Billion Dollar Industry of 2011? Mobile Advertising

Thanks to innovations like PDAs and the iPad, the internet has formed an enormous relationship with the searcher-on-the-go. It's no longer necessary to search for recipes, directions, store locations, or anything else prior to hitting the open road, and many internet users today are taking full advantage of having a world of information instantly accessible at their fingertips.
While mobile advertising is set to close out 2010 at around $743 million, expect that number to hit $1 billion sometime in 2011 (2009 was substantially less "mobile", at $416 million.
We have Apple's iAd and Google's AdMob to thank for the spike in revenue. Also in correspondence with the mobile frenzy, it now seems that sometime next year, there will be more web-enabled smart phones than basic feature phones. Because of the huge popularity of mobile search, it is truly in a company's best interest to have their site available in a mobile friendly version.
You can read more about the future of mobile here.

Privacy Goes Out the Window with "Just Spotted"

Constantly dodging the paparazzi and savoring any moment of privacy--oh, the life of a celebrity. As if it weren't already tough enough for celebs to catch a break, Justspotted.com has made things significantly more invasive.
JustSpotted works like this: based on a celeb's single tweet, and the help of Google Maps, JustSpotted is able to pinpoint the exact location of a celebrity and show them to a searcher in real-time. Kinda creepy right?
Users are also able to fan celebrities, so anytime an update occurs surrounding the celeb they will receive an e-mail of the latest news surrounding them, sort of like a constantly updated map with popups of celebrity whereabouts. CEO AJ Asver says "we don't give you enough information fast enough for anyone to run to location and stalk the person. We really care about fans following celebrities they love," he adds. "We're trying to bring people closer."
Ok, Asver, if you say so.

Facebook and Microsoft Join Forces

Microsoft's search engine, Bing, has teamed up with Facebook to provide users with search results based on their Facebook profile (such as their interests, likes, and friends), to create a product simply called "Liked Results." Mediaweek explains it like this: If you search for a movie, you will get results back that will include which of your Facebook friends either liked or disliked the film, in addition to Bing's regular search results.
Of course, Bing will give you the option to disable the integration of your Facebook profile. Mark Zuckerberg, who needs no introduction, also went on record at the press conference to say that they will only be using information that Facebook users have made public. So, anything you specify as private stays that way. There is the question however, that even though people make things public on Facebook, are they willing to let it appear in search engines? Facebook is no stranger to ciriticism, and with over 500 million users, someone is bound to be upset.
Additionally, there will be a Facebook Profile Search Tool on Bing's page that helps you find old friends and reconnect, either by friend request or message. Search results will also utilize your friend circle to determine who you might be looking for.

AOL Brings Back "City's Best"

Today, AOL re-released it's guide to cities, City's Best, which is basically a resurrection of the 1990s feature they had called Digital Cities. This time around, City's Best will focus on 25 cities pertinent to the AOL market like Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, and New York City, among others.
It's an interesting time for AOL to bring a city guide out onto the market, considering big competitors like Yelp, UrbanSpoon, and Citysearch, and hundreds of smaller sites and blogs dedicated to bringing the newest and best information to target audiences.
AOL has hired five regional editors to oversee five markets each, to ensure content is both original and linked to the community. Each market will depend highly upon user activity, and will have applications for the Android and the iPhone.
City's Best has goals to expand the 25 city market to 40 cities eventually, as well as dreams of taking the site international.

Surprise! Internet is Popular Worldwide

A new global survey reveals that the Internet is the most used medium among countries that have Internet access, beating out television, radio, and newspaper. Globally, 61% of internet users go online everyday, compared to 54% for television, 36% for radio, and 32% for newspaper.
Another trend is that developing countries who have acquired Internet recently use it more than the developed world.
Then there's blogging. 88% of Chinese users say they have posted a blog or responded on a forum, compared to Brazil's 51%.
Social networks are popular around the world, with Malaysians as the heaviest users and highest amount of "friends."
You can see more statistics here.

Search Tidbits

An article was posted following the Search Marketing Expo (which took place in NYC a few days ago), and the author regurgitated some interesting information regarding the current state of search.
First, Google announced at the conference that the Google Adwords Keyword Tool will now only provide keywords that Google finds to be profitable. As far as other Google highlights, their browser makes up for a whopping 97% of mobile search, and Google Instant (love it or hate it) has had a strong effect on video views, increasing clicks by 28%.
Second, real-time search is on fire--including one example of a blogger who's post was indexed within one minute of publishing. And Twitter is processing 12,000 queries/second, which rounds out to about 1 billion queries per day. A little more on search--55% of search queries are 3 words and up, and 20% of those are brand new queries.
And remember MySpace? After reducing page load times (which always seemed to take forever), they have seen page indexing undergo a quadrupled increase.

Yahoo! Increases Depth of Search Results

Now on Yahoo!, users that search for famous people, movies, and other topics, will get an "intelligent shortcut" feature among their search results that delivers the latest tweets, images, event listings, articles, and videos on the topic in question, according to a recent article. Additionally, if your location is turned on, Yahoo! will locate close movie listings and concert dates pertaining to your area.
In keeping with Google and Bing, Yahoo! has also enhanced its search results to show a more image rich return on search queries, most notably in the form of photographic slide shows relevant to the search topic.