10 links a week was starting to seem like a lot of links to read. 10 amazing stories all require quite a bit of time to read, so for a few weeks I am going to trial slimming down to 6. Let me know what you think of the new, leaner, fitter 3 of the best

3 of the best

Study: Ages of social network users

Social networks aren’t just for the young, but some definitely are not used by the old! Knowing which audience is on which social network and how they are using it is important for any monitoring or engagement. So swat up!

JESS3 / The State of The Internet

The internet, in case you didn’t know, is pretty big. Just how big? Watch this video. It is easy to get caught up in Twitter and Facebook (which do post big numbers in the video) and other Western-centric sites. But it is important to start realising the internet is global, and as Africa and Asia’s populations move more and more online it opens up whole new areas to communicate with.

3 of the rest

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food

If you missed it recently Jamie Oliver gave a passionate speech on how we need to better educate our children in the way of food. We wish Jamie every success!

DICE 2010: “Design Outside the Box” Presentation

A fascinating talk that is worth anyone watching. Some real food for thought and we had some more fleshed out opinions of this over here.

Roger Ebert’s New Voice

A heart warming story from a real legend of the movie industry.

My mum is an addict. It isn’t drugs or drink or anything taboo no this is much worse. My Mum is addicted to Farmville.

For those of you that live in caves without internet (how did you get to this blog!) Farmville is a hugely popular game on the even huger social networking site Facebook. How huge? Last month Farmville had over 26m users, and that was a slow Christmas month! Last I checked Facebook had around 300m users, meaning that Farmville is being played by around 10% of those people!

Players of Farmville spend most of their time Farming. Ok you’re not asked to get up at 4am to clean the pigs out, but you must look after your crops and animals and try to sell them to make more money. If Farmville was just that though it wouldn’t have trounced Harvest Moon for the Wii, a better and more involved farming game (although it does cost a few quid more).

What has made Farmville such a storming success is the social basis it is built from. Before you have even planted your first crop you are encouraged to gift a farming item to a friend, whether or not they play the game. The more friends you have playing the more likely you are to get daily gifts in return for your farm.

The game is designed to be played in short bursts over a long period of time. With some tasks requiring you to return on a daily basis.

So how did my mum end up playing this game? The age old water cooler talk. Unless you work in a particularly geeky office video games are not really a hot button issue around the water cooler, but since Facebook has gone mainstream so has its games.

The water-cooler talk once reserved for celeb gossip and soap news has now been taken over by a game. As a gamer this makes me very happy (even if the game in question isn’t that good.)

My mum is addicted not so much to the game but to the social experience it offers. She speaks to her work friends online and at work and while sometimes the conversations are about virtual farming they are often about other things. Farmville has given my mum a way in to the office conversations and also an excuse for her to be connected to her friends.

Social networks and social gaming have gone mainstream people. My mum says so!