Posterous, the blog sharing service, revamped their website, user dashboard, iPhone app and topped it off with a new name: Posterous Spaces.  They unified the site and Groups offerings to emphasize on sharing, social networking and content discovery, and to keep everything consistent and avoid confusion.

So, not to confuse the new Posterous Spaces as something of a Google+ copycat, Spaces lets users know who they’re sharing to and who they received the post from, unlike in Google Circles where you segregate people into circles and just choose which belong to what Circle.

“Versus Google Circles we think we’re building for normal people,” said Posterous CEO Sachin Agarwal in a recent interview. “We use the analogy of email [where you know who you’re sending to and they know who they’re receiving it from] — everything is symmetric groups.”

The new Posterous Spaces features a Reader Tab with feeds shared by individuals the user is following.  The dashboard also features Popular items, which gives access to top feeds.  There’s also an Activity section, with real-time activities across Spaces admin.  Meanwhile the iPhone app delivers all of Posterous’ functionality or the entire new Spaces experience on mobile.

Micro Blogging and Social Networks Dominate

According to Wave 5 of the GlobalWebIndex by Trendstream, trends in micro blogging and social networks continuously grow, as it rose to 62$ and 42% respectively, while blogging declined 4%, though online news article writing rose by 6%.   More people are utilizing micro blogs to update their status in different social network platforms in the form of sharing links, posting photos and videos, and the continued rise in the number of people using them are associated primarily with the widespread use of mobile devices.

With micro blogging and social networks promoting the sharing of other people’s works, this trend affects the blogging sector as more people choose to share than to write their own blogs, happily commenting and sharing with their friends.

The use of social networking sites has dramatically risen in all age segments as well.  Among those aged 16-24, penetration levels of social networking sites grew 26% from July 2009 to June 2011; 46% among those age 25-34, 35% among those age 35-44, and 52% among those age 45-54.

According to Nielsen’s State of the Media: A Social Media Report Q3 2011, social media and blogs account for almost a quarter of total time spent on the internet of Americans with four out of five active internet users visit social networks and blog sites.  The top brand visited by Americans is of course Facebook, where they spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes.  And this is just from May 2011.

And though 97% still use computers to access social media, mobile use is on the rise with 37%.  And active social media users are deemed more likely to become active offline as more are willing to try what their friends recommend like restaurants or retail shops.

“Whether it’s a brand icon inviting customers to connect with a company on LinkedIn, a news ticker promoting an anchor’s Twitter handle or an advertisement asking a consumer to ‘Like’ a product on Facebook, people are constantly being drive to social media,” according to Nielsen’s report.

Updates in the blogosphere

Twitter recently brought a case against Twittad, a marketing company using Twitter as its promotion audience, for using “tweet” on their trademarked service “Let Your Ad Meet Tweets.”

While Twitter battles it out in court, Facebook is rolling out a new feature, Smart Lists, which automatically groups people you work with, people you went to school, and people who live 50 miles from you.  There’s no news yet as to whether people can create their own Smart Lists according to their preferences.