Open source is a wonderful thing. Without it, this blog wouldn’t exist ( WordPress ) and I wouldn’t have access to a great Photoshop alternative ( GIMP ), or clients like Jigoshop , for example. We wouldn’t have GNU Linux, Ubuntu, Apache, Drupal, and we’d all be using Internet Explorer without the option to switch to Firefox or Chrome. But reading Matthew Ingram’s post last week about the lack of adoption for an open Twitter alternative highlighted the key reason why so few open source projects become mainstream success stories at the level of WordPress or Firefox. MORE >>

The majority of smartphone owners in Australia, China and Japan are accessing mobile social media at least monthly  – and those in China are most likely to connect with social networks via mobile, according to Google’s Our Mobile Planet research. Smartphone penetration in China is lower than in more-developed countries (estimated at 11.1% in 2011), but the population is so huge that even a low penetration leads to a high number of smartphone users: 148.3 million, based on eMarketer estimates.  The U.S. has a much higher penetration, but only 93.1 million smartphone users. MORE >>

Here are 5 must-reads on new changes Twitter made to its search functionality we don’t want you to miss. Simpler search. By Frost Li Today we’re introducing search autocomplete and ‘People you follow’ search results to twitter.com. In addition to recent improvements like related query suggestions, spelling corrections and more relevant search results, these updates make it even easier to immediately get closer to the things you care about. Twitter patches up its search interface. It’s a big and overdue improvement in usability, but the new features are not revolutionary. MORE >>

Women are more active on social media in general. It’s a fact. Facebook and Twitter each demonstrate a much-higher activity level from women for this very reason. They are the most uses social networks (despite claims from Google+) and have been integrated into our daily activities for some time, now. For men, LinkedIn and Google+ appeal to their “goal-oriented” style of social networking and disdain for Twitter and Facebook. As the graphic below reveals, there are more men on LinkedIn than women on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Google+ combined. Click to enlarge. MORE >>

Recovering from a crisis can be difficult if you don’t manage the damage and re-establish trust in your stakeholders. If you have been reading my blog for some time, you might wonder what happened to my content. And, in the past few weeks, you might have wondered about the future of my blogging. assure you, my blogging will continue. Crises do happen! Near the latter part of June, my blog was hacked and poisoned with malicious code that effectively shut down my blog. To make thing right again, I had no choice — start fresh. Which brings me to a couple of points. Crises happen. MORE >>