Twitter is the dominant micro-blogging service, having forced Pownce (remember them?) to go away while a score of such as StatusNet and Plurk quietly toil away in the background. Meanwhile, Google’s first stab at the market, Jaiku, was a dismal failure.

That said, anyone who dismisses Google’s chances of posing a threat Twitter would be making a mistake. Here’s a few reasons:

1. Despite Twitters’ large user base – 50 million or so around the world – it’s growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S. where it has been flat in recent months. This may suggest that Twitter as a standalone service has reached a saturation point.

2. GMail’s popularity provides Google with a huge potential market to launch a Twitter-Killer. GMail users are already are used to having conversations using GTalk so adding another feature is not coming out of left field.

3. GMail is also a excellent demonstration of how Google has bene able to break into new markets. At the time, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail dominated the landscape, so GMail received a tepid response. Today, it’s one of the most popular e-mail services.

The keys for Google’s Twitter-Killer will be how well it is integrated into GMail, and the features it offers given Twitter’s weak spot is the fact it continues to be a no-frills service.

The Internet has had a disruptive impact on how we live, work and plan – and perhaps one of the most interesting is how a growing number of people are leading increasingly public lives.

We talk about where we’re located (Foursquare, Gowalla), what we’re doing (Twitter), who we’re with or going to be with (Facebook) and what we buy (Blippy). Since it’s so easy to be so public, the amount of information that people are willing to publicly share continues to expand.

The question is whether there’s a limit to how public we want our lives to be? How much is too much? Is there a point in which disclosing too much about who we are, what we’re thinking/doing and where we’re located becomes dangerous? Are we there yet?

While being public is becoming the “norm” for a growing number of people, this information is being monitored, track and analyzed in different ways. Some banks and insurance companies, for example, are using information that people disclose on social media sites to make credit and policy decisions. It’s food for thought the next time you want to tweet or do an update about having a huge hangover or you’re interesting in taking skydiving lessons.

I’m also surprised by how much information people disclose about where they’re located and where they are located. For example, lots of people have no qualms about telling the world that they’re heading out on vacation for a couple of weeks. If I were a social media-savvy break & enter specialist, I would have multiple Tweetdeck columns set up to monitor all of this “valuable” data. A few searches later, and they could quickly determine where someone lives, and then schedule jobs based on this “intelligence”.

Heck, even the CIA is getting into social media monitoring after buying a stake in Visible Technologies last year. Who needs to install wiretaps when people are happily volunteering lots of information about themselves via social media!

The problem is most people don’t think their “public-ness” is a problem because sharing with everyone is seen as being no different than talking to your next door neighbour when, in fact, it’s entirely different. Maybe I’m in the minority but at some point, people have to wake up to the fact there’s a downside to being so public and transparent.

Then, maybe people will think twice about telling the world everything and anything. Maybe people will think more about broadcasting to people that you really know (friends, family, etc.) rather than everyone in cyberspace. In many respects, the public disclosure pendulum has swung from one extreme to another. Who knows whether it will swing back but people should spend some time thinking about how much they are disclosing, and who’s seeing, reading and monitoring this information.

What do you think? Are we becoming too public?

More: For more thoughts on how we have given up our privacy, check out this post by CSO.

Take look at Foursquare’s traffic over the past six months:

What’s interesting is that traffic growth in December vs. November was modest (unique visitors grew by 7.8%, while pageviews rose 15%). This is nice growth but not red-hot, which suggests Foursquare likely has a small group of enthusiastic users who account for a major chunk of traffic.

The big unknown is how much growth and traffic is coming from the popular iPhone app given Foursquare is a mobile service. There may be many users who have never touched the Web site other than to perhaps register for the service.

Still, I’m far less bullish and TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb about Foursquare’s growth. There’s no doubt Foursquare has been enthusiastically embraced but it’s left to be seen whether it can break out beyond the bleeding edge. A big key will be if Foursquare can offer more services to keep people engaged once the novelty of “checking-in” begins to wear off.

What’s interesting about Apple and its ability to generate amazing amounts of conversations is how it’s not really using social media at a time when many consumer-focused companies are scrambling to get on the bandwagon. Apple seems to be saying that it doesn’t really need to use social media because it has millions of customers using social media on its behalf. In many ways, Apple has been able to outsource social media.

It begs the question: Are there some or many consumer-facing companies don’t need to use social media?

If your customers are using social media to spread the word about your products and services, provide customer service, answer questions and build the brand’s presence, does it make sense for some companies to stay out of the social fray?

Instead, they can feed the machine by generating content that evangelists (and non-evangelists) can use when blogging, tweeting, Facebook updating, etc.

The reality is Apple may be an exception to the rule because social media makes sense for many companies as part of their communications, marketing and sales programs. Then again, it raises the issue of whether social media is for everyone at a time when social media is being trumpeted as a cure-all or silver bullet.

Note: This post originally appeared in the Sysomos blog.

While talking to sources is still an integral part of journalism, I’ve noticed a growing number of newspaper articles recently that cite or quote blog posts, blog comments or tweets. For example, the Toronto Star’s story about Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams going to a U.S. hospital for heart surgery included a quote from “Matt” taken from a U.S. Politics Online forum: “Canada keeps its costs down, in part, by neglecting the expensive business of advanced specialty care knowing that the U.S. is next door to help”.

I don’t think the reporter, Tonda MacCharles, has any information about “Matt” and his area of expertise but it must have struck her as a colorful and relevant enough to use in the story. While she did interview a Conservative Senator, Wilbert Keon, for the story, you would think she could have gotten the same kind of quote by interviewing another person rather than quoting “Matt”

So, the question is whether this kind of “reporting” is lazy journalism? Rather than having to talk with someone, all you need to do is a Google or Twitter search to find a comment, tweet or update that fits the bill. While it could also be argued that using these type of quotes is smart because it reflects what people are talking about, I wouldn’t describe this activity as journalism.

What do you think? Is using blog comments, tweets, etc. lazy journalism or a good use of social media conversations?

I get that information published on Twitter, Facebook and blogs will be instantly and readily available. I get that news reporting will be instantaneous, and I get that search will become a lot more interesting because it will deliver up-to-the-second information. That’s all very exciting but is it enough to justify the hype surrounding real-time? In other words, is that it?

I guess it might come across as naive but shouldn’t there be a lot more involved? What is the significance of the real-time Web other than information gets published, delivered and consumed faster than ever before? How does that really change things?

In a sense, it’s difficult not be think that the hype about real-time reflects its potential as opposed to the current reality. Looking ahead, you can see that real-time could have a major impact on online collaboration. As well, the ability to analyze a huge amount of data in real-time will have a major impact on e-commerce, pricing and inventory management.

That’s all well and good but for now, real-time strikes me as interesting but not tangible enough to get caught up on the hype machine.

For some, this might be a contentious or controversial statement given how much activity is happening and the growing number of people involved in the strategic and tactical pursuits. While not downplaying or dismissing the skills of these people, my point is that social media is still a nascent thing/activity/business that it’s impossible for anyone to truly claim to be an expert or guru.

Social media is an immature child, who is changing, evolving and experimenting on a daily basis. There are no tried-and-true strategic or tactical approaches because we’re all still trying to figure out what works and why. Anyone who claims they have it figured out is selling is selling you a bill of goods.

At the very best, social media practitioners and consultants can offer high-quality strategic and tactical insight and recommendations that will offer clients a solid chance of being successful. But there are no guarantees given social media is much of an art as a science. For example, if anyone promises they can attract a certain amount of traffic, Facebook fans or Twitter followers, quickly dismiss it.

In time, social media will mature, evolve and become a well-entrenched part of a company’s communications, marketing and sales activities. Then, it might be possible to point out people who are social media “experts” or “gurus”. Until then, we’re all consultants, practitioners and enthusiasts.

First, it’s a terrible name for lots of reasons; the iSlate or iTablet would have been better choices. As for my take on the device itself, it’s pretty interesting, particularly as an e-Reader, but the real story is how the iPad could evolve in the future.

In the scheme of things, the iPad is simply Apple dipping its strategic toes in the water. It lets Apple get into the tablet computer market, and probably selling millions of units to a growing customer base. In the meantime, Apple will continue to work on adding features to the iPad, and evolve it into a device could go far beyond it being a cool way to watch movies or read books.

For example, the iPad could be a key part of a home entertainment system that connects computers, televisions and the Internet in a user-friendly package – something that the consumer electronics market has been salivating about for years. The iPad could be the always-on device that provides consumers with instant access to the Internet than a laptop or home computer. The iPad could be the way that Apple extends its domination from music to books.

The iPad could also morph into lots of different things based on where Apple wants to focus on, what developers create around it, and what consumers want. This is a far more exciting proposition than the device that Steve Jobs unveiled yesterday.

For more thoughts, check out David Pogue’s review in the New York Times, Daring Fireball, which also takes a big picture view of the iPad, while Alex Payne has a different and though-provoking post in which he describes the iPod as “disturbing”.

In the last blog post, we talked the importance of having a focused approach to social media as opposed to trying to be all things to all people. If you buy into this theory, the next step is determining the best and most appropriate social media services that meet a company’s strategic and tactical needs.

The first – and probably most important – step is listening to what’s happening within the social media landscape. It’s a walk before you run approach that gives you a good handle on where the most conversations are happening about a company’s brand, products, services and industry.

If there’s lots of chatter on Twitter, it probably means Twitter is a good place to get involved. If there’s no action within the blogosphere, then maybe starting a blog isn’t such a good idea. All you want to do during the listening phase is discover the hot spots.

The next move is selecting a small handful – one to three – of social media services where the target audiences exist. Then, a company needs to determine whether it has the people who can run these services on a day-to-day basis, whether it needs to hire some people to dit, and whether there’s a budget (time/money) to make it happen.

Once these hurdles are handled, it comes down to tactical execution and making sure that whatever you do is sustained, enthusiastic and engaged. A key point to remember is social media is a long-term commitment in which tangible results can take time to materialize.

Sure, there are examples of companies that hit the social media jackpot with a video or contest that goes viral but these examples are few and far between even though you might get the impression they happen all the time based on how often they’re cited by social media consultants.

Another important consideration is that it’s important to take a flexible approach to social media. While you may have a well-defined social media strategy, you also need to go with the flow, experiment and be willing to change directions tactically if you’re not getting the desired results even after putting in the time.

Final point: despite the hype surrounding social media, it’s still early days. There’s lots of time to get involved so don’t feel like something has to happen right away. Take your time, study the landscape, and then take the plunge.

The marketing mantras include “smaller”, “more powerful”, “mobile”, “better designed”, “faster”, “more capacity” and, of course “more features”. This convinces many people to pay full-price for new products, while getting nothing or pennies on the dollar for their perfectly good old products.

That said, the frenzy of excitement over the Apple Tablet is unreal. In 15 years of writing about the high-tech industry, I’ve never seen the the market froth at the mouth so much. The only comparison I can make is it’s like how teenage girls get when they finally get a brief view of the latest teen heart-throb.

So, it didn’t surprise me this morning to see TechCrunch at the top of Techmeme with the headline that Steve Jobs has apparently been saying that the Apple Tablet “will be the most important thing I’ve ever done”. TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington hasn’t heard these words directly from Jobs but “but we’ve heard it multiple times second and third hand from completely independent sources” so chances are Jobs probably said them….or maybe not.

In any event, the stage is now perfectly set for Jobs to unveil the Apple Tablet (or not) on Wednesday when he makes his annual state of the union/here’s something new and wonderful speech. If Apple does, in fact, unveil the tablet, you should take great care around any Apple stores in the coming weeks because the MacNation will be a rapid state.

If Apple doesn’t launch the tablet, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Apple. If anything, it will just get the MacNation on more of an alert as they’ll shift their attention to the next possible launch window.

If any event, it’s clear the Apple Table is, in fact, the great thing since sliced bread…or not.

(Note: The photo above Apple’s infamous Newton tablet computer).

More: Mathew Ingram, GigaOm’s freshly-minted writer and part of the mesh gang, has a post about how the launch of the Apple Tablet will likely instigate a fight with Amazon (and its Kindle) for content creators and distributors.