Use #pdfeu to join hundreds of attendees of the conference, which focuses on the many connections between politics and technology and the leaders of both industries across Europe.

Speakers, participants and sponsors are using Twitterslurp today and Saturday to share ideas on the conference’s most compelling topics and panels, including Friday’s opening address on how President Obama’s technology team helped him win the American presidency and Saturday’s keynote on mobile platforms for change.

We’ve received a good number of compelling applications from organizations across Washington, but we are pretty sure there are many more worthy organizations out there who could use our help. Applications will be accepted until next Wednesday, Nov. 25, so please get them in soon. The entry form will only take several minutes to complete. Happy holidays, and we look forward to hearing from you!

Pew’s deep research came up with a variety of causes and conclusions to support their hypothesis, but in my opinion, here are their most interesting finds:

10. There’s been no significant jump in the number of truly isolated Americans. While the study did support the idea the number of many Americans’ social connections may have gotten smaller and less diverse in the last 30 years, there are two important caveats: First, new technologies actually combat, rather than cause, this trend. Second, roughly the same number – six percent – of the American public is completely isolated from others in 1985 and now.

9. Web users are more likely to seek counsel outside their own family. “Whereas only 45% of Americans discuss important matters with someone who is not a family member, internet users are 55% more likely to have a non-kin discussion partners,” the study reports.

8. Many 18-22-year-olds use social networking to keep in contact with nearly all of their key contacts. Pew found 30 percent of those 18-22 — the age group most likely to use social networks — use those networks to keep in touch with 90 percent or more of their “key influentials.”

7. Internet users like clubs. If you own a cell phone, use the internet at work or blog, you’re more likely to join a voluntary group, on or offline. These can include neighborhood associations, sports leagues, youth groups and social clubs.

6. Technology users have more “core” friends in their discussion networks. “On average, the size of core discussion networks is 12 percent larger amongst cell phone users, 9 percent larger for those who share photos online, and 9 percent bigger for those who use instant messaging,” Pew reported.

5. Web users leave their rooms. Contrary to the iconic image of a lone blogger on a couch sans sunlight in a basement apartment, it turns out internet users are 42 percent more likely to visit a public park or plaza and 45 percent more likely to frequent coffee shops than non-users.

4. Cell phone and web users make better neighbors. Whether or not you own a cell phone or use the internet makes no difference in the amount of time you spend face-to-face with your neighbors, however, 10 percent of internet users supplement their face time with personal emails. When online neighborhood discussion groups are considered, 60 percent of users “know ‘all or most’ of their neighbors,” compared to the average 40 percent.

3. Technology users seek conversation outside their marriage. If you use the internet at all, you’re 38 percent less likely to rely exclusively on a spouse as a discussion confidant, the study found. Use instant messaging? You’re 36 percent less likely than other internet users and 59 percent less likely than non-internet users.

2. Sharing those family vacation photos online might make you more politically open minded. “Those who share photos online are more likely to report that they discuss important matters with someone who is a member of another political party,” the study showed. 

1. Bloggers have more racially diverse friends. Pew found those who use the internet frequently and especially those who maintain a blog are “much more likely to confide in someone who is of another race.”

The chart below shows a breakdown of the decline in IE 6 this year.  I take this trend line as good news, as IE 6 has lost 8% of market share so far this year.  Here’s hoping 2010 is the year IE 6 finally goes away for good.

I’ve been testing out the new retweet functionality for a few days, and I must say I am not a fan at all.  Sean Bonner has written a great blog post dissecting what he dislikes about Twitter retweets.   In his post, he hits on my two biggest issues.

1. When a retweet appears in your Twitter stream, it shows the avatar of the person who wrote the original tweet instead of the retweeter.  So you have random people’s avatars showing up in your stream.
2. Users can no longer add their own comments to the retweets.

The result of these two protocol changes is a complete lack of context for the retweets.  Bonner summarizes the lost context problem quite well in this paragraph of his post, which focuses on the avatar issue:

Seeing icons and usernames in my stream of people I don’t follow, even with the addition of a little “retweet” icon does not create a richer, fuller experience for me. It instantly makes me assume Twitter is broken and somehow people I don’t follow are showing up in my stream. It’s jarring and uncomfortable. Ev suggests there is no value in having the icon of the person you follow in a retweet but I completely disagree. Seeing the icon of someone I follow, someone I’m familiar with, instantly puts the retweet in context. Is the person regularly sarcastic which might imply the retweet is a joke, is the retweet a link to an article covering a topic this person usually tweets about which would give me an idea of the slant of the article, is the retweet from someone I follow because I respect and trust their opinion or is it a retweet from someone I’m friends with but don’t always agree with or from someone I follow because they constantly opposing my viewpoints and I want to hear their side of the story as well. Seeing the icon of the person I follow tells me a lot about the tweet and why they likely felt the need to retweet it before I ever read it. Seeing the icon of someone I don’t follow, don’t know, and have no context for confuses me.

Not being able to add your own note to the retweet further destroys the context.

Anyway, not a fan so far.  What do you think?

Update: Techcrunch has a very thorough and thoughtful article on this issue.

In addition, we helped them launch a redesigned version of their custom Ning social network, Community of Veterans.  Community of Veterans is a members only social network that can be accessed only by confirmed veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The network provides veterans with a place to interact with other vets, and includes a robust set of social networking tools including event planning, profile pages, regional groups, etc.   Below is a screenshot of the network’s homepage.

We’re really excited to be working with IAVA.  In honor of Veterans Day, please follow IAVA on Twitter and become their fan on Facebook.

The site, Threatened Voices, aims to raise awareness to the growing number of bloggers and other online journalists being persecuted across the world. While both traditional and new media reporters have faced recent danger, the site acknowledges the growing importance and number of online journalists in the global media.

“Online journalists and bloggers now represent 45% of all media workers in prison worldwide,” Global Voices says in a press release.

The captures of high profile journalists abducted in Iraq and North Korea have called attention to the dangers of the profession, while “the harshest consequence for many has been the politically motivated arrest of bloggers and online writers for their online and/or offline activities, in some tragic cases even leading to death,” Global Voices reports.

The site allows users to enter their own location and anecdotal details, drawing from the international community of journalists to fill the site’s map content.

Outside of the central map, other features of the site include statistics and analysis organized in a timeline or by country. The site lists China, Egypt and Iran as the top three countries, respectively, with the highest number of recorded cases of threatened or arrested bloggers.

Each case is tracked to record whether the blogger was threatened or arrested and if arrested, when and if they were released. Another aim of the site is to allow the online community to call attention to campaigns to free particular journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the partners of the Threatened Voices project released a report in April on the 10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger.

Along with a thorough description of each country (at the time, Burma was listed at the top), the article quotes CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon, who emphasizes, “Freedom of expression groups, concerned governments, the online community, and technology companies need to come together to defend the rights of bloggers around the world.”

The site was also built in collaboration with the BBC, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others.

I think Twitter Lists will end up helping separate the men from the boys when it comes to influence.  In addition to seeing a Twitter users follower count, we can now see the number of other Twitter users who have added them to lists (example to the right).  I would argue that getting added to a list is a bigger deal than simply getting someone to follow you.

People follow folks for lots of reasons.  Out of courtesy.  Because they like their avatar.  To get them to follow them back.  Adding someone to a list is more of an endorsement – you are saying this person is someone worth listening to.  While I’m sure people will now work to game their “lists” number, in the short term I think it provides a really interesting insight into how respected Twitter users are.

Along these lines, my colleague J.W. Crump from our ImpactWatch team posted an interesting look at the Top 100 Twitter User list.  He basically reordered the top users list to sort by the number of lists folks are on, as opposed to follower count.  I’ve copied the results below.  I take some comfort in the fact Barack Obama is the most listed user, as opposed to Ashton Kusher who is the most followed Twitter user, and that Kim Kardashian rank plummets in this view.

Internet marketer Murray Newlands recently picked the brain of our very own Hannah Del Porto, who is one of the experts on our ImpactWatch media monitoring team.  You can read the interview here.

As you probably know by now, CNN launched a redesigned website yesterday.   While I like the look and feel, the thing that really strikes me about the new homepage is how little of it is devoted to news.  As you’ll see in the screen shot above, the far left column that I’ve highlighted in yellow is hard news while the rest of the page, which I have greyed out, is devoted to feature stories, ads and site features. 

As a frequent visitor, it seems to me that CNN site has been shifting for awhile towards feature stories/ lifestyle news and away from hard news.  With less than 1/3rd of the above the fold homepage devoted to national/world news, I think this new design is another big step in that direction.