Private company research firm Privco has ranked the top 20 merger and acquisitions of the top 20 technology VC firms of 2012, including Ancestry.com’s $1.6 billion sale to private equity firm Permira and other top tech acquisitions such as Yammer, Meebo, Instagram, and NextG networks.

The biggest 2012 private exit on the list is Ancestry.com, for $1.6 billion, while Meraki, Yammer, NextG Networks, and Nicira all passed the billion-dollar mark.

Just a little more than a week, ago, PrivCo revealed the most acquisitive companies of 2012, which included Facebook, Google, Groupon, and the still-private Twitter, which was the first time a private company had made the top 10 list.

“We had our data team pull the largest exit for each of the Top 20 tech VC firms of 2012, including company sold, date of sale, and acquisition price,” Privco CEO Sam Hamedeh told VentureBeat in an email. “Most of the deal prices below have never before been disclosed publicly, including by us.”

Here’s the data, in visual form.

Note that some exits that appear smaller are ranked higher, as they returned more capital to the venture firm that primarily backed them.

photo credit: epSos.de via photopin cc

Popular handmade marketplace Etsy has shared some eye-popping stats about its performance in 2012, with CEO Chad Dickerson calling it a “breakthough year.”

Etsy has been in the news recently due to its purchase of photo app Mixel and the launch of its sleek new Android app, showing its 800,000 sellers that it’s committed to mobile. The company also recently hired a new CFO.

“As you ramp up your businesses in these first weeks of 2013, I want to take a moment to reflect on 2012 one last time and celebrate your collective success,” Dickerson wrote to his sellers. “This was a breakthrough year for the Etsy community by any measure.”

Here are some of the key takeaways, per a lengthy blog post today:

• Overall sales in 2012 grew 70.3 percent over the previous year, to $895.1 million from $525.6 million in 2011
  
• 10 million new members joined Etsy last year, almost doubling the total number of members to 22 million in about 200 countries
• New buyers increased by 83 percent in 2012
• Sales in December 2012 were 72.9 percent higher than 2011
• Mobile visits on Etsy grew 244 percent in the past year, representing more than 25 percent of all traffic
• Jewelry is still Etsy’s #1 category, but the fastest-growing category is Furniture, which grew 134 percent from 2011.

New York-based Etsy has raised about $91 million from investors including Index Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Accel Partners.

Personalized Money Clip via 3LittlePixiesShoppe/Etsy

Games journalism is not a popularity contest. It’s about writing the best, most informative content you can. But it’s always fun to see which stories proved the most appealing to our readers. That’s why we created this list of GamesBeat’s 10 most popular stories from 2012.

1. Ocean Marketing: How to self-destruct your company with just a few measly emails. We detailed one of the greatest PR blunders in gaming history. It just doesn’t pay to pick a fight with Penny Arcade. Also, this story was technically published at the very end of 2011, but since it received most of its hits in 2012, we’ll count it. This is the only article that also appeared on 2011′s list.

2. Educational outreach program Pixel Academy looking for a place to call home. Offering workshops on topics like video game design, 3D printing, film making, and app development to children ages 8 to 18, this worthy program turned to crowdfunding to help keep itself afloat. A good cause and a great story.

3. Google Zerg rush attacks your search results with this fun Starcraft-inspired easter egg. The search engine giant paid tribute to the famous real-time strategy game by swarming the computer screen with the famous Google O. It was a pretty simple gag, but the immense popularity of StarCraft helped make this one of our biggest stories ever.

4. Breaking Borderlands 2: Easy money, XP, Eridium, boss fights, and tokens. We tell our readers how to bend the world of Pandora to their wills in this popular guide. People must have found this story useful considering how many of them kept checking it out.

5. Can’t find Franchise/Dynasty mode in Madden NFL 13? Let us explain. I guess a lot of people were having this problem if this was one of our most read stories of the year.

6. Bethesda reveals Skyrim dragon mounts, house-building, Kinect shouts, and more! Developer Bethesda originally showed these ideas during a gaming conference as potential additions to its incredibly popular role-playing game — most of which became a reality in Skyrim’s downloadable content.

7. FYI: PlayStation Network down today at noon PT for planned maintenance. A lot of people were wondering why they couldn’t get online with their PlayStation 3s and PlayStation Vitas.

8. Minecraft (Xbox 360 Edition): Tips, tricks, and achievement guide. Another one of our great game guides. It helps when the title you’re writing about is as complex as Minecraft.

9. The world’s most wanted alleged pirate was also the No. 1 multiplayer player for Modern Warfare 3. You have to admire a guy who can top both an FBI most wanted list and a Call of Duty leaderboard.

10. Survive the real zombie apocalypse in an abandoned UK shopping mall. Zombies are huge in all forms of media right now, including gaming. But what can compete with the chance to fight off “real” zombies with Airsoft guns?

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After people activated a record-breaking 17.4 million iOS and Android devices on Christmas Day, the following week saw record-smashing activity as well: over 50 million iOS and Android-powered smartphones and tablets activated, and a staggering 1.76 billion apps downloaded.

“The last week of 2012 was the largest week for both new device activations and app downloads in iOS and Android history,” Peter Farago of the mobile analytics firm Flurry wrote on the company’s blog today.

The weekly average leading up to the holidays was just slightly over a billion apps downloaded each day, which almost doubled in the last week of the year. The same week in 2011 had previously held the record for number of downloads, but saw much fewer device activations, including only 6.8 million activations on Christmas day.

Most of the downloads were, predictably, in countries that actually celebrate Christmas, with the U.S taking the top spot with 604 million apps downloads in the last week of 2012, the U.K. with 132 million, and Germany, France, and Canada following up in the 50 million range. China, by virtue of its massive population, still held second place in app downloads with 183 million despite the lack of a traditional gift-giving time around Christmas.

Flurry says that billion-download weeks will likely become the norm in 2013, and that a two billion-download week will likely come near the end of the year.

The analytics firm can estimate total device activations and app downloads since its stats solution powers usage data for over 260,000 apps running, it says, on the “vast majority” of iOS and Android phones and tablets. A quarter of all apps downloaded on a daily basis include Flurry analytics, Farago wrote, which allows the company to detect over 90 percent of all new devices activated.

photo credit: valanzola.t via photopin cc

The non-death of Color

In October we reported that Color, the super funded photo-sharing app, was closing up shop. While the report was the result of a pretty well-placed source, Color representatives nonetheless denied it, even as media outlets began reporting that Apple was involved. The deception became clear a month later, when Color announced that –surprise!– it was shutting down.

Tim Cook on the legacy of Steve Jobs

It’s been an interesting year for Tim Cook. Taking over for the late Steve Jobs has been no easy task, but Cook has done it so far with an extreme level of humility for one of the most powerful executives in the world. But as Cook admits, he’s learned a lot from Jobs, whose legacy still lives on in the devices that millions of people use each day. “Apple has a culture of excellence that’s so unique, and so special, that I’m not going to witness or permit the change of it,” Cook said.

Artful delusion from RIM’s new CEO

While RIM has been in deep trouble for some time, its executives haven’t been too great at acknowledging that reality. Many thought this institutional denial would end with new CEO Thorstein Heins at the helm, but as Heins’s July comments showed, this wasn’t the case. Heins may not seem much wrong with his company, but it’s clear that RIM’s future rests in large part on what happens with the launch of BlackBerry 10 next year.

Sh*t Judge Lucy Koh says

Judge Lucy Koh has had the unenviable job of presiding over the often-inane patent case between Samsung and Apple. normally, patent cases are pretty dull affairs, but the highly quotable Koh has made things a lot more interesting. And whatever you do, don’t mess around in her courtroom. She will sanction you.

Larry Ellison changes his tune on the cloud

As head of one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world, it’s surprising that Oracle’s Larry Ellison hasn’t been crazy about this newfangled “cloud” thing you’ve been hearing about. That changed this May, when Ellison revised his stance on the Cloud. Why? “I like the word ‘cloud’ because it’s a charismatic brand,” he said, probably talking partly about his own charismatic self.

Tough words for Scott Forstall from the father of the iPod

There were a lot of reactions to the Apple Maps fiasco-caused canning of Scott Forstall, but few were as palpably smug as the one from iPod daddy Tony Fadell. Like many people at Apple, Fadell wasn’t crazy about the often-erratic Forstall, and though the feud between the two is over, Fadell clearly still holds a grudge.

Eric Schmidt on the persistent digital divide

As Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt says a lot of important things — some of it right, some of it off base, and some of it profound. His comments at Mobile World Congress this year fell in the latter group. Part an ode to futurism, part a call to arms, Schmidt’s speech laid out the true nature of the digital divide. As we’ve noted before, it’s required viewing.

Acer on Microsoft’s Surface mistakes

Acer may be one of Microsoft’s largest hardware partners, but that doesn’t mean CEO JT Wang has to like the Surface. Wang’s comments were one of many interesting reactions to the launch of Microsoft’s tablet — a device that marks the beginning of Microsoft’s reinvigorated hardware efforts. Wang may not like it, but the hardware-creating Microsoft is here to stay.

 A patent troll talks popularity

Patent investor Nthan Myhrvold isn’t very well-liked, and he’s completely fine with that. As head of Intellectual Ventures, Myhrvold is one of the forces behind a particularly irksome practice known as patent trolling: His company scoops up patents, licences them, and then sues anyone that infringes on the ideas. While Myhrvold’s company may not be the only one guilty of the practice (Myhrvold points a defiant finger at the likes of Google and Apple), sadly, it’s his company that’s become the best known for it.

Facebook’s biggest mistake

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the most vocal of CEOs, so when he says something, it tends to be interesting. At TechCrunch Disrupt this year, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook made the wrong bet when it created some of its early apps using HTML 5 – an experiment that resulted in Facebook’s buggy and slow early apps. Thankfully, Facebook has since moved to fix the problem with native versions of its Facebook and Android apps.

Real talk from Meg Whitman

Will HP ever create another smartphone? This has been a big question ever since HP killed off its webOS devices last year. But while HP isn’t anywhere near giving mobile another go, CEO Meg Whitman knows that HP needs to try again or be forever irrelevant in the future of mobile computing.

Image credits: Brian Rosenblatt 

MakerBot continues its ascent

MakerBot may not be the only company creating 3D printers, but it certainly is the one that does it with the most style. Chief executive Bre Pettis and co. had a pretty eventful 2012: In May, it expanded its operation to Brooklyn’s 16-acre Metrotech Center, which it shares with Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield and Polytechnic institute of New York, among others.

But as big as that move was, MakerBot’s September was even bigger. Not only did CEO Bre Pettis land on the cover of Wired magazine, but MakerBot also announced the Replicator 2 and Replicator X, its newest 3D printers. To top it off, MakerBot also launched its very own storefront in Manhattan, where customers can see for themselves just how far 3D printing has come this year.

Shapeways shapes 3D printing’s future

If MakerBot is going after your desktop, Shapeways is targeting just about everything else. The 3D printing service offers its customers the capability to upload their designs and have them printed out in a variety of materials, including food-safe ceramic, then sent to them in the mail.

It’s a brilliant business model, and it’s worked out pretty well for Shapeways this year. In June, it raised $6.2 million, funding that became vital when Shapeways opened up its new Queens, New York printing factory in October. Equipped with 50 industrial  printers, the factory can generate millions of products a year. The move, like MakerBot’s expansion, is proof that the 3D printing industry is growing — and quickly.

Bringing 3D printing to the bedroom

No story this year quite encapsulated the “make anything” nature of 3D printing this year as our feature on the future of 3D printed sex toys. Using a 3D printer, designers can dream up and manufacturer sex toys that fit the exact specifications that customers want — an enabling, democratic force that rivals VCR in its personal applications.

One startup, New York Toy Collective, takes that capability a step further: Using 3D photography, the team is even able to make anatomically correct replicas of its customers’ genitals. The future is here and it’s … well, sexy.

3D printed guns reveal the technology’s dark side

As with any new technology, it hasn’t taken long for people find more dangerous applications for 3D printing. One of the more notable examples came in August, when hobbyist Michael Guslick used a 3D printer to create many of the parts for a homemade .22-caliber rifle.

While limited in its scope, the project shows that 3D printers won’t just disrupt manufacturing, but law enforcement and gun control as well. How can you prevent people from buying things — in this case, guns — that they can create in their own homes?

Fortunately for civil society, consumer-grade 3D printers are still unable to print in sturdier materials like metal, which thankfully prevents them from printing entire weapons — at least for now.

3D printing helps pirates discover a new target

Online piracy has created a lot of headaches for media and software companies, and the Pirate Bay plans to bring the pain to makers of physical objects as well. The torrent site’s new “Physibles” category enables people to upload 3D designs, which anyone with a 3D printer can print out in their own homes. While the move might seem pretty insidious, The Pirate Bay points to more noble motives: “The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labor,” the site wrote announcing the addition.

3D printing warms our hearts

“[Additive printing]  is one of those industries that matches perfectly with 3D printing, because we need custom everything,” research designer Whitney Sample says the video. 3D printing severely cuts down on both the wait time and costs of medial prosthetics. Rather than take patents’ measurements, send them to a company, and wait for the prosthetics to arrive, hospitals can just print them themselves. It sounds fanciful, but as the video above shows, it’s already being done.

Staples helps create a spooky future

One of the likely future models for 3D printing looks a lot like the print centers of today, where you go to a shop in order to get your printing done. So it’s no surprise that Staples is trying its hand at the technology. With its new “Staples Easy 3D” program, the company will enable its customers to upload their 3D designs (like this creepy face) and have them printed out in-store. The model is similar to that of Shapeways, but with one main exception: Staples is a huge multinational company, which automatically gives it a reach that’s not yet available to the comparatively small Shapeways. The one drawback with the Staples program is that it will be limited to Belgium and the Netherlands, at least at first.

Social networking titan Facebook has released a 2012 Year in Review that shows off notable trends of the year and, in a nice twist, the 20 biggest stories from your Timeline.

Similar to Google’s Zietgiest, Facebook’s Year in Review takes advantage of troves of data on its more than 1 billion users to accurately sum up the big things that happened this year. Some of the results might even surprise those who didn’t pay attention to a certain category. In television, for example, I had no idea that A&E’s Duck Dynasty was so popular on Facebook — more popular than Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Game of Thrones.

The Year in Review also takes a personal twist by showing you the biggest things that happened to you (on Facebook) in 2012. Posts and pictures in which you’re tagged that have a lot of likes and comments are the most likely candidates for big moments. My year in review features several moments surrounding the presidential election, popular photos taken with friends, memes, and a few news stories shared on my Timeline. To see your personal Year in Review, go to facebook.com/yearinreview.

To see more on Facebook’s top trends, check out facebookstories.com/2012. Here’s the full list of trends from 2012 for the United States:

2012 Trends – U.S.

Events
US Presidential Election
Superbowl XLVI
Death of Whitney Houston
Superstorm Sandy
London 2012 Olympics
Death of Trayvon Martin
Facebook IPO
Aurora Shootings
Death of Dick Clark
Obama’s Endorsement of Gay Marriage

Songs
We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monáe) – Fun
Somebody That I Used to Know – Gotye
Call Me Maybe – Carly Rae Jepsen
What Makes You Beautiful – One Direction
Payphone – Maroon 5
Mercy – Kanye West
Some Nights – Fun
Home – Phillip Phillips
Boyfriend – Justin Bieber
Take Care (feat. Rihanna) – Drake

Movies
The Hunger Games
The Avengers
Magic Mike
The Vow
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
21 Jump Street
The Dark Knight Rises
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax
Skyfall
Prometheus

Check-Ins
Times Square, New York
Disneyland, California
AT&T Park, California
Yankee Stadium, New York
Rangers Ballpark, Texas
Fenway Park, Massachusetts
Dodger Stadium, California
Universal Studios, Florida
Wrigley Field, Illinois
Angel Stadium, California

Public Figures
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney
One Direction
Tim Tebow
Eli Manning and Peyton Manning (tie)
Madonna
Honey Boo Boo
Jeremy Lin
Paul Ryan
Phillip Phillips

Books
The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) – Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2) – Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3) – Suzanne Collins
Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1) -E.L. James
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Harry Potter, #1) – J.K. Rowling
The Help – Kathryn Stockett
Twilight (Twilight, #1) – Stephenie Meyer
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

Technology
Instagram
Timeline
Pinterest
Draw Something
iPhone 5
Kindle Fire
SOPA
News Feed
Siri
SongPop

Politics
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney
Voted
Four More Years
Paul Ryan
Rick Santorum
Gay Marriage
Obamacare
The Polls
DNC

Television
Duck Dynasty
Honey Boo Boo
Big Bang Theory
Game of Thrones
Downton Abbey
Breaking Amish
Ink Master
Long Island Medium
Wife Swap
Two Broke Girls

Sports
NY Giants
New England Patriots
Tim Tebow
London 2012 Olympics
OKC (Oklahoma City Thunder)
Denver Broncos
San Francisco 49ers
Eli and Peyton Manning
Jeremy Lin
Los Angeles Clippers

Memes
TBH (to be honest)
YOLO (you only live once)
KONY
One-word Comment
Gangnam Style
Cinnamon Challenge
Cray
SMH (shake my head)
Big Bird
Linsanity

Photo via Facebook

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nicos Vekiarides is CEO and co-founder of TwinStrata.

About a year ago, I authored a post predicting ten hot trends in cloud data for 2012. While there’s a strong temptation to cast old predictions into ancient history and dive into ten predictions for 2013, I felt it more appropriate to first glance back and reflect on how those past predictions fared.

After all, much can transpire over the course of 12 months — hot technologies cool off, fads pass, buzzwords vanish, and, of course, some technologies really stick. So let’s take this opportunity to revel in success or eat humble pie.

Without much ado, here are the predicted 2012 trends and how they fared:

1. Hybrid data storage environments that integrate cloud storage into on-premise IT.

2012 brought key validations by cloud service providers of hybrid storage environments via product roll-outs and acquisitions. These included the introduction of the AWS storage gateway and the acquisition of StorSimple by Microsoft.

Verdict? Hybrid data storage is clearly big. You’ll hear a lot from us at TwinStrata after the end of this year regarding hybrid cloud storage adoption, so stay tuned.

2. Private cloud environments within enterprise companies.

While managed private-cloud solutions such as Nirvanix have demonstrated continued success, open-source clouds for the enterprise do-it-yourselfers have not quite emerged as viable alternatives. Moreover, factions have emerged between OpenStack and CloudStack for supremacy in the open-source cloud space, perhaps complicating decisions.

Verdict? The jury is still out. Keep an eye on this space to see how 2013 shakes out.

3. Disaster recovery to the cloud as a viable option.

Demand for disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) in the cloud has not waned. In fact, there has been more business and enterprise adoption of cloud DRaaS requiring no dedicated infrastructure — though buyers should beware of dedicated hosted disaster recovery parading as cloud disaster recovery.

Verdict? Progress, but the best is likely yet to come.

4. Disaster recovery from the cloud as a new need.

Not surprisingly, 2012 brought its share of cloud outages. In spite of these, cloud-to-cloud disaster recovery and off-cloud disaster recovery remained the exception rather than the norm.

Verdict? Maybe 2013.

5. Simplified on-boarding of applications to the cloud.

With vendors like VMware, DynamicOps, Citrix, VMTurbo, and others extending virtual on-premise workloads to the cloud and vendors like Racemi and RiverMeadow pulling on-premise workloads to the cloud, the option to migrate apps to the cloud has become more viable. According to a recent nCircle survey from November, the majority of respondents outsource less than a third of their infrastructure to the cloud.

Verdict? The cloud move is happening, but on-premise infrastructure still comprises the vast majority.

6. Non-relational databases for big data.

With Oracle entering the fray of NoSQL databases in 2011, it was a safe assumption that the technology was making early strides. A few successful deployments and the funding of DataStax are are indicative of burgeoning interest.

Verdict? Still early, but another technology to watch in 2013.

7. Use of the cloud for analytics.

With Google BigQuery joining Amazon Elastic MapReduce to help companies analyze their “big data” in the cloud, offerings including those from specialized analytics vendors are proliferating. According to Forrester, 38 percent of all companies from a recent survey are planning a business intelligence SaaS project before the end of 2013.

Verdict? It’s on the way.

8. SSD tiers of storage in the cloud.

During the summer, Amazon launched larger AWS instances employing SSD. Also in October, Rackspace launched a tier of high-performance block storage using SSD.

Verdict? SSD storage tiers are now available. Watch for the uptake in 2013.

9. Improvements in data reduction technology to address large rich media files.

While deduplication has surfaced in a range of primary and backup storage products, the struggle still remains with rich media (video and images) which typically do not reduce well. To be fair, companies such as SeaChange have added deduplication to their media-centric products.

Verdict? Capacity and bandwidth remain the kings of media for now.

10. “Cloud-envy” from cloud laggards.

I predicted that some of the laggards will likely seek ways to leverage cloud methodologies that improve IT efficiency. I also predicted some will fall prey to cloudwashing by purchasing traditional IT infrastructure named “cloud” in an attempt to satisfy their “cloud-envy.”

Verdict? Watch for cloud poseurs abusing a new buzzword: “software-defined.”

Nicos Vekiarides manages all day-to-day company functions at TwinStrata. Nicos has spent 20 years in the data storage field, both as a business manager and as an entrepreneur and founder in startup companies. Most recently, Nicos served as Vice President of Product Strategy and Technology at Incipient, where he helped deliver the industry’s first storage virtualization solution embedded in a Cisco switch fabric.

Clouds photo via Paul Bica/Flickr

Twitter just released new data about its user interactions from 2012 — all on a brand new website.

The site, 2012.twitter.com, pulls out specific instances of the most retweeted update, the most tweeted events, significant trends, and more. The data more or less matches up with the most popular events from the news cycle, including the 2012 presidential election, the NFL referee strike, and the Olympics. But one interesting thing Twitter did with its report was create a category that represents data that’s more or less unique to the microblogging social network.

The company listed the following categories and explanations:

• Golden Tweets: The top two tweets that generated the most retweets for the year, plus honorable mentions for a few others that caught attention around the world.
• The pulse of the planet: Some of the biggest conversations of the year that generated large numbers of tweets and retweets.
• Only on Twitter: Moments of serendipity and just plain awesomeness (if there is such a thing) are what we call #onlyontwitter. We list examples of tweets that came to life organically on Twitter and can be appreciated in an instant.
• Top trends: Lists of the significant trends of the year in the U.S., UK, and Japan. These phrases reveal what captured our attention based on sudden spike of interest, rather than what was consistently popular.
• New voices: From the Pope to Pelé, this year Twitter welcomed new voices from every corner of the world.

In addition to the year-end report site, Twitter also teamed up with Vizify to provide individual stats on each user. You simply need to plug your information into Vizify to pull up the data, which gives you an overview of your most tweeted-about topics. (In my case, VentureBeat pops up at the top of the list, followed by Netflix and Reddit.)

photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa via photopin cc

Both in the U.S and globally, people are accessing the web more frequently and for longer periods, using smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and smart TVs. We’re still using PCs as well, but personal computer usage of social media is just about the only category that’s down: 4 percent fewer Americans connected to the Internet via a PC in 2012, while 82 percent more connected via the mobile web and 85 percent more connected via a mobile app.

Source: Nielsen

Mobile app and mobile web use were both up — way up.

Overall, total time on the Internet in 2012 is up 21 percent to 520 minutes a month. A staggering 17 percent of that is spent on one service: Facebook.

And it’s social networks that are seeing huge growth, with 85.5 million accessing social networks via a smartphone or tablet app in July 2012 versus 44.8 million in July 2011, and 81.1 million using the mobile web in July 2012 compared to 43 million in July 2011. PC use is still the largest, with 171.8 million Americans using a laptop or desktop machine to get social online, but that’s just slightly up from 163.6 million in 2011.

Interestingly, while Facebook’s PC’s audience declined by 4 percent in 2012, Twitter’s grew 13 percent. Google+ grew 80 percent, and Pinterest grew 1,047 percent, but that has a lot more to do with the growth cycles of those two sites than transformative change in how users are accessing them. Facebook’s app audience increased by 88 percent, and its mobile web audience increased by 85 percent, more than offsetting the slight PC decline, and underscoring Facebook’s recent efforts to monetize its mobile services.

Another insight from Nielsen: Pinterest’s growth flattened — and even disappeared in early 2012. It had grown from an audience of perhaps 2.5 million in July 2011 to almost 25 million in February 2012, but it plateaued at that level for three months, and then actually decreased in May before taking off again in June.

Still, Pinterest is a massive force online, especially among women, who make up 70 percent of its web audience, 84 percent of its app users, and 72 percent of its mobile web audience — and spent about 2.1 billion minutes on the site in 2012.

The second-screen phenomenon is on the increase as well, as TV viewers continue to use Twitter as a way to sound off, comment on, and chat with others about what they are watching:

Almost a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds comment on social media sites about their TV shows while they’re watching, and the numbers are growing through 2012.

That’s a low percentage, globally, with 47 percent of people in Asia-Pacific countries using a second screen while watching TV, and a staggering 63 percent of people in the Middle East and Africa chatting online while watching.

The surveyors talked to 1998 U.S, adults, but the global component of Nielsen’s report surveyed 28,000 people in 51 countries.

The full report is available from Nielsen.

photo credit: ocean.flynn via photopin cc

But question and answer site Ask.com‘s year-end review of what was big and popular in 2012 focused, appropriately, on the questions people asked over the past year.

Sure, Gangnam Style is huge … but what the heck is it, actually? And Lance Armstrong has been semi-officially disgraced … but did he actually take performance-enhancing drugs? Mitt Romney said something about 47 percent of us … but what, exactly?

“With nearly half of the queries on Ask.com in the form of a full question, we get a snapshot of not only what captured consumers’ attention, but also what piqued their curiosity,” Valerie Combs, vice president of communications for Ask.com, said in a statement.

The result is a fascinating insight into not just what people are searching for, but why. And what, specifically, they want to know about a person, event, or concept.

Here are Ask’s top news search terms for 2012:

1. 2012 Olympics. How many medals did the US gymnastics team win?
2. Hurricane Sandy. What is the damage from Hurricane Sandy?
3. Black Knight shooting. What happened at the Colorado shooting?
4. Jerry Sandusky. What is Jerry Sandusky’s sentence?
5. iPhone 5. When will the iPhone 5 be released?
6. Facebook IPO. When is the Facebook IPO?
7. Lance Armstrong. Did Lance Armstrong take drugs?
8. Whitney Houston. How did Whitney Houston die?
9. Costa Concordia. How did the Costa Concordia sink?
10. Trayvon Martin. Why was Trayvon Martin Shot?

Political queries were, understandably, dominated by the 2012 U.S. presidential election. However, social issues such as rape and gay marriage entered the list, as did Europe and the Greece-inspired Euro crisis that wasn’t. Oh, and Clint Eastwood talking to a chair apparently confused a LOT of people.

1. Presidential race. Who will win the Presidential race?
2. Democratic National Convention. When is Clinton speaking at the DNC?
3. Mitt Romney. What did Mitt Romney say about 47 percent?
4. Republican National Convention. Why did Clint Eastwood talk to a chair in his speech?
5. Chick-Fil-A. What did the CEO of Chick-Fil-A say about gay marriage?
6. Todd Akin. What did Todd Akin say about legitimate rape?
7. Gay marriage. Where is gay marriage legal?
8. Obamacare. What is Obamacare?
9. Greece bankruptcy. Is Greece bringing down the Euro?
10. John Edwards. Was John Edwards found guilty?

Celeb questions were inevitably popular, including Prince Harry’s didn’t-stay-in-Vegas indiscretions and the globe-shaking controversy over when Snooki’s baby would be born. People wanted to know what size diamond Brangelina gave to itself, and whether, in fact, young Olympic greek-god-even-if-he-is-American Ryan Lochte had a girlfriend.

1. Kristen Stewart. Will Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart get back together?
2. Katie Holmes. Was Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s marriage fake?
3. Psy – Gangnam Style. What does Gangnam Style mean?
4. Snooki. When is Snooki’s baby due?
5. Prince Harry. What will happen to Prince Harry because of the nude pictures?
6. Brad Pitt. How big is Angelina’s engagement ring?
7. Carly Rae Jepsen. What is the best Call Me Maybe parody?
8. Jessica Biel. When are Justin and Jessica getting married?
9. Miley Cyrus. Why did Miley Cyrus cut her hair?
10. Ryan Lochte. Does Ryan Lochte have a girlfriend?

For the answers, of course, you’ll have to check the site. All except one: Gangnam style is, in fact, just old-fashioned fake pony riding.

Without, of course, the fake pony.

Here’s a video flipbook Ask put together of the top queries of 2012:

Last I checked, 2013 was still 34 days away. But Bing is obviously an impressive piece of technology: it already knows the most-searched terms of 2012.

With Honey Boo Boo, multiple Kardashians, Beyonce’s baby, and Justin Bieber all making the cut, there’s plenty of celebrity gossip mag in the results. It’s almost educational for those of us who don’t follow — in other words, those of us who actively avoid — popular culture.

But there’s also plenty of interest for the more web-focused of us, with rankings of social networks, viral videos, and most-searched geeky gadgets.

First of all, the celeb trash. Priorities, people.

Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber swapped their 2011 places, with the Biebs sliding to second and the Kardshian one bumping up to first. Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, and LiLo round out the top five.

1. Kim Kardashian
2. Justin Bieber
3. Miley Cyrus
4. Rihanna
5. Lindsay Lohan
6. Katy Perry
7. Selena Gomez
8. Jennifer Aniston
9. Nick Minaj
10. Taylor Swift

Speaking about priorities, Barack Obama ranked 46th, and Mitt Romney came in at 43rd. The only difference is, no one added the word “nude” to those searches. Hopefully.

Oh, and when the list is limited to reality TV stars, the three Kardashian sisters made a clean sweep of the first three spots — Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney. That’s gotta be some kind of record.

More interesting are the top non-Us Weekly news stories of 2012. The top item is also the most-searched consumer electronics device of 2012: iPhone 5. Apple’s newest gadget was followed by two arguably more important events: the 2012 U.S. presidential elections and the 2012 Olympics.

Hurricane Sandy came in fourth for current events search terms, and “Honey Boo Boo reality show” came in sixth. I am not ashamed to say that while I have heard the term “Honey Boo Boo” before — how could any of us have successfully avoided it? — I still have no clue what it means or refers to. And no, I’m not going to Google it (or Bing it, for that matter).

When it comes to social media, Facebook is the one ring that rules them all. MySpace — which has just had a very successful redesign — came in third, following Twitter and ahead of LinkedIn, the massively growing Tumblr, and Instagram. Digg, amazingly, is still holding on the edges of its grave at number nine.

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. MySpace
4. LinkedIn
5. Tumblr
6. Instagram
7. Reddit
8. StumbleUpon
9. Digg
10. Klout

As for most-searched geek chic, there are probably not too many surprises here, with iPhone 5 ranking first, followed by iPad. Apple’s iPad 3 holds the fifth spot; the iPod Touch is in the sixth spot, and the iPhone 4S also appears in ninth place. Samsung’s stellar Galaxy S III comes in third, followed by Kindle in fourth place.

1. iPhone 5
2. iPad
3. Samsung Galaxy S III
4. Kindle
5. iPad 3
6. iPod Touch
7. XBox
8. PlayStation 3
9. iPhone 4S
10. Windows 8

THe number-one searched-for video is no shock: the irritating/awesome Korean dance video Gangnam Style, which shot past the irritating Bieber Baby video to a billion views on YouTube. Here’s the rest of the list, which if you have too intimate awareness of, you probably don’t have a grownup job.

1. Psy – Gangnam Style
2. Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe
3. Justin Bieber – Boyfriend
4. Gotye – Somebody that I used to know
5. Fun.- We Are Young
6. One Direction – What Makes You Beautiful
7. Drake- The Motto
8. Maroon 5 Feat. Wiz Khalifa – Payphone
9. The Wanted- Glad You Came
10. Katy Perry- Part Of Me

photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer via photopin cc

On Wednesday, November 28, NASA will be hosting a Google+ Hangout. It’s all happening at 2 p.m. EST, 11 a.m. PST. Participants include:

• David Morrison, astrobiologist from NASA’s Ames Research Center
• Don Yeomans, asteroid scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Mitzi Adams, solar/archaeoastronomer from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
• Lika Guhathakurta, heliophysicist from NASA headquarters

The topics of discussion are the 2012 rumors that are proliferating across the Internet. According to the organizers of this chat, December 21 will not, in fact, mark the end of the world.

The official website — yes, NASA actually built an official Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End website — is up, as is the list of topic areas on which the scientists will be speaking and answering questions:

• End of the World
• ‘Prediction’ Origins
• Mayan Calendar
• Planetary Alignment
• Nibiru/Planet X/Eris
• Polar Shift
• Meteor Strike
• NASA Science
• Solar Storms

It’s a cool opportunity to chat with top scientists. Even cooler is that there is a field of science known as “archaeoastronomy.”

While I’m glad that NASA says the world is not ending, and 2012 (the movie) has it all wrong, I just have one question: But how do they know?

photo credit: c@rljones via photopin cc

The combination of diet, exercise and sleep, according to my Singularity University colleague Daniel Kraft, are keys to good health. Kraft, a physician-scientist who chairs the medicine track and runs the FutureMed program at Singularity, believes that we can end the obesity epidemic and reduce the incidence of “non-communicable” diseases (such as heart disease) through technology. Kraft helped me put together an assessment of the technologies available today that can help you fulfill your New Year’s resolutions for good health.

1. The Digital Mirror: A written commitment is a powerful tool when it comes to motivation. That power is enhanced when the commitment, and our failure or success in achieving it, is shared with others. Today, we can broadcast our weight, whereabouts, current song selections, and our latest meal over social media. You’re more likely to maintain your motivation to lose weight when you know your friends can see your gains and losses on an easy-to-read graph.

There more than 17,000 health and fitness applications in the Android and iTunes marketplaces. Exercise applications such as RunKeeper enable seamless pacing, tracking and scoring of workouts. My favorite when I go hiking is MotionX GPS—in addition to keeping track of how much and how fast I’ve walked, it remembers where I’ve been. Others like Skimble provide tracking and virtual coaches from a large library of workouts. There are apps for tracking your dietary indiscretions or to brag about your veggie intake. For example, The Eatery, enables you to crowd-source the healthiness of your meals. And for helping you count calories, there’s LoseIt — which claims that the average user loses 12 pounds.

2. Self-Tracking Devices: Logging in and recording data points have long been a barrier to self-tracking. Consider this barrier all but eliminated.

Web-connected scales like Withings, and blood pressure cuffs like iHealth, communicate with your smartphone and Web browser, recording your data with every use. They can also be configured to share your vital stats via email or Twitter. For those who need to track blood sugars, the FDA just approved iBGStar, a glucometer integrated with the iPhone.

3. Move it or Lose it: The most effective therapy for depression, poor sleep, arthritic knees, heart disease, prevention of Alzheimer’s and many other disorders is exercise. As little as 30 minutes of active walking per day can make a massive difference in your health and longevity.

Wearable devices like the ‘FitBit’, which I use and which constantly motivates me to walk more, and the pending ‘Basis’ heart rate and motion monitor tracks the number of steps you take, calories you burn, and miles you walk. These devices provide dashboards, connect to your social networks and allow you to set goals and targets. Company divisions or work groups can leverage the social component to foster friendly competition. Meanwhile, new startups are emergingto engage and reward those who do.

4. Enhance the power of sleep: The power of a good night’s sleep is often under-appreciated. It’s all about quality and duration. Applications, resting under your pillow, can track your motion at night and help you develop better habits. By using the Zeo Sleep Manager, I was able to notice a significant difference in the quality of my sleep on days that I was checking emails after 9 PM, and when I turned my computer off early. Devices like Zeo and Lark bring much of the power of an expensive sleep lab to your home, and can help identify signs of diseases such as sleep apnea.

5. Genomes come home: We have seen the pricing of genomic sequencing continue to plummet at more than double the rate of Moore’s Law. It doesn’t take a complete DNA sequence to make use of one’s own genetic makeup. Consumer-focused companies such as 23andMe, Navigenics, and Pathway Genomics now offer partial genomic analysis (not a full sequence) for about $200—the cost of a high end pair of shoes.

While the “fun” side of ancestry and family background can be illuminating, several aspects of genetic predisposition can be actionable. Knowing, for example, that a relative has twice the risk of developing Type-II diabetes or a significantly higher propensity of developing cardiovascular disease may provide the necessary encouragement to stay in shape, modify your diet, or engage in earlier screening and prevention.

6. In Case of Emergency: Quick reference tools such as iTriage help enable rapid response, whether it’s finding and obtaining guidance on treating a minor burn or directions to the nearest hospital. They can, ultimately, be the difference between life and death. And in-case-of-emergency applications are improving on the traditional medical bracelet. These applications store essential information about you and provide emergency contact numbers.

7. Gamification: Anyone who has been addicted to a video game, or knows someone who has, can appreciate the power of immersion and interaction. Video-game developers are marrying physical and social activity, giving players an opportunity to exercise and socialize while they play. And web-based applications like HealthMonth are getting in on the game as well.

8. Mindfulness: Our attention spans have been keeping pace with technology in that they are getting shorter as technology is getting faster. The benefits of almost any form of mindfulness or meditation practice are well documented. And, as with nearly everything else, there’s more than one app to help you through it.

Hopefully, with a bit of help from technology, you will fare better at keeping your New Year’s resolutions than in previous years. The really good news is that this is just the beginning. Over the next few years, we will see thousands of new devices and technologies that will help you monitor and improve your health.

Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Copyright 2011, WashingtonPost

Here are a few of our favorite tech-related #longreads of 2011. Share your own picks in the comments.

How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History

By Kim Zetter, Wired.com

It’s a 2833-word story about malware. It’s also an incredibly gripping, suspenseful and well-crafted piece of journalism tracing the discovery and deciphering of Stuxnet, a virus using zero-day exploits to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program.

This Tech Bubble is Different

By Ashlee Vance, Businessweek

Silicon Valley is pumping out new money-makers and social networks everyday, but is finding the best way to serve ads really innovation? Vance asks some hard questions about the waste of talent in the current tech bubble and the possible fallout when it pops.

What Happened to the Future?

By The Founders Fund

Follow the previous article with Peter Theil’s Founders Fund manifesto, posted in July. They’re interested in funding innovation over cash-cows, focusing on aerospace, biotech, artificial intelligence, energy and the Internet.

How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code

By James Somers, The Atlantic

Developer James Somers uses his own failed attempts to pick-up a programing language to explore a different way to teach: “Get your student to want to find something out.” Project Euler uses the same puzzle/answer approach that finally helped Somers crack the code of learning.

Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech’s Hottest Startup

By Victoria Barret, Forbes

Inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs: Dropbox grew from idea on a bus to a profitable digital storage company with 45 million users in four years. Barret gets close to co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi to tell the story of the rapidly growing company.

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

By Paul Ford, Ftrain.com

If you produce content for this crazy medium we call the Web, Ford has insight into how you can tap into consumers’ innate need to give feedback and be heard. Another great piece by Ford was Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings? in New York Magazine.

Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?

One comment on a New York Times article inspires filmmaker Errol Morris to investigate his deceased brother’s role in inventing e-mail. His brother, Noel Morris, was an MIT student in the 70s with Tom Van Vleck, who is credited with co-creating one of the first email programs. Errol interviews Van Vleck and digs into his own family’s past in this article packed with great images and ephemera from an exciting time in technology’s history.

Robots Say the Damnedest Things

By Jon Ronson, GQ

Ronson has a series of entertaining, random and sometimes insightful conversations with robots. Artificial-intelligence fans should also check out Brian Christian’s “Mind vs. Machine” from The Atlantic.

Xbox: The making of a bad-ass machine

By Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat

Yes, this is one of ours, but it’s also a great read (really!). Our own lead games writer, Dean Takahashi, is something of an Xbox expert. He’s been following the story of the console since it was created 10 years ago, and is intimately acquainted with the people who made it happen, the drama behind the scenes, and the ways this incredible piece of machinery went from concept to hit product.

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

By Mona Simpson, New York Times

There was a lot of analyzing, musing and eulogizing in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death, but my favorite was a simple piece by Jobs’ sister, Mona Simpson, that ran in the New York Times. Its personal and honest depiction of the human side of Jobs was a welcome chaser to all the genius/saint/tyrant coverage. Another interesting Jobs piece was “What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?” by Steve Silberman on PLoS.

And just for kicks, my favorite non-tech long read of the year…

Inside the mind of the octopus

By Sy Montgomery, Orion Magazine

A love letter to the octopus: “Although an octopus can taste with all of its skin, in the suckers both taste and touch are exquisitely developed. Athena was tasting me and feeling me at once, knowing my skin, and possibly the blood and bone beneath, in a way I could never fathom.”

The really big Internet IPO returned and the massive venture capital funding bubble inflated, which seems difficult considering that the venture capital industry is far smaller than it was three years ago. But look at some of the crazy valuations on revenue-less photo-sharing startups like Color and Path. And there is clearly another bubble inflating in the cloud computing sector, with every company that uses a distributed architecture now calling itself a “cloud company.” So what does 2012 have in store? Here are my predictions.

1. Social media will lose its sizzle.

It’s already happening in fact, as growth of social media usage has begun to slow for upstarts such as FourSquare and stalwarts such as Facebook alike. Silicon Valley has been obsessed with social media, and investors have funded hundreds of “me too” startups to the tune of billions of dollars. There are social networks for pet owners, all manner of marginal Twitter apps, a ridiculous number of mobile photo-sharing apps, hundreds of apps targeting social media analytics and on and on and on.

Just as location-based applications became a “feature” rather than the “big thing,” social media will live on and become an integral part of what we do. But the party’s over for investors and startups in this space. The big growth is behind us. Revenues from social media have not lived up to the promises, and the vast majority of those thousands of startups are either dying or on the ropes. It’s time to jump on the next bandwagon, folks.

2. The bubble will pop for the current crop of tech IPOs.

LinkedIn and Zynga will probably lose more than half their value. LinkedIn is a great company, but even its current valuation of $6 billion is hard to justify. Zynga’s valuation is based more on hype than business reality. Groupon will probably lose most of its value as well because of the inability of the company to actually make a real operating profit that doesn’t require odd accounting gyrations.

But we’ll see another bubble of inflated IPOs coming in the form of the next generation of social game companies, newfangled B2B technology players (if Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff doesn’t buy them all first), and cloud computing companies. And there is little doubt that Facebook will be the IPO of the year — but likely at a lower valuation than is being speculated.

3. An explosion of the tablet market driven by sub-$100 tablets.

The Kindle Fire made waves with its $199 tablet, but we will probably see a new generation of Android-powered tablets that are priced at $100 or below. Tablet manufacturers don’t have the financial incentive to make these too cheap because profits shrink along with price. Once these devices get in the $100 range, carriers may subsidize them as a way to get customers to buy data plans — just like they have done for years with smartphones. Or tablet manufacturers may offer these devices with internet service bundled for as little as $10-15 per month.

For sophisticated consumers, these cheap tablets will seem rudimentary. But there are many new markets that will embrace these devices. And they enable a quantum leap for education systems, communications and information sharing in the developing world. India’s $35 tablet is already a reality. The current version (pictured), produced by Montreal-based DataWind is underpowered and clunky, but the next versions will be very usable. Imagine the price pressure DataWind will put on the lower end (meaning everyone but Apple) of the U.S. market if it releases the Aakash tablet in the United States.

4. Voice recognition goes mainstream.

Former Apple CEO and chairman Steve Jobs revolutionized user interaction by popularizing the Windows interface and mouse. With SIRI, he did his magic once again. SIRI is light-years better at handling complex requests than anything on a smartphone to date — and is getting better with each software update. Apple will embed this technology in new devices such as the Apple TV, in future versions of iPads and iMacs. It will probably open the interfaces to other applications and set off the voice revolution.

The type of voice command capabilities that we saw on “Star Trek” will start to become the reality.

5. “Cloudburst” shakes the tech industry.

Cloud computing is advancing faster than our ability to secure systems. Companies are rapidly moving their most critical data and information from file cabinets and secured servers to shared servers on the Web. Cloud computing provides significant cost savings and operational advantages. But it also unleashes a Pandora’s box of security concerns.

We’ve already seen cloud break-ins originating from China. And a number of legitimate Internet companies have suffered when the FBI confiscated a shared server in a cloud hosting facility that also hosted rogue applications. One major security breach could throw cold water over the entire industry and slow down the corporate adoption that is expected to drive cloud growth this year and for many years to come.

No doubt the tech world is in for another roller coaster ride—which will be a lot of fun.

Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Full disclosure: Washington Post Co. Chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook’s board of directors.

Read more on Innovations:

Photos | Fear and loving in 2011: The 10 most-read innovation stories

#InnovationReads: 2012 suggestions

Photos | The top 11 trends in innovation

The best innovation moments

Copyright 2011, WashingtonPost

2012 thumbnail image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Fueled by disruption on several fronts, 2012 will see some major mobile industry consolidation, as well as mobile VoIP services’ lasting impact on carriers and more options on data pricing plans for consumers.

Over the course of 2011, the mobile industry has been a year of mixed emotions. It has witnessed dynamic changes and suffered tragic losses, such as the launch of the iPhone 4S and death of Steve Jobs. We’ve also seen the emergence of video calling, and the rapid mainstream adoption of not only iPads, but tablets in general .

At the same time, there’s been unprecedented growth in the sector. According to IDC, early year estimates predicted that the smartphone market would grow nearly 50% globally in 2011, jumping from approximately 300 million shipments in 2010, to 450 million by 2011.

This, coupled with the rise of mobile commerce as a main market driver, and it’s really no wonder why many feel that this past year has been the year of mobile.

Looking ahead to 2012, there’s guaranteed to be some big surprises lurking in the shadows. Here’s what I believe will be some of the top headlines you’ll see in the coming year:

Microsoft buys Spotify, goes head to head with iTunes

All the speculation and rumors you heard will end up coming to fruition. In 2012, we will see Spotify
become a separate division within Microsoft to compete head on with iTunes. Microsoft has long wanted a pure music play and Spotify delivers an active, engaged audience of more than 2.5 million paying subscribers and a total users base of more than 10 million. With Zune all but prospering, look for Spotify to be bundled with Windows 8 as well as of course Windows Mobile 7.

Also, not to be neglected, is the common lineage between the two. The Swedish music streaming giant already has a pre-existing (and successful) partnership with Microsoft-affiliated social networking giant Facebook. In 2007, Microsoft partook in one of Facebook’s fund raising rounds and took a $240 million equity stake in the company at a valuation of $15 billion.

As a complement to its other properties, Spotify will continue to flourish within the Microsoft domain and it’s likely we’ll see it integrated into the Xbox Live platform alongside Skype and in a new version of Microsoft’s product suite. Microsoft will benefit enormously from a brand aspect and have a new asset to monetize its existing customer base with.

Mobile VoIP growth makes dramatic impact on operators

Next year will see the tipping point for true mVoIP (mobile Voice over IP). With 4G finally rolled out across the U.S. and technology improvements from companies like Rebtel and Viber, dropped calls will become a thing of the past. mVoIP will therefore go from being a fad, to something that is embraced beyond the digerati, and finally catching on with the mainstream.

Juniper reports that mobile VoIP clients downloaded to the smartphone will account for four fifths of 640 million mVoIP users by the end of 2016, while alliances between carriers and mVoIP specialists will remain relatively few in number. In the short term, operators will respond with their own services, partnerships with over-the-top (OTT) service providers and following on more rumors of consolidation, eventually buying them.

Google to spin-off Motorola

After purchasing Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in August, Google will spin-off the company in an attempt to save face with other handset manufacture partners like HTC and Samsung and remedy the risk of them leaving the Android eco-system in favor for Windows Mobile 7. In what will basically amount to a patent acquisition deal, Google will share patents with their OEM partners to allow for more direct competition with Apple.

(Maybe not such a surprising move after all, considering research firm Canalys recently shared that Android captures nearly 50% of the global smartphone market?)

Also, look for Google TV to jump back in the spotlight with Motorola poised to offer Google TV-enabled set-top boxes and cable providers jumping on board to compete with streaming providers such as Netflix.

Carriers forced to transition to tiered data plans

Some research firms have already predicted that the role of voice within the broader communications market will change substantially over the next few years, especially as it appears to be headed into integration with other applications.

To save customer churn, carriers will begin to offer tiered data plans to cope with the ever-increasing network strain and alleviate their reliance on voice revenue. In the transition process to tiered data, a portion of consumers are likely to initially be averse to the shift. We might even see this lead to a brief period of less data consumption on mobile devices due to a fear of being charged high per MB if they go over the their limit. Over time however, tiered pricing will be for the better, as it will facilitate a better and sustainable user experience by way of a model that makes sense from an economical perspective for the operators.

More carriers offering alternative pricing models and packages to stay competitive should turn out to be a big win for the consumer over the next 12 months.

Andreas is CEO of Rebtel, the world’s largest independent mobile VoIP company. Prior to Rebtel, Andreas was COO of Taptu, UK-based mobile search engine, and previous to that he was COO of TradeDoubler, a digital marketing and technology company. Previous to these positions, Andreas spent three years at Goldman Sachs.

The biggest daily deal flaw in 2011 was that primary pioneers of the product created an unsustainably expensive infrastructure to deliver it. They tried to build new, enormous consumer brands just around deals; they spent too much on Super Bowl ads and sales forces to sell only one kind of marketing program. The “Groupon tax” is too high.

And, while many of the infinite small deal sites are now being weeded out and even some larger programs are shifting focus, I believe 2012 will usher in new programs that merge content with a seamless deal delivery experience. The focus will not be on deal sites and daily emails, it will be on matching the right customer with the right offer at the right time. With this in mind, here are few of my predictions of what’s ahead for the daily deal industry.

1. LivingSocial will be purchased

The Amazon-funded daily deal site has patiently waited in the IPO shadow, and has learned a lesson or two from its rival’s bumpy road to Wall Street. I predict that LivingSocial will not stay independent long, despite its IPO plans. Instead, the deal provider will jump to the head of the group-buying pack by combining assets with a major e-commerce player. By merging with a company backed by a large Rolodex and bank account, LivingSocial will be poised to successfully leapfrog Groupon and render it a mere also-ran in the daily deals landscape.

2. Two hundred “Groupon clones” will bite the dust as consolidation mode takes off

With more than 600 companies currently operating in the group buying space, industry consolidation is going to become a very real threat to many daily deal sites. According to Yipit.com, over 170 deal sites failed in 2011. Next year the trend will continue as large companies purchase smaller rivals and other generic deal brands go belly up. I think more than 200 of the ‘me-too’ deal sites will close their doors within the first six months of the New Year. Meanwhile, sites that have found a way to integrate daily deals into their existing content, rather than just photocopying Groupon’s model, will not only survive but thrive.

3. Big branded sites’ futures lie in instant, contextualized deals

I believe 2012 will be the year big brand sites, which source hundreds of deals to large audiences with diverse interests, establish a profitable business model. But profits will only follow the ability to tailor content, matching the right customer with the right merchant. Simply put, the daily space will be dominated by the players who understand how to effectively merge content and commerce into a seamless experience, allowing consumers access to relevant deals anywhere and at any time. In 2012, I think Groupon and LivingSocial will make massive investments in their mobile capabilities, while Google, Facebook and other major audience aggregators will extend their commitment to the integration of location, advertorial, mobile and contextual commerce.

4. Lacking loyalty, Groupon goods will come to a dreary demise

From the operational challenges associated with maintaining a physical inventory to heavyweight competition from highly efficient retailers like Amazon, Gilt and eBay, Groupon Goods has faced an uphill battle from its very beginning. I predict that the fatal flaw in Groupon’s product arm will be the lack of loyalty and repeat customer opportunity. In fact, recent Forrester research already suggests that 51 percent of customers who buy the heavily discounted goods said they would’ve purchased those goods or services at full price anyway–but took the discount instead because it was available. Merchants, lacking the customer acquisition required to justify the steep discounts, will opt out of the site’s partnerships.

Tippr Founder/CEO Martin Tobias is a veteran executive, serial entrepreneur, and a green energy and technology venture capitalist. Tobias has more than 30 years of experience creating and leading successful companies including Loudeye Technologies, Impreium Renewables and Kashless, Inc. From his beginnings as a programmer, Tobias has focused on applying technology to solve real world business problems.

Fortuneteller image via Shutterstock

Case in point: eMarketer reports that global ad revenues for Facebook alone will have increased 104% to $3.8 billion and Twitter is predicted to have tripled its earnings by the year’s end.

Yet it’s apparent that brands have barely scratched the surface in terms of how they harness big data and effectively reach consumers over social media. In 2012, marketers will tap massive data sets to gain deep consumer insights that would have seemed inconceivable as recently as a year ago. Insights, that, not surprisingly, will make a tremendous and lasting impact on marketing budget allocation throughout the year and into 2013.

With all of this in mind, here are four predictions regarding the 2012 social data evolution.

The Social Filter will re-define how we view paid, earned, and owned media

There will be a dramatic evolution in how brands measure paid, earned, and owned media. This shift will be driven, to a great degree, by how consumers interact with brands over social media. One example: we will have more advanced reciprocal and cross-channel systems of measurement that evaluate consumer influence and interactivity, such as converting the value of a Facebook fan to Twitter terms. With this understanding, we will also begin to see more clearly the relationship between a brand’s social media efforts and its advertising campaigns, or “paid media.”

The social ecosystem will become less siloed

In 2012, every brand will be social. This will enable greater collaboration in the social ecosystem across Twitter, Facebook, and the entire web resulting in dramatic innovation. Ads will no longer look like ads, but instead will be relevant endorsements, recommended content, and information. The new importance of cross-channel integration will affect high level business decisions, pushing Twitter and Facebook, for instance, to acquire larger companies and drive innovation in other media, particularly television.

We will understand the power of a socially engaged customer

Over the past couple of years, large brands have incorporated “social” into their marketing efforts in a fairly rudimentary way e.g. setting up Twitter accounts and Facebook Fan pages. However, in the coming year, companies will move to the next phase of managing their brands online, which will include more sophisticated ways of increasing favorability and managing brand perception. For instance, brands will discover methods to push highly relevant content, recommendations and messages in ways they couldn’t previously. The focus will evolve from basic customer service management to true lifetime value analysis and social CRM.

Social data will impact offline marketing like never before

Large data sets gathered from social interactions – e.g. via shared links – have helped to guide how and to whom marketers advertise online. However, we are on the brink of having data inform offline marketing campaigns more so than online: predictive insights gleaned from understanding social customers, their graphs, and their behaviors, will guide how marketers deliver messages over TV, print and radio.

Eric Wheeler is the CEO and co-founder of 33Across, bringing 20 years of experience leading successful Internet businesses to 33Across. Prior to 33Across, he was the CEO of Neo@Ogilvy and Executive Director of Ogilvy Interactive North America. Eric’s career includes leadership positions at CNET, Young & Rubicam, and Anderson & Lembke in San Francisco.

 Top photo by dieseldemon/Flickr

“We’re piloting the program with a small group of presidential candidates and national party committees,” a Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat. “These partners will be running ads in the coming week. We will expand the pilot to include other candidates and committees as we build up our political sales team.”

The importance of Twitter in political campaigns has only grown since the service was used in the 2008 and 2010 elections. With Twitter now being integrated in major televised debates and other facets of political campaigning, it only makes sense for the company to start running political advertising.

Twitter has already queued up a string of the new Promoted Tweets from a number of presidential candidates and national political party election committees.

Moreover, the company is gearing up for even more major participation in the 2012 elections, starting with the hiring of Peter Greenberger, a former Google employee who ran political ad sales for the search giant starting with the 2008 election season. Twitter will now have its own dedicated political ad sales team in Washington, D.C.

Ever since the 2008 Obama presidential campaign broke ground by using Twitter for politics, more and more of our country’s and states’ leaders have taken to the service to talk with constituents and disseminate information about their platforms. Right now, 85 U.S. Senators use Twitter, and 360 members of the House of Representatives also have accounts. The vast majority of state governors — 42 of 50 — are on Twitter, too. And of course, all the current major presidential contenders are using the microblogging service.

Candidates and national political committees will be able to purchase any of Twitter’s ad products, including Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.

As a media company, Twitter is responsible for making sure users on the service can easily distinguish a regular tweet from a political ad. As you can see below, the purple “Promoted” icon will be used to designate Promoted Tweets that were paid for by a political entity.

The company is also allowing political advertisers to include a full-length, Federal Election Commission-compliant disclaimer when users hover over the ad.

“Today’s news is a natural extension of the role Twitter is already playing in the political world,” the rep noted. “Twitter has become a more mainstream presence in politics, both domestically and around the world.”