Over December we’ve reviewed the top Web products and developments of 2010. Now it’s time to look ahead to 2011. The ReadWriteWeb team is always thinking about what’s next, so in our final series of 2010 we attempt to predict the big stories of 2011.

Predictions are of course a tricky business. The braver the predictions, the more risk of them not coming true! Without further ado, here are my predictions for 2011 – 5 serious and 1 not so serious.

1: Flipboard becomes the breakout news reading app of 2011. With its latest round of updates in December, Flipboard introduced Google Reader and made some significant changes to sharing and navigation. I expect Flipboard to introduce more such upgrades in 2011 and begin to expand to other devices than the iPad. These moves will push Flipboard into becoming a very popular app to browse, curate and share news each day. It won’t usurp Google Reader for curating and sharing activities, simply because Google Reader can be used on the PC. However for mobile surfing, which will be an increasingly important way to browse news in 2011, Flipboard will rule in curating and sharing of media.

2: eBooks will hit 20% market penetration by the end of 2011. In 2010, the Association of American Publishers reported that eBooks made up 9.03% of total consumer book sales – compared to 3.31% at the close of 2009. I'm predicting this growth to rocket in 2011, thanks to a plentiful supply of cheap eReaders and a long overdue price war on eBooks between Amazon, Barnes&Noble and others. I predict it will reach 20%, in other words one in five books in 2011 will be sold as an eBook. If that bold prediction comes true, it will be great news for book consumers and will silence eBook skeptics about the future of eBooks. Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting paper books will go away, just that eBooks become much more popular and utilized.

3: Internet of Cars will be the surprise hit of the year. This year we saw further commercialization of services that connect everyday objects to the Internet. In 2011, I predict that cars (not smart homes, smart grids, etc.) will be where the most innovation and mainstream attention happens for Internet of Things technologies. Apps like AutoBot will gain traction over 2011.

4: Internet TV tips and gets huge consumer uptake. In 2010 there was a lot of progress in this sector: Apple TV re-design, Google TV, Boxee, Roku, Clicker and other developments. Most of this activity was largely experimental though, in that no one vendor got the formula quite right. For example, the launch problems of Google TV at the end of this year. However in 2011, consumers will flock to these products as they mature and more Internet TV content is made available – particularly in the U.S. market, but hopefully to international markets too.

Picking a breakout product is difficult, as each of the main players offers something different. I don’t think there will be a breakout product, although Google has the broadest capabilities and so it has the potential to become one if it gets the product right. I predict that Google won’t dominate this market though; and neither will Apple.

5: A major pop music star will do something amazing with web technologies, that blows open the online music scene. Arcade Fire set the scene in 2010, with their experimental collaboration with Google on an HTML5-fueled interactive video. In 2011, I expect an even bigger star – someone innovative like Kanye West or Lady Gaga, or a totally new star – to do something that re-defines what music means online. That could be something new in a live show, a music video, or something completely unexpected. To get more specific, I’ll bet on something that blends a live album with internet technologies – which sells unexpectedly well and thus sets a trend in the music industry.

6: Bonus prediction: by the end of 2011, the most viewed YouTube video of all time will no longer be Justin Bieber. Instead it will be a collaboration between an unknown comedian and a breakout new baby. I’m envisaging a combination of comedy tap dancing and baby giggling (perhaps recorded using an auto-tune device). Yes, 2011 will mark the return of viral comedy and laughing babies to the top of the YouTube charts – this time as a duet!

As news consumption shifts to the personalized social news stream, the platforms we use to consume the news are also changing.

With its media-friendly design, the iPad is the first mobile device to create an environment perfect for real-time news consumption that maintains the sophistication and style of traditional print magazines and newspapers.

Pulse News, Flipboard and FLUD are three apps paving the way for rich, personalized news experiences on the iPad. Each reinvents what it means to read the news by creating a more dynamic, social and visually stimulating way to consume information.

Flipboard and Pulse News are particularly interesting because they both leave it to the user to define the term “news” on their own. They also compel the reader to include their social network friends in the process. Below, we break down all three for a look at how the iPad changes the way we get our news.

1. Pulse News for iPad

Pulse News for iPad transforms the news gathering and reading approach and perfectly appropriates those practices for optimal consumption on the iPad.

The $3.99 application is more than a stylized RSS reader, and includes Twitter and Facebook integration as well as built-in functionality — powered by Posterous — that lets users create their own My Pulse mini blog and automatically share their favorite stories with friends.

As a news reader, Pulse does not disappoint. Application users can select from featured sources, add their Facebook and Twitter accounts as content sources, connect their Google Reader accounts or add individual RSS feeds or websites. The application supports up to 20 different news sources, each displayed horizontally with photos and text to depict each story. Users who activate My Pulse get an additional five slots for sources.

Stories can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode, text or web format, shared on Twitter or Facebook, and “Pulsed” (added to a user’s My Pulse blog). Users can also flip from one story to the next.

Pulse comes in iPhone and Andriod-friendly versions as well, which makes for a news reading experience that extends beyond the iPad and is almost universally accessible.

Price: $3.99
Notable Features: My Pulse, and Bump technology for instantly discovering friends’ sources.
Lacking: Categories for newspaper-like navigation would be a welcome addition.

2. Flipboard

Flipboard is designed to be a personalized social magazine. It’s equal parts news reader, Twitter application and Facebook client, surfacing the latter two for stories in the form of videos, photos and URLs as shared by the user’s social network friends. As such, it is the most avant-garde when it comes to reinventing the way we consume news.

The very first thing users are greeted with when they launch the app is a stunning photo slideshow. The slideshow is created from photos that are pulled from Flipboard news sources, so once users configure their Twitter and Facebook accounts, the slideshow will also incorporate photos shared by friends on those social networks.

Users can flip the page to edit Flipboard’s contents. This is where the user will go to configure their Facebook and Twitter accounts (multiple accounts are not supported just yet) and add content sources as sections. Sections can be anything from a news outlet or a blog, to a Twitter account or list.

Content sections include the photos, videos and text as shared by friends and pulled from the original source. Each section has a magazine-meets-newspaper feel to it and users can easily breeze through each stylized section by flipping the page.

Flipboard does limit application users to nine sections and does not include support for Google Reader. These limitations are punctuated by the somewhat limitless and Google Reader-friendly options provided by other iPad news readers. Still, Flipboard is not a news reader in the traditional sense, so it should not be approached as such.

Flipboard is free, and as such it’s a must-try application for social media users in search of an alternative way to browse status updates.

Price: Free
Notable Features: Stunning slideshows and incredible Facebook integration (users can “Like” and comment on stories)
Lacking: Extensive source support

3. FLUD

FLUD closely resembles Pulse News in purpose and design. The $3.99 application is built to feature news stories from user-defined sources. The app highlights stories with photos in a magazine-like fashion.

FLUD presents app users with several news sources to get started. Users can click the wrench icon to edit those preferences, select from feature feeds, search for feeds or connect their Google Reader account to select from those feeds.

In landscape mode, stories appear to the right of feeds. In portrait view, stories appear above feeds. The app displays each article in “Text View” to highlight just the text and photos for each story, but users can also tap on “Web View” to view the story as it would appear on the site.

FLUD has one design element that distinguishes it from the competition: Categories. The application distinguishes sources by type, so users can navigate to view just the technology, creative, politics, business, science, lifestyle, entertainment or sports sections individually. By sectioning news based on their sources, FLUD is still able to reinvent the way we consume news while maintaining familiar elements for easy digestion.

Unfortunately, FLUD is lacking in the social media department. Individual articles can be shared and posted to Facebook or Twitter, but users are not able to use either social network as a news source.

Price: $3.99
Notable Feature: Intelligent, auto-defined categories
Lacking: Source support for Facebook and Twitter

BONUS: The Early Edition

The Early Edition iPad app is just a heavily stylized feed reader, and much less social in nature than Flipboard or Pulse News. But, the application’s stellar presentation of feeds is what makes it stand out from the rest.

The Early Edition looks and feels like a newspaper powered by feeds.

Users can keep the plethora of pre-populated feeds as sources, add their own sources or connect their Google Reader account to pull in those feeds. News sources are automatically separated into newspaper-friendly categories like Business, World News, Politics and Food and Wine, but app users can create their own news section should they so choose.

Since the app is structured like a newspaper, users can view article snippets on the front page of each section, flip between pages and select individual stores to view the full text. Individual articles can be viewed in their original web format, and also be sent to Instapaper. The Early Edition works like a typical news reader in the background, marking stories as read and removing them from each “edition” of the paper after each refresh or fetch.

The application does have it quirks. For instance, users can’t easily move feeds between sections or move sections to reorder them. Still, at $4.99, the application creates an enjoyable news reading experience that personalizes the paper and makes your feeds feel more like colorful news stories.

Price: $4.99
Notable Feature: Customizable newspaper-like sections
Lacking: Social media integration

More iPad Resources from Mashable:

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– 5 Awesome Apple iPad Mods [VIDEOS]
– 5 Extremely Addicting iPad Games
– 5 iPhone Games You Should Supersize on Your iPad
– 10 Awesome Apple-Inspired iPad Wallpapers
– 50+ iPad Resources You Might Have Missed

The API team over at Google Buzz have been buzzing to say the least. If you recall the long lost Twitter feature known as Track whose disappearance spawned numerous impassioned pleased for return you’ll appreciate the latest from Google Buzz.

Last week the Google Buzz API team updated their blog to announce the general availability for Track as well detailed error messages. This means that you can get started with Track right now in Google Reader.

Some examples:

Here is the XML returned for the VMworld example

To illustrate this, I decided to add the “vmworld” example for my trip to VMworld 2010 and discovered a host of references that I can peruse in Google Reader.

As you might expect, you’ll get the statistics as well:

Also, as you might expect with a conference the size of VMworld… I’m already behind!

What are some of your favorite Google Buzz queries that you’ve added to Google Reader? Let us know in the comments below!

Thanks to an SEC filing, another detail emerged today about Google’s acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob. We already knew the $750 million Google-AdMob acquisition was a cash and stock deal but we didn’t know the breakdown between the two. According to an SEC filing submitted by Google today, the search giant sold $530 million worth of stock as part of the deal, indicating that AdMob (and its investors) may have taken home the remainder, $220 million, in cash (because of some accounting issues, this number may not be exact).

So was AdMob happy with the split between cash and stock? I guess that depends on whether they think Google’s stock will keep going up. Google paid for the bulk of the deal with stock, and the deal will hardly make a dent in its huge cash reserves (the company has $26.5 billion in the bank).

The deal itself was drawn out due to concerns from the FTC over anti-trust issues. Over six months after announcing its plans to acquire AdMob, Google finally closed the deal at the end of May, a week after the FTC unanimously approved the deal.

In an email to staff yesterday, new Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal wrote that “When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success.” With that, he announced Ning would be abandoning its longstanding business model and discontinuing non-paying sites on its network. In light of this, is it time to reevaluate and reign in some of the excitement about the freemium model for startups?

Offering free services for a product alongside premium fees for advanced or special features – the freemium – has been touted as a promising business model for startups for several years now: “Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”

The Freemium Summit in San Francisco last month featured many companies who’ve been able to leverage the freemium model to great success, including Evernote, Pandora, and Dropbox. A recent New York Times article predicts Pandora could reach $100 million in revenue this year.

Finding the balance between what to offer for free and what to charge for is not easy. The trick is to put enough in the free version to get traffic and usage, but not so much that there is no incentive to upgrade. Companies who use the freemium model need to integrate their free service or product into someone’s routine so fully (either by making sure it’s accessible on their computer and on their mobile phone, for example) that users reach the point where they feel they simply must pay.

In yesterday’s press release, Ning noted that 75% of its users do pay for some sort of premium service. It may well be then that Ning’s announcements are less a reflection on the freemium model than on the company itself. Despite over $120 million in VC funding, Ning has been unable to develop a sustainable business. Yesterday’s announcement about the end to free Nings was accompanied with news that 40% of their staff would lose their jobs – an indication perhaps that the company’s overhead was simply too high.

Nevertheless, the news may serve as a cautionary tale for those startups who think the freemium model guarantees success. As David Heinemeier Hansson wrote in a post on 37signals, “Eyeballs Still Don’t Pay the Bills.” It remains to be seen if Ning can pull through this reorganization and turn a profit, or if they will also serve as a lesson on what happens when a business that’s used the freemium model dumps all those “freeloaders.”

Who doesn’t love magic? Whether you’re obsessed with finding out “how they did that,” or you just like to gaze with child-like wonder at a good trick, YouTube has become a wealthy repository of illusion.

As with most things on YouTube, it’s not all about big budgets and high production values. Some of the best magic videos are of the close-up, or street variety, and feature some very skilled craftsmen (and craftswomen) doing what they do best.

We’ve rounded up 10 of these magical treats, each one packing a solid wow factor. So sit back, relax, and get ready to enjoy some fine web-based prestidigitation. And if you have a favorite trick you were hoping to see here, be sure to toss it into the comment “hat” below.

1. The Best Card Trick in the World

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It’s the self-proclaimed “best,” but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. In one of the most-viewed card trick videos on YouTube, the anonymous magician asks the Internet to “pick a card, any card,” and shuffles up some impressive results.

2. Cyril Takayama’s Cigarette Magic

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Illusionist Cyril Takayama is known for his performances throughout Japan, elsewhere in Asia, and on American television. This clip features a crafty disappearing cigarette that comes and goes between Takayama’s fingers.

Kids: Don’t get into cigarettes, unless you plan to make them disappear like this guy.

3. James Brown: Close-Up Coin Magic

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“Professional Opportunist” James Brown has cultivated a style of close-up magic that incorporates sleight of hand, pick pocketing, and English charisma. Watch gleefully as he confuses an old lady with some slick coin and card tricks.

4. David Blaine Turns Coffee into Money

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We all know David Blaine for his high profile public entrapments and escapes. But some of the more entertaining work can be seen in his street magic. Here, Blaine turns a presumably downtrodden man’s coffee into a cup full of cash.

Whether or not the man and/or the cup are a plant can be debated. Regardless of the trick’s mechanics, turning coffee into money is nothing new. Starbucks has been doing it for years.

5. Card Control

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This card shark doles out a series of hearts, mixes them thoroughly back into the shuffled deck (or so it seems) and reproduces them instantly and in series, as if by.oh, what’s the word.magic. It’s a slick trick, and this oldie-but-goodie magic video is still drawing views over four years on.

6. Classic Cups and Balls

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The folks over at MagicGeek.com, purveyors of all things tricky, have whipped up a few videos demoing some of their products. This is the classic “Cups and Balls” trick, found everywhere from the Las Vegas stage to the street corner hustle. Keep your eye on these sneaky hands and see if you can’t judge where the balls will appear next.

7. Street Magic by Timur Yesilfiliz

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German magician Timur Yesilfiliz hit the streets of Frankfurt last summer to mystify some unsuspecting strollers. His card tricks are especially wowing because the big reveal often happens right in the participant’s own hand.

The video is in German, but is thoroughly subtitled, and well worth the extra watching/reading effort.

8. Sleight of Hand by Ekaterina Dobrokhotova

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You don’t see a lot of women in magic, so it’s refreshing to find Moscow-born Ekaterina Dobrokhotova’s illusionary stylings pop up on YouTube. Ekaterina is less about the shmoozy showmanship of her male counterparts, and all about grace.

Here, she performs some clever coin tricks developed by French magician David Stone.

9. Cap in Bottle Trick

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Here’s a trick you can do with any old empty water bottle, provided you’ve sealed some sort of demon pact with the underworld. Whereas many card tricks can be chalked up to clever counting or quick hands, this illusion can be downright jaw dropping for the uninitiated. Alas, a bit of Internet searching can reveal the secrets of this trick and ruin everything, but it sure was fun while it lasted.

10. This N’ That Card Trickery

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Last but not least, coming in at over 14 million views, this one-minute clip is a slick execution of a tried and true favorite called “This N’ That.” It only uses three cards, so there’s no deck to shuffle or hide behind – just two hands, some modified playing cards, and a punchy little narration.

More web video resources from Mashable:

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- Top 10 Funny Videos on YouTube
– 4 Fun and Crazy Chatroulette Videos – A Beginner’s Guide to Made-for-Internet TV
– HOW TO: Add Captions To Your YouTube Videos

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Anyka

It’s the morning after the big Chrome OS event where Google executives and engineers revealed a myriad of details about the company’s first attempt at creating their own operating system. The highly anticipated news conference was tracked all over the web, liveblogged by technology sites, and Twittered so much that it’s still listed as a “trending topic” as of this morning.

But now that the news is out, has Chrome OS lost its shine? People had high expectations for Google’s new operating system but the end result doesn’t look like the revolutionary, “change the world” product many had hoped for.

Yes, Chrome OS is Different

Don’t get us wrong – Google’s OS is different than whatever Windows, Mac, or Linux build you have running on your computer today. The new OS does away with desktop applications entirely – everything you use on Google Chrome OS runs on the web. Of course, the company hopes you’ll use a lot of Google products like Gmail and YouTube, but it doesn’t limit you to just Google-branded services. In the built-in applications area, there are also links to other web apps like the online TV streaming service Hulu.com and music sites Lala and Pandora. To be fair, Chrome OS even links to Yahoo and Microsoft’s webmail offerings right out of the box.

Google’s major goal with Chrome OS is to moving computing off our personal hard drives and into the cloud…the Google cloud. To accomplish such a feat, they’ve made the web browser the OS. Everything you need (in theory) is accessible through the included Google Chrome browser, the same browser the company currently offers to Windows users with Mac and Linux versions expected by the end of this year.

As exciting as that vision is, we have to wonder if people – especially the mainstream netbook users the OS is aimed at – are ready for this big of a switch. And more importantly, is the technology itself ready to make the change a comfortable and seamless experience?

…but is it Better?

After digesting yesterday’s news, some lingering questions remain. Was this the OS everyone was hoping for or has Google let us down?

You Can’t Just Install Chrome OS – You Have to Buy a New Netbook

To begin with, one of the more surprising reveals that came out of yesterday’s news is that the OS cannot be installed on your own computer. Oh sure, there are downloads available that use Google’s open-sourced code to create bootable builds tech-savvy users and developers can play with, but the official word from the search giant is that anyone wanting to use the “real” Google Chrome OS will have to purchase a new netbook to do so. You cannot simply download it from the web and install it on any machine.

Part of the reason for this restriction is driver support. Google is working with carefully selected manufacturers to offer a handful of netbooks running the OS in the coming year. By going this route, they don’t have to provide an entire ecosystem of drivers for every piece of hardware out there – they can pick and choose which ones to support. They’ll likely limit the number of peripherals supported, too. According to what was said yesterday, the company will support “mass storage devices” (think USB flash drives and digital cameras) but were cagey on how they plan on offering printing support. All they would say is that they’re planning on an “innovative approach” when it comes to printing, whatever that means. Hopefully, they’re planning to do something more than just integrating with Kinko’s and FedEx’s online document services, for example. Printing, (sorry Google) is not a web app just yet.

No Other Web Browsers Supported

Another big disappointment is the company’s decision to limit all web surfing to the one included browser, Google Chrome. Firefox and Safari users are out of luck – no other browsers will be supported. But before you cry out “antitrust!,” be warned – Google has this covered. The code base used to build the OS is open-source – that means anyone take the code and create their own version of Chrome OS. As was carefully – and haltingly – explained by Google’s VP of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, other browser makers can take the code and build their own OS if they want to. But let’s get real – Firefox Chrome OS? We don’t think so. The reality is that fans of other browsers are simply out of luck if they want to use this operating system.

Offline Access is Limited. Your New Netbook is Now a Brick.

One of the questions that got glossed over during the Q&A; session at the end of the event is how Google's OS plans to deal with offline access. The world is not blanketed in Wi-Fi yet, so what can this web-based OS do without the web? Surprisingly, the answer given didn't refer to any subsidized deals with cellular providers regarding deals to offer built-in 3G connectivity for the new netbooks. Instead, Pichai explained that the OS was built for use with Wi-Fi.

Of course, a handful of Google products use Google Gears, a technology that makes websites available offline. For example, Gmail uses Gears to create an offline version of your webmail inbox which you can use to read and respond to email until internet connectivity becomes available again. At that point, all the changes are synced back to Google’s servers. Although Google didn’t specifically refer to Gears when answering the question, there’s no reason to doubt that it will work in Chrome OS’s web browser the same as it does now in the standard Chrome browser.

However, Pichai did make note of Chrome OS’s support for HTML5, an upcoming revision to the core markup language used to build the web. In the new specification, a key feature is offline support for web apps. However, web application developers will have to rebuild their apps in order to use HTML5, so users will be dependent on each individual company to make this change. While it’s believed that one day this spec could make the whole web an offline app, the reality is that most developers have yet to implement this technology in their services yet. Even by Chrome OS’s launch next year, there’s no reason to believe the landscape will have changed significantly by then.

Do You Really Need an OS or Just the Chrome Web Browser?

Finally, the big question regarding Chrome OS is why? What can the OS do that any operating system running the Chrome browser cannot? Based on what was shown yesterday, the answer is very little. Chrome OS’s brand-new features consist of two things: application tabs and panels. The panels are persistent windows that pop-up in front of your web browser’s main window. For example, Google Chat, the company’s IM service, can live in a panel that stays on top no matter what window you’re viewing.

Application tabs, meanwhile, are special tabs that give you easy access to your most frequently used web apps from the browser. Any page tab can be made into an application tab with one click and the resulting “tab” is represented with the colorful icon for that site or service. While that’s certainly a cool feature, it alone isn’t a major selling point for the OS. That woul
d be like saying you have to buy Mac OS X because of the dock or Windows because of the taskbar. You need a million of these little features combined to add up to a compelling reason to buy an OS.

That’s not to say that Chrome OS itself doesn’t have worthwhile features of its own – like its built-in security mechanisms or its auto-update system, it’s just that these aren’t the kinds of things that sell it to an end user. The questions consumers want answers to are what does it do that’s special? What does it look like? And for now, the answer is “it’s basically just a web browser.”

Revolution? Maybe Not Just Yet.

At the end of the day, Chrome OS is an exciting, but not fully realized, vision. Although it has potential, the world may not be ready for a web-based netbook right now. Also, the technology needed to make the Wi-Fi only netbook useful without an internet connection isn’t up to full speed either. At the end of the day, the netbook will be marginally more useful than an iPod Touch – when connected, it’s amazing. Offline, not so much.

While you might not rush right out to buy a Chrome OS netbook when they first launch, there could come a time – sooner than you think – when it becomes a reasonable choice. When the majority of apps work offline and you’ve fully transitioned away from desktop apps, a web-connected netbook, especially one that’s affordable, could easily become your everyday computer. That day hasn’t arrived yet. For now, Chrome OS is an exciting glimpse at the future of computing, but not a practical device for the majority of users.

Disclosure: Sarah Perez freelances for Microsoft’s Channel 10 blog, but is not a Microsoft employee. Her primary web browser is, in fact, Google Chrome which she uses exclusively.

Writing a book will never be easy, but FastPencil’s mission is to make things easier for authors by bringing this process online and to collaborate with others. FastPencil takes writers from idea to published book. The service offers features for collaboration, editing and design, as well as professional consulting services for authors. One cool feature of FastPencil is that it can import blog posts and turn them into books and e-books that bloggers can then sell through all the major book distribution channels.

Features

The areas where FastPencil exceeds are online editing, collaboration and distribution. Fast Pencil offers a surprisingly comprehensive online editing suite. While this editor isn’t quite as fully-featured as Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or Apple’s Pages – there is no feature to create headlines or tables of content, for example – it’s more than enough to power the service’s online collaboration tools.

In it’s latest update, which launched earlier this week, FastPencil introduced a number of interesting new features. These include new templates, new roles for collaborators (co-authors, project managers) and forums for prospective authors to meet and discuss their work.

Turn Your Blog Into a Book

If you import your blog feed, FastPencil will turn every blog post into a chapter. The service also imports images from these posts. These images have to be inserted at the beginning or end of a post, however. You can’t have your text flow around an image.

Publishing: Hardcover, Paperback, E-Book

Once you have finished your book, you can publish it as an e-book and printed book. These services, however, do cost. These paid services include printing, obtaining ISBN numbers, and organizing the distribution of your book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ingram Digital and other retail partners. FastPencil also offers a number of editing services like design, illustration and editing services. Besides printing hardcover and paperback books, FastPencil can format books for virtually any digital platform, including DRM-free ePub e-books and the Kindle.

Don’t Need All These Services? Try SmashWords

If you don’t need all of these services from Fast Pencil – or if you have already finished your book – another service worth looking at is SmashWords. Smashwords specializes in e-books. Thanks to deals with Barnes & Noble and Sony in the US and Indigo Books & Music's Shortcovers in Canada, self-published authors can get their e-books into traditional distribution channels, or sell their books directly on SmashWords. Smashwords acquired the New Zealand-based e-book self-publishing service BookHabit earlier this week.

“Teens don’t tweet.” Over the past few weeks, this fact has been reported time and time again from analysts, bloggers, and even mainstream media. Why the obsession with the teenage crowd on Twitter? Perhaps it’s simply because adults can’t believe that, for once, they’re the group responsible for the birth of an internet phenomenon and not the other way around. But before all you adults get too comfortable with your Twitter dominance, take a look at the recent data from comScore. It appears that the youngest Twitter users – those in the 12-24 bracket – are now the fastest growing segment of Twitter’s population. So the kids don’t tweet? Looks like they may start soon if this new data is to be believed.

Kids Don’t Use Twitter

According to a recent article in the New York Times, teens are more likely to use text messaging than Twitter for keeping up with their friends. Today’s teens feel somewhat uncomfortable with the public nature of the communication that takes place Twitter, and, besides, they just don’t see the point in broadcasting what they’re doing to the whole world. Yet even without this age group’s participation, Twitter has seen amazing success, proving the point that a new technology does not have to be adopted by this young group of users in order to make it big.

Twitter’s Youth Sees Growth

Although Twitter didn’t attract the teens from the onset, that could still change. In fact, it looks like that change may already be underway. A newly released chart from comScore breaks down the age groups of Twitter users and plots each group’s growth over time, relative to audience. The most surprising revelation from this chart is the steep incline seen in the age group 12-24. Over the past few months, this group’s participation levels have been increasing dramatically.

In reading the chart, a score of “100″ means that the age group on Twitter is represented in perfect proportion to how much that age group uses the rest of the Internet as a whole. Go over 100 and that means the age group is represented more heavily on Twitter than they are represented on the rest of the web. In July, those aged 12-24 scored a “121″ – a score that was only in the mid-70′s a mere six months ago.

Statistics Can be Misleading

But wait – a quick glance at these statistics can be misleading. At first, it appears that the chart simply shows the increasing participation levels of the teens (and young adults) on Twitter. While that may be true, it’s important to note that the actual number of younger users on Twitter is still much lower than those of their adult counterparts. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that only 11% of Twitter users are aged 12 to 17 according to comScore.

Plus, there’s the fact that the age group 12-24 represents an odd way of breaking up the demographics. Why not 12-18 instead? With this particular slice of Twitter’s user base, there’s no way to tell how many users are teens versus how many are young adults in their 20′s.

Finally, what the chart is showing is audience growth as compared to the rest of the Internet as a whole. That’s also a an interesting way of charting the demographics of Twitter, to say the least.

All that being said, the data seen here is still valuable to some extent. It’s interesting to see this market segment’s growth, even if it’s sliced and diced in this odd way. But does this mean that teens are going to start tweeting sometime soon? Let us know what you think in the comments.