Ben Parr's column, The Social Analyst, regularly delivers insightful observations on social media. His latest has four basic predictions on the Web of the future:

1. Accessible anywhere.
2. Not focused on the computer, but on the TV or car or other devices.
3. Media-centric, not text-centric.
4. Social media will be its largest component.

"In ten years, when you access the web, most of the time you spend will be to connect with your friends. Almost all of that will be on social networks and through social media. It will be the #1 reason why we ever pull out our phones, tablets, or computers," he writes.

The recent Jaron Lanier book, You Are Not A Gadget, argues that mob madness has taken over the Internet and that social and participatory media have simply gone mediocre.

But Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, takes a different view. She asserts the participatory pieces are in and of themselves important but not necessarily because they create an end-result book or song or article.

Rather, it's the process we should be celebrating, the involvement of people in sharing assets that will be useful to others.

"Systems such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Hunch and various parts of the open source movement are based around small contributory systems, bodies of work in which there are incremental improvements by multiple contributors, or exposing small actions that would be insignificant in isolation, but are meaningful in the aggregate."

A Poynter Institute post from Dorian Bekoil indicates an imminent IBM study will indicate a decline in the percentage of people visiting newspaper Web sites last year.

This would be startling news to the industry, which still considers itself on a growth curve as the Internet's spread widens and the sites themselves gain strength.

Overall, social media use grew, but younger people in particular pulled away from newspaper sites in the year, the report suggests.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Apple's aim with its new tablet due next week is to reshape the news business in the way the iPod reshaped the music business.

It will be family-friendly, conceived as a device passed around the household for media consumption, and easily shared.

What isn't clear is how publishers will participate. Apple has indicated it has been in discussions with publishers on content strategies, but there is no indication yet on pricing structures for what people consume.

It makes intuitive sense and feels comfortable anecdotally, but a new report provides empirical data on the fact we are losing teenagers to their media.

In the last five years alone, teen media consumption has grown more than two hours daily on average to 7.5 hours daily, roughly half their awake time.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation report, an update on an earlier look at teen media patterns, is bound in the days ahead to be challenged for its accuracy --- so astonishing do the figures feel at first blush.

Television, music and the Internet rank one through three in terms of consumption, but gaming wasn't far behind.

The report authors suggest the findings have enormous implications for learning --- the distractions are substantial --- and overall creativity.

A new study from the L.E.K. media firm suggests e-readers are quickly becoming hot, Internet radio is being heavily consumed and the physical newspaper (but not its content) has nowhere to go but down.

The online survey of 2,000 respondents found print content consumption increases heavily --- more so than audio content increases with MP3 players --- when you own an e-reader.

The study suggests it's a myth that conventional television will be overrun by the Internet. For some time to come it will remain a prime medium. But it also suggests the Internet is crowding other media out in terms of time.

The report's authors suggest that within five years or so, metropolitan newspapers will be online only, media targeting older demographics will perform well, and book sales will rise, among other things.

As goes the New York Times, often goes the approach of journalism, so its long-expected announcement today that it will charge for full access in early 2011 is bound to have influence.

The Times isn't going to put a full firewall up. Rather, it will permit access to a certain number of articles free, after which there will be a flat fee for full access.

Today's announcement is really more of a conceptual confirmation. Many details of the plan are forthcoming, including how much access will be free, what will be charged for full access, and what will be included in that full access. Executives even suggest that access may shift at times.

One thing that is clear: A print subscriber is automatically given full access.

The Times sees the move as a bet on the future of digital distribution and suggests it's time to find a stronger revenue stream out of it.

Apple has indicated it has an announcement January 27 and all speculation focuses on the introduction of its tablet-like device that most believe will be called iSlate.

The Guardian's Mercedes Bunz suggests in a post today that one thing Apple could do, if it were trying to support journalism, would be to unveil a micropayment plan along the lines of iTunes for news.

Her post is more hopeful than empirically grounded. There is little indication Apple will do more than have some publishing partners for its device, and the one notable likely partner (The New York Times) is already neck-deep with other devices like the Kindle.

But Bunz notes that Apple could help journalism address its micropayment conundrum by bringing the notion forward as it brings its device to market.

An Outsell research firm report from Ken Doctor indicates aggregators could be hurting newspapers and their Web sites by satisfying users with headlines.

The report examined patterns of consumption and concludes that people are increasingly using aggregators like Google, Yahoo, AOL and others to scout news. But once there, they tend to simply skim the headlines and move on.

The report indicates local newspapers and their sites continue to have strong consumer support as the prime source of local news content.

But it also suggests that so-called power users of the Internet are the likeliest to be dropping their newspaper subscriptions in recent times.

Joshua-Michele Ross, a digital strategy executive at the Fleishman Hillard communications company, has a good post on Mashable on social media that has more than a little applicability to newsrooms.

As many extol its virtues, Ross identifies some reasonable concerns organizations should have before jumping in with both feet. They're much the same reason firms should weigh any expenditure on research: If you're not going to listen, don't do it.

Ross notes that, without the ability to act upon what you learn, there is little point. Moreover, while it seems the right thing to "join the conversation" about your entity, social media can paint a bullseye on your back.

What the customer (audience) wants to talk about is not necessarily what you can.

"Ultimately if your company is willing to take the feedback and turn it into action, then social media is a competitive game changer," he writes.