Even though email and IM are still the two important communication channels, social media channels are rapidly increasing for our communication and we are dedicating more and more of our time online to social media.

Infographiclabs have collected and visualised the most recent data on Social Media usage in infographic below, enjoy!

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One of the much hyped features of Google+ are the privacy settings, which are not new compared to Facebook, but easier to configure and actually use. While it is unlikely that we’ll soon get any insight in the user numbers. The number known so far is that more than 10 million users signed up to the service within its first three weeks. If, we can expect more official numbers it will probably be at Google’s next earnings call.

While it is too early to call Google+ a success, more and more we see very interesting numbers emerge, combined with the fact that the immediate reception and hype around the service did push Google’s stock (GOOG) with 13%.
Hitwise estimated Google+ at around 300,00 daily US based visits after two weeks, comScore said on Wednesday that the site had reached 20 million page views already in only three weeks, Paul Allen estimates there’s 18 million users already and Alexa ranks the G+ subdomain at almost 2% of the entire traffic to Google properties.

In an interview with The Mercury News, Vic Gundotra – Google+ Project Lead, disclosed another interesting statistic: around 2/3 or more of the updates posted to Google+ are ‘Limited’ and shared only with a select number of people. Women are also likely to share more content privately than men and early statistics of a low number of female users (less than 15%) are wrong. read more

Since Google+ launched, we have been left wondering how many users signed up, and were able to join in the first days. Wild estimates and predictions have been made, including complicated prognoses based on surnames. The latest and most widespread one by Paul Allen said that Google+ could surpass 20 million users by this weekend, as we reported here at The Blog Herald.

Until the Google(+) overlords decide they will publish user stats, we can only guess and guesses will continue to be made. But the service could be much more popular than expected already and with help of the Palo Alto search giant’s own tools, I discovered the rather amazing number of 40,100,000 profiles already. read more

First wave of invites to Google+

The first wave of Google + (www.plus.google.com) invites will be going out soon and in the next few hours, we’ll probably see more posts with loaded with praises or criticisms.  The first few weeks of reviews won’t probably do much to prove or disprove the idea that the search giant’s social initiative will actually eat up Facebook as it inches towards its rumored 2012 IPO.

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From 2009 through 2010 Facebook has increased their size by leaps and bounds, not only in the United States and Canada, but in countries throughout the world.

Based on statistics taken from Alexa, Google Trends and other reputable data service centers, Vincenzo Cosenza posted the December 2010 map for Facebook dominance by country. As the legend on the map shows, Facebook, color coded in blue, has for the most part taken up a stronghold in more countries, although Orkut has managed to continue some of their dominance in some of the South America territory Facebook has begun to slowly control.

Also interesting, Facebook has knocked Orkut out of the top spot in India, while gaining slightly more control in Europe.

China’s QZone has also managed to work out a nice niche in the Chinese region, while Orkut does still control the Brazil market. read more

Twitter and Facebook users may want to act especially wary of any “free iPad” offers that come their way, according to PC World a new scam has circulated that states:

“u have to check out this website its glitchin right now and sending out ipads to everyone for free!”.

The messages look legit, having been sent according to IntoMobile from “hacked Twitter or Facebook accounts” that may include people from your very own friends list.

Once the link is clicked users are taken to “better-gifts.net” which asks users to enter in their information to receive items from various companies. Once a user enters in their personal contact and other information, they have immediately given up their info for malicious uses.

Both of the social network sites involved are aware of the issue and have reset the passwords for accounts that may have been hacked. While both companies say the issue affects only a small number of accounts, it’s still worth paying close attention to if you receive this type of offer. read more

Are you frustrated by the mundane conversations taking place on your Facebook wall? Tired of spam friend requests on MySpace? Sick of the Fail Whale? The folks at Current TV feel you, and have put together a game that will let you do what we have all dreamed of… kill the social networks! read more

A recent survey of European consumers has found that current social networks aren’t living up to expectations, either being too complicated to use or lacking features such as synchronisation.

3,000 consumers were questioned, with key findings:

• 75% said that updating their contacts across social networks was frustrating
• 82% wanted a solution to synchronise separate address books
• 78% wanted a simple, easy-to-use solution
• Most people wanted automatic updates from the friends on social networks, as well as being able to control over what updates they receive.

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Keeley Houghton, 18, has been sentenced to 3 months in a young offenders institution after pleading guilty to harassment. Keeley had bullied Emily Moore for 4 years already when she wrote the death threats on her own profile.

Keeley is going to murder the bitch. She is an actress. What a ******* liberty. Emily ****head Moore.

Keeley was also given a restraining order banning her from contacting Emily in any way, already had 2 previous convictions for bullying Emily Moore. In 2005 she assaulted the victim on the way home and was subsequently expelled from school. Two years later, in 2007, she was convicted after she kicked the door at Emily’s parents home in.

According to the Daily Mail Keeley is thought to be the first person in the UK sentenced for cyber-bullying.

Huge news! Facebook nabs FriendFeed, which totally makes sense when you think about it. This from the FriendFeed announcement:

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

They seem happy enough, and while no immediate changes are planned, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that we’ll see new features roll out on Facebook. Question is if FriendFeed will live on as a separate identity or not. My guess is no, but we’ll see.

More in the Facebook press release and on Techmeme. No financial terms have been released.