The use of social networking has increased by 21% worldwide, according to a Universal McCann Social Media study- Wave 3.This survey indicates that social media usage is up to 58%, with about 272-million users worldwide.

Universal McCann Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) surveyed 17,000 internet users in 29 countries, focusing on the evolving trends of social media. The findings are as follows:

Blogging: The blogosphere rivals any mass media in terms of reach, time spent and wider cultural, social and political impact. There are also major shifts into participation, pioneered by the Asian markets and now happening everywhere.
Brand penetration: This research indicates that MySpace is still number one among a broad collection of international networks with a 32% weekly reach. Facebook is second with a 22.5% weekly reach. However, in Asia a variety of local sites like QQ, Cyworld and Mixi dominate in home markets, while Orkut is number one in Brazil.

Things to watch in the world of social networking:
Niche Social Networks: In the face of the all encompassing mega social networks, a raft of more niche and sometimes exclusive networks are emerging.

DIY Social Networks: White label social network systems that you can customise are driving the emergence of a wealth of ultra niche networks.
Reputation Management: The survey predicts that personal brand management is going to be big in the next few years. Tools to report and manage your reputation are coming online; Wink.com or peekyou.com for personal search and reputa.com and reputationdefender.com for more sophisticated management systems.

Zooped,Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace. But at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave.

The latest research comes from Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at the Harvard Medical School, and James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. The pair reported last summer that obesity appeared to spread from one person to another through social networks, almost like a virus or a fad.

In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced similar findings about another major health issue: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit — even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.

Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime.

“What all these studies do is force us to start to kind of rethink our mental model of how we behave,” said Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. “Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals and puts policies in place to try to get them to stop smoking, eat right, start exercising or make better decisions about retirement, et cetera. What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way.”

For both of their studies, Christakis and Fowler took advantage of detailed records kept between 1971 and 2003 about 5,124 people who participated in the landmark Framingham Heart Study. Because many of the subjects had ties to the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass., many of the participants were connected somehow — through spouses, neighbors, friends, co-workers — enabling the researchers to study a network that totaled 12,067 people.

When researchers analyzed the patterns of those who managed to quit smoking over the 32-year period, they found that the decision appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. A person whose spouse quit was 67 percent more likely to kick the habit. If a friend gave it up, a person was 36 percent more likely to do so. If a sibling quit, the chances increased by 25 percent.

A co-worker had an influence — 34 percent — only if the smoker worked at a small firm. The effects were stronger among the more educated and among those who were casual or moderate smokers. Neighbors did not appear to influence each other, but friends did even if they lived far away.

“You appear to have to have a close relationship with the person for it to be influential,” Fowler said.

But the influence of a single person quitting nevertheless appeared to cascade through three degrees of separation, boosting the chance of quitting by nearly a third for people two degrees removed from one another.

“It could be your co-worker’s spouse’s friend or your brother’s spouse’s co-worker or a friend of a friend of a friend. The point is, your behavior depends on people you don’t even know,” Christakis said. “Your actions are partially affected by the actions of people who are beyond your social horizon” — but in the broader network.

In addition, the researchers found that the size of smokers’ own networks did not change over time, even though the overall number of smokers plummeted, from 45 percent to 21 percent of the population during that time. The researchers realized that what happened was that entire networks of smokers would quit almost simultaneously

It’s well known that kids and young adults of many ages have taken up the trade of blogging, either for personal or professional reasons. But how many of the generation born in the era of global interconnectedness can say that their mothers in particular have had their hands in social Web services and publication platforms? Not many, one might think. And one might be right. But of course there are exceptions to every rule.

In celebration of this Mother’s Day, Ellen Lee, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, documents a few such cases involving methods by which mothers of the world have utilized the coterie of connectivity options ranging from blogs (both standard-sized and micro) to social networks in order to document the process of pregnancy to parenthood. Services such as Typepad, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have all been applied to the momentous time of childbirth.

One example given is that of a Facebook employee sharing alerts and photographs chronicling moments of motherhood with a personal network of some 400 individuals, including a nonagenarian grandmother-in-law. As might be expected, her Facebook page in turn flooded with virtual gifts to mark the occasion of the birth of her son. Another case in point: a co-founder of the blogging stalwart Six Apart by the name of Mena Trott spent her hours in labor documenting her stay at the hospital from her cellphone. (Nevermind that cellphones aren’t generally allowed to be used around some medical equipment. As we say above, exceptions can be made, right?)

Lee goes on to offer statistics gleaned from the Internet researcher eMarketer of the rising number of mothers that have ventured online. It is said that some 80% of mothers in the US make their way onto the Web “at least once a month.” The researcher estimates that some 35.3+ million mothers will spend a portion of their time on the Web in 2008. That carries over from about 32 million in 2006. What for? To research baby products, of course. And to connect with family and fellow matriarchs, or even just to build and maintain a sort of digital diary and scrapbook of the early life of their newborn(s). One particular service which we here at Mashable recently highlighted, called Kidmondo, is indeed purposed specifically to enable parents to maintain personal sites for their young children.

According to a BlogHer report referenced by Lee published this year, mothers familiar with the ways of blogging are very much invested in social services, with 71% maintain profiles on MySpace, 44% on Facebook, and 1.8% on Twitter. Naturally, most activity among those users is centered around the sharing of photographs, with a smaller, yet still sizable percentage of individuals sharing videos.

All in all, the trend of female adoption of online services is headed nowhere but up. For about two years or so, it has increasingly been understood that girls outnumber boys as far as registration and active use of blogging software and social networks. Now it seems that older female demographics have taken note of the usefulness of such things, and adapting them to serve their wants and needs in ways that.

So to mark this holiday we say this any and all mothers out there on the Web: keep blogging, keep networking, keep Twittering even. Most importantly, keep sharing. The fact that the Web 2.0 space is evolving to encompass more of the general populace, and not only the geek class, goes far in proving its ultimate legitimacy. And hey, who doesn’t love baby pictures? The more the merrier.
Story Source Mashable.com

Mission: Create a social network for the Christian community.

Safety net: Anyone who logs on is designated “red.” Those who supply a working phone number are “yellow”; a credit-card number will get you designated “green.” This makes all participants accountable — you can create a group for green users only, which will consequently make the social-networking neighborhood more exclusive.

Gates of heaven: ZoeCity invites users to post secular content as long as it doesn’t violate the site’s code of conduct and content policy. But any spiritual content must abide by the Christian faith, with a more thorough scrutiny process than on the “mainstream” social networks. Additionally, the premium service includes real-time monitoring.

Financials: The private company has yet to make a profit, and plans to generate revenue the old-fashioned way: advertising. Additionally, it wants to partner with global Christian groups to drive large numbers of users to the site.

Employees: 20

My holy space: “The most popular social networks treat all friends the same,” Wong said. “If you are a friend, then you get to see the entire user’s personal information. In the real world, we all have friends that are based on context. Your work friends are different from your best friends. They are also different from your family. We allow you to segment your friends to different circles and then assign privacy rights to what they can or cannot see.”

Common courtesy: Wong said the moderating process will not stifle free expression. “There may be a difference about baptism, whether it requires total immersion or just a handful of water over the head,” he said. “We will encourage these healthy discussions, as long as there are no personal attacks.”

It’s a tale of two social network developer platforms. Hi5, a site popular in some Spanish-speaking Latin American countries and other regions around the world, launched its platform at the beginning of this month — and the third parties that have applications on the site are reporting impressive growth.

Leading widget company RockYou, for example, says its “SuperFive” application has already been installed two million times in the last couple of weeks. Why? Hi5 specifically offers ways for users to contact each other through third-party applications.

Meanwhile, applications on market leader MySpace’s platform have been seeing insignificant growth since it launched in mid-March — because MySpace has yet to introduce effective ways for applications to contact users. However, one top developer tells us that MySpace will soon be offering notifications, email messages, and other so-called “viral channels” already available on Hi5.

So MySpace may soon become the hot spot for applications that third parties have long hoped for. Meanwhile, Hi5 may have done a better job of addressing the spam problem.

Does “viral growth” = spam?

To get an idea of what I mean by “viral growth,” here’s a closer look at RockYou’s “SuperFive” application, which lets users send action messages like a “hug,” “tickle,” etc. to Hi5 friends. If this sounds familiar, it’s because 1) Hi5 already has a feature called “five” which is basically a copy of Facebook’s “poke” feature and 2) RockYou and competitors already offer Facebook applications where you can hug/tickle/poke your Facebook friends

I’ve been hearing that this messaging feature is actually useful for companies that want branded contact with users, like being able to “throw a Coke” at a friend (I made that example up, but you get my drift). Many developers have made good money from selling branded pokes/hugs/tickles.