Kevin: Pete Warden does a very interesting analysis of Facebook in the US and looks at who is connected to connect to whom. "Looking at the network of US cities, it's been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the cluster." He breaks the country into areas like Dixie, Stayathomia (the Mid-Atlantic, Ohio River Valley and upper Midwest), Greater Texas (Missouri, Arkansas and Texas), the Nomadic West, Pacifica (the Seattle area) and Socalistan (southern California). It's a very interesting analysis.

Kevin: Facebook has overtaken Google News for referrals to news and media web sites. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic writes: "Facebook's page view explosion in the last months of 2009 — plus new evidence that it is becoming the major driver of news — has some analysts wondering whether the site is taking over Google News and personalized Google Reader accounts as America's leading information hub. "

Kevin: Demand Media, which has fine tuned an approach to inexpensive text and video content online, is looking to sell its content to traditional media. They optimise content to what people are searching for online. Demand produces 4500 pieces of original content a day. Some writers are getting very anxious for the fact that Demand pays roughly $15 per 500-word piece.

Kevin: Robert Andrews of paidContent UK gives a great list of proposed amendments to the UK Digital Economy Bill. There are some very interesting things lurking in these amendments. Conservative Lord Ralph Lucas has tabled this amendment: “Protection of the right to link to publicly available information on the internet”, which states: “The creation, aggregation, copying and publication of any link to publicly available information contained on websites on the internet shall not constitute an infringement of copyright.”

Kevin: Dan Lewis James looks deep into Hunch at the social network design principles. This is a fascinating look at how to build social spaces based on the goals and pyschological motivations of users. While working for a content site, you wouldn't re-create Facebook, but if you look at the goals that people have in terms of finding and sharing content, you can easily see how you would build a news site different to add social elements not just around participation but also in terms of helping them find the content that they want. This is a really well done and thoughtful post.

Kevin: Fascinating discussion from the DeSilve-Phillips Dealmakers Summit 2010. “We believe in content but we’re struggling to monetize it,” said Jeff Horing, managing director of Insight Venture Partners. Interesting discussions as well in terms of paid content versus advertising supported content. Investors see opportunities for investing in magazines that serve attractive niches, but they don't see investment opportunities in newspapers. "Newspapers have a fundamental issue where they don’t deliver as much value as their alternatives," said Richard Zannino, managing director of CCMP Capital Advisors.

Kevin: This year's Edelman Trust Barometer. Richard Edelman says: "The events of the last 18 months have scarred people. People have to see messages in different places and from different people. That means experts as well as peers or company employees. It's a more-skeptical time. So if companies are looking at peer-to-peer marketing as another arrow in the quiver, that's good, but they need to understand it's not a single-source solution. It's a piece of the solution."

Kevin: "Everybody goes online, everybody has a cell phone, and kids hate blogging and Twitter, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project."