Let’s look at this from the all sides. All indications in the past year are that a lot of people sign up for Twitter but rarely or never use it. Even a relatively early adopter such as myself who signed up in early 2007 didn’t use Twitter regularly until late 2008. Even still, I go through periods where I don’t use it all, despite the fact that I’m actually working on some Twitter analysis tools for the iPad, as well as work in social media quite regularly. (The main reason is that if I am tweeting, it’s often for clients, not for myself — just like how when I’m busy, I don’t have time to blog here on this site.)

So if I’m not microblogging on Twitter regularly on my personal account, why would anyone who isn’t in some way involved in online marketing and social media tweet daily? How then are SocialTwist’s findings, as reported by Fast Company, showing that content links (for articles, blog posts, video, Web presentations, ebooks, etc.) on Twitter are clicked more than six times as often as content links shared on Facebook? Personally, I’d think the situation would be quite the opposite for several reasons:

1. Facebook streams (i.e., your profile Wall) are more visual, thanks to content snapshots.
2. Twitter stream items are limited to 140 characters of text. Only. (Though Twitter is trying to make it easier to share images.)
3. Twitter links are typically cryptic, thanks to “URL shorteners” such as bit.ly, ow.ly, goo.gl and so on. You’d think people would be less likely to click on a link when they don’t necessarily know where it leads — especially with all the computer viruses Windows-based PCs tend to suffer.

With a clickthrough rate six times that of Facebook, Twitter is now commanding $100K per day for their Promoted Tweet ads. That’s $100K for roughly 140 characters of advertising text. But exactly who is clicking links in tweets? Between the time I signed up and when I really got into tweeting, Twitter maybe had 25-50M registered users — not active users. They now have about 165M users and handle close to 100M tweets per day — a frequency their infrastructure definitely cannot handle. Compare this to Facebook’s 500M+ users.

So what’s going on? (Since Twitter users are more likely to follow celebrity Twitter accounts than be followed, maybe that’s a factor?) I’m going to make an educated guess, based on my background in math, statistics, computing and, more recently, social media. I haven’t done the math, but instead of boring you, I suggest you trust me on this. Comparing clickthrough rates between Facebook and Twitter users really makes no sense for now. When you average out daily clickthrough rates for Facebook’s very large and broad user base, it’s not mathematically surprising that it’s overall rate is lower. It’s like comparing apples and oranges, since Twitter users are probably more likely be involved in social marketing — my feeling — and are still in the early-adopter category, whereas Facebook users are not. The two Web services in general have very different purposes, with some overlap, as pointed out in a Web slideshow presentation over at Mashable, which discusses the differences between Twitter and Facebook.

However, if Twitter reaches its goal of pushing for a billion users — as pointed out in a Bloomberg article — before Facebook does (really quite unlikely, given FB is at over 500M users already and Twitter has a third of that, but never say never), then let’s see if Twitter’s overall clickthrough rate still maintains its lead. I say not, unless Twitter becomes more of a social network than it is now — where it’s more like a social news service. Twitter is overhauling their infrastructure and allowing for more information to be carried per tweet, so it’s possible that 3rd-party developers might start building desktop, Web or Mobile interfaces that give Twitter a similar look and feel and usages as Facebook. But if that happens, the Twitter of tomorrow will have transformed from its current purposes, and so I think it’s unfair to currently compare clickthrough rates.

Links: Fast Company, Social Twist, Mashable, Bloomberg.

So which is it? Up or down? Most statistics about all the relevant market share Apple is gaining suggests that their value is only going to grow. Not to mention, analysts predict that iPhone 4’s upcoming launch weekend will probably result in sales of 2-3 million units [All Things Digital]. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they shoot to $500 in 2011 or 2012 based on those statistics, though that’s not a prediction. Although Gene Munster, and analyst at Piper, thinks it could hit $1,000 within 5 years. (I don’t own Apple stock but if it drops and I can afford it, I would. I do hope it will reach that $1,000 level eventually, though I really wish they’d split their stock so smaller investors could buy. On a side note, I wish Google split their stock, too. Any company who claims to be “open” but has their stock at levels that keep the average investor away makes me doubt their claim.)

So what possible reason could there be to destroy confidence in Apple to the point that shares drop so drastically to $42? Well according to BAM Investor’s tweet on Twitter — they also put out a press release at PR Web — behavioral analysis suggests a serious fall in share price is coming. When you consider the scandal going on right now regarding the iPad security breach (which released 114,000 customer details into the wild, including that of top U.S. politicians), and iPhone 4 pre-order security breach which matched customers with the wrong person’s credit cards, those are events that could shake confidence — despite the fact that some are blaming cellular carrier AT&T for these security problems.

As a technical investor myself, in the past, I’m prone to believing that “things will get worse before they get better.” But wait, you say. Apple is already “better”. Their shares have been going up for the past decade. Ok, true, though the share price often dips before rising again. What do I think? I think the share price will drop significantly and then it will shoot its way up over $500 over a few years. The mobile platform will dominate computing and communications, and Apple’s hardware, app market share, and the dozens of new patents granted to them put them in very good stead to be king of the castle for quite some time. At least until the next company comes along to supplant them. Think it won’t happen? Tell that to IBM, Microsoft and even Google. Three to four years ago, while regularly writing about telephony and VoIP, I predicted that Google would be pushed out by whichever company would come to dominate the mobile space — which I think is exactly what’s happening with Apple, at least for now.

Notes: Barron’s, Business Insider, All Things Digital, PR Web, Bam Investor.

That’s what happened to Brelyn Hammernik, who is being accused of violating non-compete agreements by her former employer, Minnesota-based TEKsystems — an IT staffing company — because of her “conduct” on the professional social network LinkedIn. What did Hammernik do? She “communicated” with numerous contract employees from her former employer, via LinkedIn.

That’s scary for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s normal to communicate with former colleagues. Secondly, it’s normal for recruiters to “persuade” previous colleagues to shift allegiance. I’m not saying it’s right, just that it’s normal. But unless Hammernik was actually poaching, why is it a problem to interact with former colleagues? Unfortunately, TEKSystems is claiming that Hammernik actually solicited both their contract employees and clients via LinkedIn, and they acquired communications as proof. As a result, the company now has a lawsuit against both her and her current employer, amongst others.

Just keep this in mind: any company with a knowledgeable sys admin can easily capture all Web communications, copies of email, even phone calls. In fact, a publicly-traded company must do this because of SEC regulations. But even private companies do this. If you use social media, remember that, whether you’re communicating with employees of either a former employer or a current employer.

Now given that this so-called authority ranking is based on the number of followers and that celebs probably attract people from all walks of life, it’s not surprise, at least mathematically, that average follower authority is low for celebs. On the other hand, people who are social media and Web authorities, such as Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Steve Rubel, seem to have an average follower authority that is much much higher. The same goes for news/ media sources: the broader the appeal, the lower the average follower authority. But of course, social media influencers will have the advantage when it comes to the social media arena. That is, it’s not a surprise that their followers have a higher average authority ranking.

What can you take away from these findings? Just that the quantity of a Twitter user’s followers doesn’t necessarily matter, depending your objective in connecting or interacting with him or her. Influence is important, but sometimes depth of social graph is just as valuable as breadth of social graph.

If you’re interested in finding out more, Sysomos has a detailed, charted & mapped breakdown of the 15 influencers that they studied.

Yes, we should mourn the victims, though is Twitter or social media in general the place to announce the first execution of its kind in the U.S. in nearly a decade and a half? A lot of Twitter users thought it was disgusting. What do you think? Isn’t “socializing” about sharing news? Did Shurtleff step over a line? Twitter might be an opt-in service, but there are public timelines, trending topic lists, etc., and children can see such tweets. Did he let his obvious passion for justice go to far, commit an act of TMI (Too Much Info) in the wrong channel, or was he justified, as some commenters at Mashable have said, given that Twitter has become a news source?

Even if Google does some magic, all the but the fastest of Internet connections will give anything close to the same user experience as editing straight on your desktop. I can’t even imagine wanting to try. Editing images online isn’t even much fun; video couldn’t possibly be a better experience. Unfortunately for me, I moved about a month and a half ago and had to switch services. In the past two weeks, I’ve had regular problems with my AT&T U-Verse Internet service. In the past two days, it has been up and down every few minutes. While the tech CSRs have been really nice over the phone, the problem still persists, and I have to keep wasting time getting it fixed.

Even when my Internet service is working at its top rate of 12 mbps (I think), YouTube’s TestTube browser-based video editing web service is one that I just will not be trying. At least not until I have roughly 4 to 5 times the Internet connection speed I currently have. Desktop video editing serves me just fine. The same goes for trying to save a 500MB-2GB video file with a cloud data service: it ain’t happening. I’m happy to store some pics and pass around files using cloud storage, but humungous video files? If you’ve ever uploaded a video to YouTube, you know how long that can take for a video under 10 min. Imagine longer works or even full-length films. If your connection blipped during an upload, you’d have start again. A few regular blips would probably have you pulling out your hair. Now just imagine trying to edit video under the same conditions.

The predictions about iPhone 4’s memory is true: it’ll have 512MB of RAM, which MacRumors says is double what the iPad and iPhone 3GS have. This is going to be a necessity with all the killer apps and features the iPhone 4 will have — such as video calling, mult-tasking and, heaven forbid, video editing. It’s true: the iPhone 4 will have an iMovie video editing app made explicitly for this device.

Now, the iStat app running on both my 3GS and iPad WiFi-only devices seem to indicate that I have a bit more than 128MB of RAM on each, but I’ll take MacRumors’ word for it that it’s actually 256MB. Both devices serve me relatively well, expect when I run the VNC remote desktop app while lounge on the couch, watching TV but wanting to check in on my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, because I run 2 external monitors with my laptop, the iPad runs out of memory while running VNC. It’s these occasions that I wish Apple would have designed these devices for memory upgrades — even if it made them a bit thicker. Well, at least for the iPad, if not for the iPhone. (On a side note, Toshiba announced a 128GB NAND flash memory module. Would that be nice to add to your mobile device’s non-RAM storage? Alas, Apple products don’t allow that. It was another surprise iPhone 4 only has 16GB and 32GB models — not even a 64GB model, which was entirely possible for their production cycle.)

Of course, from a marketing point of view, I can understand why Apple doesn’t make these devices memory-upgradable, but what does surprise me is that they tend to hide the specs during the announcement of a new device. Many of Apple’s customers are tech savvy and WANT TO KNOW that the company’s latest gadget has whatever speed and memory under the hood, for a variety of reasons.

For example, when the iPhone 4 was announced, I saw conflicting details from non-Apple sources, so I was surprised to hear that there would be an iMovie for iPhone app when the phone only had 128MB (according to some sources). But with 4 times that, video editing starts to make sense. There’s no way the current iPads could handle a mobile iMovie app, but with iPhone 4’s 960×640 screen resolution, improved processor speed, multitasking, front and back-facing cameras, 720p HD video recording and so on, it seems a bit more plausible.

Of course, now I have to eat my words from 2007 that video editing on a cellphone was a ridiculous claim. Not that it couldn’t be done but that it could be done well and that it would catch on. But with iMovie on the iPhone 4, it definitely seems to make sense — at least for short videos. However, with my wife being a filmmaker and my own interest in film, I’m really waiting for the next iPad, in hopes that it can handle video editing. What about you? Is video editing on a cell phone something you would do?

Of course, in Sandberg’s case it’s easy to at least guess why she’d try to make people believe email is “probably” going away. Facebook is a major powerhouse of the pop culture phenomena of social networking, but her comments are really self-serving. Ok, yeah, it has infiltrated our lives, and yeah, only 11% of teens email daily — a huge generational drop. But how does that really matter? Us older online workers might use email more frequently, but that’s because we have the business need to do so — whether we work online or from home.

Ask yourself: Do you seriously think that when these teens grow up, graduate from college (if their online empires don’t keep them away), and get hired by an employer that they aren’t going to use email more frequently? I’m sorry but I really don’t see anyone texting or tweeting important documents to each other.

Mobile devices might be more integrated into the daily workflow of the average employee, and with Twitter’s new infrastructure changes, someone might try building an email client out of tweets, but email will continue to be used. In fact, I seem to recall that Facebook was working on their own full-service email client. Does Sandberg’s comments mean that’s changed? Regardless, email is not going away. Email clients might mutate, or have new features like video messages, or appear in a hologram in front of you, or be integrated into your favorite social network — but either way, they’re here to stay.

This is what Google is doing by integrating Google Voice into GMail chat sessions. The new integration of GMail and Google Voice means that a phone will no longer be necessary. (This is a feature that’s still being rolled out, so you may not see it yet.)

Doesn’t sound like something you’d do? Right now, I have a client in Washington, D.C., who communicates with me through business email setup on GMail, as well as through text chat from GMail, and of course by phone. If we’re text chatting, it’d be nice to have a “click to call” option if we need to sort something out in an audio conversation. Seems to me it’s far more productive than having to pick up the phone. Now, it’d be nice if Skype was somehow integrated into this sort of offering.

However, B&N’s free wireless promotion is time-limited. To get your free cup of joe, you have to show a B&N server some mobile device and that you’re actually reading an e-book on their software. It doesn’t even have be a B&N Nook device, since there are Nook apps for a variety of mobile devices, including Apple’s iOS devices, HTC smartphones, or even a laptop. On the other hand, Starbucks’ free wireless offer is permanent — for the foreeable future — and it will include free access to paid content such as the Wall Street Journal.

These aren’t the only companies who currently offer free wireless and other goodies, but they are two with big brand names. Of course, various carriers have their own free wireless access offerings in select locations of select cities. (Check with them to find out where. I have AT&T and Verizon service plans and I’ve never come across any free wireless access points — or at least not noticed. What about you?) As well, Google has it’s own wireless network as well. Of course, the wireless city, where you can be online anywhere you go, is nothing new, but it seems corporate networks will be more widespread than muni (municipal-run) wireless networks.