Last reports I saw had Facebook at over 200 million active worldwide unique users (and growing) and an estimated $200m-plus in annual revenue in 2008. Pretty kooky to claim it'll be a failure, eh? Let me start by saying that social networking itself is a utility that is not routinely differentiated by any particular protectable intellectual property. It's a utility that demonstrates a better way for the online and mobile web audience at-large to connect with each other. But it's also a utility that ultimately threatens to be its own worst enemy.

Last week, we did a blog post on the top categories visited by Canadian internet users. We followed that up with a post looking at the number of words used in queries. To follow this theme, today we are posting on what Canadians are searching for online. The following table shows the top search terms entered into search engines by Canadian Internet users in the twelve weeks to 30th May 2009. The table is divided into two columns to show the highest volume navigational search terms (meaning that most searchers had a clear intent to reach a particular website) and the highest volume generic terms.

What do people search for on Twitter? We collected search terms that we took place within Twitter’s search engine to identify the topics that are being searched most often on Twitter for the week ending March 21, 2009. Searches for the vampire series ‘twilight’ were the most popular for the week overall fueled by the US release of the DVD, followed by ‘redco’, and ‘parkersburg’.

The National Consumers League is out with the results of a new study conducted by Opinion Research showing that 90% of consumers believe they should be able to back up their DVDs to a hard drive or copy them to a portable device, and they'd be willing to pay about $61 for a piece of software that helped them back up their collections. Sounds like a good business opportunity for someone like a RealNetworks...oh wait.

Is Twitter, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt opined last week, the poor man's email? Is it a Facebook or Google killer? What can clickstream data tell us about how people are using Twitter and how does that compare to email, Facebook and search engines? The following table shows the top 20 websites visited after Twitter.com in February:

I noticed Ryan Spoon's blog post (via Techmeme) on PerezHilton.com's growth this morning. I have followed the Perez Hilton site (for purely professional reasons) for some time. The website ranked #398 among All Categories of websites last week and #5 among Entertainment - Personalities websites (based on share of US Internet visits).

January is the peak season for visits to employment websites and with unemployment numbers climbing ever higher, this year was no exception. Each year, visits to employment websites peak the second week of January. This year visits to websites in the Employment and Training category were 17% higher than in January 2008. Growth is due to continued natural growth for the category (see chart below illustrating that visits have been growing for the past three years), as well as rising unemployment rates and job uncertainty.

In Hollywood, direct-to-video movies, and the folks who make them, have always been second-class citizens. But it's clear from recent media earnings reports that recent changes in the DVD market are now driving the type of movies the upper crust is making as well. Call it, direct-from-video. In Viacom's Q4 earnings call earlier today, for instance, CEO Philippe Dauman said slumping DVD sales are weighing heavily on green-light decisions at Paramount Pictures.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the launch of Facebook, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at the website’s impact upon the social networking category. Overall, Facebook was the #5 ranked website by total market share of visits in January 2009. One year ago, visits to Facebook represented 15% of the total social networking category while MySpace captured 73%. In January 2009, Facebook’s share doubled to reach 31%, while MySpace’s total share of the category eroded to 57%.

As we wrote on Friday, the Senate has passed the Bill that would extend from February 17 to June 12 the deadline for full-power television stations to transition to digital operations.  This leaves the House of Representatives to once again consider the matter - supposedly in committee on Tuesday and perhaps by vote of the full House as early as Wednesday.  In preparation for that consideration, there have been conflicting letters released by Congressmen supporting the bill and those who are oppose.

Today we are releasing data and analysis on the top 50 search terms entered into YouTube's own search engine, revealing that 72% of searches are music related. We did this analysis using our Conversions technology which we use for custom projects for clients. We, on the Hitwise research team, requested this data when we saw the news in November that Google would be testing an auction based system for ads on YouTube.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was a major event for US Internet users on Tuesday since many needed to rely upon online streaming on news websites to view the event from work. As one might expect, the Broadcast Media and Politics categories were the main beneficiaries from the Inauguration activities, increasing 33% and 53%, respectively, as compared to the market share of visits on the previous Tuesday.

Warner Bros. just became the latest studio to announce cut backs, unveiling plans to eliminate 800 jobs, about 10% of its global workforce, through layoffs, attrition and outsourcing. The move follows similar cut backs at Paramount Pictures and NBC Universal, as well as earlier downsizing moves by Warner Bros. parent Time Warner. In a memo to staffers announcing the cuts, Warner Bros. toppers Barry Meyer and Alan Horn called the decision painful but necessary.

Twitter has become a popular pastime for many who like to update their daily thoughts and activates, as well as for the voyeurs who just enjoy reading the tweets. Last week, the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked #84 (one above Digg at #85) in the Computers and Internet category. A big driver of traffic to Twitter last week was around the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday, driving many posts and updates about the situation.

The online music retailer eMusic has put out some interesting data that, it is claimed, supports the famous “Long Tail” theory of online retail. Chris Anderson (picture), the editor in chief of Wired magazine, coined the phrase in a 2004 article, claiming that Internet retailers would sell more niche products at the expense of mass-market items. However, this theory was challenge in a recent study by Will Page and Andrew Bud, which claimed more than 10 million of the 13 million music tracks available on the Internet failed to find a single buyer last year. In response, eMusic has reported that 75% of the tracks in its catalogue were bought at least once in 2008.

The press was abuzz yesterday with the news that Julius Genachowski is apparently the pick of the Obama Administration for the position of FCC Chairman.  Mr. Genachowski was at the FCC during the Reed Hundt Administration, and has since worked in the private sector in the telecommunications industry, including work with Barry Diller and running a DC-based venture capital fund.  From the positive reactions that the appointment has received from all quarters, the choice would seem to be a great one.  But, in looking at some of the reactions, you have to question whether everyone has to be reading what they want to see into the new Commission.