Social Media is fast becoming popular and is now commanding 22 percent of our time online. According to a survey conducting by Nielsen, the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites. Not only has the traffic to these sites increased 24 percent in last one year, but people are also spending 66% more time on these sites than a year ago. In the month of April 2010, 82% of the world’s internet population visited Google, and each spent 1 hour 21 minutes and 51 seconds on the site, making it the most popular site.

Before now, Twitter has been a fairly open entity.  Yeah there is only one Twitter, but any developer is totally free to create a client of their own and become the next TweetDeck.  The simplicity and openness is part of the charm: sort of a blank canvas upon which we, the denizens of the internet, can paint our thoughts.  For better or worse, Twitter will very soon be changing the regulations regarding a client’s ability to connect to their servers.  Apparently as of June 30th, all Twitter clients must utilize OAuth.

With all the mud being slung over the internet, it’s become easy to doubt the internet overlords' whole thing about “not being evil.”  From back-room deals, to jumping on the mobile ads bandwagon, it’s beginning to look like Google is just as evil as the rest.  Granted they certainly aren’t any more evil, just par for the course.  Well it seems that the folks at their PR department have been catching wind of this, and have decided to do some good old fashioned marketing campaign…. I mean humanitarian work. 

While day one of the first Disrupt event was centered on pie in the sky, science-fiction-esque dreams for the future of mobile computing, today’s event was the more business oriented day with much more immediate and perhaps realistic dreams.  This is not to say that there is anything wrong with pie in the sky dreams… jetpacks and neural phones that let you think at people are awesome things… they’re just not going to happen any time soon.  When the question of the ideal smartphone was brought up at the opening, there were a few recurring themes, and the issue followed suit for a good portion of the day.

For the past month or two, the growing issues surrounding Facebook, and the group account deletions and boycotts because of them.  At the opening of the second day of Disrupt, Vice President of Facebook Chris Cox (among others) spoke a bit about addressing those issues, particularly privacy.  Whether privacy is really the key issue, or it’s just been blown up by the tech media, it’s what the folks over at Facebook are working the hardest on.  According to Cox, within the next day or two, Facebook will be releasing an updated and “simplified” security settings interface to try and solve what they believe to be their biggest issue.  Depending on how this interface change is implemented, it may or may not be a good thing. If implemented wrong, it could be disastrous.

Between all the accusations of monopolistic practices, all the patent cases, and all the Facebook boycotts coming up, it seems that user freedom is finally taking the lead in our consciousnesses as tech consumers.  It seems appropriate that Richard Stallman, one of the minds behind the free software movement gave his thoughts on software, social networking, and computing freedom in an interview with Mashable.  For those of you who don’t know, the Free Software Foundation (symbolized by the adorable Yak) actually started before the Open Sourcers; they're basically the more militantly anti-proprietary older brother of Open Source.

Sunday during his Hampton University commencement speech, U.S. President Barack Obama’s commentary on the information age took a surprising turn for the critical. First he cited the speed with which we are given information today, and the often limited credibility of that information. Then he talked about “certain devices” turning information into nothing more than distraction and entertainment; he actually mentioning the iPad, iPhone, Xbox and Playstation by name. This coming from the president who said that his blackberry would have to be “pried out of [his] hands?” What’s wrong with a little info-tainment now and again?

Over at Twitter Media, a new tool called Blackbird Pie was posted today that can convert tweets to html for easily embedded around the Web. So far Blackbird Pie seems to be working well for most. Some have reported it works fine, while others are having issues. It is important to note that Blackbird Pie is not an “official feature,” just a new addition released by a helpful developer who has found it to be useful for himself.

Many of you were probably aware of Apple's stance on Flash; and if you weren't before, you almost certainly are now. The internet has been buzzing after Steve Jobs' explanatory attack against them for his fans yesterday. It seems that we are torn between who is in the right in the Flash/Apple debate.  Unfortunately in this case, there really isn't anybody in the right, just varying degrees of evil.

Well, it’s finally happening.  All of Google and Microsoft’s planning and OS promotion has finally paid off.  The internet is abuzz with rumors, leaks, and reviews of the latest Android based phone, and the sensation over the information leak is almost the size that one expects from one of Apple’s carefully orchestrated “secret leaks.”  Well, perhaps one cannot blame in entirely on the planning and promotion, but the digital pomp and circumstance surrounding this impending release of the Thunder and Lightning may be evidence of Android and WP7 achieving the social status that they've been craving.

So, Engadget just leaked a lot of information about Dell’s upcoming smartphone project,  Thunder and Lightning. In less than a day, the denizens of the internet have devoured the leak for all the information it is worth.  Both phones will have a 4.1-inch OLED display, a 5 megapixel camera, 1GB of flash with 512MB RAM, 8GB of storage, a GPS, and an FM radio.  Sounds pretty standard… what’s the big deal you ask?  That’s simple, the promotion.

Pingdom put together an amazing study that compared the three tech giants in terms of profit and revenue.The statistics used don’t go back to each company’s inception, but begin when the companies went public (stock market). The information gathered on both Microsoft and Apple goes back to the mid 1980s, while Google’s stats appear much later.

As we all know Apple has decided to be rather stifling in its regulation of what will and will not work on the new OS4.  Yeah they are offering multitasking regardless of developer, but getting the Apple seal of approval is going to be an arduous process.  Perhaps the most strict of their new regulations is the carte-blanche ban on self-executing code in apps, and a limitation on languages.  This prevents any sort of Flash based app from being allowed to run on OS4, and effectively cuts Adobe out o the iPhone loop (and soon to swell ad profit).

In an effort to improve usability, Facebook unveiled a new look for their corporate blog. The redesign was “aimed at making this blog more visually appealing and helping you discover more stories about what's happening at Facebook.” The new layout is chalk full of features, and really aims to please. Here is a quick rundown:

On Thursday, Google has made a new Blogger layout tool, Blogger Template Designer, available on their "test lab" site Blogger in Draft.  The new template tool allows users to have more custom control over their blog by using professional designs, prebuilt templates and control colors.