Take a look at the forecasted spending and growth for mobile ads:

And with iAd, users will have a far more interactive experience, with research suggesting higher click rates than banners.

It was a surprise to find Google.com down today at about 9:15  AM PST. It was also surprising that they don’t have a fail whale or better 404 page. Its 5 minutes since I checked and Google.ca works, but Google.com still down.

Considering that Google earns most of its revenue from advertising, and over 5 billion per quarter, it stands to lose approximately $1.7 million for the hour its been down. Gmail is down too. Not good.

This made me wonder what things would be like if Google disappeared. Had it never existed, we wouldn’t know any better. We’ve enjoy decent searches which probably contributed to the growing popularity of the web. Had we all been relying on Yahoo, their rate of updates (and relevancy) might have turned off a lot of people. Wait a minute, it already does. Guess that’s why Google has about 65% marketshare and Yahoo a little over 10%?

Makes you wonder what could be going on. It’s unlikely a ddos attack on Google would work. It must be skynet. Update: Google came back online a full hour later.

Then hakia came along, but it was a short lived battle when Powerset, its main competitor, was sold off to Microsoft.

Now there is Jinni, the new video search engine. Jinni has labeled itself as the first “Taste Engine”. This based on algorithms semantic search technology and personal recommendations.

Possibly most  interesting about Jinni is their vision of the future where a search engine becomes personal and results are served based on personalized recommendations. Think how powerful that could be once tapped into social networks.

Ongoing monitoring of social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc is in the works, with Jinni wanting to be part of the conversation, without actually becoming a social network itself.

I can’t put my finger on it, but a lot of advancements in techology like smart phones, social media, and much more give me the impression that we’ll soon witness some noticable changes in how we go about getting things done.

With the advent of consumer journalism and social media, we are now empowered moreso than any other time in history. We’re controlling what we read, and view, and also have a direct impact on what others see by the power of our vote. News all over the world can now be reported in real time. From Twitter and social bookmarking sites to CNN’s iReport, we’re now the correspondents. Know as consumer journalism, technology and social media are the tools of the trade and they bring truth.

But what’s really amazing is the impact all this can have, and the change that it can make. Take the recent events that are happening in Iran for example. After the recent elections,  a landslide win led to riots over the concerns of voting fraud, and created Iranian protests worldwide. Technology and Social Media makes the truth prevail.

Using Twitter, news of the civil unrest leaked out in real time. People not only tweeted about what was happening around them, they shared via cell phones and uploaded video of riots in the street from their phones to youtube. While the Iranian authorities prohibited journalists from reporting, social media tools kept us informed. Iran’s authorities later attempted to block communications such as TV, radio and cellphones, but the Internet proved to be more challenging. To illustrate the Iran election and use of social media, see this timeline.

When there was an earthquake in China, people twittered it as it was happening! CNN didn’t break the story for another couple hours.

But beyond social media for current events and trends, how do you use it for your business? You can use social media tools to empower your employees.  So long as you have a social media policy of some kind, why get in the way of the conversation? But how you might use it for a business is for another time.

Here’s an interesting clip from the Ted talks that’s a must see;

Clay Shirky – How Social Media Can Make History