It’s that time again when various media channels do a retrospective on the year. It is interesting to note that the conservative Tea Party political movement, Julian Assange- the WikiLeaks guy, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the 33 trapped Chilean miners were passed up for TIME magazine’s choice as “Person of The Year”.

The bottom line is that Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of the Facebook social networking site has changed the way many people socialize which has had a huge impact on people’s day to day lives.

It doesn’t matter if you’re at work or home, it seems that there’s always a need for music. Nowadays, there are a lot of softwares/websites that offer music on the go. Places like Last.fm and Pandora give you some freedom to listen to your favorite songs on the web. However, there’s a new kid in town and from the looks of it, the competition should take notice.

Grooveshark.com is an international online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application. It allows users to search for, stream, and upload music FREE of charge that can be played immediately or added to a playlist you’ll create, name and share. Grooveshark aims to help bridge the growing gaps between artists, consumers and those in between who distribute, market, and promote music.

It is fairly safe to assume that social media is here to stay. However think about the following: would the new generation be more apt to this new type of social interaction if they were trained on how to use social networking and media since they were babies?

The Finnish designers Janne Passi and Hannu Rippati from Palmu Inc, have created the IOBR, a concept of children’s toys that use shapes and colors in a way that it educates toddlers on small social interactions early on.

The founders of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai must be very happy now (and rich!). It was announced today that their one and a half year old baby, location-based social network Foursquare, has grown to over 4.5 million users. They will be heading west and will be opening an office in San Francisco, CA.

If you’re not familiar with the software, it is basically a web and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for “checking in” at specific places.

Thanksgiving is approaching and for many people it’s a time to unite and enjoy time with the family. But there are a lot of people looking forward to the day AFTER Thanksgiving. The day famously called Black Friday. It’s a day that many stores create sales and promotions to incite people to buy gifts for Christmas. It has become a war for stores and e-commerce sites in an effort to grab the attention of customers. Companies like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Amazon, try to beat out the competition by flooding the internet with advertising and by making printed ads of featured deals. But there’s one major US company that did something different. They decided to invest heavily in social media marketing. A week and a half before retail’s biggest day of the year, Target bought the Twitter hashtag #BlackFriday.