Social Media Round-up of the Week – 09 May

Welcome back to our weekly instalment of what’s hot in the world of social media. In case you missed what happened over the past week, here’s a run-down of our top six.

1. Social media users boast double the amount of friends online as offline, according to the latest research. It found that whilst the average patron of a social networking site such as Facebook can boast 121 separate connections, the reality is that the individual is likely only to have 55 physical friends.

2. Facebook is driving an increasing amount of traffic to news sites but Google remains the top referring service, according to a study published today.The study examined the 25 most popular news websites in the United States, looking at how users get to the sites, how long they stay there, how deep they explore a site and where they go when they leave.

3. A Twitter user today made a mockery of the celebrity trend for using privacy injunctions to hide their identity. @superinjunction, who quickly attracted a following of 5,000, set up an account claiming to ‘out’ those behind the legal gagging orders. So many Twitter users began exchanging messages supposedly naming high-profile figures who have hidden their secrets that part of the site crashed.

4. Forget Silicon Valley in California, the governement has just announced a £1Million funding competition for investment in the British equivalent; Silicon Roundabout. The competition, Tech City Launchpad, started last Friday and was announced by David Bott, the Technology Strategy Board’s director of Innovation Programmes, at the inaugural Digital Shoreditch Festival.

5. YouTube’s livestream of the Royal Wedding was viewed more than 72 million times last Friday, the company has revealed. That’s a higher number than the number of people living in the UK. In fact, if royal wedding web viewers were to form a nation (perhaps one in which everyone wears fancy hats), it would be the 19th largest country in the world.

6. The latest research from Beyond suggests that privacy concerns are stalling the growth of social location apps, with the findings in this infographic (above). We’re not sure whether we agree with the findings, but it’s certainly food for thought.