In August, the average time spent on Facebook by each person hit an astonishing figure of 5h 18 mins. That's about twice of Google's 2h 46 mins average. See the table below.

There are many ways to update our Twitter profile and today, it just got more convenient as Twitter is now integrated with MySpace, AIM, Bebo, and AOL.com. According to co-founder Biz Stone, thousands of MySpace users were seen syncing their accounts to Twitter. There isn't any data from the AOL side yet.

According to Reuters, Twitter currently has no plans to monetize its traffic with advertisements this year. Biz Stone claimed that Twitter is doing pretty good right now and is currently focused on features and paid commercial accounts for 2009.

With 300 million active users, it is definitely an advertising channel worth considering; but advertisers need more confidence. Nielsen, a leading market research company will bring Facebook another step closer to perfecting its advertising platform.

Have you ever tried searching for your favorite brands on Twitter and all you got was a detestable default avatar (o_O)? You've cybersquatters to blame for that. They are basically people who take slums online and virtually squat on an account that is not legally theirs. Most of them are just waiting for the rightful owner to buy it back.

Social media has given consumers a whole new voice. A recent study by Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology found that 20% of Twitter updates are either requests for product info, or responses to brand messages. With that, companies better not give consumers anything bad to talk about. As with the 5 case studies below, the consequences can be severe.

We have been waiting for more than a month ever since Twitter announced Project Retweet. From Biz Stone's sketch, mock up and most recently, a sneak peek release, Twitter's new retweet platform has changed tremendously in terms of its appearance.

Jonathan G. Parker, 19 was one burglar who could multi-task. After breaking into a Martinsburg, West Virginia house and stealing 2 diamonds rings worth more than $3500, he had enough time to use the victim's computer to Google "best escape routes". If that's not enough, he also logged into his Facebook profile and updated his Facebook status that read, "OMG LOLZ brkin into sum1s house!"

Jajah, an Internet communications provider, which has more than 20 million users to date, announced a third party service called Jajah@Call today. This service will enable Twitter users to make free calls to other Jajah@Call users on Twitter. But here's the catch, the call will only last for a maximum of 2 minutes.

YouTube is a great resource for entertaining commercials, where a large portion of them are remixes and parodies. Are parodies on YouTube potentially harmful to businesses? It really depends and it is not like the companies are able to control these user-generated videos anyway. With parodies being so popular among viewers, businesses should not be trying to control or avoid them. They should harness their power, like what some companies did in the videos below. Watch all 5 of them and I guarantee you a good laugh!

If you are keeping up with Facebook's evolution, you would notice its keen adoption of features from other social media sites. With that, Facebook has nothing to be ashamed of (not that they are). In fact, Facebook is the leader of social media partly because of its willingness to embrace ideas that are not of its own. So what's next, Facebook? Could it be one or more of the 5 possible features that we thought of?

You will probably find an increasing number of businesses putting their brand presence in social media sites. Several big brands (and also small brands) are using Twitter and Facebook to build relationships with their fan base. Conversely, there are also many businesses who are (very) skeptical about this whole idea. Are you that stubborn businessman who is unwilling to try new social media tools? If you are, you will most probably agree with the points below but look out for the counter-arguments!

"After studying the top most engaging brands on the web and going in depth to see how Starbucks and Dell did it, I have gathered some tried and tested best practices businesses can apply into their own social media efforts."

A head to head comparison between meme and Twitter but as usual, you have the final say to what you think and prefer. What's important is that you share it with the rest of us!

Facebook vs Twitter. Who wins? Twitter may be ahead in terms of followers on Twitter but not quite in number of users worldwide… Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just announced on his blog that Facebook officially reached its 300 million users milestone.