A new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Experian’s ProtectMyID.com found that people are doing little to protect their personal information on social networks, opening them up to increased vulnerability for ID theft. While about 80% of those surveyed expressed concern about security around social media, over half of them aren’t doing anything about it.

uTest has released the results from a check-in services "Bug Battle" competition, in which over 300 users from about 40 countries reported bugs in popular check-in services Fousquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite. A total of 870 bugs were reported – technical, functional, and GUI bugs in the web and mobile apps of these three services.

YouTube has a lot of influence on people’s daily lives. It is often touted as the world’s 2nd largest search engine, and is by far the top online video destination.

Ipsos released some new research, seeking to understand how consumers engage with media brands, with a specific focus on popular online video and TV brands. YouTube was found to be the most engaging online video brand, as Google is happy to point out.

The Online Publishers Association has revealed some findings from research on how brands are perceived across content in different online environments. Specifically, it looks at how environments like media publications (such as ESPN.com, iVillage, NYTimes.com, Wall Street Journal, etc.), portal channels (such as AOL News, MSN Money, Yahoo Sports, etc.), and social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) impact content and its advertisers.

Facebook is bigger than anyone ever imagined it would be, and it’s not done growing. Businesses are finding more ways to use it to their benefit, and more people seem to be willing to get involved with brands on the social network.

What value would you place on a Facebook fan? Let us know.

Yahoo has shared the results of a survey that not only looked at how parents monitor children’s online behavior, but how adults take control of their own digital reputations. The survey (conducted among 2,003 Internet users in the U.S., ages 18–64) revealed the need for a great deal of reputation management education.

Yahoo has released some findings from a survey about how parents monitor children’s online behavior. The company says it makes safety a company priority by supporting efforts to educate children, parents, adults, and communities about safe online experiences. Yahoo takes a "multi-faceted approach in promoting a safer online experience," Yahoo spokesperson Terrell Karlsten tells WebProNews.

Update: NYT’s Brad Stone has written another post about Pulse. He quotes a spokesperson for the Times, who says, "We want to be clear that we are willing to work with Pulse, but only under our terms of use."

More here.

A new study from Retrevo (over 1,000 non-Retrevo users) looks at interest in the iPad ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next week. The company emailed WebProNews with a round-up of significant findings.

So without beating around the bush, let’s just get to them.

Study Highlights:

It’s been quite clear that Android usage has been growing steadily, but a report from the NPD Group finds that in the first quarter of 2010, Android devices actually outsold iPhones (still behind RIM) in the U.S.

Here are the market share numbers for sales in the first quarter according to the report:

RIM: 36%
Android: 28%
Apple: 21%

You may recall Facebook’s Gross National Happiness project, it which it tried to measure happiness around the U.S. based on positive and negative words used with status updates. Now the company has taken the project on a more global scale.

They didn’t measure every country. They just measured the ones with the highest volumes of status updates in one of the languages they support: English, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish.

A study released this week sponsored by FIS, PayPal and NACHA, found that demand for electronic P2P payments and transfers is growing rapidly, and that the interest of making these and other payment transactions through an ePayment Portal is also strong.

According to the study, of those who were interested in the Portal concept, 70% would be likely to use P2P payment services within that Portal.

Last week, we saw some interesting findings from AdMob about smartphone usage. Now Compete has shared some of its own findings with WebProNews. The firm recently conducted a Smartphone Intelligence Survey.

About 47% of T-Mobile smartphone users use their phones to find local branches and ATMs, while 45% of AT&T users and 36% of Sprint users reported doing this (see chart #1 for data).

As you know, smartphone usage is on the rise, and that means more opportunities for businesses to sell to customers via their mobile devices. We often hear about how important mobile is to the marketing strategy and especially future strategies, but how much are consumers really into shopping from their phones?

An interesting study has been released by PR firm Ruder Finn, which finds that 91% of mobile phone users go online to socialize, compared to only 79% of traditional desktop users. Meanwhile, Americans are spending an average of 2.7 hours on the mobile Internet.

Econsultancy and Exact Target have released a report based on joint research, polling over 1,000 marketers about their brand reputation strategies. The research found that marketers are slashing their budgets for radio, TV, and print, while looking online to build their brand reputation. The firms say the research indicates there will be a 17% surge in digital marketing spending this year.

Even as social media has grown to be a much more widely accepted form of communication among businesses over the years, there is still plenty of data out there depicting the flaws and setbacks that can occur when social networks are used in the business environment.