Pew News & Articles

The fourth "Future of the Internet" survey is now available from the PEW Internet and American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. In this latest survey we find that Google will not make us stupid. In fact, our reading, writing and knowledge sharing capabilities will be improved. But that's only the beginning.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Social Nets Changing News Consumption Patterns
• HootSuite Mobile Apps Make Twitter Business Friendly
• Facebook To Bring In $1 Billion in Revenue
• Yammer Opens Up To Communities

A new study revealed this week that approximately 46% of Americans say that on a typical day they get news from four to six different media platforms. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform.

Ahh, blogs. Random chatter? News? A combination of the two? It's a question often posed by those who aim to study new media. In an attempt to monitor the blogosphere and compare it to the realms of traditional media, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has launched the New Media Index which aims to track over 100 million blogs and 250 million social media outlets.

If you're mom has started using Facebook then you won't find this recent report surprising at all.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life project, who released a report on Adults and Social Networking Services, "adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from eight percent in 2005 to 35 percent."

A funny thing that’s developed in the last few years is a shared interest in the latest trends by teens and adults. At least, we’re made to think it’s a tad odd, and surely greasy-faced adolescents are horrified at the thought of getting an add request from their parents on MySpace.

But at the same time, when it comes to things as explosive and powerful as social networking, is a shared interest really all that strange? After all, adults are people too, and as Pew Internet & American Life Project reports, their motives for joining a network are a little more colorful than one might think.

Chances are if you’re easily frustrated and regularly discouraged by the failure of computers, cell phones and the Internet, you’re old. That’s not criticism, though. It’s the results of a recent study released by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The study, based on a survey of over 2000 U.S. adults, took an in-depth look at how people felt and reacted to problems with technology, whether it is a loss of Internet connection or a broken iPod.

We reported recently about the slowed growth of the blogging industry. A new report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project may shed some additional light on the subject.

The study reported that networked workers, those who use the Internet or email at work — which is 62% of American adults — said such technologies are a “mixed blessing for them.” Reading blogs at work was reported by only 11% of those surveyed. A mere 2% of the employed Internet users said they blog at work.

According to a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project study, Internet users are shifting their media consumption habits to downloading more podcasts.