Young adults are the heaviest social media users but older adults are fueling the growth. Wired adults 50 and older nearly doubled use of social networking in the past year, according to the latest Pew Internet & American Life report, something I’ve seen anecdotally as my friends and family members…

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  The month-long battle between Random House and literary agent Andrew Wylie seems to be over. The publisher is claiming victory, saying it has the rights to publish e-book editions of 13 classics books that the Wylie starting publishing under his…

Local online researcher Borrell Associates is revising its forecast upwards for how much advertisers will spend on local online ads next year; the company says it now expects local online ad spending to jump 18 percent in 2011 to $16.1 billion—a figure it had previously said the market would achieve…

Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT), which uses research and interactive technology to market a massive roster of celebrities, has closed a $20 million third round led by Miramar Venture Partners. Other participants in the round included existing investors Newport Coast Investments (the private investment fund of BAT co-founders Chad and Ryan…

Some intriguing details from NPR about when listeners tune in for its programming—and what platforms they use. For instance, the iPhone app is by far the most used mobile option, peaking during morning drive/commute time while the iPad app and the mobile site spike in the late evening. NPR.org‘s primetime…

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  Nick Denton is planning a major overhaul of the Gawker sites, starting with Deadspin. But instead of the usual blog-based redesign—more white space is in right now—Denton is modelling the new look on TV. [MediaMemo] »  As Hulu prepares for…

There has been a lot of doubt about publishers’ hopes that tablet devices could help return magazines and newspapers to the days when scarcity helped drive ad revenues and consumers couldn’t get all that content for free on the web. A new study from the major publishing JV Next Issue…

Facebook has once again caused eMarketer to revise its ad spending projections significantly upward, while rival MySpace (NSDQ: NWS), which is about to embark on a consumer branding campaign and website revamp, continues to trend downward.

The downward trajectory of consumer magazine circulation appears to have slowed in the first half of the year. While publishers weren’t able to muster the slightly positive growth that ad pages have had lately—the Publishers Information Bureau recorded its first increase in ad pages and rates last month in two…

Android is now the top-selling mobile platform in the U.S., besting both BlackBerry and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), according to The NPD Group, a market research company.

Apple’s Steve Jobs somewhat famously said in April that people aren’t searching on their phone, but instead, are using apps. He reasoned, apps on the iPhone “get you into every corner of the internet…This is a new phenomenon that is occurring on the iPhone for the first time in history.”…

Marketers still don’t get Twitter, a report from interactive shop 360i shows. Not only are advertisers hardly being mentioned by Twitter users, but the categories of those brands who do prompt discussions on the microblogging service are fairly limited to social nets, entertainment and technology companies.

... Zero. Yes, zero, according to a study by the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School For Communication And Journalism. We already know thanks to several other surveys that consumers aren’t exactly rushing to pay for social networking online, but the Annenberg School’s…

At paidContent Mobile today in New York, Alan Wurtzel, the president of research and media development of NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), outlined how mobile is ready for prime time with the Vancouver Olympics as a $100 million research lab. The major case study he focused on was the change in…

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) still isn’t saying how many Kindles it’s selling, but that isn’t keeping the company from shouting how well it’s doing. The latest specifics and non-specifics from the company: “The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled” since it cut the price of the Kindle 2…

ZenithOptimedia has revised its ad spend forecast upward for the U.S. and Europe, while the internet is poised to grow 13.1 percent in 2010 and gain another 16.1 percent year-over-year in 2011. In the U.S., mobile ad spending and social media ad spending have had a particularly strong impact on…

But how much are they willing to pay to access music from iTunes via the cloud? A survey by marketing researcher NPD Group estimates that a base subscription rate of $10 a month would attract 13- to 15 million customers out of roughly 50 million iTunes users.

Earnings season is almost upon us and Q2 results are likely to be stronger than expected, says Barclays internet analyst Doug Anmuth in a research note. Still, the wider economic recovery is decidedly tentative, so looking toward the second half of 2010 into next year is now looking a bit…

Search engine marketing firm Efficient Frontier says in a report to be released later today that search ad spending jumped 24 percent year-over-year during the quarter. That marks the second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for the search ad market, following a deceleration last year.