Kevin: A fascinating infographic showing the use of various web 2.0/social web services. The one quick thing to see on this map is how popular photo sharing is, popular and universally so. Social networking also is very popular around the world. Microblogging and blogging shows a wide variation in use around the world. One thing that is really veruy interesting is how popular social media is in Asia compared to Europe. For instance, 60% of China's internet users upload photos but only 38% of British users. Some 46% of Chinese internet users have blogged but only 8.4% of British users. Wow. That's huge.

Kevin: My colleague Mercedes Bunz has a great interview with media consultant Gary Hayes on how social media services such as Twitter are now being used effectively to reflect the community that builds around television shows. This is a great point by Hayes: "Most broadcasters and programme-makers are really missing a trick in not having a presence in the real-time discussion that surrounds "their" show – they don't need to control the conversation, they just need to be a voice of "the creator" or represent the production." The same could be said for news organisations. It's not about control but about showing up.

Kevin: A fascinating article by Peter Kirwan looking at the relationship between journalists and hyperlocal bloggers. In 2010, we will see new hyperlocal experiments in the UK. However, how effective will traditional news organisations be in partnering with local bloggers if this 'mutual incomprehension' exists.

Kevin: A lengthy piece by Richard Rodriguez looking at the decline of newspapers in the US. "Newspapers have become deadweight commodities linked to other media commodities in chains that are coupled or uncoupled by accountants and lawyers and executive vice presidents and boards of directors in offices thousands of miles from where the man bit the dog and drew ink."

Kevin: A very interesting short article on Poynter looking at recent departures by forward-thinking, digital journalists from newspapers. Quote from Anthony Moor, formerly of the Dallas Morning News and now a lead local editor for Yahoo says: "Part of this is recognition that newspapers have limited resources, they are saddled with legitimate legacy businesses that they have to focus on first. I am a digital guy and the digital world is evolving rapidly. I don't want to have to wait for the traditional news industry to catch up."

Kevin: Matt Thompson looks at Google's Living Stories and work that he has been doing concerning a way to create canonical pages about news topics. He asks: "What if we started with a Wikipedia topic page, and began to imagine how a newsroom could improve that? How might we improve the storytelling? What might the talk page become? What would bring people back to follow the story as it progresses?"

Kevin: A nice presentation by the New York Times. "Since the Great Depression, presidents have tried many methods to fight recessions. Three economists explain what worked and what didn’t."

Kevin: In Adam Tinworth's continued excellent live blogging of LeWeb 2009, he quotes Brian Solis with a real gem of a quote about social media: ""We all have to report to people who don't give a shit about authenticity."

Kevin: Roy writes: "In a challenging posting, American media commentator George Snell argues that reporting is a commodity but journalism is not." Snell makes a difference between reporting and journalism which involves investigation and analysis. I think reporting is part of good journalism. If you haven't done proper research, it's impossible to do the kind of 'journalism' he's talking about. This post by Roy and the original commentary are worth reading.

Kevin: "The multi-faceted role of the online journalist is rapidly evolving. These 8 skills will be essential for landing the journalism jobs of tomorrow." Jay Rosen suggests a ninth skill: 'flexible ideas of what "journalism" is.'

Kevin: Jay Rosen interviews Dirck Halstead, the author of an article on Digital Journalist titled "Let's Abolish 'Citizen Journalists'". It's a fascinating and slightly bizarre interview in which Halstead claims that publishers are looking to replace all professional photojournalists with amateur submission. Halstead also believes that print has to die so that Time Inc and other "principal players" will set up super sites with huge advertising budgets. I can't say I agree with much of what Halstead says, but it's fascinating to read.

Kevin: Government 2.0: What does "Open Government" mean for the networked generation? written by Howard Rheingold's Community and Social media course at Stanford.

Suw: Excellent post from Johnnie with lots of background quotes and links. Well worth a read.

Kevin: Interesting polling site by TalkingPointsMemo. Clicking on the individual polls is where this really shines.

Kevin: TechCrunch looks at NPR's (US National Public Radio) mobile strategy, it's iPhone app and its plan for an Android app.

Kevin: My friend and colleague Keith Stuart has reviewed a game connected to the new Sherlock Holmes film. The game 221B has some interesting social reinforcement. You have to play the game with a friend. Keith says something very interesting that I think is of use in a broader context, possibly even in a journalistic context, "221B is a great little game in its own right, but it's also an important exploration of new interactive storytelling possibilities."

Kevin: How Barack Obama routed around the soundbite media. Soundbites dropped from almost 45 seconds to 7 seconds in the 2008 US presidential election. Obama "routed around the soundbite press to address the public directly," says Ari Melber. The Obama campaign "used the web not only to shape media coverage but to replace it with his own content and distribution networks."

Kevin: Chinese authorities have closeddown 414 video and audio websites this year for operating without a licence or for containing pornography, infringing copyright or containing other 'harmful' information.

Kevin: A location-based mobile social network in South Africa maps almost 11,000 HIV-related support services across the country. It allows South Africans to find HIV services closest to them. Excellent use of location technology.

Kevin: The Wall Street Journal reports: "Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad — college students, housewives, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople — in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and other places indicate that people who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them."

Kevin: Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of US website Salon.com, on the effects of its 2001 paywall experiment

Kevin: Advertising Age's "continuing farewell to magazines that quit print under pressure from the recession and digital media."

Kevin: Philip John looks at a number of different models that could support hyperlocal journalism. There are a lot of ideas here. Some might seem strange to journalists and newspaper commercial departments, but it will take editorial and commercial creativity to build the new businesses that will support professional journalism in the 21st Century.

Kevin: John Temple writes: "My view is that he should go ahead and cut off Google if he wants. At a minimum, it'll be amusing to watch. But I doubt his content will be missed – unless he can create greater value and benefit for the user than he has today. The way to do that is to give people relevant content – information and advertising – that has real value. No easy task. I'm trying to wrestle with these issues – how to monetize content. And I know it's not easy. But I can't believe traditional news organizations will find success just by bashing Google and other search engines."

Kevin: "Asterisq just released Mentionmap, an exciting web app for exploring your Twitter network. Discover which people interact the most and what they're talking about. It's also a great way to find relevant people to follow." It's a very good tool to see your network, not only in terms of people you're most connected to but also the topics that they are talking about.

Kevin: Ian Betteridge summarises a discussion that he had on Twitter with a number of digital journalists including Matthew Ingram and John Robinson. Ian puts forward an interesting argument that people too focused on what readers need and forgetting what people want engage in a "puritan reductionism" and "paternalism".
"But if you treat journalism as some kind of “enabler of effective citizenship” you will never produce stories which are compelling, interesting, provoke real emotion – and yes, which entertain too."

Kevin: Zoe Kleinman writes: "Children who blog, text or use social networking websites have better writing skills than those who do not, according to the National Literacy Trust." A survey of 3,001 children aged nine to 16. "Of the children who neither blogged nor used social network sites, 47% rated their writing as "good" or "very good", while 61% of the bloggers and 56% of the social networkers said the same."

Kevin: Google CEO Eric Schmidt writing in the Wall Street Journal says: "Video didn't kill the radio star, and the Internet won't destroy news organizations. It will foster a new, digital business model." It's especially delicious to see Schmidt use Murdoch's words against him in one of his own publications. "…as Rupert Murdoch has said, it is complacency caused by past monopolies, not technology, that has been the real threat to the news industry."

Kevin: A fascinating visualisation looking at the wide variations in income across New York's various neighbourhoods. This is what visualisation is about: Allowing people to easily see patterns in large amounts of information. This shows you the median income of the people living in various neighbourhoods and income distribution of the household in that neighbourhood or borough. Bravo.

Kevin: Matt Brittin, Google UK MD, told a Parliamentary committee hearing: "Google delivers 'something like' four billion clicks to news organisations and publishers per month, he said. "Once those clicks go through to sites those are people reading stories and engaging in advertising."

"It's wrong to paint us as stealing content (…) The amount of traffic that comes from us is equivalent to 100,000 clicks a minute to newspaper sites."

Google's 'snippets' of text were in-line with worldwide copyright law, he claimed."

Kevin: "The Twitter "back channel" can be a powerful tool to quickly knit a gathering of strangers into an online community, a place where attendees at meetings broadcast bits of sessions, share extra information such as links, and arrange social events. But the same technology can also enable a "virtual lynching.""

Kevin: Facebook announced that the Guardian (my employer) will be integrating Facebook Connect across their site. In other Facebook news in December 2009, they said the average user spends 25 minutes on the site. It has 90,000 apps. SkySports recorded 400,000 fans in four weeks.