Traffic to the ever-popular Twitter has increased by 974% from the week ending January 19th 2008 to the week ending January 17th 2009. That’s a pretty dramatic increase.

This data comes from Hitwise, who reported the other day that Twitter traffic had surpassed that of Digg, a concept that some found hard to believe. Twitter’s growth in general, is not so surprising, considering the non-stop talking about the service in recent memory.

Indicators that times are tough shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, and a new report from eMarketer suggests that some advertisers will respond by making cutbacks.  The research and analysis company took a close look at a few social networks, though, and believes advertisers in the UK won’t turn their backs on them too much.

Close to 4 million British shoppers went online to purchase goods on Christmas Day, spending a total of  $154 million (102 million pounds) according to a new report from the ecommerce retailing body IMRG.

People who are careful with their time and money and either live in or have a fondness for the UK should be pleased.  Yelp, the site famous for offering tons of user-generated reviews, has launched a version catering to this region.

If the importance of this presidential election has you feeling anxious, fresh stats from Hitwise may not help much.  Essentially, they act as a reminder that the world’s watching, and UK residents in particular seem to be interested in a couple of political figures.

There’s been a high volume of searches for Barack Obama since (at least) late last year.  Only on a few occasions have searches for the UK’s own prime minister, Gordon Brown, become more common.  Meanwhile, interest in Joe Biden has remained quite low even after his nomination.

Auntie, as the BBC is sometimes known, has been shoved back.  In what may or may not be a sign of the apocalypse, comScore reports that Facebook passed the BBC’s network of sites in terms of UK traffic.

According to a statement, "Facebook.com broke into the top 5 most visited properties in the U.K. for the first time in its history in September, reaching 18.4 million visitors."  This puts it behind just eBay, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google.  The poor BBC came in sixth place with 18.2 million unique visitors.

More than 14.5 million people in the UK visited at least one blog in August, representing 41 percent of the total UK Internet audience, according to comScore.

When it comes to blog platforms the most popular in the UK was the Google-owned Blogger.com, which pulled in more than 9 million visitors, followed by WordPress with 4.8 million visitors and Six Apart with 2.7 million.

Our friends across the pond may have a reputation for being polite, but that doesn’t mean they should be subjected to unnecessary nuisances.  So starting this week, Google and the Highways Agency are teaming up to provide predictions and real-time traffic info in England.

The economy’s problems have, in some corners, elicited comparisons between now and 1929.  Other experts don’t even use the word "recession."  However, it looks like the people in charge of the news sites run by Google and Yahoo are in a good position to visit the completely opposite side of the spectrum and focus on some silver linings.

Great Britain is not, according to most accounts, the gambling capital of the world.  Nonetheless, the area has received a special nod of sorts as Google is preparing to end a ban on gambling ads.

Fewer people in the UK are illegally downloading music for fear of having their Internet connections cut off, according to a new survey from Entertainment Media Research.

Three quarters of music pirates would stop if told by their Internet Service Provider (ISP) the survey of 1,500 UK consumers revealed.

About 39 percent of music fans currently download songs from illegal sites, compared to 43 percent in 2007.

Proposals announced in July said that music pirates could have their Internet access restricted if a voluntary enforcement on piracy is not effective.

Forget eBay, YouTube, Bebo, and the BBC.  When it comes to the most visited websites in the UK, Facebook’s topped them all.  According to new Hitwise data, the fast-growing social network only sits behind Google UK.

Internet advertising expenditures in Britain grew to $2.95 billion (1.68 billion pounds) in the first half of 2008, a 21 percent increase year-on-year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Marketers showed overwhelming confidence in online advertising at a time when all major advertising mediums experienced declines in expenditure.  The total advertising market was down 0.7 percent year-on-year, during the first six months of 2008. Without the Internet’s growth the advertising market would have experienced a 4.6 percent decline.

A new online watchdog group has been created in the UK to help protect children from harmful content on the Web such as bullying and pornography.

The idea of projecting toughness with a YouTube video is an iffy one from the start.  Now, it looks like British folks will have to attack the task empty-handed, as new YouTube.co.uk rules prohibit "showing weapons with the aim of intimidation."

According to new comScore numbers, UK Internet users really like watching videos online.  They managed to view a total of around 3.2 billion clips in June, surpassing France, Germany, Canada, and even the US in terms of videos per person.

Loose pets and pieces of candy should be hard to find in Google’s UK headquarters next month.  Any employees who are accustomed to wearing sandals will probably put on real shoes, while "creative" desks may get a thorough cleaning.  And believe it or not, all of this will occur in preparation for a visit from the Queen.

Nokia said today that it is launching a new mobile phone music service in the UK, called Comes With Music.

The majority (76%) of Internet users in the UK admit they cannot live without the Web, according to research by YouGov.

I wasn’t going to give Twitter’s "we’re stopping SMS text messages in most countries" announcement much real estate today, then a single comment gave me pause for thought.

First, the background:

Spending on online ads surpassed advertising on mainstream TV in the UK last year, increasing 40 percent to $5.3 billion and representing 19 percent of all advertising according to regulator Ofcom.

In its annual report Ofcom said Britons spent four times as much time on computers, averaging 24 minutes a day, and double as much time on mobile phones in 2007 as in 2002.

Average household spending on communication services declined slightly, due to bundled services and discount broadband prices. More consumers also switched providers to get better deals.