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Issue no. 413 - 20 February 2011

• Study: Young kids better with tech than 'life skills' (CENT)
  by Larry Magid. A survey of online mothers found that more small children can play a computer game than ride a bike. The Digital Diaries study from Internet security firm AVG said that 58 percent of children aged two to five know how to play a "basic computer game" compared with 52 percent who know how to ride a bike. Sixty-three percent can turn a computer on and off, and 69 percent can use a mouse. By contrast, only 20 percent can "swim unaided," 11 percent can tie their shoelaces without help, and 20 percent know how to make an emergency phone call.

Issue no. 412 - 28 November 2010

• EU - Broadband speeds increasing but Europe must do more (RAPID)
  Broadband connections in Europe are much faster than one year ago according to statistics published by the European Commission. In July 2010 29% of EU broadband lines had speeds of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps) (up from 15% one year earlier). Broadband take up continues to grow in the EU with 25.6 subscriptions for every 100 citizens (23.9 one year earlier). Annual growth in mobile broadband is remarkable at 45%, with 6 mobile broadband dedicated access devices (usb-keys or dongles) per 100 citizens.

• EU - Survey of children's Internet use; competition for high quality online content (RAPID)
  children in Europe are on average starting to use the Internet at the age of 7 but only one in three 9-12 year olds feel that there are enough "good things for kids" of their age online, according to a pan-European survey published by the European Commission. The study also shows that one in eight children have upsetting experiences online and they still lack skills and confidence using Internet.

• Leading mobile phone makers lose market share (BBC)
  The world's leading mobile phone makers are losing market share to non-brand manufacturers, according to research. Analysts at Gartner say smaller, Asian companies accounted for a third of worldwide handset sales in July, August and September. Nokia is still the biggest seller of mobiles, followed by Samsung and LG. Meanwhile, Google's Android operating system has sharply increased its share and is now the second most popular mobile operating system after Symbian.

• Teens and Mobile Phones (Pew Internet)
  by Amanda Lenhart. Exploring safety issues as mobile phones become the communications hub for American teens. Mobile phones have become the hub of teens' communication with peers and others, and is increasingly a source of information as well as connection to others. In this talk, presented to the Family Online Safety Institute's annual conference in November 2010, senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart discussed Pew Internet data about how teens use mobile phones and the potential safety issues associated with them.

• U.S. Teen Mobile Report: Calling Yesterday, Texting Today, Using Apps Tomorrow (Nielesn)
  If it seems like American teens are texting all the time, it's probably because on average they're sending or receiving 3,339 texts a month. That's more than six per every hour they're awake - an 8 percent jump from last year. Using recent data from monthly cell phone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers as well as survey data from over 3,000 teens, The Nielsen Company analyzed mobile usage data among teens in the United States for the second quarter of 2010 (April 2010 - June 2010). No one texts more than teens (age 13-17), especially teen females, who send and receive an average of 4,050 texts per month. Teen males also outpace other male age groups, sending and receiving an average of 2,539 texts. Young adults (age 18-24) come in a distant second, exchanging 1,630 texts per month (a comparatively meager three texts per hour).

• UK - Ceop sees a rise in children reporting problems on net (BBC)
  he police unit that protects children while they are on the internet says there has been a large increase in the number of reports it has received. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre - known as CEOP - believes the rise is due to greater awareness of the problem. There were 6,291 reports last year - an increase of 880 on the previous year. More than 1,500 were related to the online grooming of children. Zoe Hilton, the head of safeguarding and child protection at CEOP, said the rise was down to the fact that more sites now worked with them and the introduction of a panic button meant it was easier to report incidents of concern.

• UK - Children want gadgets not toys for Christmas (Daily Telegraph)
  Children are turning their backs on traditional toys at Christmas in favour of the latest high-tech gadgets, a new study suggested. A breakdown of the top 10 most wanted toys for this Christmas among children aged five to 16, revealed a grown-up taste in gifts, with Apple products, including the iPhone 4, iPod Touch and iPad dominating the top three places. Approximately 39 per cent children quizzed desired Apple gadgets this year, with 17 per cent of five to eight- year-olds, 50 per cent of nine to 12-year-olds and 66 per cent of 13 to 16-year-olds all putting Apple items at the top of their lists. The report also highlighted the growing similarities between boys' and girls' preferred Christmas presents, with both sexes increasingly opting for gender neutral gadgets.

• US - Study: 'Kids are Alright' when it comes to privacy (CNET)
  by Larry Magid. A study commissioned by Truste paints a pretty optimistic picture about how teenagers are using privacy tools on Facebook and other social networking sites. The study, entitled The Kids are Alright, (PDF) reports that "80 percent of parents and 78 percent of teens feel in control of their personal information on social networking sites" and that "84 percent of parents are confident their teen is responsible with personal information on a social networking site." But the news isn't all good. The survey also found that more than two-third (68 percent) of teens have at some time accepted friend invites from people they don't know. Eight percent said they accepted all friend requests 34 percent said some and 26 percent said they rarely accept requests from people they don't know personally.

• t - EU - More Europeans on-line but concerned about costs and security (Europa)
  Europeans are becoming increasingly "digital" according to a European Commission Eurobarometer survey which questioned 27,000 households throughout the EU on their use of internet, telephones and TV. More Europeans are subscribing to broadband internet and digital television in fixed-cost bundled 'packages'. Increased broadband take-up means even more Europeans are going online with 35% now using social networking websites. However, they have concerns about cost, quality of service and security, as well as online freedom. One fifth of fixed and mobile internet users reveal that they have experienced problems with blocked content and applications.

Issue no. 411 - 3 October 2010

• Logging Off - The Internet Generation Prefers the Real World (Der Spiegel)
  They may have been dubbed the "Internet generation," but young people are more interested in their real-world friends than Facebook. New research shows that the majority of children and teenagers are not the Web-savvy digital natives of legend. In fact, many of them don't even know how to google properly. A study by the Hans Bredow Institute entitled Growing Up With the Social Web was particularly thorough in its approach. In addition to conducting a representative survey, the researchers conducted extensive individual interviews with 28 young people. Once again it became clear that young people primarily use the Internet to interact with friends. They go on social networking sites like Facebook and the popular German website SchülerVZ, which is aimed at school students, to chat, mess around and show off - just like they do in real life.

• People worry about over-sharing location from mobiles, study (Guardian)
  More than half of people with geolocation-capable mobile devices worry about "loss of privacy" from using their location-sharing features, a survey has found - even though location-sharing apps such as FourSquare and Gowalla have millions of users checking in every day. Among UK respondents, 52% said they were "very or extremely concerned" about loss of privacy from using location-sharing applications - even though the same proportion said that they geotag photos, indicating where they were taken, when uploading them to the internet. The survey, commissioned by security company Webroot, interviewed 1,500 owners of devices with geolocation capabilities, including 624 people in the UK.

Issue no. 410 - 6 August 2010

• The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check Facebook (Mashable)
  Young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom. The study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media in an attempt to break down their social media habits.

• UK - Children and young people's views on web 2.0 technologies (Nfer)
  Research report by Peter Rudd and Matthew Walker. The overarching aim of this work was to gather young people's views about web 2.0 technologies. The project was interested in young people's personal use of social media, but also in how they might use these tools in a community or local authority (LA) context, for example, to communicate with other young people, organise meetings and events, express their views, or take part in a youth cabinet or similar representative group. The report provides useful information for LA personnel considering using web 2.0 tools and policy personnel considering future forms of communication within children's services fields.

• UK - Times loses almost 90% of online readership (Guardian)
  The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June. The huge drop matches the industry expectation before the Times instituted the paywall that traffic would fall off by 90%, which is the standard experience when a site moves to a paid-access model instead of free access.

Issue no. 409 - 6 June 2010

• CN - China's online population passes 400 million (The Age)
  The number of Internet users in China, already the largest in the world, has surpassed 400 million and accounts for almost a third of the country's population. The online population in the world's most populous nation has reached 404 million, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the State Council Information Office. That compares with 384 million users at the end of 2009.

• Reputation Management and Social Media (Pew Internet)
  More than half (57%) of adult internet users say they have used a search engine to look up their name and see what information was available about them online, up from 47% who did so in 2006. Young adults, far from being indifferent about their digital footprints, are the most active online reputation managers in several dimensions. For example, more than two-thirds (71%) of social networking users ages 18-29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online.

• UK - Britons grow cautious about social networking data (OUT-LAW News)
  Twice as many UK adults have a social networking profile now compared to two years ago and those users are nearly twice as likely to keep their profiles private, according to research by media and telecoms regulator Ofcom. A study by Ofcom found that 44% of British adults had a social networking profile in 2009, compared to 22% in 2007. The study into media literacy found that 80% of those users now set their profile so that it is only visible to their friends and family. In 2007 that figure was just 48%.

• US - 48% of Parents Friend Their Kids on Facebook (Mashable)
  According to a survey of parents' social media practices by consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo, nearly half (48%) of parents add their children as friends on Facebook. Retrevo also asked parents at what age they believe it’s appropriate for kids to sign up for Facebook or MySpace. 26% said over 18, 36% said 16-18, 30% said 13-15 and just 8% said under 13.

• US - Cyberbullying 2010: What the Research Tells Us (Pew Internet)
  by Amanda Lenhart. An updated look at the research and definitions around bullying and cyberbullying, this talk was presented to the NetSmartz Youth Online Safety Working Group assembled by National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Amanda unpacks both what current research can tell us about cyberbullying as well as where the gaps in our understanding of this issue lie.

Issue no. 408 - 25 April 2010

• Facebook and Google Dominate Online Identity War (Mashable)
  A new study from OpenID company JanRain shows that users heavily prefer to use their Google and Facebook logins on websites that offer third party sign-in options. In many segments, such as media, retail and technology, Facebook outstrips other authentication services by a sizable margin. Still, for JanRain's entire client base of 170,000, Googlee remains the most popular login service overall, commanding about 38% of all user authentications.

• OECD - The Economic and Social Role of Internet Intermediaries (OECD)
  This report is Part I of the larger project on Internet intermediaries. It develops a common definition and understanding of what Internet intermediaries are, of their economic function and economic models, of recent market developments, and discusses the economic and social uses that these actors satisfy. The overall goal of the horizontal report of the Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy (ICCP) is to obtain a comprehensive view of Internet intermediaries, their economic and social function, development and prospects, benefits and costs, and responsibilities. This report was prepared by Ms. Karine Perset of the OECD‘s Directorate for Science Technology and Industry.

• UK - A quarter of internet users aged 8-12 say they have under-age social networking profiles (OFCOM)
  A quarter of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home say they have a profile on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, new Ofcom research revealed today. These sites have a minimum user age of 13. But 83 per cent of these children have their profile set so that it can only be seen by friends, and 4 per cent have a profile that can't be seen. Nine in ten parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93 per cent) also say that they check what their child is doing on these types of sites. However one in six (17 per cent) parents of this group are not aware that their child visits social networking sites. See report on UK children's media literacy.

• US - Teens and Mobile Phones (Pew Internet)
  Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months, from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008 to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. And it's not just frequency – teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a day. Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day for the entire cohort. The youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting – averaging 20 messages per day.

• Young People, Privacy, and the Internet (Bruce Schenier)
  There's a lot out there on this topic. I've already linked to danah boyd's excellent SXSW talk (and her work in general), my essay on privacy and control, and my talk - "Security, Privacy, and the Generation Gap". Two new papers have been published on the topic. Youth, Privacy, and Reputation is a literature review published by Harvard's Berkman Center. How Different Are Young Adults from Older Adults When it Comes to Information Privacy Attitudes & Policy? from the University of California Berkeley, describes the results of a broad survey on privacy attitutes.

• Youth, Privacy and Reputation (Literature Review) (Berkman Center)
  Authored by Alice E. Marwick, Diego Murgia Diaz, John Palfrey, Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative. The scope of this literature review is to map out what is currently understood about the intersections of youth, reputation, and privacy online, focusing on youth attitudes and practices. We summarize both key empirical studies from quantitative and qualitative perspectives and the legal issues involved in regulating privacy and reputation. This project includes studies of children, teenagers, and younger college students. Due to language issues, the majority of this literature covers the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Canada.

Issue no. 407 - 28 March 2010

• US - Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape (Berkman Center)
  The Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative's response to the FCC's Notice of Inquiry (09-94) on "Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape". The response synthesizes current research and data on the media practices of youth, focusing on three main areas: 1) Risky Behaviors and Online Safety, 2) Privacy, Publicity and Reputation, and 3) Information Dissemination, Youth-Created Content and Quality of Information. See also submission by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

• Internet access is 'a fundamental right' (BBC)
  Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests. The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.

• SuperPower: Visualising the internet (BBC)
  Explore this interactive graphic to find out which are the biggest sites on the internet, as measured by the Nielsen company.

• US - Facebook passes Google as most-viewed site (Guardian)
  Facebook was the most-visited site in the US - just - in the past week. Compared to the same week in 2009, Google's visits were up 9% - but Facebook's were up 185%. So now Facebook was 7.07% of visits, while Google was put in the shade - just - at 7.03%.

Issue no. 406 - 21 February 2010

• Facebook dominates UK mobile use (BBC)
  Facebook dominates the lives of mobile internet users in the UK, according to figures from a mobile industry body. The social network accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones. The data, from the GSM Association (GSMA), showed that people in the UK spent around 2.2bn minutes browsing the social network during December alone.

• Facebook is the new threat to Google (Guardian)
  More people are coming to US news sites via Facebook and other social networking sites such as Twitter - supplanting Google News, which had been one of the primary sources of readers, according to research by the metrics company Hitwise. During the past year, the proportion of traffic that Facebook sends to US media sites has tripled from around 1.2% to 3.52%, while that sent by Google News has remained roughly static, at around 1.4%.

• Sahara Byrne: Parents, Kids and Online Safety (John Palfrey)
  Prof. Sahara Byrne, of the communications department at Cornell, studies responses to Internet safety techniques. She's interested in the "recipes for disaster," such as when parents love a given safety technique and kids hate it. She's a believer in psychological reactance theory: that when kids really don't like something, they're going to work hard to get around it. Her methods: an extensive Internet survey of 456 parents, with matched child pairs (10 - 17 years old). Asked parents how much they would support a particular tool and kids how they would feel if their parent adopted this strategy. Parents were asked more questions than the kids. A few of her findings from the matched pairs: - Surveillance of kids' online behavior by the technology/service provider is popular by parents and particularly disliked by kids. - User-child empowerment strategies were popular with both parents and kids. See video.

• Teen blogging replaced by Facebook status updates (IDG)
  Blogging is becoming a thing of the past for teens and young adults, who are now far more likely to keep in touch with friends on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, according to a new study Social Media and Young Adults by Pew Internet & American Life Project.

• The Future of the Internet IV (Pew Internet)
  A survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered. The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues: Will Google make us stupid? Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge? Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come "out of the blue"? Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information? Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade? See Overview of responses. see also presentation by Lee Rainie.

Issue no. 405 - 24 January 2010

• Read-e for the masses - The growing popularity of electronic books (Economist)
  E-reader sales have been gathering momentum since Amazon launched the Kindle in 2007. In 2009 falling prices, combined with a flurry of deals, announcements and technical upgrades, primed the market for a vast expansion. There are about 5m e-readers in circulation worldwide and double that amount will be sold in 2010, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm.

• US - If your kids are awake, they're probably online (New York Times)
  The average young American now spends practically every waking minute - except for the time in school - using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones. And because so many of them are multitasking - say, surfing the Internet while listening to music - they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours. The study's findings shocked its authors, who had concluded in 2005 that use could not possibly grow further, and confirmed the fears of many parents whose children are constantly tethered to media devices. It found, moreover, that heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades.

• US - Teens and Sexting (Pew Internet)
  As texting has become a centerpiece in teen social life, parents, educators and advocates have grown increasingly concerned about the role of cell phones in the sexual lives of teens and young adults. A new survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 4% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images or videos of themselves to someone else via text messaging, a practice also known as "sexting"; 15% say they have received such images of someone they know via text message.

Issue no. 404 - 21 December 2009

• Awesome Visualization of Social Media Usage Around the Globe (Mashable)
  TrendStream, who publishes the Global Web Index, has created a fantastic visualization that shows the penetration of different social technologies in major markets around the globe. The research is based on interviews with 32,000 Internet users in 16 countries.

• DFG-Projekt: Young Scholars' Network on Privacy and Web 2.0 (Hamburg Media School)
  Um den internationalen Dialog zum Thema „Privatsphäre und Web 2.0“ zu fördern, finanziert die DFG ein wissenschaftliches Netzwerk von fünfzehn internationalen, renommierten Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern. Zum Netzwerk unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Sabine Trepte von der Hamburg Media School gehören auch Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt vom Hans-Bredow-Institut sowie als Mentor Institutsdirektor Prof. Dr. Uwe Hasebrink. Das DFG-Projekt „Young Scholars' Network on Privacy and Web 2.0” ermöglicht den direkten wissenschaftlichen Austausch zwischen exzellenten, internationalen Nachwuchsforscherinnen und -forschern. Die fünfzehn Mitglieder des Netzwerkes stammen von der Harvard University, der University of Amsterdam, der Michigan State University, der City University of Hong Kong, der University of Bath, der Universität Hamburg, dem Hans-Bredow-Institut Hamburg, der Universität der Künste Berlin, der Universität Hohenheim, der Universität Mainz und der Universität Duisburg-Essen.

• EU - The Impact of Social Computing on the EU Information Society and Economy (IPTS)
  This report by the The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies provides a systematic empirical assessment of the creation, use and adoption of specific social computing applications and its impact on industry, personal identity, learning, social inclusion, healthcare and public health, and government services and public governance.

• US - Study: 15 percent of teens have gotten 'sext' messages (CNET)
  Sending explicit content, such as naked or near-naked photos, via text message - a phenomenon also known as "sexting" - is a familiar phenomenon among some teens, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Older teens, especially those who foot their own cell phone bills, are much more likely to send and receive these images. While 8 percent of 17-year-olds with cell phones have sent a sexually provocative image by text, this number goes up to 17 percent among those who pay their bills themselves. In all, 30 percent of 17-year-olds have received explicit images on their phones. The survey also shows that while the exchange of nude images mostly takes place among romantic partners or potential partners of the same age, these images are also forwarded to non-partners or people in different age groups.

Issue no. 403 - 24 November 2009

• CA - New study highlights need for education and collaboration to address child sexual abuse websites (Press Release)
  The Canadian Centre for Child Protection today released a new study titled Child Sexual Abuse Images: An analysis of websites by Cybertip.ca. The study reinforces concerns regarding the scope and severity of child sexual abuse imagery and underscores the need for additional solutions. The report was based on the examination of nearly 16,000 incidents involving sites hosting child pornography and the analysis of more than 4,000 unique images of child sexual abuse. More than 82% of the images assessed by Cybertip.ca depicted very young, pre-pubescent children under 12 years of age. Most concerning was the severe abuse depicted, with more than 35% of all images showing serious sexual assaults.

• EU - Europe's growing army of bloggers and social networkers can generate new services and growth (Europa)
  A study says that European interactive websites like video sharing sites and blogs are growing, generating revenue for both owners and contributors. Compared with the US, which hosts the most commonly used websites for content created by users (blogs, texts, videos, music, games and virtual objects), Europe has more contributors. For example, almost 4 in 5 Italian internet users read blogs compared to 60% in the US, 41% of Spanish users write blogs but only 26% in the US, almost 60% of Czech internet users upload photos and 48% of Polish internet users subscribe to RSS feeds, all ahead of the US. To help the emergence of European Flickrs and youtubes that turn this large European creativity into growth and jobs, the Commission's report highlights the need for new and updated EU rules building a Single Market for content that can be made and shared online by anyone.

• Oxford's word of the year - 'Unfriend' (CNET)
  The New Oxford American Dictionary has picked the verb "unfriend," or "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook," as its 2009 Word of the Year. [Ed: Other new words were considered including hashtag, netbook and sexting]

Issue no. 402 - 18 October 2009

• Google Internet Stats (Google)
  This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights. These have been collected from a number of third party sources covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behaviour and technology are changing over time.

• Kids' top searches include 'porn' (BBC)
  A survey of children's web habits shows that "sex" and "porn" are among the top 10 most-searched terms. The study logged webpage visits through security firm Symantec's OnlineFamily.Norton, a web-monitoring service for parents. Video website YouTube topped the list, as did search engines Google and Yahoo, along with social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. The survey scanned 3.5 million searches between February 2008 and July 2009.

• Multitaskers beware: your divided attention comes at a price (Ars Technica)
  In tests where they were asked to perform tasks that required working memory and focus, people prone to consuming multiple streams of information at once failed relative to their more single-minded peers.

• Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results About Usage (Social Media)
  posted by Ryan Kelly. We embarked on a study as to how people are using and consuming Twitter. Some felt it was their source of news and articles, others felt it was just a bunch of self-promotion with very few folks actually paying attention. But mostly, many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute. So we took 2,000 tweets over a 2-week period and categorized them into 6 buckets: News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value. See also Twitter: "pointless babble" or peripheral awareness + social grooming? by danah boyd. Studies like this one by Pear Analytics drive me batty. They concluded that 40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% are conversational; 8.7% have "pass along value"; 5.85% are self-promotional; 3.75% are spam; and ::gasp:: only 3.6% are news. Twitter - like many emergent genres of social media - is structured around networks of people interacting with people they know or find interesting. The vast majority of Twitter users are there to maintain social relations, keep up with friends and acquaintances, follow high-profile users, and otherwise connect. I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of people who are joining its ranks are there to be social.

• UK - Broadband rates 'not up to speed' (BBC)
  Broadband users are not getting the speeds they are paying for, according to the largest survey of its kind ever undertaken by telecoms regulator Ofcom. Nearly one fifth of UK broadband customers on an eight Megabit per second (Mbps) connection actually receive less than 2Mbps, it found. The research showed that less than 9% of users received more than 6Mbps. see also Virgin defends broadband speeds (Ed: an odd choice of ISP for the BBC to interview, since Virgin did best in the test).

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