Facebook has announced that it has 500 million active users around the world.

Each Facebook user has on average 130 friends and shares 70 bits of personal information — including home movies and family photos — every month. With 500 million users detailing their moods and passions online, Facebook is more than a social networking site. It’s a global phenomenon that’s shaping the way people communicate.

Facebook has half a billion users around the world (130 million in U.S.). That’s huge for a planet of less than 7 billion people. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous nation after China and India.  Every 1 out of 12 people on this planet has a Facebook account.

What grew as the pet project of Mark Zuckerberg, when he was a student at Harvard, has exploded — gaining eight new users ever second for the past 15 months. Facebook has changed the way many people communicate — letting its millions of users share personal thoughts and images with their network of friends.

Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, said, “People have really gotten connected, not only sharing more information and different kinds but being more open and with more people and that social norm is just something that’s changed over time.”

And people share a lot. Whole lives play out on Facebook. Births. Graduations. Marriage. Even divorce. Some experts say that sharing too much information can have downsides — including affecting the way prospective employers may evaluate a job candidate.

And some people are downright negative about it. “I think it’s terrible. It’s narcissistic,” said Facebook user Julia. Yet, people share personal information on the site 70 times per month on average.

And what was once an online destination only for college students has expanded, says Michael Nelson. He worked at IBM and currently teaches at Georgetown University. “It’s grandmas, it’s executives, it’s politicians. It’s everybody. The fastest group of users — it’s the over sixty group,” he said.

Bonnie Speich logs on once a week to keep in touch with family. “Every minute of my grandson’s life is on that thing,” she said. Mike Aedenran checks in a lot. “I usually go on about five times a day, five to ten minutes every time,” he said.

But not everyone is excited about having an online community of friends. Kevin Sampson said “If they are finding comfort with friends online rather than meeting people, that’s pretty sad.”

Still, Facebook is so popular that public figures have taken notice. President Barack Obama is credited with using the power of Facebook during his 2008 campaign. Even Pope Benedict has a profile — sharing updates in eight languages.

And Facebook played a role during Iran’s post-election upheaval. Khsro, a graduate student from Iran said “For a lot of Iranians, like a year ago, it became one of the foremost important tools to get news from inside Iran. Right after the elections, basically the international news agencies were not allowed to get news and the first place you would check for the videos from Iran, the protest videos and so on, was just on Facebook.”

Information can easily go viral with the click of a mouse, says Nelson. “Now we have this technology for this one community to talk to another community, and all these different conversations happen at the same time. Almost effortlessly,” he said. He says, the future of social media is mobile. More phones will be able to support Facebook giving even more people access to their online communities from the palm of their hand.

Google Tags is a new advertising product from Google that is rolling out nationally today, and is available in all 50 states.

Tags are yellow markers that allow us to promote important aspects of your business.  Consumers can scroll over Tags on Google or click on the sponsored link to visit your website, view coupons, photos, or other select features.

Read our last post to determine if this is the right service for you.

Google Tags is a new advertising product from Google that is currently available in 11 select cities, including our city San Francisco.

* Atlanta, GA
* Austin, TX
* Boulder, CO
* Chicago, IL
* Houston, TX
* Mountain View, CA
* San Diego, CA
* San Francisco, CA
* San Jose, CA
* Seattle, WA
* Washington DC

We can help you add Tags to your business listing in Google Maps to promote coupons, display photos, videos, and any piece of content that you want to highlight.  This will help your business stand out from others, and attract more customers to your store or website.

Photo below: Tags are yellow markers that allow companies to promote important aspects of their businesses.  Consumers can scroll over Tags or click on the sponsored link to view coupons, photos, or other select features.

It is becoming quite clear that Apple is making a play into the increasingly competitive space of mobile advertising.

Photo: Google Nexus One & Apple iPhone

Reports suggest that a new personalized, mobile advertising system that could be called the “iAd” will officially be unveiled to Apple Developers on April 7. Executives familiar with the plan quoted Apple CEO Steve Jobs as describing the new ad platform as “revolutionary” and “our next big thing.”

iAd is believed to have been built on top of Quattro Wireless, according to Online Media Daily, which said “it is expected to be the first real battle of a Silicon Valley Holy War between Apple and arch frenemy Google that is shifting its front line to Madison Avenue.”

Apple acquired mobile ad developer Quattro for a reported US$275-million in January 2010. This came on the heels of Google’s US$750-million purchase of AdMob in November 2009. AdMob’s mobile ad platform has been particularly popular on the iPhone.

On Google’s Public Policy Blog, group product manager Paul Feng said the Apple deal is “further proof that the mobile advertising space continues to be competitive.” With more investments and acquisitions in the space from Apple, Google and others, he expects the vigorous growth and competition to continue.

On Apple’s most recent conference call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated that Quattro was bought because the company wants “to create a seamless way for developers to make more money on their apps, especially free apps.”

Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes believes Apple is likely going to start looking at a way to get a fee for helping developers create effective mobile ads, tapping into its vast resources of customer data on iTunes. This should allow it to get more content (especially free content) available for download on all its devices.

“Given Apple’s affluent customers, its installed base of mobile devices and its dominant iTunes platform, the company is in a very good position to get the best information to advertisers and drive revenue,” Mr. Reitzes told clients.

His colleague Doug Anmuth (who covers Google) noted that industry estimates put the mobile advertising market at around US$600-million, growing to US$1.6-billion in 2013. Apple has sold about 48 million iPhones to date – not including iPod Touch units. Assuming 40 million devices are installed and each has the ability to generate $10 per year in advertising-related revenue, Mr. Reitzes said mobile ads could equate to a US$400-million revenue opportunity.

“Given millions of iPhones, iPods and iPads are set to sell in upcoming years; Apple could become a big player in the mobile advertising market quickly, practically having the power to recreate the market from scratch, with the ability to scale quickly just like it did with the App store.”

Photos of Schmidt and Jobs talking were snapped and sent to Gizmodo. Jobs was in his trademark mock turtleneck and jeans at the cafe Calafia in the Town and Country shopping center. The establishment is owned by former Google chef Charlie Ayers.

Jobs was overheard by the photographer as saying two things: “They’re going to see it all eventually, so who cares how they get it,” reportedly said about Web content.  And, “Let’s go discuss this somewhere more private,” after a crowd began to gather around the two.

The report said that Schmidt was mostly quiet and listening while Jobs did most of the talking.

“The fact they’d meet in a neutral place like this implies, although does not prove, they chose a public place for its neutrality,” Gizmodo’s Brian Lam wrote. “Or they just wanted coffee and inevitably started talking shop, albeit in public. But since when do billionaires have to step out for coffee? The only thing that adds up is that neither felt comfortable meeting at each other’s HQs, and this is the start of talks that will inevitably be tense for both sides.”

Jobs’ Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG was also spotted parked out front.

Is that an iPad near Schmidt’s coffee? Or just the menu?

In addition to being chief executive of the search giant, Schmidt was also a member of the Apple Board of Directors until last year. Since his departure from the Apple board, Schmidt has shared kind words on the Mac maker. However, the perception of a growing rivalry and intense dislike between the two companies has only grown.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that people close to Jobs said the Apple executive feels that Google “violated the alliance” it had with the iPhone maker when it began producing its own Android-powered cellphones that resemble the iPhone. One person familiar with both companies said the level of animosity involved puts it on a level of “World War III” between the two tech giants.

That report alleged that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page considered Jobs a mentor, and were regular visitors to the company’s Cupertino, Calif., campus. And while the relationship between Jobs and Schmidt was said to be pleasant, the two were reportedly “never close friends.”

In February, multiple reports suggested Jobs disparaged Google at a meeting with Apple employees. Specifically, he was quoted as saying that the search giant’s “don’t be evil” motto is “a load of crap” — an incident later corroborated by the Times. It was also alleged that Jobs said Google wants to “kill” the iPhone.

It has even been rumored that Apple and Microsoft entered into talks to make Bing the default search engine and maps provider for the iPhone. Google, in the wake of those reports, has maintained that Apple is a “valuable partner.”

Jobs’ SL55 AMG…Legally parked; still no plates…

And Schmidt has also insisted that all is well between the two companies stating that he has a “soft spot” in his heart for Apple. The former board member also had a peek at some of the products the Cupertino, Calif., company is working on, and said Apple has “a lot of very good stuff coming.”

Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, finally unveiled the Apple iPad during an event in San Francisco today. The name of the new tablet was revealed only a few days ago, and aims to separate itself from tablet computers such as Microsoft’s new Slate PC category. Leaks have prepared us all for an “iPhone on steroids” and we recently estimated the release date to be April 2010. The “iPhone on steroids” has turned out to be a good description of the new Apple iPad, and the release date will indeed be April 2010.

According to Steve Jobs, the reason for its existence is to beat both smartphones and laptops when it comes to the categories in bold throughout this story. Of course, with such a mission the Apple iPad will likely walk down the same road as the iPhone: Either you’ll grow to love the Apple iPad, or you’ll return it and hope that the netbook category will soon be offering optimized software and services too.

So, we all know what a netbook can and can’t do for the time being, and now the time has finally come to figure out what the Apple iPad can and can’t do:

Browsing

The Safari browser on the Apple iPad is just as capable as the iPhone browser. Steve Jobs pitches it as a way to see the full page you’re surfing on without zooming in and out, something you can obviously not do on the iPhone. There’s of course also landscape and portrait mode support, and the built-in accelerometer will take care of the switching for you. That being said, Apple is known to be a strong supporter of HTML5, and there’s no doubt that the Apple iPad is part of the company’s effort to get Web developers moving in the right direction in that regard. There’s no Flash or Silverlight support at the time of writing here.

Email

The Apple iPad offers a very nice presentation layout, and a large on-board QWERTY keyboard will appear when you need to enter text. Will the iPad beat a laptop keyboard? The iPad Keyboard Dock will be available as an accessory, offering a full-size traditional keyboard for those who need that.

Photos

Apple’s way of presenting photos is already highly acclaimed. Especially taking flick scrolling to this new level where it can be combined with a larger screen real estate, should really give you the feeling of an “iPhone on steroids”. We’re sure it’s going to be a whole lot easier to bring out old memories when friends comes to visit after the Apple iPad hits store shelves than before. Showing photos on a laptop is fine, but the Apple iPad will basically act like an advanced photo frame in that regard. There’s likely no smartphone or laptop that’ll be able to beat that experience.

Video & Music

Videos on the Apple iPad will obviously be a challenge when it comes to power. With built-in access to the iTunes store, as well as YouTube and YouTube HD streaming being available, it’ll be easy to throw your smartphone or laptop away in favor of the Apple iPad. You can play movies, TV shows and music videos. When it comes to music playback, we guess playing those music videos will be the most alluring part here, as the iPad would obviously not beat the iPhone when it comes to portability and battery life.

Games

A large part of the iPhone apps out there are games and the Apple iPad will run any iPhone app out-of-box without modifications. To take advantage of the iPad’s large screen, one can also double the pixels on-the-fly and run apps in full screen mode. Popular iPhone developers will offer optimized iPad apps pretty quickly to take full advantage of the larger screen though, and an Apple iPad Developer SDK was released today to ensure that every developer out there can offer optimized iPad apps. The app store will be an integral part of the iPad.

Some high-def games will be available from companies such as Electronics Arts from day one. EA’s Need for Speed Shift will for instance offer a range of new touch controls besides taking advantage of the obvious graphics power and display technology hidden in the Apple iPad.

eBooks & Newspapers

Of course, eReaders will never look the same after you’ve seen what type of content the Apple iPad can offer. New York Times have created a showcase of its newspaper, which will for sure become a popular service on the iPad. In stead of holding a static newspaper in front of you, you can simply load up New York Times on the iPad, boasting multimedia such as in-line video streaming. Yes, you read that right. It’s that simple to reinvigorate newspapers, as long as you have the world’s largest gadget maker enabling it, of course. If you’re an independent sketch artist, Apple will of course also provide you with an application called Brushes. We guess its potential is self-explanatory.

There’s also a new iBook Store, which will basically compete directly with certain other eBook stores out there. Apple has partnered up with Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette Book Group, and eBooks will be available in the ePub format.

Once you’ve purchased an e-book via the free iBooks app, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf.  Just tap it to start reading.

Productivity & Scheduling

Steve Jobs have pushed his army to create iWorks for Apple iPad, and will sell it for $10 each (Pages, Numbers and Keynote). A calendar for scheduling is also available out-of-box, of course. It’s an interesting move Apple has made here though, no doubt about that.

Apple iPad Specifications

The Apple iPad is 0.5 inches thick (just as slim as the iPhone) and weighs in at 1.5 pounds. It sports a 9.7-inch IPS display and offers “full capacitive multi-touch”. Compared to TFT displays, IPS displays require a brighter backlight, subsequently drawing more power. In return, Apple iPad users will get a wider viewing angle (178 degrees to be exact) and accurate color reproduction. The Apple iPad is the first consumer device to take advantage of an IPS display (LG.Philips is likely the brain behind this screen).

The Apple iPad will be available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions. It also boasts 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR connectivity, speaker, microphone and an Apple 30-pin port. Apple promises a battery life of up to 10 hours and over a month of standby time.

The bomb shell as far as specifications is concerned: The 1GHz Apple A4 chip. It’s an ARM SoC with an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU) manufactured by P.A. Semi. Apple acquired P.A. Semi back in April 2008, and this is the first Apple chip to appear. We guess it’s just a matter of time before Apple’s iPhone will be powered by an Apple chip as well. In other words, companies like Qualcomm and Intel doesn’t seem to get much fun out of Apple’s new mobile adventure in the future.

Price and availability

The Apple iPad Wi-Fi models will start shipping worldwide in late March 2010 ($500 for 16GB version, $600 for 32GB, and $700 for 64GB).

The Apple iPad 3G models will start shipping in the U.S. and selected countries in April 2010 ($630 for 16GB version, $730 for 32GB, and $830 for 64GB). International pricing and worldwide availability will be announced at a later date. Apple expects to have international carrier deals ready by June 2010.

The Apple iPad 3G models (7.2Mbps HSDPA) will be sold with an unlocked micro SIM card, but Apple has a new prepaid data plan deal with AT&T Wireless: $30 per month for unlimited data or $15 per month for up to 250MB. AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots will be free to use when signing up for a data plan with AT&T. There’s no contract and you can cancel it at anytime. The AT&T plans can also be activated on the Apple iPad.

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

This esentially bring the social networking and micro-blogging service with 140 characters to become a “Local Real-time search engine”.

The location-stamping or geocoding of content and the release of that data to third parties (online and in mobile) will unleash a wide range of creative applications and expressions for local tweets.

Indeed, newly hired Twitter COO Dick Costolo emphasized that mobile would be a prominent use case for this location-oriented data.  That’s clear, as people look to Twitter-enabled local-mobile apps to find out who’s around and what’s going on.  This innovation should bring more explosive growth to the platform.

To learn how you (and your ad) can reach all these users, subscribe to 2020 Social advertising service.

Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone

Twitter today confirmed reports of a fresh $100m investment in the company, by announcing that it has closed what it called a “significant round” of funding.

A Wall Street Journal report earlier this Thursday pegged the new round of funding for Twitter at $100 million, and said backers were valuing it at $1 billion.

In a post on the company’s blog, co-founder and chief executive Evan Williams said that the three-year-old internet startup had received a new injection of money from four investors - though he did not confirm the size of the deal.

“It was important to us that we find investment partners who share our vision for building a company of enduring value,” he said. “I’m proud of the team we’ve built so far and I’m confident in the future we’ll build together.”

It heralds the latest march forward for the highly-regarded startup, which now has more than 30m users worldwide using its service to send each other short messages through the web and their mobile phones.

The site’s growth has been boosted by celebrity users including Britney Spears and Ellen DeGeneres, as it attempts to find a business model that it hopes will propel it to profitability.

The company has now raised $155m over the course of four investment rounds, and has said that it plans to start rolling out money-making services in the coming months - including commercial accounts for businesses and brands - as well as saying it wanted to “leave the door open” on advertising opportunities.

It recently brought in a new chief operating officer, hiring former Google executive Dick Costolo earlier this month, as it attempts to expand even further and make its service more widely available. Costolo had been with the internet giant for two years, since selling his own startup, FeedBurner, to Google in 2007 for a reported $100m.