Nielsen has produced a report on teens and the internet in an attempt to throw light on some of the myths which surround internet usage. You can download a free copy of the report here. It has provided some interesting insights namely

• Teens are NOT abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more TV than ever, up 6% over the past five years in the U.S.
• Teens love the Internet … but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online. Far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes.
• Teens watch less online video than most adults, but the ads are highly engaging to them: Teens spend 35% less time watching online video than adults 25-34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television.
• Teens read newspapers, listen to the radio and even like advertising more than most: Teens who recall TV ads are 44% more likely to say they liked the ad.
• Teens play video games, but their tastes aren’t all for the blood-and-guts style games: Just two of their top five most-anticipated games since 2005 have been rated “Mature.”
• Teens’ favorite TV shows, top websites and genre preferences across media are mostly the same as their parents: For U.S. teens, American Idol was the top show in 2008, Google the top website and general dramas are a preferred TV genre for teens around the world.

Interesting and shows that no matter what your age you are looking for content that is entertaining, engaging and that attention needs to be earned.

Each Friday I share articles people have sent me which will help you get the most out of your social networking and social media world

Anna presents Social Media is Like Building A Town posted at The Engaging Brand

Ace presents Internet Marketing For Beginners: Multi-Level Marketing posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Ray presents Declutter Your Life By Getting Rid Of Junk Mail posted at Money Blue Book.

Niche presents Increase Website Traffic With No Follow Social Bookmarking posted at Niche, Traffic, Sale.

Andre Nilsen presents Generate Web Traffic by Using Twitter posted at QualityNetworkers, saying, “Twitter is all the rage at the moment, and one of the biggest questions facing businesses and entrepreneurs is how to make this microblogging service drive business to their websites. We have done our research and have just started to use Twitter, and almost immediately it started to generate traffic to our website.”

Margaret Garcia presents Top 20 iPhone Apps for Busy AttorneysSchools posted at Court Reporter Schools.

Steve Sildon presents 7 Website Design Flaws to Avoid posted at Sell It on the Web, saying, “Common website design flaws that site owners should avoid.”

Allison Johanson presents Top 25 Social Networking Sites for Security Professionals posted at Careers in Criminal Justice.

Isaac Yassar presents How Twitter is Teaching Business the Lost Art of Conversation posted at Isaac Yassar’s Overture, saying, “So it’s happened. Twitter has gone mainstream. As Twitter users, we knew instantly when Mumbai came under terrorist attack. We laughed at the photo of Stephen Fry stuck in an elevator when he tweeted his predicament, we were there when Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to 1 million followers, we caught the first glimpse of passengers being evacuated from the ditched plane on the Hudson River and we all suffered the lag time when Oprah Winfrey sent her first ever tweet on live TV.”

Emma Taylor presents 25 TED Talks That Will Change Your Life posted at Online Degree Hub.

Entrenova presents Study: Our Brain can’t Handle Twitter | EntreNova posted at EntreNova.

Tim presents 6 Reasons To Ignore The Nofollow Update posted at Search Engine Optimisation.

Tim presents Why You Need To Start Blogging posted at Search Engine Optimisation.

Tim presents How To Encourage Links To Your Content posted at Search Engine Optimisation.

Margaret Garcia presents Go Beyond Google: 50 Excellent Health Search Engines posted at Comments on: Top 100 Diet and Fitness Blogs.

Mike Sands presents Make Money with eRepublik posted at Nisi’s work blog.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of social networking tips and tricks
using our carnival submission form.

Friendfeed is a program that I feel I should use, yet it hasn’t taken over for me from a combination of Twitter and Google Reader. However, they have just announced the addition of file sharing which is an interesting development. The Friendfeed blog says

“Now, we’ve added the capability to share files as well. You can easily attach any file, such as a PDF or a spreadsheet, to your FriendFeed post.

To share files on friendfeed.com, simply click the “Files” link underneath the post box and select which files you want to include. You can also share files by including them as attachments on emails sent to share@friendfeed.com. (Learn more about posting via email.)”

The appears to be no notes on the sharing limits although when audio is uploaded it refers to 3 files per day. This may be the kind of enhancement that will persuade me to use Friendfeed more.

Time spent social networking is increasing as per research from Nielsen Wire.Some interesting points from the research are

• Total minutes increasing 82% year-over-year
• Average time per person increasing 67% year-over-year in May 2009.
• Twitter.com was the fastest-growing Web brand in May 2009, up 1,448% year over- year.
• Average time per person on Twitter increased 175 percent year-over-year, from 6 minutes and 19 seconds in May 2008 to 17 minutes and 21 seconds in May 2009.
• With 144.3 million unique visitors, Facebook was the No. 1 global social networking destination in May 2009 for the 7th month in a row.
• Myspace.com continued as the top social networking site when ranked by total video
  streams in May, with 116.1 million video streams.

Facebook continues to grow and has now overtaken MySpace as the number 1 social networking site for US users. Now 70 million users visit both Myspace and Facebook on a monthly basis. For such a large site then a 97% growth rate is still impressive for Facebook.

The table also shows the annual growth of Twitter which continues to be impressive

Twitter is the social media tool that I use the most on a daily basis. Today I found TweetTabs which has been developed by Tweetmeme which shows the hottest trends on Twitter. What Tweettabs does is to allow you real time search on an array of search terms. I have been using it today and I have to say I like it, especially for latest news.

Recently I haven’t been using Tweetdeck as much as I found that I was so absorbed by the real time updates from my twitter friends, it was starting to affect my productivity and as much as I enjoyed being distracted, it was not great for the bank balance! This means that I have my twitter tab open and go there every now and again to see what is happening. Tweettabs has helped me because it fills that gap which Tweetdeck filled with up to date search results.

Tweettabs describes itself as

“TweetTabs is a way of viewing the latest tweets of upcomming twitter trends or searches.

Use the search box to easily search twitter for tweets, TweetTabs will automatically update each tab with new content when it comes in.”

My first thoughts are

I love it because it is simple

I love it because it is browser based although you can download an application

I love it for news items

See what you think!

1. For creativity. Working alone can be hard and Twitter constantly feeds ideas to me.
2. Support. If I have a question, if I have a problem then I put it out to my virtual friends. Free advice !
3. Meeting new people. I am naturally shy and twitter lets me meet people, get to know them and establish new friends in a non embarrassing way.
4. To get me thinking about different aspects of life, different topics, different cultures. It makes me think globally and stops me being insular.
5. Helps me condense my thinking. I am a natural waffler! Twitter is a training tool which makes me think about the importance of each word.

Twitter is in my top 3 social media tools. Podcasting and blogging will always remain important to me. Podcasting lets me explore areas, blogging then lets me detail my thoughts…..but twitter is my water cooler…what does twitter do you you?

Each Friday Buzz Networker brings together articles to help you understand the web, and get the most out of the web.

Ace presents Easy Search Engine Optimization or Easy (SEO) posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Anna presents Creating an Innocent Brand posted at The Engaging Brand

deborah davis presents The Challenge of Keeping Your Store Hand-Held Products Secure posted at Anti theft security systems.

Mariano DiFabio presents Support Problem? Twitter to the Rescue posted at The Web and You, saying, “I had a recent experience where using Twitter actually resulted in excellent customer support and getting the answers I needed…all quite by accident. Hopefully my experience would be useful to you!”

ivan presents 42 Sites Where To Submit Your Tutorials posted at PC Hacks, saying, “When you write tutorial , you want to spread the word and drive traffic to your blog/site. I’ve found great way to increase traffic and publicity, there ate many tutorial sites that are happy to receive your tutorial, and link back to your site. Here are all the possible places, where you can submit and publish them, where I think it’s worth to submit.”

Jim DeSantis presents Review: Which Is Best - Free Traffic System or Article Marketing? posted at Free Backlinks, saying, “Review: Which Is Best - Free Traffic System or Article Marketing? Free Traffic System is the new age of article marketing: it has its advantages and does not have its disadvantages. That’s a bold statement but stay with me for this.”

Ace presents Internet Marketing for Beginners: Marketing On EBay posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

FitJerk presents Fit Jerk Talks SEO Techniques, Internet Marketing & Laws To Run A Business Online posted at FlawlessFitness, saying, “Why isn’t your website getting any traffic? Why isn’t your online business making money? And why does your Google ranking SUCK? The 4 secrets to online success revealed…”

Bobby Leong presents Social Media Online Video Growth posted at Internet Marketing Solutions.

Relax presents How to learn new software posted at The Wise Curve, saying, “Learning new software can be challenging, depending on how steep the learning curve is.”

Silicon Valley Blogger presents Silicon Valley Blog About Money, Finance, Geek Culture and Cyberspace posted at The Digerati Life

Ace presents Internet Marketing for Beginners: Marketing On EBay Part II posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Robert Bravery presents Blogging from the Brave Programmer - Acronyms to use on Gatorpeeps and Twitter posted at The Brave Programmer, saying, “If you have been living in a man-hole you might not have noticed the obsessive craze of micro-blogging. Micro-blogging is a form of communicating and networking. Sites like Twitter, and South Africa’s Gatorpeeps are examples of micro-blogging sites and services. But space is limited. Her is how to make the best use of that space.”

Andre Nilsen presents How to Build an Online Community with Your Offline Customers posted at www.qualitynetworkers.com

Ace presents Adding A Profitable Online Solution To Your Offline Business: Your Website posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Mariano DiFabio presents How You Can Use Online Tools to Buzz Like Apple, Inc. posted at The Web and You, saying, “This week, we look at Apple as a successful machine for creating buzz, and how we can take lessons from their model and apply it to your small business.”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of social networking tips and tricks using our carnival submission form.

Social networking is about sharing and providing value to each other. So each week I publish blog articles that readers send in to help us on the web. Here are this weeks

Ace presents Internet Marketing for Beginners: Google Adsense and Adwords posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Anna presents Social Media Questions for Small Business posted at The Engaging Brand

Ace presents Internet Marketing For Beginners: Offering Expert Advice Online posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Ace presents Internet Marketing For Beginners: Offering Expert Advice Online Part II posted at Internet Marketing Ace.

Sarah Scrafford presents 100 Professors You Should Follow and Learn from on Twitter posted at Associate Degree Blog.

Blog SEO Expert presents What is Onsite and Offsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? | BlogSEOExpert.com - SEO for Blogs posted at BlogSEOExpert.com - SEO for Blogs.

susan baker presents The Top Audio Visual Products for Schools, Universities and Libraries posted at Interactive Retail Displays.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of social networking tips and tricks using our
carnival submission form.

The interaction also gives you a feel for the level of interest in the services you offer which can be measured by the amount of click through’s generated by a link on a particular topic posted or questions you get asked while your on these sites. When i weighed the time required to do this against the benefits i soon found out it was time well spent.

The challenge as always is finding the time to do this.

If you know of anyone using social media in a different way or in an unusual industry then let me know at anna@theengagingbrand.com