InTheCapital

By Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel

Now here’s what we like to see, politicians stepping forward with innovative ways to educate students. We dig. 

According to the Associated Press and as first posted by the Washington Post, Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell and Va. Sen. Mark Warner are teaming up to help students understand and better use the technology that’s all around them. 

Here’s the scoop:

The program, “My Digital Life,” is a joint effort by technology company Neustar and digital education platform provider EverFi. The curriculum is designed for students in grades eight through 10 and includes topics such as cyber bullying, good texting practices and online research.

“Technology and the individualized tools it provides can fundamentally and positively change education,” said Governor Bob McDonnell at the launch event today. Sen Mark Warner also noted that,  “Our kids are living their lives on-line, and this is a great new partnership to try to make sure that young people learn how to use the Internet and social media tools in a safer, more positive and responsible way.”

We at InTheCapital love this for a few reasons. Students currently in 8th-10th grade are native to the digital culture—they don’t know a world without internet access and probably only a handful can remember dial-up access. These are the students who are more likely to send their information to the public world of the internet before they flag down their friends and, consequently, are the people who need to know the inherent risks involved in living a digital life.  Plus, we love seeing two DC-based companies working together to innovate and bring about change to the DMV.

[Lead Image via serc.carleton.edu]

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By Carl Pierre / @carlpierre

As we come to the end of 2011, it’s important to wistfully reflect upon your year and realize how much time in your life has been wasted on Social Media via an infograph. So take a quick pause from stalking that person on Facebook, hold off on tweeting about how you found a hair in your muffin this morning, and take a look at a few staggering metrics and figures that will make you question the direction humanity is heading.

“Out of the 800 million Facebook users currently active, more than 200 million were added in 2011.”

- This means that close to a seventh of the world’s population is on Facebook. If you just soiled yourself, fret not, this statistic induces that effect. God help us the day Facebook goes offline for whatever reason.

“eMarketer estimates there will be nearly 21 million Twitter users in the U.S. by the end of the year, a small supplement to the current 100 million users currently active on Twitter.”

- Have you ever dreamt of having omniscience as a child, being able to know what everyone is doing and thinking around you? Well you can stop dreaming and get the next best thing, a twitter account. That’s right, we’re doing it Jetsons-style in 2011 baby.

“Beyonce’s baby bump elicited a new Twitter record of 8,868 Tweets per second.”

- A lot of momentous things have happened in 2011; the earthquake in Japan, finding possible water on Mars, Congress’ budget crisis, the US pulling out of Iraq. What truly shocks me to my core is that of everything that has happened this year, the event that set the world’s tweeting record is Beyonce getting knocked up. Congrats humanity, we officially fail.

Netflix’s price hike caused 805,000 paid subscribers to ditch the service during the last quarter.

- The greed of corporations leading to something amazing being ruined is not a new story. Just look at Arrested Development.

One in three texters would rather text than talk.

- In the defense of texters, it does take a considerable amount of work to raise a phone to your face and hold it there. I consider talking on the phone the new isometric exercise of the year. Burning about three to four calories per phone call, about 10 reps a day, just a few more thousand phone calls till I have the biceps of Dolph Lungren.

According to Nielsen, 23% of overall internet usage is spent on a social network or a blog.

- This is actually a statistic I do enjoy. I think integrating more methods and mediums of absorbing knowledge into our lives is a good thing. 

65% of adult internet users now say they use some sort of social-networking site.

- This is a staggering statistic, and I cannot emphasize enough how this reflects the amount of weight Social Media carries in the average internet user’s life. It’s statistics like these that demonstrate how powerful a tool Social Media can be for businesses and companies.

44% of companies track employees’ social-media use in and out of the office.

- Possibly the most frightening statistic of all, truly affirming my 1984-induced paranoia of big brother. Tweak those privacy settings on your Facebook account to ninja status, and beware of tweeting disparaging comments about your boss or coworkers. This year has been filled with a variety of Social Media-related firings/scandals, feel free to check them out yourself.

Clearly 2011 has been quite an epic year for Social Media, and I anticipate 2012 will only get crazier.

By Charlie Warzel/ @cwarzel

So, it turns out we use the internet to share things. A lot of things to be exact. Clearspring, a Washington, DC-based company shows us exactly what was passed around the internet this year and just how it was shared with some fancy looking graphics to boot.

Clearspring owns the sharing platform ‘AddThis’, which you’ve almost certainly scene if you’ve visited a website in the past two years. Given that AddThis is on over 11 million sites, there’s a lot of data to be collected. Here are some of the most interesting things they found from 2011.

Facebook Owns Web Sharing - Not too much of a surprise, but Facebook makes up over 52% of web sharing.

People Love Sharing News About Death, Especially When It’s Osama Bin Laden’s - 73% of the top 10 shares were related to death and disaster. Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco notes that 28% of AddThis shares this year were about Bin Laden’s death and came on May 1st and 2nd.

Google Kills It With Chrome, Not So Much with Google + - Google’s totally awesome browser surpassed Firefox this year in social shares by browser. If they follow the same trajectory, they’ll soon overtake Internet Explorer as the most social web browser…Seriously, who still uses Internet Explorer. Google + grew a ton this year with it’s Beta launch, but has plateaued.

Way More People Shared Stories About The East Coast Quake Than the Japanese Tsunami - This is just a good example that social sharing is not always proportional to the magnitude of the event.  Need more proof? Kim Kardashian’s divorce was shared almost as much on the web as news about the Super Bowl. Gross.

Big Takeaway: Huge Growth in Mobile Sharing - 2011 was big for mobile shares as it grew by 6x this year. Expect to see this stat continue to grow as more and more people bring their obsession with Facebook and Twitter to their wireless devices. We saw the power of social media to make social change in the Middle East this year and I expect mobile sharing will soon dominate the way we share information. The Occupy movement alone caused a 217% spike in mobile shares in one day alone. Can’t underestimate it’s importance moving forward.