Social media is no longer for the young crowd. At least, not exclusively. A survey by the Pew Research Center suggests that the 34 and older generation is cozying itself to social media at a blistering pace. And although the 18- 33 age range is more active online, it’s the 74 and older demographic that is growing the fastest when it comes to social networking. Since 2008, the number of social media users in that particular age range has quadrupled, from a meager 4% to 16%. This is a figure that may come as a surprise to some, but Pew’s Director of the Internet and American Life Project, Lee Raine, is hardly  shocked. According to her

“Social networking sites also have special appeal to older users because they let those who have medical conditions find and talk to others who have gone through the same thing”

And there are a few activities that are popular no matter what age range you look at. They are:-

• Email
• Search engine use
• News
• Online reservations
• Online banking
• Online shopping
• Product reviews

….etc

In fact, the clearest trend that the Pew report seems to throw up is how the world itself is moving more and more online. In two years, not a single online activity has decreased in popularity in any age group, other than the notable exception of blogging among teens and 18 – 33 year olds. The drop has been the biggest among teens; the number of teenage bloggers today is only half of what it was in 2006. However, the number of bloggers among the33 or older demographic has increased. And even the drop among teenage blogging is more indicative of how social media sites like Facebook and microblogging services like Twitter have essentially replaced blogging as a habit. So all the jokes, stories, pictures and quips that would earlier be uploaded on blogs are now found on social media platforms.

Q: How do you make Wikileaks close its doors?

A: Just make Yahoo buy it out.

So goes a joke bouncing around the internet these days. Another fallout of the whole Yahoo/Delicious fiasco. If you don’t know what that is, here’s a quick backgrounder. A few days ago, this slide from an internal meeting at Yahoo was leaked to the media….

In case you missed it, Delicious was right there in the”Sunset” section. Well, millions of users and fans of the popular social bookmarking site didn’t, and Yahoo felt a taste of fan rage…again. But this time, it was far worse, because Delicious was, and still is an extremely popular service. Scrambling for a response, Yahoo has claimed that they are not shutting down Delicious, but merely trying to sell it off because …

“We believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users.”

That’s official Yahoo speak right there. Of course, there was also the obligatory reference to how they were misrepresented by the media. However, there is no denying that Yahoo has lost a lot of user faith and goodwill, and it will take some pretty big steps to undo the damage done, something many feel Yahoo really isn’t capable of.B

But is anyone surprised by this? Anyone at all? Yahoo has a long and rich tradition of acquiring services that seem to be poised to break into the stratosphere with just a little bit of help, and then not knowing what to do with them. People still mourn the death of Geocities.  According to Co founder John Reznor “Nothing ever happened. GeoCities stagnated from day one …Yahoo never knew the value of GeoCities”.

Yahoo has managed to throw away other opportunities with other properties like Musicmatch Jukebox, Hotjobs and Dropbox.com. All of them showed promise until they were left to rot. So Delicious fans are understandably worried, even though Yahoo assures them that they will find the bookmarking service a new home.

That’s not to say that a fresh start won’t do Delicious a world of good, especially considering the fact that Yahoo is in a downward spiral they seem to be unable to get out of (the company has decided to lay off about 600 employees even as even leading media outlets paint an extremely bleak picture about its present and future). So maybe some other company will come along and take the service under its wing. Maybe someone will inject it with some much needed vigor and innovation. After all, it has a staunch user base and plenty of fans. Is Google listening?

What’s do Justin Beiber, the iPad, the FIFA World Cup and the earthquake in Haiti have in common?  Well, for one thing it seems like they all got the social media universe talking like nobody’s business in 2010. Facebook and Twitter have just released the top trending topics in their platforms through 2010, and those 4 are the only ones that feature on both lists.

Beiber Fever hit fever pitch this year, with Sept 12^th, his debut on the MTV Video Music Awards seeing most mentions of him on Facebook. The World Cup was unsurprising, considering it was a global media event. In fact, it was the second most popular mention on Facebook as well as Twitter. In fact at key moments, almost 50% of all Facebook status updates were related to the world cup. Wow!

Another big topic this year was the iGadgets, specifically the iPhone and the iPad. Not all of the posts were positive, but together there were 25 million posts on this over the year, showing how important mobile technology and Apple have become.

Meanwhile the earthquake on Haiti, a disaster on an unimaginable scale was naturally another subject people continued to talk about through the year. Status messages came even from ground zero, where rescue workers and trapped victims took to social media to spread the updates worldwide.

However, according to the second Facebook Memology study, the absolute top global trend for 2010 was none of those four. It was a simple acronym; HMU, short for “Hit me up”. According to the social networking site, about 1600 posts a day contained that acronym at the end of 2009. Fast forward to one year later, and HMU mentions are up to nearly 80,000 mentions a day. Who knew an acronym could go viral?

Other than the earthquake in Haiti, another disaster dominated the conversation on Facebook. This time it was the Chilean miners’ incident where 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days until their eventual rescue.  Meanwhile conversation about movies, Facebook games, 2011 and interestingly enough, lyrics of the song “Airplanes” rounded off the Facebook top ten.

On Twitter though, it was the Gulf Oil Spill that dominated the conversation. The oil spill was a topic that was as politically charged as can be, so no wonder people turned to the internet to vent. At number three on Twitter was Christopher Nolan’s inception, possibly Hollywood’s biggest release this year, at least in terms of interest. Another movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 too featured in this list. And unlike Facebook, Google’s Android OS shared space with the iPad on Twitter’s list.

To check out the complete lists, click here for the Twitter Top Trends and click here to see the Facebook Memology Study.

While Chrome and Mozilla defenders get all the press, there’s another browser war brewing in the sidelines. And no, it’s not IE vs Opera on who gets to become the least relevant in the shortest amount of time. It’s the social browser war, and things are getting ugly.

Historically, Flock was the first social media web browser on the scene in early 2005. It did create a bit of a splash, and won major awards as well as kudos from critics, but didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Fast forward to 2010 and suddenly, there’s a new kid in the block who goes by the name of Rockmelt. And somehow, this one is getting far more attention. Rockmelt is based on the Chromium engine and has the backing of Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Quite possibly, it’s this backing that’s turning heads. A New York Times article on Rockmelt is titled “Web Browsing Takes a Social Turn”, something that will not the people behind Flock one bit. After all, they will argue, its something that happened five years ago with their product. And they have already fired a salvo with a video showcasing exactly why Flock is better….

…as well as a comparison chart.

Flock recently shifted to the Chromium engine with version 3 (they were earlier based on Firefox’s Gecko). It’s an interesting move on their part, and initial reviews , seem to suggest that Rockmelt does things just a little bit better. This is in spite of the fact that the browser is still in limited beta, so you have to snag an invitation before you can actually use it. However, it must be kept in mind that Flock’s recent shift in engines means this is a fresh start for them too. We doubt they are going to just lay down without a fight, so this war is about to get very, very interesting.