What does this mean? Well, probably not too much if you are above the age of 100 and don’t know what a computer does, or if you just hate giving gifts. But, if you are like the rest of us and usually find yourself in a shopping time crunch during the holidays, let it be known that sales in movies, jewelry/luxury goods, flowers, greetings and gifts grew substantially within one month and we are reminded of the simple joys our home can offer during the hectic holiday season.

This also could mean something for companies without a strong online presence. Of the top 50 web properties with a focus on advertising, The Google Ad Network came in first place, engaging 93% of Americans. Also, more than 6.6 million people visited a tax site to make sure their books were in tact for the upcoming year.

If you haven’t jumped on the online shopping, advertising or researching train, I would go ahead and take that leap; you won’t be disappointed.

With many unwilling to fight the crowds or unwilling to get up early on a rare Friday off, more people are choosing to do their Black Friday shopping online. This year, more than $816 million was spent on Black Friday online, a jump of 26% from 2010.

Online shopping becomes more popular as an ever-busy society seeks ways to make life just a little easier — with less traffic, fewer parking hassles and smaller crowds in general.

This consumer urge — is it overstating it to call it ‘consumer demand’ — requires all businesses to provide online options, from catalogs and service lists to full-scale e-commerce sites.

If you doubt that, we suggest you check out your competition … online. If the competition is there, and it’s more than likely it is, you need to be there, too.

It’s not snarky to say you should go where your customers, and your competition, are. And they are online.

As any retailer will tell you, the fun doesn’t stop on Black Friday – it just begins. The same is true for holiday shopping online. Yesterday was Cyber Monday, and you better believe the next month will have tens of millions of shoppers looking to the Internet to help them avoid long lines at the mall.

Recently e-commerce has a challenger, or maybe a little brother. It’s called F-commerce, which stands for Facebook Commerce

This info-graphic was the first time I had ever heard it used, but the term is catchy enough that we might start hearing it regularly.

The info-graphic itself tells us two things:

• Not a lot of Facebook pages engage in F-commerce
• The number of pages that do will probably rise quickly.

There are numerous pages right now that have integrated some sort of commerce application into their Facebook page. Music artists make use of Facebook to sell merchandise, Best Buy allows its fans to browse its store from their Facebook page, and Starbucks lets its fans buy, manage and send Starbucks gift cards.

If you sell product and have a Facebook presence, you should start looking into F-commerce – before your competition does.

Along comes TechCrunch today with a long analysis of the most popular cameras posting pix to Flickr. Apple’s iPhone4 is about to overtake the Nikon D90.

And where are the point and shoots? They are doing a nose dive to oblivion. Couldn’t keep up.

Just saying …

A collection of inspiring photography, Web design, illustrations, website architecture and online images, Five Minutes Daily shares the Web’s most interesting imagery from the perspective of the IWS creative team.

Yeah, it’s got examples of our own design work, but we are casting our net wide to show off stuff that we think is cool, cutting-edge and creative.

Get your daily dose of inspiration; visit FiveMinutesDaily.com!

Rebecca has more than six years of content development experience and for the last two years spearheaded social media efforts at a local interactive agency. She has already put her expertise to work for our biggest clients.

With digital communications becoming the dominant form of reaching audiences today, we believe social media and content are vital to the success of any business, non-profit or political or advocacy campaign. This umbrella of online communications encompasses community management, page creation and development, monitoring and reporting, friend and follower development as well as content development. And Rebecca will be an important part of delivering those services to IWS clients.

Because not everyone is perfectly comfortable with social media, we will be offering some social media seminars in the coming months. Watch our Facebook page for details.

Welcome aboard, Rebecca.

SXSW came up with group tweeting.

I hate to say it, but we think it’s going to be all about integration.

Take a look at Facebook. Have you noticed how much it resembles the old AOL – your one stop shop on the Internet? And, in fact, have you seen how much Facebook looks like a microcosm of the old World Wide Web? (A mini-We, as Austin Powers might say.)

It’s all getting smooshed together.

What does that mean?

Two things, I think.

1. People (our “target audiences”) will find their way to platforms and software apps that suit their needs.

2. We will monitor, track behavior and chase them every way we can.

In short, we in the consulting business have job security, as long as we can explain what it is we do and why we do it so well.

-  Overall Campaigns – Ballot Initiative:  Yes on 100 – Protect Education and Public Safety
-  Direct Mail – Ballot Initiative:  Yes on 100 – Protect Education and Public Safety
-  Vote-By-Mail Ballot Request:  Yes on 100 – Protect Education and Public Safety
-  Best Use of Negative Contrast:  No on 302 – Save First Things First
-  Website State:  Yes on 100 – Protect Education and Public Safety
-  Website State:  No on 302 – Save First Things First
-  Website Local:  Keep the Cubs – Yes on 420
-  Television Ballot Initiative – GOTV:  Yes on 100 – Protect Education and Public Safety

Being recognized for our work in TV, Direct Mail and Online is a testament to the integrated strategic approach we bring to our clients’ projects. It also reflects the many channels the world now uses to consume content.

We are pleased to give a big shout out to the steering committees of the campaigns and our strategic partners who deserve these awards as much as we do:  HighGround, Inc., Coleman Dahm and Associates, David Leibowitz, and Jay Heiler.

The Pollie Award is “a symbol of the ’Best of the Best’ in political and public affairs communication.”

If you are in digital, you are growing. If you’re not, you’re not.

“News organizations — old and new — still produce most of the content audiences consume. But …”

You could drive a Zamboni through that exception.

“In 2010, every news platform saw audiences either stall or decline — except for the Web.”

The implications from this continuing trend are enormous, but …

“In a media world where consumers decide what news they want to get and how they want to get it, the future will belong to those who understand the public’s changing behavior and can target content and advertising to snugly fit the interests of each user.”

Let me repeat that last part: “…each user.”

Two fun stats from the report:

• 47% of Americans get some local news — primarily weather, traffic and information about restaurants and local businesses — from a mobile device.
• In January 2011, 7% of Americans reported owning a tablet, double the number just four months earlier.

This is Pew’s usual outstanding job of understanding and reporting on the topics it cares about. Worth the read.

So hat’s off to Google, which this morning created a People Finder for Japan within hours of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake there.

The People Finder app allows users to report people who are missing and also identify people who are not missing (or who get found).

Here’s the original:

And for those of you who only speak sushi Japanese, it looks like this:

This is, quite simply, technology being used for good.