Daily Dose of social media: Android growing fast

Android Growing Fast, But Not as Fast as iPhone — The mobile space is just starting to explode with several advanced smartphone OSes on the market. The iPhone gets most of the press, but there are other platforms that news organizations and content producers should be keeping a keen eye on (and producing products for). Android is one of those platforms:

Looking at AdMob’s statistics, the HTC Dream, the first Android-based phone, generates 2% of their US requests and is now the fourth smartphone overall, behind the iPhone, BlackBerry Curve, and BlackBerry Pearl. It has also managed to capture 6% share of the smartphone OS market in the US.

Remember that Android is only on one handset right now, and it is still doing pretty well when it comes to mobile Web usage and mobile apps. Android will be appearing on several more handsets later this year and should really begin to take off. Smart news organizations will be watching Android closely. Any smart news organization already has some mobile-focused products and probably at least one iPhone app.

Would You Pay for a Facebook Vanity URL? — “Apparently, Facebook has been asking some of its users whether they would be prepared to pay for a vanity URL. That means having something meaningful as the address of your Facebook profile; for example, “facebook.com/stan” instead of a random string of characters.”

I could see companies like The New York Times being interested in an easy-to-remember URL like facebook.com/nytimes. Or how about facebook.com/beatblogging? I don’t know how much people would be willing to pay for this feature, but I can imagine that many companies would be interested in paying for an easy-to-remember-and-SEOed-up URL If a company is getting value out of Facebook’s non-sensical URLs than it will certainly get even more value out a quality vanity URL.

Facebook, like Twitter, could make money by selling premium features to business customers. Companies are making money off of social networks and wouldn’t mind spending a little money to make even more money.

6 Twitter Search Services Compared — There are several options available for searching Twitter, and Mashable compares six of them. Search.twitter.com was the benchmark they used, and they were able to find alternative search engines that were either more powerful or simpler than search.twitter.com.

Of all the alternative search engines that Mashable looked at Twazzup is probably the best option for content producers, due to its feature-rich nature:

Starting with Twazzup, this is Twitter Search on steroids. For any given query string, you can see results down the left column that are updated in real-time.

A feature I like, albeit slow at times, is if you mouseover an avatar, a bubble pops up with another look at the avatar, a “follow” link to their homepage, and other information from their Twitter.com settings, such as locations, bios, website links, and the number of followers and friends.

Other features are vertical down the right column, including popular tweets, avatars of the trendmakers (those who are responsible for the most retweets), related photos, and the most popular links that people are tweeting or retweeting. In this case, since I typed in “mashable,” you can see @mashable and @tweetmeme. While not an immediate fan of the related photos section, I can see its usefulness during breaking events to be able to view popular twitpics without having to click tweeted links.

Daily Dose of social media: Chrome can’t be pwned, nor owned

Google Chrome, Mobile Browsers Survive Security Challenge — After one day at the Pwn2Own challenge, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari all fell victim to malicious exploits. For those who don’t know, Pwn2Own is a yearly hacking contest to test the security of Web browsers. Google’s Chrome was the only one of the four to survive the challenge:

The lone survivor in this year’s contest is the newcomer: Google Chrome.

Chrome was affected by one of the flaws that brought down the rest of browsers, but thanks to the tightly-sandboxed way that Chrome runs, no one was able to actually exploit the flaw, which is good news for users facing every more sophisticated attacks.

With most browsers offering roughly the same range of features and comparable speeds (you knew browsers where running out of ways to stand out when they start advertising JavaScript benchmarks), security is fast becoming an important benchmark for many users. But it’s also a very touch one to measure.

Journalists are increasingly working on the Web, and many of you work almost exclusively on the Web. Proper security from malicious Web attacks can prevent you from losing your work or having your data comprised. Chrome has two things that should really appeal to people relying on a Web browser for work: security and stability.

It’s all worth noting, despite a higher prize for compromising a mobile browser at Pwn2Own, no one was able to successful run an exploit on one. That phone in your pocket might be your safest browsing experience.

iPhone Makes Up 50 Percent of Smartphone Web Traffic In U.S., Android Already 5 Percent — Despite being out less than two years, the iPhone has the majority of smartphone Web traffic in the U.S. iPhone users use the Web all the time and download lots of apps. News organizations need to start developing products that work well on mobile, especially the iPhone and other smartphones with rich Web experiences. Before the iPhone came around, mobile browsing wasn’t fun, but now it’s a big part of many people’s lives:

The gains shown by the iPhone and Android show what is possible when phones are built with fully capable browsers and support a rich array of Web apps.

Google’s Android platform is already up to five percent of smartphone Web traffic in the U.S. Android has a rich Web experience like the iPhone, and as more people gets phones like these, more will be utilizing their Web capabilities. With Palm’s Pre due out later this year, this is destined to be the year of the consumer smartphone.

Blackberries largely appeal to business users who use their phones for e-mail and for calendars. But consumer-oriented smartphones are beginning to take over and news orgs have to get on this platform early. So, if your news org gives out Blackberries for business purposes, don’t let that cloud your judgment of what is possible.

It won’t be too long before having a smartphone with a rich Web experience is the norm, not the exception.

And yes, people are getting rich selling apps on the iPhone App Store.

Happy Birthday Twitter! — Yes, Twitter recently turned 3 years old. For the first few years, Twtter was very niche, but now it’s exploding. Try it out.