These are my links for January 9th through January 29th:

• Twitter Ad Revenues to Soar This Year- eMarketer – Prediction of the online/social ad network in next year, which shows Twitter ads to grow from a low starting base to exceed the dying MySpace this year. Facebook remains the daddy of social advertising, with the lion's share of all spend for some time to come.
• Top 10 Productivity Tools for Entrepreneurs – Nicely curated collection of online tools for social media, project management and client management for the budding start-up.
• Why Is Chinese Web Design So Bad? – OK a linkbait headline, but this post from Think Vitamin talks about the different aesthetics and cultural differences as to why Chinese websites appear so '1995' and cluttered, rarely getting to the point quickly for its users. Having worked on a multi-lingual site recently, this insight is fascinating that its not just images and text but the whole navigation and approach which is distinctly different out east.
• Filtering places – Another insightful post from Mr Pete Ashton from his The Future of Local series, this time looking at augmented reality and how layers of data align with our human instincts to filter, or add meta and meaning, to the world around us. A refreshingly human view of the potential of this curious and emerging mobile technology.
• Seven Rules for Effective Social Networking For Artists – A good approach for independent artists to social networking, particularly disarming that the 'pin ups' of social success like Amanda Palmer should be treated with caution: establishing human relationships (and unpicking this if you're in a band) with fans is at the centre of a fan engagement approach – and being genuine.
• How to Improve Engagement with your Webisodes – Useful diagrams and approaches for transmedia (previously known as cross platform) producers to improve engagement and blending secondary (non webisode) material and scheduling to enhance audience engagement.
• Empowerment and Innovation – Great article from online community/social expert Pete Ashton on how blogging can (sometimes) increase the empowerment, knowledge and understanding of the blogger using example of Birmingham bloggers (disclaimer: many of these writers are old friends of mine!). Part of an excellent series of posts on 'The Future of Local' for the 'Talk About Local' project.
• Number of global co-working spaces doubles – If, like me, you work from a range of home and client offices its refreshing to know that the amount of coworking spaces for nomadic and freelance workers has doubled from 2010 to 2011. Whilst I've often enjoyed the spontaneous encounters in co-working places many are still problematic: hard to make phone calls due to background noise, lack of easy to book private spaces etc. but no doubt competition will bring more variety to the market. Co-working Europe have a co-working conference this Nov and have published a list of European co-working spaces (no doubt incomplete – the two places I use TechHub in East London and Antenna in Nottingham both missing!) http://coworkingeu.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/more-than-140-coworking-spaces-in-europe-here-is-a-list/ (via Freelance Advisor and Dave Harte)
• 20 minutes on Facebook – An analysis project showed what a typical 20 minutes of activity on Facebook contained, which was multiplied to show the impact of a year of data. 1 million links and 1.85 million status updates are shared in 20 minutes (doesn't seem like that much to me, far under the volume of Twitter)
• 17 digital marketing trends for 2011, by Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein – The last 2011 crystal ball gazing article – promise! This time a savvy UK digital marketing perspective from Econsultancy's Ashley Friedlin, including an expectation that social media is less about ROI and more something we have to do, user experience gets more touchy feely, and new ways of harnessing data.
• Ten 10 Predictions for Digital in the Middle East, 2011 – Out in the middle east, interestingly the landscape of digital media has many similar challenges and predictions than in the west, perhaps overall reflecting UK trends from around 2008/9.
• Internet Marketing: The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made by Artists and Creatives (and How to Fix Them) – Lateral Action's quirky but true round up of creative's internet marketing errors (including social media narcissim) equally applies to a lot of other small business sectors. Adding people without permission to your email list – keep those hands raised!
• How Online Video Can Reach the Business Audience – More evidence to show that video is an extremely effective tool for business, with up to 65% of executive visiting a vendors website after watching a business video, and 45% puttng in a call. Compelling video definitely helps speed up the sales funnel.
• UK’s Digital Music Boost Slowed In 2010 – In the week HMV announce the closure of 60 stores nationally, more bad news as it seems digital music sales have grown little and overall music sales are likely to have only retained in units and declined in overall turnover, when BPI's figures are announced in March.
• Our Bets For Digital Media In 2011 – The excellent media and publishing journal paidContent:UK gaze through a crystal ball to see what's ahead for digital media in 2011 with predictions on the popularity of mobile check-ins, tablets and interactive tv.