As Google continues to focus on HTML5 mobile experiences (and do it very well), they have to think about systematically driving usage… which, for mobile, requires ‘desktop’ real estate.

I have written about the design of promotion and notification units several times – pointing at examples from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

After a few days of usage, a handful of thoughts of Google Instant:
1. It’s a technical feat: fast, inteliigent, and useful.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about YouTube’s terrific mobile promotion of their new html5 experience.
Here is an even better, more eye-catching promotion by Facebook for the new Facebook Places product. As background, to …

Last year I covered the Madden 10 advertising blitz that took over ESPN and YouTube’s homepage with slick, expanding units that interacted with the pages’ content. I have always been impressed by ad units that …

Last week YouTube Mobile adopted HTML5… it wasn’t long ago that Apple touted YouTube as the iPhone’s original launch partner (via a native application). Their adoption of HTML5 is yet another indication that it is …

January marked the month where Facebook passed Google in visits and Yahoo in Uniques. Today, Compete released their February 2010 numbers and the trends continued:
1. Google remains the largest by reach (with 141m uniques) and …

As seen in the below screenshots, Facebook Widgets now feature and play video in-line (although I am not entirely sure that this is a new release – it is my first exposure to it). These …

I cannot tell if these are:
- new YouTube ad-units, or
- bizarre / sneaky advertiser units
… but they are appearing more and more across the Google AdSense network. The below screenshots are taken directly from advertisements …

Royal Pingdom has a recap of 2009 web usage by the numbers. There are several nuggets – but here are a few that really stand out:
350 million – People on Facebook.
50% – Percentage of Facebook …

Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has put together a great video called “Social Media Revolution”. Worth watching and then checking his datapoints and footnotes (a couple of which I included below):

For video game and sports enthuiasts, Madden Football’s release day is the equivalent of a major Hollywood blockbuster. In Madden 2009′s first month, it did $133.5 million in retail sales. Today, Madden 10 arrives and …