Editor's note:we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interestingto our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.Remember what it was like to capture video off a computer screen before desktop recording software came along?You'd mount a big, expensive camera on a tripod, point it at the screen and, unless you had tweaked a bunch of settings or loaded special software, you'd get black bars creeping up and down the screen because of a refresh rate mismatch. And once you solved that problem, you still needed to be well versed in editing tools, video-tape transfer and replication.Sponsor1990s: Cost of Production and Distribution = Very HighThe advent of all-in-one desktop recording software was a minor revolution, because it gave ordinary computer users the means to capture anything they could see on their computer, edit it into a finished production and get it onto a CD-ROM or their Web server.Now, anyone could be a software trainer—or at least share tips and show off cool stuff that they'd done on their computer.Just as blogging platforms lit the fuse that rocked the world of online publishing, tools such as Camtasia Studiobrought screencasting production to the mainstream. And video-sharing sites (think YouTube and Screencast.com) came along to eliminate distribution costs and hassle. The read/write Web took a step forward.2000s: Cost of Production and Distribution = LowThen along came "instant" screencasting tools such as Jing, ScreenToaster and Screenr (see ReadWriteWeb's reviews), which have lowered the barrier even further. The cost of these tools is nothing. And because content uploading and hosting is built right in, the time between idea and posted content has shrunk from hours to seconds. Think it, record it, post a link.If the all-in-one screen recorders are like blogs, these new apps are like Twitter. And they've birthed a new mode of communication: the casual, disposable micro-screencast.2010s: Cost of Production and Distribution = 0Meticulously orchestrated and slickly edited screencast productions will always have their place. But now it's also practical to fire off a quick, informal micro-screencast in the time it takes to jot an email or dial a phone number.And just as with Twitter, a stripped-down feature set and length limitations can be a benevolent deficit. The author has no time to ramble and no temptation to fiddle around, "improving" something that's good enough. (Anyone who has wasted 15 minutes tweaking the formatting of an unimportant document just because you could, raise your hand!)On the other hand, simple doesn't mean poorly executed. You don't want the equivalent of typos and grammatical errors in your screencast. So, keep these basic tips in mind and you'll make something worthy of the viewer's time and attention.Three Tips for Micro-Screencasting ExcellencePrepareThis is as easy as pausing to collect your thoughts and maybe jotting down on a sticky note three things that you want to communicate. This will help you focus and be succinct.PracticeNo one wants to watch you hunt around, looking for the right window or browser tab. A quick dry run goes a long way towards smooth delivery on the first take.PauseMemorize the hotkey that pauses your recorder (or write it at the top of your sticky note). Use it to stop and regroup if your brain freezes or you start to bumble. It's faster than starting over.How aboutyou? Are screencasts part of your day-to-day communication? Got a story or tip to share?Daniel Foster (@fosteronomo) is a marketing writer at TechSmith and edits the company's monthly e-newsletter.Discuss

  Microsoft will offer an application marketplace within Sharepoint 2010 that shall integrate with third-party applications from its partner network. No date has beenset for the marketplace lauch but it will evolve from "The Gallery" a feature that provides Sharepoint 2010 users access to templates.SponsorIn an interview we did at Enterprise 2.0, Christian Finn said Microsoft will offer the marketplace for vendors who want to sell their products through the Sharepoint platform."We will have a route to market for vendors who want to have applications and add-ons available," Finn said. Conceptually, Finn said, you think about a marketplace idea. Customers will navigate from the Sharepoint interface to see what web parts are available for a trial period.Finn said that from their perspective, collaboration is mostly on-premise. Customers are starting to move to the cloud. "We are seeing early customers starting to move. When we see that bell curve adoption we will definitely be there."But collaboration services are increasingly cloud-based. MindTouch, SocialCast, Socialtextand a host of other companies are offering best-of-breed-services.The availability of a marketplace brings up a lot of questions about the role that partners will play with Sharepoint. But it also raises interesting competitive questions about the role of Sharepoint as a cloud-based service. It almost looks like it will be more of a Software-as-a-Servce (SaaS) than the on-premise platform it is today.The Sharepoint application marketplace will evolve out of The Gallery, a resource within Sharepoint 2010 that serves as a central place for templates. Microsoft will initially offer their own web parts through Gallery. Eventually the service will take a different name and migrate to offering partner services. We asked Finn what the model will look like. Will it be pay per use? How will the application marketplace be administered? Finn said most of the details are being worked out in Redmond. The service will have IT safeguards. Finn said that IT managers will have a level of control over what applications users may integrate.What Finn describes sounds similar to application platforms now commercially available.Salesfoce.comis the obvious example. TheirForce.complatform is a full development environment. AppExchangeis the platform for building third party applications on Salesforce.com CRM. Dazzlefrom Citrix also comes to mind. It is an iTunes like service that is all about making IT more consumer friendly. Employees may choose the applications that they want to purchase. The service is set up as a store front that can automatically stream the application on a virtual desktop to a Windows PC, a Mac or an iPhone.Details are few about the application marketplace that will be offered through Sharepoint. But it does point to the increasing significance of third-party applications for the Sharepoint platform and how the service may evolve as cloud computingbecomes more prevalent.Discuss

  The wildly popular nonprofit fundraising application Causesreportedly emailed users of its MySpace app on Tuesday to tell them that all Causes will be removed from MySpace on Friday morning, in three days. Causes was co-founded by Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, the Comcast-acquired Plaxo and Founding President of Facebook. MySpace users of Causes were encouraged to post links on their MySpace profiles asking cause supporters to join the cause on Facebook instead. In abandoning MySpace, is Causes abandoning nonprofit groups organizing online with poorer users and people of color? Or are neither MySpace or Causes any big loss for social change organizations?SponsorThe Politics of PoliticsAmy Sample Ward writes today on the Stanford Social Innovation Reviewblog that she's concerned. "Causes leaving MySpace," she writes, "means that no users there will be able to continue promoting the causes, organizations or sectors that they care about via a process that's already been established, adopted, and networked."[The] Causes' About statementsays, 'The goal of all this is what we call equal opportunity activism.We're trying to level the playing field by empowering individuals to change the world.' The removal of Causes from MySpace where there are active communities of supporters means 'equal opportunity activism' is defined by only certain communities - we know that social networking platforms have very different demographic user groups."So Sample Ward argues that Causes is being hypocritical by allowing equal access to tools for social change to be defined only by the more economically powerful demographic groups on Facebook. Causes told users it was pulling out of MySpace because of a lack of activity, but the MySpace App Gallery says there are almost 190,000 active Causes users right now, making it the third most popular appin the politics and causes category.On MySpaceNot everyone thinks that MySpace provides a meaningful opportunity to effect social change, though. In an interview four years ago on the topic of nonprofit promotion on MySpace, Pete Cashmore of social network tracking blog Mashablearticulated what's now a widely-held belief. He said he believed MySpace was really just filled with young, drunken, hyper-sexualized, attention seekers. "You've been there...it seems crazy for organizations to invest time and resources there," he said, "but it's popular!" Not everyone sees it that way. The Humane Society, for example, posts daily to MySpace about animal welfare issues for its 65k+ friends. Causes co-founder Sean Parker poses sitting with crossed legs in his photo on the company profile page; his mission statement begins with the words "According to the historical Buddha..." It's hard to imagine a beneficent religious figure that would ditch MySpace for Facebook, isn't it? Perhaps "the historical Buddha" would choose to pull up stakes from the 11th most popular website in the worldif the people were too shallow and go to the hip social network where the money-raising action is.The Loss of CausesPerhaps even more cynical are some of the attitudesaround Causes itself. This Spring the Washington Postreported that despite big expectations from many nonprofit organizations, posting a Causes app to a Facebook profile and waiting for the money to roll in is a sure path to disappointment."Only a tiny fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that have turned to Causes as an inexpensive and green way to seek donations have brought in even $1,000, according to data available on the Causes developers' site. The application allows Facebook users to list themselves as supporters of a cause on their profile pages. But fewer than 1 percent of those who have joined a cause have actually donated money through that application."Widely respected nonprofit technology consultant Beth Kanter says that Causes is like a one-night stand. "Where's the opportunity to cultivate and get to know those joiners and move them up the ladder to donation?" she asks, "Where's the relationship building?"So by pulling out of MySpace, is Causes abandoning some of the people who need it most? Or is MySpace a bad place to do political organizing anyway? Or, is Causes just not a great way to organize and fundraise? There's a lot of negative feelings around this news, but maybe that's what happens when the struggling nonprofit technology sector puts too much stock in the dalliances of a big-named Silicon Valley baron like Sean Parker.Kanterbrings a twinkle of optimism to the conversation: "This sounds like a great opportunity for other fundraising applications," she says.Discuss

  Finally, the powers that be are planning to put a stop to #liesboystell, #goodhead, and... well, all the other asinine, vulgar, and generally pointless trending topics one finds in the right column of the Twitter web interface.Over the summer, we noticedthat Twitter was submerging some adult-themed trending topics, and we noted the absolute need for more top-down policing of the trends list, which should be available for surfacing interesting and timely items to engage users. Today, Twitter has finally acknowledged the brokenness of the feature and has stated its intentions to fix the issue.SponsorTwitter rep @jennadawn (no real name given, and no link from her Twitter profile, either) wroteon the official Twitter blog, "We've noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics. Trends began as a useful way to find out what's going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation."So, today we're starting to experiment with improvements to trends that will help you find more relevant tweets. Specifically, we're working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful. The improvement won't be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results."We are interested to know exactly how this new algorithm will work. Clearly, the wisdom of the masses has proved to be anything but. We hope that, beyond editing the tweets that qualify as representatives of a given trending topic, Twitter will acknowledge that they already dopolice trending topics, and we hope they will do so with greater diligence, intuition, and intelligence.Vulgarity and inanity aside, we worry about dupes. For example, right now, FortHood, Fort Hood, and FtHood are all trending topics. Likewise, every time a good football game rears its majestic head, we see the name and city of each team start to trend, along with NFL and the like.There are many ways in which trending topics are busted, useless, and irritating - hence, many opportunities for making them customizable, interesting, and useful. We're sensing an opportunity for third-party apps to step in here. Traditionally, Twitter is late to the gamein making official features from ideas third-party developers have been working on for ages. Unless Twitter takes some impressive and noticeable action, an app might fix trending topics before Twitter does.Discuss

  Metaio Augmented Reality Solutions is about to announce the release of the company's JunaioiPhone application and ReadWriteWeb has an exclusive pre-release review. While other products like Wikitude, Robotvisionand Layarallow users to view notes and text above a location-based layer, no other service offers us a chance to add 3D objects and animation. While the demo may seem frivolous for now, the possibilities for branded scavenger hunts, real-world

  Ben Behrouzi came from the shadowy Lead Generation business, but some people in that fieldsaid he played too dirty. Now he's got a real-time search engine that just came out of beta today, called Leapfish, and he says the company will already report $10 million in revenue this year despite having barely launched to the public. This is a strange story, but no one said the path to the future wouldn't itself be strange. So consider suspending your disbelief so you can see what Leapfish has to offer.SponsorLeapfish was at first a site for calculating the estimated value of domain names, then it became a patched-together meta-search engine that prioritized timeliness. Now it's a gorgeous, smartly planned real-time search service with an introductory video that can only be described as epic. (See below.) The company has convinced businesses to pay hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for year-long exclusive keyword advertising and the first right to renew each year. It's like an investment in the future viability of Leapfish, the company says. Leapfish at present only looks good, though, it doesn't really work that well. Leapfish searches for user queries across 25 different services, from Google and Yahoo to Yelp, Digg and some Real Estate sites. The service determines which sources are providing the most relevant results and constructs a search results page accordingly. If users love Leapfish enough to marry it they can turn on as many as 35 different widgets to interact with things like their Facebook and Twitter accounts on the Leapfish home page.The design of the site and results pages are quite nice and the fundamental idea is a good one. But how could Leapfish already be set to bank $10 million in revenue this year? The Pleasanton, California company says it has 100 employees; 50 are listed on LinkedInand almost every one of them are in sales.The sales pitch is this: Leapfish is small today, but the keyword prices that companies (like this lady) are paying will be a bargain if Leapfish can really grow. It's an investment, and as such it's a very affordable one. Some companies have already resold the keywords they bought from Leapfish for a profit, the company says.One part of what's being invested in is, no doubt, a vision of the future. Check out this absolutely cathartic videothe company made about the real-time web. It just might make you want to leap to your feet, pump your fist and shout "Go get 'em, Lead Generation Guy, go capture the future of the internet!"Unfortunately, in our tests Leapfish doesn't work very well. Search results are often off-topic, there are software bugs in some of the most basic parts of the site on the day of its grand unveiling and the compelling vision isn't that exciting in reality. Check out our 5 minute tour of the siteto see what $10 million in ads have been bought against over the last year.If Leapfish can in fact pull it off, it wouldn't be the first time a company has sputtered oddly into a final, grand-slam iteration. It wouldn't be the first time a controversial entrepreneur with a business model that some people are skeptical of ended up capturing the world's imagination, either. Leapfish is right, the web has changed dramatically, and someone's going to figure out how to searching it effectively. The Leapfish story sure is a strange one, though.Discuss

  Earlier today we posted about Answers.com's rise as a revenue and page-view generator. Through user-generated Q&A posted to WikiAnswers, the company is crowdsourcing heaps of daily content, ranking high in search across a variety of subjects, subsequently seeing steady traffic and, finally, cashing in via Google ads. It's a simple business model, but from a user standpoint there remains one question: Are we seeing quality solutions? KillerStartupshopes to ensure that entrepreneurs get quality solutions. The company launched Startups.comas a WikiAnswers-style Q&A site specific to business.SponsorAccording to TechCrunch, Startups.com is built on StackOverflow's Stack Exchangeand offers basic Q&A, tagging, badges for prolific experts and community voting on solutions. Users can enter questions via the site, emailor through Twitter by using the tag @askstartups.When it comes to finding out information about salaries and SEO strategy, WikiAnswersmight help, or it might just open the door to a good old fashioned rant. The hope is that instead of wasting time digging through spam and fodder, that Startups.com will offer entrepreneurs the answers they need to focus on their businesses. Nevertheless, with a system that moderates in exactly the same way as WikiAnswers it's too early to tell if this community's quality users can keep spammers and sub-par experts at bay. And if quantity really is the name of the game, then does KillerStartups really want to?For more information visit Startups.comor checkout KillerStartups for the company's own description of the service. Discuss

  Magnatune, a small and eclectic online record label, just releasedits first iPhone app. As far as we know, this is the first time that a record label has released an iPhone app that allows its users to play every song of every artist on its label for free and as often as they want. The only restriction on the app is that every song is followed by a short announcement with the name of the artist and title of the song.SponsorMagnatune Magnatune has always done things differently. It was one of the first online music services to allow its customers to choose how much they wanted to pay for an album. From its inception, the service never featured DRM'ed music and always offered its albums in alternative formats like WAV, OGG, FLAC and AAC. On its website, Magnatune offers a commercial-free streaming plan starting at $5/month (users can choose to pay more) and a download membership that starts at $10 a month.Sadly, the first version of the iPhone app doesn't support these membership options, but according to Magnatune's announcement, the next version will allow paying members to stream announcement-free music.FeaturesThe app itself is pretty straightforward. You can browse Magnatune's catalog by artist, album and genre. One neat feature of the app is that it remembers where you left off when you turn the app off - or when you get a call - and prompts you to return to that song when you start the app again.ShoppingThe Magnatune store allows users to buy songs right from their phones. Most of Magnatune's artists are featured in the iTunes store, and the app simply takes users to the iTunes app to buy the song. This, though, also means that potential buyers can't choose how much they want to pay for an album.Record Labels on the iPhoneAnother label that has also released an iPhone app recently is Ghostly International. This app(iTunes link) features only a selection of Ghostly's catalog, however.We have talkeda lot about how bands and artists have started to look at iPhone apps as replacements of traditional albums. Hopefully, more music labels will now also follow Magnatune's lead and release their own apps. With built-in purchasing and music discovery, this is a logical extension of the app-as-album trend - but then, the major music labels aren't exactly known for being logical.Discuss

  IBMannounced today a set of cloud services that will allow developers to develop and test cloud applications. In addition, IBM is offering free compute and storage for developers using the IBM platform.SponsorIBM Smart Business Development and Test on IBM Cloud is designed to remove burdens from developers who spend a lot of time setting up their own test environments for applications. By using this kind of a cloud service, developers can test in a fraction of the time, compared to more traditional methods.This has the potential to translate into a competitive advantage. By speeding up development, companies can move products faster to market.The service supports third-party and open-source tools. IBM is targeting IT managers who often are managing hundred of projects on an annual basis. IBM will also offer its service as a private cloud infrastructure. A private cloud infrastructure service is often designed for people who prefer governance and control over their own environment.The IBM offering is in some respects a collaboration platform for engineers and IT managers. They can share projects and do development and testing. It further permits distributed teams to collaborate on development projects.IBM is taking the right approach. They are focusing on education as a key component of the offering. They offer their own social networkwhich serves as a resource for developers and IT managers. Cloud computing is still quite abstract for people and education helps customers feel more comfortable about making investments in cloud services. It helps mitigate the risk factor.Discuss

  Yahoo just announcedthat it has upgraded its video searchproduct with new features that make it easier to discover music videos. Yahoo Video Search now recognizes and shows the most popular albums and songs whenever a user searchesfor an artist or band. A sidebar on Yahoo Video Search now displays an artist's most popular albums and songs. The album view then allows users to drill down even deeper and see videos for all the songs on this album.SponsorYahoo Video Search lets users filter searches by the length of the videos. Search queries can also be restricted to official videos from a band or artist. Just like it does with non-music related searches, Yahoo also features recently shared videos from Twitter at the top of the search results.Yahoo Video displays videos from services like YouTube, DailyMotion or MetaCafe right on the search results page. For the vast majority of video services like Artist Direct, however, users have to leave the site to see these videos. In our tests, this new feature mostly worked as advertised, though it sometimes showed songs that weren't part of the album we had selected.Reaction to Google Music Search?It is worth noting that while Google launchedits new Google Music Search service last month, Yahoo also offers a seamlessintegration with Rhapsodyon its site. Discuss

  Google is open sourcing a collection of Javascript tools todaythat will enable developers to build faster, more powerful and more efficient web applications using some of the same code that runs Gmail, Google Maps and Docs.tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_ui_javascript_library.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';Why is Google doing this? Because the more powerful web applications become, the more important Google's search, browser and nascent OS become. More relevant to developers than some grand anti-Microsoft conspiracy, though, is that some serious UI sweetness may be forthcoming.SponsorHere's what's being made available today:The Closure Compilerwill scrunch up your weighty javascript for super-efficient deployment, allowing you to do more in the user's browser with a much smaller code payload to deliver. The compiler is available in binary, as a web app and as an API. Google is also releasing a Firebug extension called Closure Inspectorthat will translate those compiled bits of code back into their original format.The Closure Libraryis a collection of cross-browser, modular, "industrial strength" UI components from across the various Google properties. Rich text editor, DOM inspector, drag and drop ala Google Maps - you want it, you got it.Also released are a number of high-efficiency Closure Templates.Google's Amit Agarwal says that all of the above were originally built as "20% time" projects but then became fundamental parts of some of the most popular Google applications. Now these technologies can be used in building your apps, as well.It will be interesting to see how these Google offerings stack up and get adopted compared to Yahoo's YUI library.Discuss

  Earlier this morning, Google launchedthe Google Dashboard. This new feature gives users a quick overview of the Google products they use and a slice of the data that is connected to these accounts. Google sells this as a way to enhance "transparency, choice and control," though it is important to note that none of this information is new. The dashboard simply brings all of this data together in one place and gives users an easy way to access the privacy controls in the Google services they use.SponsorThe dashboard lists all of the active accounts a user has on a selection of Google services. These include, among others, Google Calendar, Contacts, Docs, Finance, Picasa, Reader, YouTube and Voice. There are also still dozens of services like Google Maps, News and Book Search that don't appear in the dashboard yet.The dashboard itself doesn't offer the ability to change any privacy settings. It links to the respective services' privacy pages where users can make changes.Nothing NewIt is true that, as Google puts it, the "scale and level of detail of the Dashboard is unprecedented" - Google never made something like this available before. The data that appears in the dashboard isn't really the data that Google is interested in, though. All Google really cares about is the data that it can use to show you better AdSense ads.This Is It?As the LA Times points out, Google's "data storage revolves around precisely how and what the company does to analyze and profit from user information." This would be interesting information to have, though it's also the data that Google is the least likely to share. Google also doesn't share information it collects about you through cookies, its server logs or its advertising programs.It is good to see that Google makes it easier for users to see an overview of all the data they have given to Google and made public. Maybe it will come as a surprise to some people that Google knows what emails they have received and that the company keeps track of all the YouTube videos they have watched. For most users, though, the dashboard won't offer any major revelations.Discuss

  Facebook is getting old. No, people aren't getting tired of it, it's actually getting old, as in its population is aging. In May of 2008, the median age for Facebook was 26. Today, it's 33, a good seven years older. That's an interesting turn of events for a site once built for the exclusive use of college students. tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/as_facebook_ages_gen_y_turns_to_twitter.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';So where are today's college students hanging out now? Well, to some extent, they're still on Facebook, despite having to share the space with moms, dads, grandparents, and bosses. Surprisingly though, they're also headed to another network you may have heard of: Twitter.SponsorAs it turns out, Gen Y likesTwitter...Well, maybe not, but they are usingitOver the course of the year, there have been countless reports - some more substantialthan others- but all with the same message: Generation Y is just not interested in Twitter. The reports generally cited members of this demographic as saying Twitter was "pointless" and "narcissistic." Apparently, that's beginning to change. Well, maybe not their perception of Twitter, but certainly their use of it. Today, Twitter is now the second-youngest of the top four social networking sites. Its median age is 31. MySpace's is 26, LinkedIn is 39, and, as noted above, Facebook is 33.When looking at specific younger demographic segments, and not just Gen Y, you can see strong Twitter uptake over the past year. For example, 37% of those 18-24 now use Twitter when only 19% did back in December 2008. And in the slightly older 25-34 bracket, a portion of which could still be considered Gen Y, 31% are now using the service compared to only 20% in December of last year. Combined, these two groups account for more than half of Twitter's network. Why is Gen Y Now Flocking to Twitter?So what gives? Why has Gen Y seemingly changed their minds about the social microblogging network that only months ago they avoided? A recent AP articleoffered up some ideas including the influx of celebrity tweeters, pressure from teachers or bosses, and it even hinted that Gen Y'ers entering the workplace have found value in the network for business-related purposes. That same sentiment was shared by Meredith Sires of Gen Y trend-watching site, YPulse. She theorizesthat the rapid growth in the 18-24 demographic has to do more with the recent college graduates segment of that group finding ways to build entirely new online contact lists and create new identities more closely tied to information-sharing. However, there have not been any in-depth studies that detail all the various reasons that Gen Y has chosen to adopt the microblogging network. To date, everything cited consists of just theories and speculations based on anecdotal evidence. But while all the ideas have merit, the theory that rings truest to our ears is the one put forth by Craig Watkins, a University of Texas professor and author of the book "The Young and the Digital." He saysthat what we're seeing is "...a kind of closing of that generational gap as it relates to technology." In other words, young and old alike are joining the same networks and socializing in the same spaces. At this point, we would have to agree. After all, Gen Y (or Gen Z for that matter), hasn't all of a sudden flocked to some new social networking site where the majority of the online user base mostly consists of their peers. Although some niche sites like FML, Failblog, TextsFromLastNight, and Sporclehave apparently attracted this young crowd, their numbers are dwarfed by those of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. It seems as if Gen Y is simply content to join the older adults on the top social networks of today and not strike out on their own...and vice versa. The older social networking users, in turn, never really set up shop on networks designed just for them like the (now "hibernating") Boomj, a social network for baby boomers, or the online old folks home eons.com. They, too, have gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter. Will this ever change? Will there ever be another network dominated by the digital youth? Of course no one can know for sure, but odds are that unless it's a closed-off network where entry is barred to those over a certain age, any new social network will have trouble keeping the grown-ups out these days. And even if some such network ever sprang into existence, it may struggle to attract the Gen Y members it desires - especially since they're so content to socialize on the sites they already use. And now that they've added Twitter to that list, the challenge to draw them away to yet another social networking site may prove even more difficult than before.Note: statistics in this article are from Pew Internet's Recent Report on Twitter for Fall 2009Discuss

  In our society, there's an image of a computer nerd as this sad, pale, and lonely guy sitting in the dark gazing at a glowing screen. As it turns out, that's just an image and it's far from the truth. The reality is that most technology users are perfectly well-adjusted and social creatures. In fact, those who surf the web and use their mobile phones may actually be more social and better connected to the world at large than those who don't. SponsorAccording to a new study from Pew Internet and American Life Project, technology does not lead to social isolation, as many often suspected. Instead, researchers found that online participation and mobile phone usage leads to people having larger and more diverse core discussion networks. (Discussion networks are defined as being the places where we can discuss "important matters" with friends and confidants.) Internet Use and Social MediaThat's not to say that there aren't some technology addicts that aren't social isolated - around 6% of the adult online population would fit in this category, having no one with whom they can talk about those important matters and who say they don't have anyone "especially significant" in their life. However, this figure (the 6%) has not grown as access to technology has grown over the years - it has remained virtually unchanged since 1985. This points to the fact that perhaps those who are socially isolated individuals would be so anyway, regardless of what sorts of tools are provided to them, be those mobile phones, PCs with internet access, etc. For the majority of the online population, technology - and especially social media - has led to more diverse networks than we've ever had before. The report notes that those who participate in social networking services such as Facebook for example, are more likely to interact with people from different backgrounds, different races, different political parties, etc. Specifically, blogging and general internet use was tied to having more racially diverse networks while online photo sharing was tied to having more diverse political discussion partners. Those who use the internet tend to have 15% more network ties who aren't family members and those who use instant messaging services have 19% more non-kin members in their core networks.Mobile Phone UseAlong these same lines, the ubiquity of mobile phones hasn't led to decreased face time with family and friends, but just the opposite. On average, a person spends 195 days of the year having mobile phone contact with others, but face-to-face interactions occur on about 210 days per year. In addition, mobile users have around 15% more family members with whom they can discuss important matters and tend to have 25% more core network members who are not family members. Overall, those who use mobile phones have core networks that are 12% larger than those who don't. Despite all this good news about how technology leads to having larger, more diverse networks, the researchers also found that our networks' size has actually shrunk over the years. Since 1985, there has been a decrease of about 1/3 in their size. The researchers don't suggest any specific reasons for this shrinkage, but they do point out that they can now rule out one possibility for sure: technology. Discuss