on its geolocation tool – Facebook Places.

Android is now the leading smartphone platform according to Canalys, which just published its Q4 2010 report on the subject. Shipments of smartphones with Google’s mobile operating system reached 32.9 million. 

The fourth quarter saw 101.2 million smart phone shipments in all, representing an in crease of 89% year-over-year.

Millennial Media has released its latest monthly SMART report, looking at the mobile advertising landscape. The report looks at the top verticals (six of which had triple digit growth YoY).

It’s that time of year again that we can look forward to the Edelman Trust Barometer which was published today. There are some important insights for corporate communicators and I have summarised a few that caught my attention.

Millennial Media has released its monthly Mobile Mix report looking at the smartphone market for the month of December. For the first time, Android surpassed iOS as the largest smartphone OS on the Millennial network, with an 8% increase month-over-month and 46% impression share on the firm’s network in December. iOS currently has a 32% share.

For context, Millennial’s network is the largest mobile ad network in the U.S. 

I’ve received a series of inbound requests for comments based on a report from Gartner, an IT analyst firm, that estimates as many as 70-percent of social media campaigns will fail in 2011.

Which is more valuable to business – Facebook or Twitter? It’s a question that business owners struggle with every day in the quest for building a larger customer base, and retaining the customers they already have. It’s a question that won’t have the same answer for every business. It’s also a question that requires the evaluation of a great deal of variables on a per business basis. 

ABI Research, which released a study on Mobile Messaging Services, is saying that over seven trillion SMS messages will be sent in 2011. That’s worldwide, from about 4.2 billion mobile subscriptions.

ABI says SMS is being increasingly regarded as something of a commodity by users, due to falling delivery costs and high competition.