From digital dads to social media mavens, children redefine how parents and kids communicate using traditional and new media. Just ask the eight-year-olds using cell phones—and not for phone calls alone!

Social media has not only changed the way consumers communicate and gather on the Web, but also impacted content discovery and navigation.

If social media and social networks are these all-powerful game changers, shouldn’t they eventually make a newsworthy impact on email, the internet’s original “killer app?”

If you’re in the U.S. and are using a social network like Facebook, Myspace or LinkedIn, chances are you’re more affluent and more urban than the average American.

The Nielsen Company and Facebook today announced a multi-year strategic alliance to help marketers better use the Internet to develop and market new products. The first product of the collaboration, Nielsen BrandLift, is designed to give marketers a tool for…

Interview by Sue MacDonald, Research Manager, Online Division
In a difficult economy of rising unemployment, struggling newspapers and advertising agency cutbacks, Alexa Robinson graduated this year from the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill with a degree in… journalism and advertising. But she wound up finding a position that carried an entirely new job title — one that didn’t even exist when she started at UNC — “Twintern.”
As Pizza Hut’s first-ever Twitter intern (Twitter + intern, hence, “Twintern”), the 22-year-old Greensboro NC native has been on the job in Dallas since late …

Maya Swedowsky
In this week’s Nielsen Online Webinar, “Consumers in Control: Social Media Strategies for Retailers and Brands,” I will be highlighting two key social media opportunities for Retailers: listening and engaging.
No one can deny just how prevalent social media has become, from Facebook to Twitter, its meteoric growth is hard to ignore*. But why is it absolutely imperative that retailers pay attention and get involved? The answer is simple, and dates back to pre-Internet days: the purchase consideration process has always been a social endeavor. Before the advent of social …

What does a “Day in the Life” of a technologically savvy mom look like?
Nielsen Online recently hosted a webinar (listen and follow along below) focused on Power Moms based on the recently launched “Power Moms Initiative” in conjunction with Nielsen Life360. The goal was to get a more intimate view of moms’ use of digital tools through groundbreaking video ethnographic research. As part of the study, a select group of women from around the country revealed how they use their “digital toolkits” to juggle careers, manage demanding family schedules, streamline …

Melissa Davies
The Pew Internet & American Life Project today released the results of its latest survey into how and when Americans use the Internet to gather health information. In The Social Life of Health Information, Pew reports that Americans are turning to an increasingly broader array of online and offline resources in their search for health information.
Highlights from the report include:

83 percent of online adults have looked on the Web for health information. (Since 2002, Pew Internet Project surveys have consistently found that 75-83 percent of Internet users look online …

Melissa Davies
The FDA announced yesterday that it is launching a Transparency Task Force, charged with “making useful and understandable information about FDA activities and decision-making more readily available to the public in a timely manner and in a user-friendly format.” The task force will seek public input on how the FDA can be more transparent, including identifying “new technologies for informing the public.” To this end, there will be a public meeting on June 24, 2009, to solicit recommendations.