Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Trend Watch: People Are Online What They Are Offline--Divided, and Slow to Build Bridges

IN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever.” At the time, Facebook was stealing members from MySpace, but most people thought it was just a fad: teenagers tired of networks, the theory went, just as they tired of shoes.

But after hearing that youngster, Ms Boyd, a social-media researcher at Microsoft Research New England, felt that something more than whimsy might be at work. “Ghetto” in American speech suggests poor, unsophisticated and black. That led to her sad conclusion: in their online life, American teenagers were recreating what they knew from the physical world—separation by class and race.

A generation of digital activists had hoped that the web would connect groups separated in the real world. The internet was supposed to transcend colour, social identity and national borders. But research suggests that the internet is not so radical. People are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges.

via www.economist.com

In Google We Trust: Young Adults’ Evaluation of Web Content [Research]

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting piece about a research study, Trust Online: Young Adults’ Evaluation of Web Content, out of Northwestern University which found that the much lauded "digital natives" aren't so savvy and that they may trust Google a little too much.

Sure those digital kids can surf the web and text, but when it comes to web credibility and media literacy, they are lacking the skills necessary to properly vet digital resources.

As readers of this Barking Robot are aware, this is a topic that I've been talking about for some time.

Here's the RWW with a breakdown of the study:

"In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy.

Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others.

That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results.

Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit.

During the study, one of the researchers asked a study participant, "What is this website?" Oh, I don't know. The first thing that came up."

That exchange sums up the overall results from this study: many students trusted in rankings above all else. In fact, a quarter of the students, when assign information-seeking tasks, said they chose a website because - and only because - it was the first search result.

Trust Online: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web Content

Study: Video Games May Sap Attention Span

Parents who believe that playing video games is less harmful to their kids' attention spans than watching TV may want to reconsider -- and unplug the Xbox. Video games can sap a child's attention just as much as the tube, a new study suggests.

Elementary school children who play video games more than two hours a day are 67 percent more likely than their peers who play less to have greater-than-average attention problems, according to the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics.

Playing video games and watching TV appear to have roughly the same link to attention problems, even though video games are considered a less passive activity, the researchers say.

"Video games aren't less likely than television to be related to attention problems," says the lead author of the study, Edward Swing, a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology at Iowa State University, in Ames. "They were at least as strong as television at predicting attention problems."

However, the study doesn't prove that video games directly cause attention problems. It could be that kids who have short attention spans to begin with might be more likely to pick up a joystick than a book, for instance.

via www.cnn.com

Facebook and BBC iPlayer Lead U.K. Online Video Growth

While monthly video viewing in the U.S. may be showing signs of leveling off, the British market is in serious growth mode. As in the U.S. Google's YouTube has the lion's share of that market, with slightly less than half of all videos served. While the market fragments quickly from there, the TV networks are growing rapidly.

The BBC more than doubled its videos viewed last year to come in second place. Each visitor to the broadcaster's site consumes 15.7 videos a month. Before many U.S. networks and Hulu started pouring prime time onto the Web, the BBC was developing its robust iPlayer portal and player.

While the BBC’s video viewing audience tends to be male and spread between the ages of 25 and 54, Channel 4 skews heavily toward the 15-24 year old age group. The site was visited evenly by males and females but women watched five more videos then male viewers on the site during the month.

Facebook is the big up-and-comer in U.K. video, however and clearly the one to watch. The social network saw the number of videos viewed rise 205%, to 42.6 million in February.  

The importance of Facebook to all online businesses, including video, was underscored last week by no less a video maven than Mark Cuban, co-founder of HDNet.

In a post at his blog, Cuban mused that Facebook has become the new Internet, the place we now go to fill time in much the same way we channel surf TV. With its increasing knowledge of users and alternative means of discovering content via social sharing, he sees the network as a challenge to two of the biggest stakeholders in the digital universe.

via www.mediapost.com

Weekly Wrap: Facebook Social Plugins, How to Create Foursquare Events, Apple Shutters Lala, What is Facebook Saying About You, Social Metrics Tools & More!

Facebook’s New Social Plugins: 50,000+ Websites in One Week: Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook announced that more than 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative. [Mashable]

Apple To Shut Down Lala: In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in the cloud? [TechCrunch] 

What is Facebook Saying About You?: Yee’s tool shows you exactly what data a developer would get when it asks Facebook for info via the API, such as your name, birth date, location, etc. and also any public information such as your “likes”, your photos and so on. [GigaOm]

Summer Music Watch: Jennifer Lopez Does a Cover of Donna Summer's "On The Radio" [Ryan Seacrest]

The Future Of The Web is HTML 5: Did we mention that 2010 would be a big year for HTML5? Apple and Google are pushing it big time, and now so is Microsoft. When Internet Explorer 9 comes out, it will support HTML5 and help make it more common across the Web. [TechCrunch]

Millennials: This generation is diverse, educated and plugged-in: Gio Acosta says that on any given day there are only two hours in which he is not texting, doing something on his cell phone, or on Facebook, or playing games on his laptop or PS3. Acosta is exactly what Kaiser Family Foundation recently found in a study: That to say today's young people are wired is an understatement. It’s an integral part of their daily lives. [PennLive.com] [Barking Robot]

Edelman Digital Social Metrics Tools: Last week Suzanne shared a few tools to help you find new folks to follow on Twitter to kick-off a new focus on tools and resources for online engagement. I wanted to continue this trend by introducing you to a few blog analytics tools! [Edelman Digital]

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Teen Driver Program: NHTSA has developed a multi-tiered strategy to prevent motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries among teen drivers: increasing seat belt use, implementing graduated driver licensing, reducing teens' access to alcohol, and parental responsibility. Related: Get the 'No Phone Zone' Lesson Plan [NSTSA] [Barking Robot]

Guide to Creating Foursquare Events: There are some reasonable and relatively simple ways to incorporate Foursquare and encourage audience participation at your next event. [Tradeshow Insight]

Texting Poetry Inspires Kids: Once considered a disturbance in the classroom, cell phones, texting devices and other wireless technology are being embraced by some of the very same people who used to malign them: teachers. [Record Online]

End Bullying Now: Here's the link to the Josh Shipp & Brooks Gibbs 'End Bullying Now' Teleseminar! [Barking Robot]

2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award: After listening to feedback from our friends in the educator community, we've made some important changes to this year's Totally Wired Teacher Award provided by Dell. Please help us spread the word to any public school teachers you are in contact with. [Ypulse]

Infographic: If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportion

via neatorama

Weekly Wrap: Foursquare Nabs MTV & VH1, Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter, Saving the Google Students, COPPA & Youth Marketing, Free iPad eBooks & More!

Six Reasons to be Skeptical of the 'Digital Natives' Discourse: Almost all of the claims of the net gen discourse are in popular media and if they are based on research, it is proprietary and full methodological details are not provided. All of the sound research that refutes the claims is published in scholarly journals and has been subject to peer review. [Net Gen Skeptic]

Saving the Google Students: For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read. [LA Times]

Weekly Wrap, Foursquare Edition: Meet Gatsby, Fresh off the heels of hooking up with Bravo TV and Harvard Foursquare signs a similar deal with MTV & VH1, Microsoft adds Foursquare data to Bing Maps & a really cool visualization of Foursquare check-ins at SXSW. [Iconoculture] [Mobile Entertainment News] [Mashable] [TechCrunch] [SimpleGeo]

10 Reasons Students Are Tuning Teachers Out: You’re teaching to a generation of students that can access more information more quickly than any other generation. Don’t tell students that you don’t want to figure out how to use the internet or that you don’t answer email. You’re putting yourself into a category you don’t want to be in. [GYJoe]

US Census Bureau Adds Mapping App to Facebook: In an effort to reach out to young people, the U.S. Census Bureau is launching a huge nationwide campaign incorporating social media, broadcast media and print to encourage people to fill out their census forms this year. [Inside Facebook]

Ypulse Interview| Jamie Tworkowski: Jamie is the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms, a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury and suicide. Related: MTV Poll: Generation Stress [Ypulse]

Preparing Your Content for iPad: Platform-specific considerations and UX Guidelines for web content in Safari on iPhone OS devices, with specific information for iPad. Also, iPad to Offer 30,000 free eBooks at launch. [Safari Technical Notes] [Apple Blog] [UX Magazine]

Marketing to Kids | A Time for Playing by the Rules:Whether it’s Quiksilver, Monster Energy Drinks or ESPN X Games, the look and feel of the typical action sports-related website is young, edgy, authentic. Action sports marketers need to be aware, however, of the panoply of laws that regulate marketing to kids, including the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [GroupY]

Quote O' The Week: “I hate being thought of as a product. I am not a doll, and people want to treat me that way. I’m older now. I have an opinion. I have my own taste.” - Miley Cyrus on why being a Disney pop princess is so difficult. [Gossip Girl] [Barking Robot]

Blogging, academia, and the new public intellectual: John Holbo admits he and his fellow pioneers have lost the “revolutionary fervor” of blogging’s early days. “I’m fortunate to be at the top of the food chain, to have these bully pulpits where I can stand up and know thousands of people will hear me,” he says. “But we all thought blogging was going to transform academic life, and that didn’t really happen.” [Cal Alumni Association]

Linguist Urges Kids to Embrace Twitter: Language is forever changing -- and forms such as tweets and text messages are no less valid than any textbook version, says the linguist David Crystal, whose latest book encourages children to engage with the possibilities of their lingua franca. [The Independent]

More People Are Watching TV While Surfing the Web: This is some decent news for the TV industry, since the fear is that Internet time is eating into boob tube viewing. Overall, TV viewing is up 1%, year over year, according to the report.  [Business Insider]

Why Apple’s iPad Can’t Succeed in Schools (Yet): You see, tablets-as-books is a great idea until the battery dies, and then the student has no textbook and no computer. She will have to plug-in to a power outlet if she wants either of those things back. Related: A Kindle in Every Backpack [The Apple Blog] [Barking Robot]

Weekly Wrap: Microsoft Courier, Conan vs. Leno (again), Simon Fuller's Social TV Experiment, Content Strategy, Teen Brain, Cybertots, 39% in USA Don't Use Internet & More!

Microsoft's Courier 'digital journal': We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5x7 photo when closed. [Engadget]

Conan Vs. Jay, Round Two: Hulu users tag Jay Leno’s return as “Vomit Inducing” (and worse) and Conan rallies his 'Facebook Army' for his next battle with Jay. Can't we all just get along? [Mashable] [Business Insider] [Barking Robot]

Simon Fuller Aims for Social Networking TV Reality Hit: The man behind Pop Idol, So You Think You Can Dance? and the Spice Girls is rarely wrong about trends and if this latest idea takes off it will change the way in which we watch television, paving the way for other producers to cut TV networks out of the loop altogether. [Guardian]

Twitter Safety | Keeping young people safe on Twitter: Twitter is popular with everyone but due to the very open nature of Twitter younger users should take extra caution. Remember everything you post to Twitter with an open profile can be seen by anyone in the world and is very easy to search for.  [BullyingUK]

The 10-Step Content Strategy: Embed social media into your content — even if your content is PDFs of case studies, e-books or white papers. Give readers the opportunity to engage in your content and share it with their networks. Lightweight ways to encourage reader engagement include adding a “like” button to your content, plugging in Facebook Connect and including discussion threads for blog comments. [Smart Blog on Social Media]

Study Finds 39% of Americans Don't Use the Internet: But even more to the point, in this day and age, not having internet access is almost like being illiterate. There is just so much of the world that is off limit without the ability to get online. So the fact that the majority of people who aren’t online in the US see their lack of an internet connection as not important is somewhat scary. [The Next Web]

The Teen Brain | It's Just Not Grown Up Yet: Nature made the brains of children and adolescents excitable. Their brain chemistry is tuned to be responsive to everything in their environment. After all, that's what makes kids learn so easily. But this can work in ways that are not so good. Take alcohol, for example. Or nicotine, cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy... [NPR]

Content Marketing Lessons From the 2010 Vancouver Olympics: If you want to stand out online, you need to create a plan and invest in it properly. [IdeaLab]

The Secret To A Better Social Media Strategy: By tailoring marketing strategies to account for statistics such as these, small businesses can maximize the effectiveness of their social media efforts and focus on reaching their desired audiences. [American Express OPEN]

Cybertots: Fisher-Price Targets the Preschool Set: Set aside the Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys. Fisher-Price is cyberfying your kids. [BrandChannel]

Teachers Not Adequately Prepared for Education Reform: A report released in December by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (CFTL) indicated that in California, where schools are pursuing ambitious education reform, while many teachers are well qualified to take on the demands of such an effort, many more simply are not up to the task. [THEJournal]

Weekly Wrap: Slacktivism, Open Source Social Innovation, Boomers & Social Media, Helping Google Get Social, Sundance 2010 Round-Up, Texting Party in the USA, Steve Jobs' Wardrobe & More!

A Time and Place for 'Slacktivism': Slacktivism; (v.) action 4 social change w/o much effort beyond a click/text. Known causes: social media, cellphones. [Ypulse]

Baby Boomers Get Connected with Social Media: Boomers are turning to social media, where they keep up their offline social connections and make new ones. Online marketing messages that help them build on their connections—and foster other online relationships—will get their interest. [eMarketer]

Lady GaGa's Lessons for the Music Business: Underneath Gaga's haystack wigs is a case study of what it takes to succeed in the music business today. Gaga, 23 years old, has made shrewd use of new digital platforms, while still leveraging the clout of a major label, an institution deemed obsolete by many proponents of DIY culture (Thanks Ypulse!). [WSJ]

Conan O'Brien's Fate a Sign of the Times: While the "Tonight Show" ratings fell under O'Brien's tenure as a whole, ratings amongst the younger demographics were better than those of Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." According to the New York Times, the median age of "Tonight Show" viewers fell by 10 years, from 55 to 45, in O'Brien's first month alone. [Colorado Daily]

Social Media Marketing, How Pepsi Got it Right: Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big. [Mashable]

Will Creating a SWAT Team Help Google Get Social?: As successful as Google has been with plenty of other things — including a little thing called search-related advertising — it has struck out big-time in virtually every attempt at the social side of the web. [GigaOM]

Reflections from the Sundance Film Festival: Lois Vossen, ITVS vice president and Independent Lens series producer, shares her reflections on this year’s festival, which wraps up this weekend. [Beyond the Box]

College Students Hate Email: In fact, the student joked that she only uses her email to “communicate with her boss and adults.” She uses Facebook as her preferred method of peer-to-peer communication – she has had a Facebook thread running between the three of them for three years now. [Off Campus Media]

Tweet O' the Week: Can someone please buy Steve Jobs a new outfit! The man has more money than God and Oprah! A simple button down will do!" (via Scott Nevins) [Twitter]

Americans Sending 4 Times as Many Texts as Brits:There was a turning point a couple of years ago when it was suddenly undeniable: It was either text message or be left behind. If you were paying for it by the message, you suddenly had to find a plan, because you started having more and more friends that wouldn't talk any other way. Well, we're wondering if it has finally reached that point in the U.K. - or if it's yet to come. [ReadWriteWeb]

Teen Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage: For teenagers, the effects of a drunken night out may linger long after the hangover wears off. A recent study led by neuroscientist Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego compared the brain scans of teens who drink heavily with the scans of teens who don't. [NPR]

Open Source Social Innovation: Last week Bill Gates entered the digital publishing world by establishing the Gates Notes - an online evolution of his now annual January letter sharing his thoughts on the progress of the issues central to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s interesting and symbolic that the next chapter of his life story would include an “open source” platform for sharing IP on social innovation. [Cheskin]

Razorfish FEED Report: Meet the 'Connected Consumer'

How do consumers engage with brands in an increasingly digital world? That's the fundamental question Razorfish set out to answer with this year's Digital Brand Experience FEED report.

Sorta Related: PBS > Frontline > The Persuaders > Interview: Douglas Atkin

Disney, Xbox 360 & the Jonas Brothers "It's More Fun Time" Sweepstakes

Disney and Xbox 360 have teamed with the Jonas Brothers to star in a national campaign for Xbox 360 called It's More Fun Time.

The campaign can be seen across multiple digital platforms including Disney Channel, Disney XD, ABC Kids, Disney Online and Family.com's Get Plugged In.

The campaign also includes the It's More Fun Time with the Jonas Brothers sweepstakes for K-8+, which can be entered at Disney.com/MoreFunTime or by texting "Xbox" to Disney (347639).

In conjunction with this campaign Xbox Live members will receive a single episode of the series Jonas free to view on Xbox Live Zune Marketplace through December 31, 2009.

Sorta Related: Watch Disney's 'Prep & Landing' Online--for free!

Weekly Wrap: Parenting Backlash, Twitter Christmas, Google & OpenID, BBC BullyProof, Africa & Web 2.0, Xbox Live Gets Social, Virgin Mobile, Homeless Teens & Lady GaGa

Backlash Against Helicopter Parents: The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We were so obsessed with our kids' success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it's never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. [TIME]

America’s first Twitter Christmas: America’s first Twitter Christmas got under way in earnest on Friday. Across the land,retailers and their customers used the social networking site to talk to one another about bargains, problems, purchases and shopping strategies. [NYT]

Tweet O' the Week: "I am too tired to play video games. I must be 35." via @smbeaverson

Google Profiles Turn into OpenID: As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. What this means is that you can sign into any site that accepts OpenID simply by using your Google Profile domain. [TechCrunch]

Youth Judge Brands Like Peers: The clever thing is, understanding which factors earned a brand ‘aspirational’ status enables us to enlighten brands to where they must invest time and effort if they are to succeed in repositioning their brand as they so wish for it to be viewed by the consumer. [MTV Sticky]

BBC BullyProof: The BBC has launched a new campaign targeting online bullying. As part of BBC Radio 1 anti-bullying initiative, Bebo, Facebook, Habbo, MSN, MySpace and YouTube are joining forces for the first time to try and tackle the increasingly serious issue of online bullying by putting in special measures and advice on their sites. [BBC]

Assume Your Personal & Social Media Life Have Merged: Los Angeles Times employees have been advised to watch what they post on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or any online social space. In other words: Privacy Is Dead. [LA Times]

Nintendo Dominating US Female Gaming: Nintendo says 35% of "primary players" of consoles are women, 80% of whom own a Nintendo (11% XBOX, 9% PS3) [EDGE]

Human Rights Groups Warn Against In-Game War Crimes:The study attempted to determine if the acts gamers engage in while they play violent titles would "lead to violations of rules of international law, in particular International Humanitarian Law (IHL), basic norms of International Human Rights Law (IHRL), or International Criminal Law (ICL)." [CNET]

African Trends of Mobile Web & Web 2.0: The relative price for ICT services is highest in Africa, the region with the lowest income levels, yet that households in Kenya are willing to spend up to 50% of their income for mobile phones. (Thanks Dayna!) [Web 2.0 for Dev]

Millions Using Social Media on Xbox Live: First-week figures show that at least 2 million Xbox Live users have logged into Facebook, and that one million Last.fm accounts were created in the first 24 hours of availability. [CNET] [Mashable]

Virgin Mobile USA Monster Ball with Lady GaGa: For the first time, Virgin Mobile USA will extend its innovative "Free I.P." program to a national tour, offering fans who volunteer their time to homeless youth organizations access to free show tickets. Virgin Mobile has been a very active advocate for homeless teens. [CNN Money]

Alternate Reality Games Flourish At the Grassroots: Over the years, the games have become a favorite marketing tool of large companies like Microsoft, which has commissioned huge ARGs, as they're known, for the launches of things like the video game Halo 2. [CNET]

Growing Pains As Video Games Move Online

The Economist has an interesting article about the migration of video games from physical consoles to web-based platforms. While most video game consoles allow users to play online with others, the real growth in online gaming is being fueled by web-based virtual worlds, social and casual gaming platforms.

The article points to several indicators that video games have begun to make the transition from consoles to online and mobile gaming platforms. There are several indicators that social, mobile and casual gaming are the next wave of disruptive technology:

• In America, the industry’s biggest market, sales of games were down 12% in the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2008.

• Gameforge, one of the biggest and fastest growing online-gaming firms, offers 15 games and has more than 85m registered players.

• The biggest area of growth for online gaming has been social gaming in social networks like Facebook. These games allow users to "join their friends for an online game of poker or Scrabble, or to create and show off virtual pets, farms and mob families."

• Zynga, the market leader, which had 22m users in January, now has more than 170m.

• Since they don't have to manufacture and distribute physical video game software, online social games are very profitable for game developers.

• The other big advantage for online gaming is that they don't have to spend as much money on traditional marketing, instead relying on "viral" and "word of mouth" among friends on social networks.

• The iPhone App store is also a leading source of mobile social gaming with literally hundreds of games available at the tap of a finger.

• The biggest monetization boon for online gaming companies comes from the sale of "virtual goods." By 2012, the article forecasts, annual revenues of virtual goods will have grown to $1.2 billion.

Despite these gains, there are signs that online gaming is already experiencing some potentially serious growing pains. This month Zynga and Facebook have come under fire for it's advertising practices. A potential class-action lawsuit asserts that "unauthorized charges imposed on Facebook and MySpace users who participate in social games like 'Farmville' and 'Mafia Wars.'"

Whatever the outcome of the Zynga lawsuit, social and casual gaming is here to stay. Electronic Arts (EA), the big dog of the console gaming era, recently snapped up Playfish, the second largest producer of social games for $400 million dollars.

Global Youth: Turkish Millennials Love Instant Messaging, Facebook & Google

According to research conducted by comScore more than 19.7 million people age 15 and older accessed the Internet from a home or work location in Turkey, viewing an average of 3,070 pages of content and spending an average of 31.6 hours per person online giving Turkey the seventh largest online population in Europe.

Overall comScore reports that among internet users in Turkey communications and entertainment activities accounted for much of the total time spent online. Among the key findings:

• Instant messaging, led by Windows Live Messenger, was the most popular online activity accounting for 25.9 percent of total time spent online during the month, followed by social networking (9.9 percent), online games (6.9 percent) and e-mail (4.6 percent).

• Google Sites was the most popular property in Turkey in September with 18.4 million visitors, reaching 93.0 percent of the total online population, followed Microsoft Sites with 17.6 million visitors.

• Social networking giant, Facebook.com, ranked third with 16.1 million visitors, having grown 26 percent in just the past six months.

• Dogan Online, which attracted 11.1 million visitors in September, led a total of seven Turkish-based properties that ranked amongst the top 15, including Milliyet Group (8.8 million visitors), Mynet A.S. (8.3 million visitors) and Blogcu.com (8.2 million visitors).

• Window’s Live Profile – which provides a gateway to Turkey’s most popular Instant Messenger, Window’s Live Messenger – ranked second with 7.8 million visitors, followed by Turkish property Mynet Eksenim (3.2 million visitors) and Netlog.com (1.8 million visitors).

Weekly Wrap: Bing Rocket Contest, School Bake Sale Ban, iPhone & Teens, Brands, Content & Youth, Mobile Augmented Reality, Tween Summit Wrap Up, South African Youth Trends & More!

Interest in iPhone High as iPod & iTunes Dominate Teen Market: The of the 18th bi-annual Piper Jaffray teen survey shows that Apple's share among teen consumers continues to grow. Apple's smallest market among teens -- the iPhone -- is poised to greatly expand. While 15 percent of those surveyed currently own an iPhone, 22 percent intend to purchase one in the next six months. [Apple Insider]

Brands Must Accept Young People Expect Control Over Online Content: A lot of marketers are really just wrapping up the old-fashioned method of control and broadcast and making it look young. What teens want is to be given something and allowed to do anything with it, which is particularly hard for corporate marketers to grasp. [New Media Age]

Mobile Augmented Reality Booming in Australia: There’s some momentum building in the mobile-based augmented reality space in Oz. [TechNation Australia]

2009 Tween National Summit Wrap Up: Amy Jussel and Debra Moffitt (aka @pinklockermom) have put together a great round up of the first ever National Tween Summit to see what’s on the minds of preteen girls. Lot's of great info and insight here folks! [ShapingYouth]

Do Good!: Nominate Mr. Youth for Best Social Media Agency in Mashable's 2009 Open Web Awards!

Pepsi, Stay The Hell Away From My Daughter (and my niece too!): Any sweet-talking kid who thinks he will outsmart this girl with a stupid iPhone app could find himself on the mean end of a double-sided axe. [Mobile Insider]

Social Media as Content Gateway: In a nutshell, there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool — roughly 18 percent of users see it as core to finding new information. While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure. [Nielsen Wire]

Laptop for Every Student in Uruguay: This is not simply the handing out of laptops or an education programme. It is a programme which seeks to reduce the gap between the digital world and the world of knowledge. Hat tip @SarahNewton [BBC] [Gen Y Guide]

Schools 'Ban' Bake Sales: Say What?!: The New York City Board of Education has implemented a new policy banning bake sales in all of their schools. Well, mostly. [MomLogic]

Bing Launches 10,000 Rockets: Bing is asking 10,000 students to submit the rocket design of the future. They’re assembling a pretty cool panel of scientists from across the nation to help them judge which of these designs best exemplifies how space travel might evolve. [Bing]

Twitter Adds 100 Million Potential New Users: Twitter, in an extensive announcement detailing its vision for making a global impact, announced that it had secured an SMS deal with India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel. This opens the service to 110 million new people can tweet via SMS, all from the second-most populous nation in the world. [Mashable]

Speed Round: Vodafone has a parents' guide to help you protect your family on mobile phones, Instant Grass has a new report on South African youth trends, Josh Shipp kicked off a new contest to win 1 of 5 FREE COPIES of "Josh in a box" and a $500 scholarship, UK-based Indie Screenings partners with film creators to allow anyone to buy a license to screen their films, several cult shows get a boost from recorded viewing and finally......Yo Television, Meet Twitter! [Vodafone] [Instant Grass] [Josh Shipp] [Indie Screenings] [The Wrap]