Research into social media trends

I am looking for some help with research for my undergraduate dissertation. I am NOT looking for somebody to write my dissertation, just somebody to find and summarize relevant information for me, to reduce the amount of time spent surfing the Internet and allow me to focus on the other aspects of the report. Therefore English reading skills are more important that writing, although the completed summary must obviously be clear enough for me to understand! I define "social media" as any user-generated content that is not mass-media, so that includes blogs, micro-blogs (e.g. Twitter), photo-sharing (e.g. Flickr), social networks, podcasts, video, wikis, etc. I am interested in finding statistics about all of these forms of communication. I require statistics concerning the following topics: * the growth in production of social media, market trends * relative usage of each form of social media mentioned above (or as many categories as possible) * average consumption of social media (in terms of amount consumed or time spent) If possible, I prefer scientific journals, books or other "trusted sources". I may be able to find copies of books and journals if you give me the necessary details (ISBN/ISSN, page number). If (and only if!) there are no books or journals covering this topic, I will accept quotations from newspapers, blogs or web pages. In all cases, a proper citation should be produced, or a URL where citation details can be found. You might like to consider using [login to view URL] which allows you to easily collect and send me the citation information. A bonus will be awarded for finding additional related information about: * how people produce and consume social media (using what software, websites and devices) - particularly trends and statistics * tools or techniques to deal with "information overload" in social media ## Deliverables For each paper or article, please also write a short (50-200 word) summary of how it relates to these topics. Only quote if you think it is very relevant, otherwise please just describe what it does and doesn't include and remarks of anything you think I should take note of (e.g. small survey, out of date, sponsored by a specific company, etc.). Please also describe your search strategy - what you searched for, which website you used etc. Please also document search strategies you tried which DID NOT produce any useful information, as this will help me to avoid wasting time looking for the same things. I expect summaries and citations for at least 10 relevant papers or articles, plus evidence of 50 or more search strategies that did not yield any relevant results. Depending on your reading and writing speed, I would guess that this could take 5-10 hours. You are encouraged to send me draft copies whilst you work on this task so that I can see how it is going and clarify my requirements if necessary. Please note that I am mainly looking for statistics from surveys that I can quote in my dissertation, although some analysis may also be relevant. The work should be completed within 2 weeks. I strongly encourage the submission of draft copies of the report before this time, so that I may give you feedback. I will generally reply between 10am and 11pm GMT and will reply within 24 hours. Please don't hesitate to ask me for more information BEFORE submitting a bid. Please note that there is significant opportunity for similar further work, both on this dissertation and also related to my business, if this task is completed to my satisfaction. ## Platform OpenOffice format (preferred), Microsoft Word, PDF or RTF