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How can Windows 7 be bigger than Harry Potter, you ask? That box can’t be more than 15 inches tall, while Daniel Radcliffe is at least 5′8”!

Well, what Amazon meant when they said that was this: Windows 7 is the biggest grossing pre-order product of all time on Amazon.co.uk.

Even Amazon UK’s MD Brian McBride sounds a bit surprised: “The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone’s expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong.” We’re not; we wrote earlier that Windows 7 is being preordered a lot more than Vista, and that trend obviously hasn’t changed until the very last day.

I’ve been testing Windows 7 since the first beta and while I have my qualms about it, one can’t deny that it’s better than Vista: it feels faster, looks nicer, the unnecessary fat *cough* sidebar *cough* was trimmed and it has a whole lot better hardware and driver support. And one also cannot deny that Windows XP was released in October 2001, which means that Windows users have been waiting eight long years for a decent replacement for their operating system. Tomorrow, they’ll be getting one; no wonder they’re excited.

Celebrities using Twitter is not a new phenomenon — it’s an increasingly common way for celebrities to promote new projects and connect with fans.

But how do celebrities use Twitter ? What’s the following/followers ratio? What is the sentiment for tweets involving celebrities? Brian Solis (FutureWorks) and PeopleBrowsr analyzed this information in his Twitter Celebrity Report for August 2009.

Some highlights:

She may have quit Twitter earlier this month, but actress/singer Miley Cyrus led celebrity Twitter mentions in August 2009, with an impressive 255,938 @mileycyrus mentions

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) had the most followers in August with 3,778,464 — but The Ellen Show (@theellenshow) wasn’t far behind, with just under 3.5 million.

Gossip Blogger Perez Hilton led total celebrity tweets in August with 1,488.

Britney Spears (@britneyspears) follows the most users with 432,814.

Check out the full study and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

The Nielsen Company issued a report on the top U.S. web brands and Internet usage in the U.S. As expected, Google is the #1 web brand based on unique audience.

The statistic that really jumped out for us, however, was that in September 2009, the average U.S. Internet user spent an estimated 68 hours online (both at home and at work).

Although that still trails television usage by a significant margin, it’s clear that the Internet is carving out a greater and greater role in our lives each month.

In addition to spending an average of 68 hours online, the average user visits nearly 2700 websites and averages 57 seconds per site.

For the larger web brands, users spend an average of 1 hour 53 minutes a month on Google, 3 hours 8 minutes on Yahoo and 5 hours 24 minutes on Facebook. The usage study compliments another Nielsen report issued yesterday that reported a 25% increase in online video viewing year-over-year.

How much time do you spend online each month? Is there any other medium that gets more of your attention than the Internet (music, television, etc.)? Let us know!

Look out Amazon: Google just announced plans to open an electronic book store. Unlike Amazon’s strategy with the Kindle dedicated eReader device, Google plans to deliver eBooks to any device with a web browser.

The service, dubbed Google Editions, is slated to launch in the first half of 2010. At launch it will feature about 500,000 eBooks from publishers Google is already working with on Google Book Search. Purchases can be made directly from Google or through partner sites like Barnes & Noble.

Interestingly, Reuters names Amazon.com as a potential retailer for Google’s electronic books. Considering Amazon would surely prefer to sell its own titles for use on the Kindle, and also considering Barnes & Noble plans to launch its own eReader device as well, these 3 partners seem interesting bedfellows.

Looking into how the revenue sharing breaks down, though, it starts to make more sense. When Google sells an eBook outright, the publisher will get 63% of the sale with 37% going to Google. When sold through a retailer, 45% goes to the publisher, 55% goes to the retailer, and Google only takes “a small share.” In this scenario, publishers will have incentive to promote customer purchases direct from Google, and it will be interesting to see what sort of market share grab will come of this.

Good News for the Consumer

To the consumer, Google’s entry into the electronic books market is most certainly a good thing. It means more customer choice, more widespread support for eBook open standards, and better access to the books they buy online. You’ll be able to use your Gmail login to access your Google eBook “library” from almost any device, whether it be desktop, laptop, netbook, phone, or anything else able to access the web.

Does Google’s entry into the electronic books market make you think twice about picking up an eReader like the Kindle or Sony Reader? Or are the gains in reduced eye strain, battery life and portability enough to make you interested in a specialized device?

Without a doubt, social gaming is on the rise — and big business for some. With the Facebook application platform, game developers have an unprecedented opportunity to tap into existing social connections for both compelling gameplay and viral promotions for their titles. And they’re taking advantage of it in droves. Luckily for Facebook users, many of these games are mighty fun. Take a look at our 10 top picks for getting your Facebook game on.

10. Biotronic

Offering a biotechnological twist on the puzzle game genre, Biotronic features easy mouse controls, exploding combos and artful animations.

9. Restaurant City

From popular casual games developer Playfish Games, Restaurant City continues in the venerable tradition of casual games like Diner Dash. Combining elements of time management games and virtual sims, in Restaurant City you start your own food joint, customize it, and vie against other restaurants to become the talk of the town.

8. MindJolt Games

Actually a collection of various titles, MindJolt Games includes a number of arcade, puzzle, strategy and sports games to play solo or in challenges with friends.

7. Know-It-All Trivia

This one’s for trivia buffs: Know-It-All Trivia pits you against your Facebook friends to test your knowledge and show off the size of that big brain of yours.

6. Zynga Poker

It’s hard to argue with at current count over 18 million active monthly players. If you’re already a Texas HoldEm fan, Zynga Poker is probably a no-brainer. If you’re a card enthusiast looking for something fun to pick up on Facebook, you’re in good company here.

5. Bejeweled Blitz

Insanely addictive on almost any platform, this gem-swapping puzzle title comes from the highly regarded house of PopCap Games.

4. YoVille

Zynga’s YoVille () is a Sims-like virtual world on Facebook. You start off with your own apartment and do virtual “work” to get the money to decorate it. You can visit your friends’ virtual homes and chat with them in real-time.

3. Mafia Wars

Priding itself on being the “#1 Crime game for Facebook,” Mafia Wars has over 25 million Facebook users doing crime jobs for cash, vying for respect and fighting to be the ruling family in fictional New York.

2. Word Challenge

Here’s one for the wordsmiths and language lovers out there. In Word Challenge, you’re given 6 letters and need to generate as many 3-6 letter words from them as quickly as possible. If you like word games like Boggle or Wordle, you’ll love Word Challenge.

1. Farmville

With 11 million daily players and counting, Farmville is a virtual force to be reckoned with. If you like management-type games where you build and monitor assets — or if you just love farm animals — this could be the Facebook game for you.

With several gazillion other Facebook game options out there, we’re sure we’ve omitted some of your favorites. Be sure to let us know what you play in the comments, and why others should play it too!

Now open in wide theatrical release is a film that remakes one of the formative books of many a childhood. Typically that’s cause for fear that a special and rare experience hasn’t been done justice.

But in this case, Where the Wild Things Are has world class director Spike Jonze going for it as well as the explicit blessing and accolades of the author Maurice Sendak. It also has a very plugged-in and intelligent social media campaign going on to promote the film.

Case in point, a creative iPhone app (warning: iTunes link) and Facebook page that’s seen impressive growth up to at current count over 1.6 million fans.

In the iPhone app you can watch trailers and view photos of the film as well as hear the soundtrack. But most notably, the creative and delightful part of the app sees the Carol monster as a creature kids (and adults!) can interact with. If put to sleep at night he’ll gobble up your contacts’ photos from your phone — a playful and yet appropriately modern element that’s true to the spirit of the Where the Wild Things Are universe.

The Facebook page is also done well, with a continuous stream of updates featuring behind the scenes information, videos, media coverage, interviews and more. It also features a custom app where users can upload images of themselves to be inserted in place of Max’s face in one of the film’s promotional images.

It’s certainly not the first example of a mainstream film taking advantage of social media promotion tools, but it’s definitely an example of one done well. Did you hear about the film via its social media promotions or its more mainstream publicity campaigns?

It’s been known for a number of months that Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey is working on a new startup codenamed “Squirrel”. Rumors swirled that it may be a mobile payments system, although the name of the venture and its specifics have remained under wraps. Today both the company’s name and technologies have been unveiled.

Dorsey’s new venture is called the Square iPhone Payment System, his new company is Self Edge NYC, and the service’s site will likely be located at SquareUp.com. The service provides a white dongle for your iPhone or iPod Touch that lets you pay without a credit card.

As CoolHunting wrote in July (without knowing about Dorsey’s involvement):

The innovation is in a small, plastic card reader that fits in to the headphone jack of an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and transfers the credit card’s swipe data to the app. After the employee enters the amount to charge, the customer confirms by scrawling their signature with their finger and then either one enters the customer’s email address to send the receipt to. The payment is processed by Square for a small percentage plus a fixed fee; the funds are transferred directly to the store’s bank account, cutting both time and complexity on the processing side. The customer’s receipt includes a map showing the location of the transaction which is handy for those who record, sort and file such things.

Credits:Mashable

When your website first reaches a million visitors, it’s a great milestone. However, one billion views per day can only be attained by the selected few, and YouTube is now one of them.

According to the official blog, YouTube is serving “well over a billion views a day”. That’s at least 11,574 views per second, 694,444 views per minute, and 41,666,667 views per hour. Imagine the web server farm that can withstand that much traffic, and then remember that YouTube is just one of Google’s many properties.

YouTube still may not be making enough money to justify the 1.65 billion dollars Google has paid for it, but it definitely makes it up when it comes to visitors.

To celebrate the occasion, YouTube has a special logo today, accompanied with the text “1 billion views per day”. Yes, they’re bragging, but one has to admit they have a lot to brag about.

Between search engines and social media, there are a lot of different ways that people can get to your website. But which of these sources provides loyal users that come back to your site multiple times?

That’s the subject of a new study by ad network Chitika, who analyzed the browsing habits of 33 million unique users over the course of September.

According to their findings, Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

In the realm of search engines, Yahoo provides the most loyal visitors at 15%, followed by Google and Bing with around 12% each.

The finding that social sites provide stickier traffic isn’t surprising, but what implications do the loyalty rankings for Facebook, Digg, and Twitter have, if any? Perhaps that in the long-run, encouraging your visitors to share on Facebook might have the most value, even if it doesn’t provide the most short-term traffic.

That said, it’s easy enough to provide sharing options for a multitude of social media sites (case in point, this post!), so you can probably file this under the “nice to know” category of statistics and use your own analytics to gauge what is and isn’t working.

We’ve known this was coming for a while , but Yahoo today sent out a final closure notice with the date of GeoCities’ demise: October 26.

Back in the proverbial day, GeoCities was the place where many a modern-day internet nerd cut his or her teeth. After a spectacular dot com purchase of $3.65 billion and an equally spectacular dot com bust, its closure marks the end of one of the earliest ages of the social web.

Yahoo, of course, has been busy slimming down and cutting costs under CEO Carol Bartz. With the company’s focus elsewhere, it makes sense to shut down what is essentially an internet relic. Still, to those who look back with nostalgia, October 26 could well be a wistful day. Check out the full farewell letter below, and let us know if you have any memories from the heady GeoCities days to share in the comments!