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Some 25.1 million people accessing Facebook via a mobile Web browser, a growth of 112 percent from January 2009, according to new research from comScore. Twitter use via a mobile browser grew 347 percent to 4.7 million users. MySpace lured 11.4 million users. In total, some 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010. Apple’s iPhone 3GS and Google Android devices such as the Motorola Droid and Nexus One make it easier for users to access applications they would normally only be comfortable using from their PCs and Macs.

Some 30.8 percent of smartphone users accessed Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, according to new research from comScore.

That number is an 8.3 point jump from the 22.5 percent figure the researcher tallied one year ago, and is much greater than the 6.8 percent of feature phone users who accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.

The specific breakdowns, which do not include access of social networks by the 6 million mobile phone owners who do so solely through mobile applications, are even more encouraging for the top social network sites.

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• Mobile Access to Twitter and Facebook Rises (pamil-visions.net)
• Twitter Sees 347% Growth in Mobile Browser Access (readwriteweb.com)

The Department of Defense has loosened the reins over the use of Facebook, Twitter and other user-generated applications among its personnel, ending the maddening inconsistency of Web 2.0 application use among the military.  

In a Feb. 26 memorandum covering the “safe and effective use of Internet-based capabilities,” the DOD said the entire non-classified network may provide access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other user-generated content and Web 2.0 applications, such as Google Apps, wikis and blogs.

“This directive recognizes the importance of balancing appropriate security measures while maximizing the capabilities afforded by 21st Century Internet tools,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III.

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• New Department of Defense Policy Authorizes Social Media Access (lezgetreal.com)
• U.S. military OKs use of online social media (cnn.com)
• New U.S. Military Policy Opens Up Social Media to the Troops (mashable.com)

You know those patents we see in the tech world that seem overly broad and tend to restrict competition in the space? Well, check out this one. Social networking giant Facebook was just granted a patent for “displaying a news feed in a social media network.”

The patent, which was filed back in 2006, covers the information that is released the in the information river on Facebook’s front page. It doesn’t seem to cover status updates exclusively, meaning that sites like MySpace are probably safe on that front.

As many sites are pointing out, Twitter also seems safe from the effects of the recently granted patent. 

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• Facebook Patents The Feed (allfacebook.com)

The Internet is moving away from being a data transportation and messaging platform, into a space filled with integrated rich-media content such as video and voice, and Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook, that encourages online collaborations even at the enterprise level, according to Cisco Systems.

 The networking giant also sees increasing demand for distributed virtualized data center architecture, Irving Tan, newly-appointed managing director of Cisco Singapore and Brunei, said during a media briefing here Thursday.

He noted that this “new Internet” will frame the company’s future strategies and product offerings.

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• Cisco Earnings: Demand Expected to Bounce Back, Supply Worries Loom (seekingalpha.com)

Yahoo has announced a partnership with Twitter that includes integrating Twitter content and social features across the Yahoo! network.

Yahoo has announced a partnership with Twitter that includes integrating Twitter content and social features across the Yahoo network.

In a February 23 blog post on the issue, Yvonne French, product manager for Yahoo Social programs said under the agreement users will be able to view personal Twitter feeds in Yahoo Mail.

“Users who authorize Yahoo will be able to read and update their Twitter feed from Yahoo Mail, the Yahoo homepage, and other locations across the Yahoo network,” French said. “The Twitter (and Facebook) feeds will be important additions to the rich, diverse Updates feed that Yahoo users already enjoy,” she said.

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• Yahoo To Announce Broad Twitter Partnership (paidcontent.org)

Just in time for the anniversary of the Iranian revolution (February 11th), that country’s government is reportedly blocking access to Gmail, instead replacing with a government-issued e-mail program. The plan comes ahead of what many expect to be nationwide protests. According to The Wall Street Journal, the suspension of Google’s free Webmail is expected to become permanent.

Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s e-mail services, saying instead that a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Google’s email services in Iran.”

Iran has experimented with similar Website suspension in the past, having blocked Facebook in the lead up to last year’s election.

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• Gmail Banned in Iranian (appscout.com)

Facebook’s and AOL’s instant-messaging systems now can link together. It’s a step forward–but one that also shows how backward Net communications are today.

“AIM has teamed up with Facebook, and now you can chat with your Facebook friends–right from AIM!” gushes the AIM beta download site. “After you sign into AIM, click the ‘Facebook Connect‘ button at the top of your buddy list to set up Facebook chat. When you are done your Facebook friends will be added to your buddy list. You can now chat with your friends who are using the Facebook site!”

Maybe I should be happier about this than I am. I can’t begrudge Facebook’s effort to enrich its members communications’ options through its 2008 launch of instant messaging, but I also can’t help feeling this is a case of a new-era Internet company making the same missteps as its dot-com 1.0 predecessors.

Specifically, I hate how, unlike e-mail, instant messaging consists of separate islands of non-interoperable services. The fact that Facebook and AOL had to hammer out a partnership and that AIM had to release new software to take advantage of it reveals just how unpleasant the prevailing system is for users.

Reports: Gmail to Become Hub for Social Networking? Categories:   Google Tags:   Gmail, Google

Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal report Monday that Google will be adding hooks to popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter via Gmail. While interesting, a Facebook and Twitter plugin wouldn’t exactly be game-changing. In fact, my early suspicion was that this might be a Gmail Labs plugin. In fact, this sounds very very similar to Google’s recent real-time search efforts, where Google Social Search provides real-time updates from people that you know. It’s not that far from an active search for those updates to having them pushed, now that Google has a real-time framework for those updates. It seems reasonable to assume that Google is stealing a page from startups like Threadsy, which tries to take feeds, streams, tweets, and other elements of your social networking life into one easy, manageable stream. If so, more power to Google. And that’s exactly what you’ll be giving the company if you sign on, unfortunately: the ability for Google to sniff a collection of inbound communications and updates, rather than just the Gmail and Google Reader feeds it previously only had access to.

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• Google Opens Social Search to All; Cuts Facebook Off at the Pass (readwriteweb.com)

Google Tops Mobile Site Visits

New data from The Nielsen Company shows that Google Search was the top mobile property in December with nearly 28 million unique visitors, according to MediaPost. Yahoo Mail was in second place with 23.2 million, followed by Facebook at 18.8 million. Gmail and the Weather Channel were fourth and fifth, with 17.6 million and 13.8 million unique visitors, respectively. Overall, the entire U.S. mobile device Internet audience was 62 million, the report said. That’s about 25 percent of the installed base of wireless subscriptions.

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• Facebook dominates UK mobile use (news.bbc.co.uk)

WS-Security, SSL, encryption, digital certificates… We know the deployment and consumption of cross-enterprise and inter-enterprise services opens us up to all kinds of vulnerabilities, and there are all kinds of security protocols and solutions to address this in a multi-layered fashion.

But we still can’t seem to get the most essential piece of the puzzle right: user passwords. Imperva, a security vendor, recently released an analysis of weak passwords used at a popular social networking site, which were exposed to public view by the hacker.

ZDNet colleague Dancho Danchev, a well-known expert in all things security, also weighed in on this new revelation.

As Imperva puts it, we have made precious little progress over the past two decades in improving passwords — long considered the Achilles heel of Web security.