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One thing social bookmarking site Pinterest has going for it right now is traction, with brands quickly getting in on the act. So, it was inevitable that the next stage for Pinterest was that it would earn itself an infographic.

If online search results are slowed by even a fraction of a second, people search less – a 400ms delay leads to a 0.44% drop in search volume. And impatience isn’t just limited to search, as four out of five online users will keeping on clicking away if a video stalls while loading.

Every second, one hour of video is uploaded to Google’s YouTube. That equates to a decade’s worth of footage every single day. Or, in 10 days, an entire video century.

The video-sharing website has lots more time-bending stats it wants to communicate. Which is why the Google Data Arts team has joined forces with digital production outfit Punk & Butler to develop a new website, onehourpersecond.com, with illustrations by Alex Eben Meyer.

Google Music has launched Magnified Artists to showcase unsigned artists in the Android music store and to perform at live events, writes Maria Stadtmueller. The search giant uses sales performance, buzz monitoring and editorial nous to select Magnified acts from its recently launched Artist Hub, a digital destination which allows bands to upload and sell music.

Google pulled in revenues of close to $38 billion in 2011, 96% of which came from advertising. The biggest advertisers? Finance and insurance brands with a spend of $4 billion, ahead of retailers ($2.8 billion) and travel and tourism ($2.2 billion).

Brands which are early adopters of Google+ will overtake competitors in search results and therefore in online share of voice, says Habib Amir, head of digital at Clarion.While Facebook is still one of the biggest social networks, it’s important to remember that Google is where people begin their Internet journey, he explains. Google accounts for almost two thirds of total online searches and serves 98% of mobile search queries globally.

More than half of India’s urban youth have consciously cut the time they spend on social media and are no longer as enthusiastic about social networks as when they first signed up, according to a survey conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, writes Maria Stadtmueller.

Close to 30% of respondents in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune have stopped using accounts on social networking sites, while 20% barely log on to the websites.

Regardless of how cloud-based streaming plays out in the long run, 2012 will be a year in which the access-based approach will get a full test, says eMarketer.