What do you use your smart phone for most? Is it to find the nearest bakery, or get directions to the airport, or is it to check the latest scores of the Royals vs. Angeles game while at work? Whatever it is you use your phone for the fact is life is made a lot easier with it. Here is an article from mashable.com about the top five mobile commerce trends in 2010.

Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010

The mobile trends series is supported by Samsung. Read more about the Samsung Galaxy here.

Considering that most people would rather lose their wallet than misplace their cell phone, it’s fitting that the mobile world is quickly becoming a new hub for business. For many of us, our cell phone never leaves our side. It holds a place at the dinner table, is easily accessible in your bag’s front pocket, and often, somehow it even manages to end up sharing your pillow at night. Busy schedules mean people are often on the move and when marketers and companies can’t reach consumers at their computers, on TV, before the previews at the movies, with billboards, or magazine and newspaper ads, they must feel assured that they can still reach them on their cell phones.

Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is simply the ability to conduct business transactions through a mobile device. With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, never before has it been so easy to shop, anywhere, anytime from the palm of your hand. There is an enormous amount of ongoing market research, and though there has been a variety of numbers estimated and reported, they all conclude that mobile commerce is a profitable and rapidly growing market.

By 2015, it’s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend about $119 billion on goods and services bought via their mobile phones, according to a study by ABI Research released this past February. In the United States alone, mobile shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009, and mobile campaign spending also increased by 25 to 30% over the past year, with companies shelling out just under $313 million according to the same study. Senior Analyst Mark Beccue, said that he’s forecasting U.S. sales to reach about $2.2 billion in 2010.

Here are five mobile commerce trends to keep an eye on for the remainder of 2010.

1. Bargain Hunting

It would seem that mobile purchasing often lends itself to an impulse buy. Maybe you just have to suddenly download that song from the iTunes Store or really want to make sure you have tickets to that hot concert. In this case, it’s the savvy shopper that has taken note of mobile commerce. Beccue said that in the fourth quarter of 2009, he started to notice something unexpected and a bit “weird.”

Bargain hunting has become extremely popular with apps like RedLaser that allow users to scan product bar codes and discover it’s various prices at different retailers. Shoppers are melding the two worlds of online/mobile shopping with actual physical shopping to make sure they get the best prices.

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Smart phones are becoming more and more popular and advertisers have begun using them as a tool to reach large audience with the use of applications. Here is an article from mashable.com about how people are welcoming advertising with smart phone applications.

Consumers Embrace Mobile Advertising

Advertisements on mobile devices are both welcome and effective, a recent study from mobile audience media company JiWire revealed.

This is especially true of advertisements that appear in apps. Of the roughly 1,000 smartphone users surveyed, 52% claim they have acted on an advertisement in an app and 18% have made a purchase directly from an ad in an app in the last month.

In addition, 53% said they were willing to share their location to receive more relevant advertising and a full 76% said they would prefer to download a free, advertising-supported app instead of paying an upfront fee for the same app.

This is great news for social gaming apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable users to unlock special deals from advertisers based on their locations. It’s also great news for Apple, whose mobile app advertising platform, iAds, will debut this summer with the iPhone 4.0 OS.

Have you ever wondered how much time the average person spends on the Internet? And have you ever wondered how much of that time is spent on social networking sites? Thanks to Neilsen, we now know that people spend more time on sites such as Facebook and Twitter than on any other site. Here is an article from mashable.com by Adam Ostrow about the Neilsen findings.

Social Networking Dominates Our Time Spent Online [STATS]

Social networking now eats up twice as much of our online time as any other activity. According to new stats from Nielsen, sites like Facebook and Twitter now account for 22.7% of time spent on the web; the next closest activity is online games, which make up 10.2%.

The stats also show the degree to which social networking is displacing other forms of communication, with e-mail as a percentage of online time plunging from 11.5% to 8.3% from June 2009 to June 2010. Instant messaging also saw a significant drop in share, with a 15% decline from last year.

However, e-mail use on mobile is still on the rise – from 37.4% to 41.6% — presumably as users continue to migrate to smartphones from feature phones.

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Twitter Lists have become a popular way for people to talk to a group of people who share the same interests, are in the same profession or who want to be informed about a current topic. CEO’s, CFO’s and other top business executives are increasingly taking advantage of Twitter Lists in order to stay updated on the latest information concerning their industries. Here is an article from mashable.com by Erica Swallow about the top lists for business executives to follow.

15 Twitter Lists for C-Suite Execs to Follow

This series is supported by The Awareness Social Marketing Hub, a leading enterprise-grade application for marketers struggling with the social media chaos of managing multiple social channels. Click here to learn more.

Twitter Lists are a great way to follow a group of like-minded Twitter users. By following a List, you can get an overview of a particular subject by simply taking a look at the stream from time to time. A well-curated Twitter List can be focused on a specific topic, industry or interest.

With the increase in C-level executives joining and taking part in social networks across the Internet, there are bound to be questions. While Twitter is one of the simplest social media tools out there, Lists are one of the more complicated features for new tweeters to comprehend.

We recommend using tools like TLists, Listorious and TweetMeme Lists to scope out and follow Lists of interest. To get you started or to beef up your current List inventory, here are 15 Twitter Lists for C-suite executives to follow, separated into categories for CEOs, CMOs, CIOs and CTOs, and CFOs.

Twitter Lists for CEOs
For the latest business, management and leadership tweets, here are three Twitter Lists for CEOs to follow:

CEOs: If you’re a CEO and not on this Twitter List, send a friendly tweet to Brand Strategist Valeria Maltoni, and she’ll likely add you to what seems to be the most comprehensive list of CEOs on Twitter. Look to this List for the latest tweets from over 150 CEOs. The List seems to be highly concentrated on digital and technology.

Business News: Curated by The New York Times, this compilation is a short list of the most essential business news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Reuters Business and Silicon Alley Insider.

Management & Leadership: This TLists SuperList compiles the top tweeters from 216 Twitter Lists, tweeting about management, leadership and power.

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Last Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg sat down for a rare public interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer to discuss the continued success of Facebook along with the latest pressure it has faced. Facebook, the largest social networking site, recently hit a major milestone of 500 million users but along with fame has come issues dealing with privacy and a lawsuit that Zuckerberg sold a portion of the ownership in exchange for work in the early years of Facebook.

Watch the interview here.

For years Facebook has been a growing trend for people of all ages. Most recently “FarmVille” has been the latest craze, allowing people to create their own online farm, animals and all. Google and partner Zynga, the creator of “FarmVille” and other popular social media games, may now be in the process of creating Google Me, a site that may lessen the popularity of Facebook. I would like to share an article from cnn.com by Doug Gross about the making of Google Me and its potential impact on social networking.

‘Google Me’ site may be in the works

(CNN) — If online reports are to be believed, Google could be cooking up a rival for Facebook — and bringing the maker of popular social games like “FarmVille” with them.

Google Games, built around some sort of partnership with casual-gaming company Zynga, is in the works and would be part of a larger social network called Google Me, according to technology blog Tech Crunch.
Statements from notable internet players, including Digg founder Kevin Rose and a former Facebook chief technical officer, have suggested in recent weeks that the search-engine giant is working on a social network geared toward rivaling Facebook.
TechCrunch this weekend reported that unnamed sources said Google has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, the maker of successful online social games like “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars.”
The investment part of the deal was confirmed last month and a “larger strategic project” is still in the works, according to that report.
A Zynga spokeswoman said Monday that the company has no comment on the reports. A Google spokesman referred questions to the company’s media-relations e-mail account, which did not respond to inquiries.

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to explore Mars? Now, thanks to Microsoft and NASA, it is possible to experience Mars in a new way. I would like to share an article from mashable.com by Stan Schroeder about a new application that allows you to take a virtual tour of Mars.

NASA and Microsoft Let You Explore Mars Like Never Before

Microsoft Research and NASA have teamed up once again and brought the “most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available” to WorldWide Telescope. Microsoft’s app lets you explore space either through a zoom-and-pan interface or guided tours.

This imagery is the handiwork of a group informally called the Mapmakers, led by NASA’s Michael Broxton. Their job is to take satellite images from Mars and elsewhere in our solar system, and turn them into maps.

Yes, it sounds like every geek’s dream job, and having a name that sounds like something from a William Gibson novel doesn’t hurt, either. Director of Microsoft Research’s Earth Dan Fay has worked with Broxton to turn these images and maps into an immersive new experience for the Worldwide Telescope.

“NASA had the images and they were open to new ways to share them. Through the WorldWide Telescope we were able to build a user interface at WWT|Mars that would allow people to take advantage of the great content they had,” Fay says.

As far as what kind of imagery you can expect here, one example is a new dataset from the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which is a remote-sensing camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are taken in an incredibly high resolution — each image is a gigapixel in size — and the team took all 13,000 HiRISE images and stitched them onto one map. This map, says NASA, is the “highest-resolution map of Mars’s surface ever constructed.”

WorldWide Telescope is available as a desktop application or a web client (which requires Microsoft Silverlight) over at www.worldwidetelescope.org.

Two popular Kraft Food brands are increasing their social media marketing efforts with campaigns on Twitter and Facebook. Here is an article from nytimes.com, by Stuart Elliott, about Oreo cookies and Wheat Thins revamping their brands on social networking sites.

Food Brands Get Sociable on Facebook and Twitter

The number of advertisers with presences in the social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are increasing faster than the lines at the supermarket when the values of the cents-off coupons are being tripled.

Now, two familiar brands of baked goods sold by Kraft Foods are stepping up their marketing efforts in social media.

One brand, Oreo cookies, is going to be giving its Facebook page a global look, effective on Monday. The other brand, Wheat Thins crackers, is starting a campaign to reward fans of the brand who discuss it on Twitter.

Oreo has been on Facebook since last August with a page that has been primarily American-oriented. But the many comments left on the page from other countries — reflecting that more than half the brand’s 5 million Facebook fans are from outside the United States — led to a rethinking of how Oreo is presented on the Web site.

“It was an ‘A-ha’ moment for us,” said Mark Clouse, senior vice president for global biscuits at Kraft Foods in Northfield, Ill., reflecting that the company understands Facebook “is now a global vehicle and a platform we can use to have a global dialog” with consumers.

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I would like to share an article from mashable.com, by Grace Smith, about 10 infographics that present social media tools in an appealing format.

10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format. With social media growing at an ever increasing pace, there is now a wealth of data about how people interacting with one another on the web. Naturally, infographics have proven an excellent aid in expressing high volumes of social web information in a clear, visually appealing manner.

Here are 10 infographics that prove as beautiful as they are interesting.

1. Social Web Involvement

This is a global map of social web involvement which illustrates that hundreds of millions of web users are creating and sharing content every month. It provides a clear visualization of the ways in which social technologies are adopted differently across the world, showing the number of active bloggers, social networkers, video sharers, photo uploaders and microbloggers.

Interestingly, it reveals that despite the Twitter hype, microblogging is still not a mass social activity and is nowhere near the size and scale of blogging.

2. Social Marketing Compass

A compass is a device for orientating oneself and guiding physical direction. The social marketing compass points a brand in a physical and experimental direction, allowing them to connect with their customers, peers, and influencers, where those users already interact and seek guidance online.

Created to illustrate social marketing within the book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, this infographic was also available as a poster to celebrate the book’s pre-sale.

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