In China, the country’s top search engine, Baidu, said it plans to begin monetizing its mobile search traffic and social media platforms, this year. Not unlike strategies being pursued by certain American Web giants, Baidu says the effort will help boost growth beyond the PC. Putting the move in a larger context, Reuter writes: “Baidu has expanded its dominant position in China's Internet search market ever since Google Inc decided in 2010 to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong following a standoff with the Chinese government over Internet censorship.” Thanks to strong revenue growth, the company just reported fourth-quarter …

Despite recent concerns over traffic growth and related costs, Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations for the fourth quarter of 2011. In a conference call with analysts, CEO Richard Rosenblatt acknowledged it was a “turbulent year,” reports AllThingsD. For the quarter, the online media company said it earned eight cents per share, up one cent on analysts’ estimates of seven cents. Revenue came in higher too, at $84.4 million compared to an expected $81.95 million. “Still, Demand shares were down almost five percent in after-hours trading on the news, to $5.94,” AllThingsD notes. The company said that about $50 million …

We’re learning more about the latest venture from Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch. Named Pinwheel, the forthcoming service appears to be a way for users to leave virtual notes, annotations, tips and photos for fellow users and friends at real world locations and places. While Pinwheel will have a Web presence, Fake herself expects the mobile version to be the “primary experience,” TechCrunch reports. “With Pinwheel, you can find and leave public or private notes at places all over the world,” TC writes. “These notes can be shared with one person, or everyone; and can be categorized.” Fake …

Twitter is expected to benefit greatly from the upcoming release of Apple’s latest operating system, Mountain Lion. “Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo are some of the third-party services that will offered as part of [the system’s] new ‘share sheet’ that allows you to share links, photos and videos directly from the app one is using on the Mac,” GigaOm reports. “Twitter, however, is the one that is pretty much everywhere inside the new operating system.” And this isn’t the first time that Apple has blessed the microblogging service. In iOS 5, Apple integrated Twitter, and in no time at all the service …

Despite Google’s near-strangle hold on the market, search start-ups continue to carve out niches for themselves. Take DuckDuckGo, which just reported 1,000,000 searches in a single day. “The growth chart continues to trend in the right direction for DuckDuckGo,” remarks Search Engine Land. “It was just about three weeks ago that we wrote about the search engine setting its own record with 731,000 searches in a single day. To go from that to more than 1 million in a few weeks is impressive.” The start-up differs from Google in that it draws on crowdsourced sites like Wikipedia when establishing authority …

Not a huge surprise, new Nielsen research tells us that the rise of gadgets is creating a new generation of children who are “growing up digital.” What may surprise some, however, is that seven out of every 10 children in tablet-owning households used a tablet computer in the fourth quarter of 2011 -- a 9% increase compared from the third quarter of the year, per Nielsen. According to its survey of adults with children under 12 in tablet-owning households, Nielsen found that 77% of those surveyed said children play downloaded games on their tablets, and 57% said children used tablets …

Not since Angry Birds, has there been so much excitement around a mobile app. Even more remarkable, it’s a to-do list that has everyone talking. TheNextWeb puts Clear -- released this week on iTunes App Store -- in that category of apps “that make you re-think the way that you’ve been using apps altogether, breaking the mold and re-forming it with just a few minutes of use.” The brainchild of development studio Impending, Clear was produced in partnership with Realmac Software, makers of popular photo editing app Analog. According to TNW, Clear is “a simple and relatively limited list app,” i.e., …

You go, HTC. The struggling smartphone maker is reportedly working on several new products, including a music streaming service. HTC, which recently acquired a substantial stake in Beats Audio, is developing a streaming service that will be offered as a default music client on HTC phones and tablets, reports OmMalik. “My sources say that the company is still working on pricing plans and other details,” Malik writes. “It has long harbored ambitions of offering a music service on HTC devices, folks familiar with HTC say.” an interview with the Los Angeles Times last year, Beats Audio co-founder Jimmy Iovine said: “Getting Beats audio into …

Surpassing Samsung, Apple became the world’s biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to new data from Gartner. “Almost a quarter of smartphones sold were iPhones as Apple’s market share rose to 23.8 percent from 15.8 percent a year earlier,” Bloomberg notes, citing Gartner. All told, Apple sold 35.5 million smartphones to consumers while Samsung sold 34 million. Global smartphone sales increased 47% to 149 million units. That said, Apple’s sequential growth may slow this quarter as pent-up demand was largely sated by holiday sales, Roberta Cozza, a Gartner analyst, told Bloomberg. “The wild card for 2012 …

U.S. consumer electronics sales reached $144 billion in 2011, with Apple topping all brands, according to new data from The NPD Group. Additionally, the market research firm found that in-store sales fell by 2.5% in 2011, while online sales jumped by 7%. “The top five categories for electronic spending were PCs, TVs, tablets and e-readers, mobile phones, and video game hardware, which accounted for nearly 60 percent of all sales in 2011,” reports CNet, citing NPD data. Far from a dead market, PCs -- including notebooks and desktops -- generated the most revenue with almost $28 billion, or about 20% …