Developers - here is an interesting competition for you - the Mobile App Challenge with the first prize being US$10k and a trip for two to the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona in February 2011.

The closing date for applications is 10 January 2011.

Follow the App Challenge on Twitter @appchallenge or check out their Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/mobileappchallenge

Sysomos have recently released some interesting data having reviewed over a billion Tweets and this is what it tels us about the current state of the Twittersphere.

In summary when they compared 2009 to 2010 results:

- Users with 100+ friends have increased by three-fold to 21% since 2009

- 22.5% of users accounted for about 90% of all activity

- 80% users have made fewer than 500 tweets

- Significantly more users are disclosing their location, bio and web information in Twitter profiles.

You can view the report with lots of charts at the Sysomos website but here are the statistics I found of interest:

- The number of Twitter adding a bio to their account has more than doubled to 63.3%, compared with 31% in 2009 - does that mean we are happy to share information about ourselves or is it that there are more accounts on twitter now being used for business where people will add data about the company or their role in it?

- From January, 2010 until mid-August, 2010, new users accounted for nearly 44% of the total Twitter population. People who created a profile before January 2009 only accounted for 4.7% of the total population.

- A small hard-core group (2.2%) have accounted for 58.3% of all tweets, while 22.5% have accounted for about 90% of all activity - which group are you in?

- Of all Twitter users, only 0.18% have made more than 25,000 tweets, while 2.7% have made more than 5,000 tweets. More than three-quarters of Twitters users - 80.6% - have made fewer than 500 tweets.

- 0.05% of users reviewed have more than 10,000 friends they follow, and only 2.05% have more than 1,000. The vast majority of users - 95.8% - have less than 500 friends.

- Only 0.06% of Twitter users have more than 20,000 followers, and only 2.12% have more than 1,000 followers. Meanwhile, 95.9% have less than 500 followers.

- 82% of Twitter users now provide a name, compared with only 33% in 2009.

- 73% of Twitter users provide location information compared with 44% in 2009

- 45% of Twitter users submit a Web site address versus 22% a year ago.

This infographic compares the Facebook population to the Twitter population - of note, Twitter users seem to be more active, but less interested in following brands.

Here are a few of the key findings represented in the infographic, which was based on data from a Barracuda Networks survey as well as an analysis from Razorfish and other demographic breakdowns from a number of sources (although the data on Twitter in particular is a little old — the service now has 190 million users).

• 88 percent of people are aware of Facebook, while 87 percent are aware of Twitter
• 12 percent of Facebook users update their status every day vs 52 percent for Twitter
• males make up 46 percent of Facebook users, and 48 percent of Twitter
• 30 percent access Facebook via mobile vs 37 percent for Twitter
• 40 percent follow a brand on Facebook vs 25 percent on Twitter
• 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the U.S. vs 60 percent for Twitter

Last week Brightcove and TubeMogul released the Online Video and the Media Industry Quarterly Research Report for the third quarter of 2010.

Notable points include the fact that Facebook now refers more video streams than Yahoo! for the aggregate media sample. This is the first time the social platform has surpassed the search engine and content portal. Facebook accounted for 9.6% of all referrals, making it second only to Google.

Are you using Facebook to refer people to your online video?

The most active days of the week by total video views for all media companies were weekdays, in particular peaking on Wednesdays. By category, brand marketers and online media saw peaks in total views on Thursdays.

The weekends including Friday had the highest engagement per view based on average minutes watched across the aggregate sample.

When are you publishing video? Are you tracking when people are viewing your content and what does this research mean for your online publishing?

Experian® Hitwise®, has released data on the top 1000 search terms for 2010 in the US and the most visited websites.

People are spending more time visiting fewer sites and services it seems: yhe combination of Google properties accounted for 9.85 percent of all U.S. visits. Facebook properties accounted for 8.93 percent, and Yahoo! properties accounted for 8.12 percent.

The top 10 Websites visited in the US measured by Hitwise accounted for 33 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010, an increase of 12 percent versus 2009.

TOP VISITED WEBSITES IN THE US

Facebook was the top-visited Website for the first time and accounted for 8.93 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2010.

Google.com ranked second with 7.19 percent of visits.

YouTube accounted for 2.65 percent of visits.

MOST SEARCHED FOR TERMS IN THE US

For the second year running, Facebook was the top-searched term overall.

Hitwise comment "This is the second year that the social networking website has been the top search term overall, accounting for 2.11 percent of all searches.1 Four variations of the term "facebook" were among the top 10 terms and accounted for 3.48 percent of searches overall".

When combined, common search terms - e.g., facebook and facebook.com - for Facebook accounted for 3.48 percent of all searches in the US among the top 50 terms, which represents a 207 percent increase versus 2009.

YouTube terms accounted for 1.12 percent of searches, representing a 106 percent increase versus 2009.

AddThis.com have released an infographic this week detailing the services people are using to share information.

Facebook accounts for some 44% of the sharing volume - but take a look closely - Gmail, StumbleUpon, Orkut and Yahoo Mail are growing faster than Facebook.

It's a good reminder to ensure that you have 'share by email' as a feature on your blog posts or articles on your website. And I also recommend installing Tynt.com which you can read about here (and watch a video tutorial) so that your site is attributed as the source of content when people copy content from your web pages to share in emails or other online platforms from Evernote to their blogs.

Great examples here of creative examples of the new Facebook profile - check the other 9 examples on Mashable.

One point to note - this example is actually in breach of Facebook terms of business as it is an organisation using Facebook personal profile - where in fact it should be using a Facebook Page to promote their business.