Hidden in Facebook’s new iPhone App update  which went live last night is the code for something new… the long awaited new Facebook iPad solution. OMG… Yes it really is there in the code and even better you can launch it.

After months of rubbishing  the importance of a iPad app Facebook has obviously spent time working on this so I thought I would share a sneak look. I cant wait for this app to actually launch. Stay tuned for more updates.

Last Friday Twitter celebrated its 5th birthday. Yep Twitter first opened it’s doors to the public on the 15th July 2006 (just seams round the corner doesn’t it) and since then the service has gone literally from a Zero to 200 Million Tweets a day!

And things just seam to be getting better for The Big Blue Bird because In the last 10 months alone Twitter has seen the number of Tweets increase by over 100%. There is no doubt that Twitter is starting to get major traction with people and with businesses for been more engaging socially and commercially.

Have a look at this infographic from Visual.ly…

These awesome new figures are stunning and the interesting thing is how many of them are relative to social media. And don’t forget that whilst you read the list this is NOT happening every hour but… every 60 seconds. So by the time you have read this paragraph alone all this would have already happened.

• Search engine Google serves more that 694,445 queries
• 6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr
• 600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content
• 695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Social Networking site Facebook
• 70 New domains are registered
• 168,000,000+ emails are sent
• 320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Social Networking site Twitter
• iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times
• 20,000 new posts are published on Micro-blogging platform tumbler
• Popular web browser FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times
• Popular blogging platform WordPress is downloaded more than 50 times
• WordPress Plugins are downloaded more than 125 times
• 100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn
• 40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com
• 100+ questions are asked on Answers.com
• 1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content
• 1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com
• 1,200+ new ads are created on Craigslist
• 370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users
• 13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora
• 1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company

Update: 12th July

Social gamers will buy $6 billionin VIRTUAL goods by 2013… movie goers buy ONLY$2.5 billion in REAL goods.

Want learn more about the state of Socialnomics watch this…

We are all familiar with the Google Page Rank score and with how Google uses complex algorithms to rank web pages but did you know that Facebook uses the same sort of techniques to give you what they call your EdgeRank? If not you need to because this is going to be the next battle ground for your eyes and your attention.

You’re aware that at the top of your Facebook page there is “Top News” and “Most Recent” but do you know the difference between these two sections? And… do you know why it is becoming more important that you show up in these sections?

The “Top News” section is a collation of status messages which Facebook considers are from your close friends and pages and this is calculated using the Facebook algorithm and is called your EdgeRank. The “Most Recent” are status updates from ALL of your friends and also ALL the pages which you have liked. So how does Facebook know the difference between your closer friends and everyone else without you telling them? This is simple because you are actually telling them and more on that in a moment.

But here is something you should be aware of… By default the “Top News” is what you see when you FIRST login. Now because over 50% of people just view these updates without even been aware that there are other views it’s important that you are listed here so your message can be seen by your community and ultimately get there attention.

So what is EdgeRank and how does the formula work? Well as I said earlier it is the algorithm which Facebook uses to determine which of your status messages your Facebook community sees in their “Top News” when they first login. And don’t forget that 50% of your community don’t even look at any of the other choices so this is the first things they see before they interact with their community.

This means that if you get their attention first you stand more chance of them liking your statuses and more importantly commenting on them, more on that in a bit but first here is the formula:

Affinity x Weight x Time Decay = Your Facebook EdgeRank

Let’s break down the formula to make it easier to manipulate…

The first part is the affinity score, this is a measure of the relationship between you the creator of the item and the viewer your friend. Facebook calculate this by considering if you send your friend a few or a lot of Facebook messages, do you check their profile often and if you do you will get a higher affinity score for that friend than for an old acquaintance you don’t talk to very often.

Then there is the weight which is given to each type of interaction. For example a comment on an item has much more importance than a Like and a picture has the heaviest weight of all.

Lastly there is the time factor or how long has it been since someone had any interaction with an item. In other words the longer an item goes without anyone interaction with it the less important it becomes.

This simple formula is the magic to increasing your status views and it all boils down to one thing… Engagement! The higher your engagement is the higher your Facebook EdgeRank score will become.

This is the magical formula to increasing your status views or as Facebook calls it impressions. What does it all boil down to? Engagement! The higher your engagement is, the higher your EdgeRank score will be.

It was discovered today that Twitter gets more traffic than MySpace and also more monthly visitors.

But here is the real killer… Twitter now has 96 million users as opposed to the 95 million users on MySpace in less than half the time it took MySpace. Also Twitter has seen grown by 76% whilst MySpace has declined by 17% because of the popularity of sending Tweets by people.

It is also believed that Twitter and Facebook are a broader church for people where as MySpace has been focusing on music rather that the wider aspects of social media. MySpace may also be seen as a less interactive platform where as Twitter and Facebook are perfect for short messages easily adopted by the SMS generation.

With MySpace becoming less and less popular by the day it seems that it may well be uncool to have a MySpace profile, if so this could be the death nail and social extermination for MySpace.

So who’s top-gun? Well it’s still facebook but with over 2 billion tweets a month and a new look twitter getting rolled out over the next few weeks this is likely to only boost Twitters growth.