A lot of pixels have been sprayed since the New York Times story headlined “Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter.”

The essential data: “The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.”

Does this spell the end of blogging? In fact, the decline in blogs as a place for random musings and trivia is wonderful news for blogs and their readers. We already had WAY too much noise. Now with Twitter and Facebook siphoning off the trivia and momentary mind-burps, blogs are increasingly the safe-harbor for deeper dives into a topic, whether that topic is books or gossip or politics.

Clive Thompson captured the new blogging ecosystem perfectly a few weeks back in Wired:

When something newsworthy happens today — Brett Favre losing to the Jets, news of a new iPhone, a Brazilian election runoff — you get a sudden blizzard of status updates. These are just short takes, and they’re often half-baked or gossipy and may not even be entirely true. But that’s OK; they’re not intended to be carefully constructed. Society is just chewing over what happened, forming a quick impression of What It All Means.

The long take is the opposite: It’s a deeply considered report and analysis, and it often takes weeks, months, or years to produce. It used to be that only traditional media, like magazines or documentaries or books, delivered the long take. But now, some of the most in-depth stuff I read comes from academics or businesspeople penning big blog essays, Dexter fans writing 5,000-word exegeses of the show, and nonprofits like the Pew Charitable Trusts producing exhaustively researched reports on American life.

And Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress also noted that the data isn’t actually that dire. Fewer people may be blogging, but the number of people reading blogs is growing.

The title was probably written by an editor, not the author, because as soon as the article gets past the two token teenagers who tumble and Facebook instead of blogging, the stats show all the major blogging services growing — even Blogger whose global “unique visitors rose 9 percent, to 323 million,” meaning it grew about 6 Foursquares last year alone. (In the same timeframe WordPress.com grew about 80 million uniques according to Quantcast.)

And here’s the URL. Odd the Washington Post go to the trouble or writing SEO headlines, but not optimizing URLs.

Join Clive Thompson, Lenore Skenazy, Steven B. Johnson, and Maud Newton as they discuss how social media is transforming the experience of writing and reading books — and what the changes may mean for authors, readers and publishers.

From Social Media Week 2011.

SOCIAL READING
0:16 – Clive describes the primal “social book”
1:37 – Will Maud respond to comments within the text of her book?
2:35 – Steven reacts to Kindle’s “Popular Highlights”
4:51 – Clive watches the “margins of the unpopular”
6:19 – Steven describes Findings.com, his new social reading project

SOCIAL WRITING
8:38 – Clive discusses blogging and the writing process
9:26 – Lenore uses her blog for source material
10:14 – Steven maintains a private relationship with the reader

INTERACTING
11:08 – Maud creates new connections on Twitter
12:27 – Steven on responding to criticism online
13:15 – Can Lenore turn comments into a book?

THE FUTURE
13:50 – Clive: we can’t imagine books ten years from now

Photo via JellyBeanBoom.com

The reviews are in.  Blogads’ SUXORZ panel — with panelists Brian Clark, BL Ochman, Jessica Amason, Brian Morrissey, moderator (Blogads CEO) Henry Copeland and Social Media DJ Jon Accarino — last Thursday night was an unFAIL.

Rebecca Leib, AdAge:

New York’s Social Media Week featured wall-to-wall sessions on how marketers can do social media right, but nothing can hold a candle to the sheer Schdenfreude of watching the brands and agencies that are doing it wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Rachel Conforti, definition6:

Last night at the SUXORZ awards, we celebrated schadenfreude at its best, taking a look back at poorly executed social media initiatives.

Jesse Stanchak, SmartBlog on Social Media:

We must punish failure as well as praise excellence. Or, at least, that was the mood at the fourth annual Suxorz Awards event at Social Media Week on Thursday night.

Bea Villamor, Cake New York:

I try not to take myself too seriously, so it’s nice to do the same with the work that we do (PR, not ER!).

Amanda McCormick, Jellybean Boom:

Total irreverence was enjoyed by all last night at the #Suxorz panel at the Gershwin Hotel (pictured above), where we parsed the delicacies of the year’s most flat-footed and tone deaf social media campaigns.

Ron Casalotti, Bottom of the Food Chain:

Just because your PR team makes you do social media doesn’t mean you get it.

Esther Surden, NYConvergence:

Of the week’s events, this one was the one that pointed out what good social media practitioners should not do.

Already got ideas for next year’s SUXORZ? Log your nominees here.

Video highlights coming here soon.

Social Media Week got a little rowdy last night, as a crowd of 150 gathered at the Gershwin Hotel to join our panelists in taking on the worst social media campaigns of the last year. If you weren’t able to be there, you can relive the night via the #SUXORZ11 tag.

Many thanks to Brian Clark, BL Ochman, Jessica Amason, and Brian Morrissey for lending their expertise and good humor, and to Social DJ Jon Accarrino for running A/V and keeping the crowd laughing. And of course, thanks to the audience, our Greek Chorus, who helped us pick our Grand SUXORZ.

Without further ado, here’s a recap of our nominees and winners — or rather, losers — by category.

MEME PURGATORY
This is where Internet memes go to die. These nominees took established memes and, rather than running with them, put them to sleep.

Winner: Cisco: Ted From Accounting
Perhaps an attempt to keep up with the Old Spice Guy, Cisco introduced us to Ted From Accounting. And who is he? Well, no one seemed to notice him, so we may never really know.

Runners Up:

• VW: Sluggy Patterson and the Punch Dub
• Smirnoff Shuts Down BrosIcingBros.com
• Dell: Dr. Ashley

MISSED CONNECTIONS
When it comes to social media, some companies just don’t get it. This category recognizes such companies.

Winner: Denny’s Twitter Fail
It’s great that Denny’s wants to connect with its customers on Twitter. Unfortunately, the Twitter handle they published in their menu was already taken by a man in Taiwan.

Runners up:

• Starbucks Goes To Hungary, Deletes Grassroots Fan Page
• CVS Doesn’t Care (Twitter account is locked…)
• Leo Burnett’s Humankind Intro

MEAN PEOPLE SUCK
When given a chance, people are innately cruel. Here we looked at Social Media Meanness
Winner: Price Chopper Tries to Get Customer Fired
In a bizarre incident in the Syracuse area, a representative from the grocery store Price Chopper contacted an tweeter’s boss to try to get him fired.

Runners up:

• Dr. Pepper and the Facebook Status Blunder
• Facebook Freakout: Nestle vs. The Orangutans
• Mercedes Tweetrace

YOU’RE SO VAIN
In our final round, we examined celebrities and pseudo-celebs getting all tangled up in the Social Web.

Winner: Digital Death
It seemed so noble. Celebrities would stop using twitter until their fans could raise a million dollars for AIDS in Africa. Only problem was no one really wanted them to come back.

Runners up:

• Lebron James Joins Twitter
• Kenneth Cole Hijacks #Cairo
• Fast Company’s Influence Project

In the final round, we pitted all four winners against each other, and in near-landslide fashion, Price Chopper took the Grand Suxor prize.

Perhaps the ultimate lesson of last night is this simple: be nice and don’t hurt people.

Lots of other practices in social media can get you in trouble — polluting the Tweet stream (Mercedes), taking yourself too seriously (Digital Death, Nestle), doing unviral videos (Dell, Cisco), letting people insert their words in your mouth (Dr. Pepper.)

But, at least in the wisdom of THIS crowd, no social media crime is worse than when a big company comes down on an individual.

Update: Jesse Stanchak gives a great blow by blow of the evening.

This will be the fifth year (or sixth?) of our parties at SXSW, again with the great PBS folks and other friends. This year we’re moving to an awesome bigger venue, The Parish. As always, the party will be Sunday night.

Location: 214 East 6th Street

Time: 9pm to 1am.

The headliner, Trombone Shorty, is AWESOME.  Don’t believe me?  Try this:

If you’re at SXSW be sure to stop by and see us. This year Donald, Henry, Katie, Rachel, Robert and Zsolt will be there. And we’ll have some teeshirts.

We’re hosting two panels next week during Social Media Week NYC:

1. Social Books: How Social Media is Changing the Writing, Reading and Promotion of Books

#SOCIALBOOKS

Books are everything social media is not: composed and consumed in solitude, written and read at leisure, conceived and bought as blocks. Yet readers and writers are increasingly connecting to each other with tweets, apps, and book-based social networks.

Join four authors as they discuss how social media is transforming the experience of writing, reading and promoting books — and what the changes may mean for authors, readers and publishers.

Panelists:

Steven B. Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From (@stevenbjohnson)
Maud Newton, book pundit and nascent novelist (@maudnewton)
Lenore Skenazi, author of Free Range Kids (@freerangekids)
Clive Thompson, New York Times Magazine writer and Wired columnist with book in progress (@pomeranian99)
Henry Copeland, moderator, Blogads.com (@hc)

The hashtag for this event will be #socialbooks. Register here.

2. SUXORZ: The Worst Social Media Advertising of 2010

#SUXORZ11

Amid tales of genius and triumph during #SMWNYC, the #SUXORZ11 panel will be the Greek chorus.  We’ll dissect the twelve worst social media campaigns of 2010, and then throw them to our drunken audience for comments and voting. It’s like what we’ve done in past years at SXSW… with the lubrication of complimentary beer and wine. Who will be crowned this year’s SUXORZ champion?

Panelists:

Jessica Amason, Mother NY, ThisIsWhyYoureFat (@jessamanson)
Brian Clark, GMDstudios (@gmdclark)
Brian Morrissey, Ad Week (@bmorrissey)
BL Ochman, Proof Digital Media (@whatsnext)
Henry Copeland, Blogads.com (@hc) moderator

The hashtag for this event will be #suxorz11. To get in the spirit, feel free to submit SUXORZ candidates to http://on.fb.me/suxorz. Register here.

Tickets are going fast, so make sure to sign up now. Follow @blogads or catch us here: www.facebook.com/blogads to keep up with event updates. We also have notes from last year’s panels.

See you next week!

The video intro to Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad publication The Daily is crazily underwhelming.

Some folks seem excited by the price — 99 cents per week or $39.99 per year — arguing that this is far cheaper than a newspaper.

It’s also far more expensive than all the other news sources on the web. Not only does it not do anything particularly new (and therefore justifying some extra effort/expense) but it doesn’t do a lot of things that make the web so amazing — comments, socializing, and hyperlinks to a nearly infinite tree of additional information.