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The who’s who in the Irish blogging world will descend on Belfast on 19 March for the 2011 Irish Blog Awards.
This year’s awards are taking place at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, with bloggers being honoured in a wide variety of categories, including Best Science/Education blog; Best Humour; Best Youth; Best Personal; and Best Sports/ Recreation among others.

A topical category will undoubtedly be Best Blog of a Politician and Best Political blogs. There also the regulars like Technology, Business and Best Blog by a Journalist.
At the beginning of the process more than 100 people signed up to be judges, and they have now examined a total of 649 blogs, as well as blog posts.
Those blogs have now been whittled down to a shortlist of over 100, with finalists to be revealed in the coming days.
Tickets can be bought online for €15. Please note they will not be available on the door. Keep updated at @irishblogawards

comScore’s The 2010 Europe Digital Year in Review, which was released for the first time last week, has thrown up some interesting statistics about Europe’s and Ireland’s digital media landscape.

It says social networking sites reached a massive 84 per cent of the population in Ireland in December 2010, up eight per cent on 2009.
Facebook is the leading social networking site here, reaching 77 per cent of the population.
Meanwhile results from Ipsos MRBI’s OmniPoll, its dedicated telephone omnibus featuring a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Irish adults aged 15+has found 50 per cent of the Irish population over the age of 15 is now on Facebook - approx. 1.75 million users. 175,000 users have joined in 6 months.
Ipsos MRBI also found one in five 55 to 64 year olds have a Facebook account with 35% of these looking at their account daily. It says that the number of Twitter accounts remains unchanged at 7%. Read more at @IpsosMRBI.

If you know that #GE11 is a Twitter hashtag for the General Election 2011 you’ll know that this is an election that is being fought and tracked online. New websites and webpages devoted to the election are springing faster than canvassers can get a leaflet through a letterbox (or set up a Twitter account).

Innovation in the use of the web and social media has been evident in the run up to the elections. Here’s some ways to enjoy the election online:
Boards.ie/vote invites users to predict the election results by selecting their constituency and casting a sample vote online.
Ballotbox.ie allows Irish emigrants who are not allowed to vote to cast a symbolic ballot.
Candidate.ie links to every election candidate’s Twitter and Facebook profile and lists their follower numbers.
TheJournal.ie’s Realtime Twitter Tracker compiles the top 10 words associated with party leaders (amongst other functions).
YouTube Newstalk Digital Debate gives people the option to voice the questions they’d like to ask the next Taoiseach.
Politics.ie is a popular politics forum that attracts people interested in politics year round.

The importance of ethnic communities to advertising revenue in Ireland has been recognised with a new revenue generation arrangement for Facebook.pl in Ireland.

According to Niall Kehoe, MD of Ethnic Media, the company is now entirely responsible for the ad placement sold on a CPC basis on Facebook.pl.
The company already works with the top 10 Polish news portals already. “We geo target users here,” he explains. “When you log into the Polish version of Facebook what it gives us is a younger user with longer dwell time.”
According to Kehoe, as much as people think all the Poles have gone home, the people who are here now are highly educated and more likely to use a digital platform.
“Getting access to almost a quarter of a million Polish people every month represents a very unique communications opportunity to companies, it is something that has never been offered before”.

Social media has changed the way people watch television and Irish broadband provider, Magnet Networks is making it easier for people to follow a running commentary of a programme they’re watching, all in their browser.

The company has launched a free web-based live TV service with Twitter and Facebook integration, accessible at www.magnetwebtv.ie.
Regardless of internet provider anybody in Ireland with a 1Mbit broadband connection and a computer can log into the website to view RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4 and 3e live in their browser.
From the same web page, users also have the option of running their Twitter and Facebook feeds to comment, tweet and watch updates alongside their TV stream.
Commenting on the launch of magnetwebtv.ie, Mark Kellett, CEO of Magnet, said: “People in Ireland can now watch TV and comment, or just observe comments, from one device, which we now know is a very popular activity for many.”