Search revenue rose 14.5% to $16.9 billion or 46% of 2012 revenue, compared with the previous year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. It's reflective of an increase in dependence on technology that requires an increase in speed across the Internet.

It's a race among Apple, Epson, Google, Microsoft and others to develop the next fashion statement. Wearable electronics aims to become the next phase of mobile -- intimate computing. As a search marketer, can you imagine trying to optimize paid-search ads on a 1-inch screen?

Marketers spent 24% more on paid-search ads across all engines in Q1 2013 -- a slight sequential decline from 25% growth in Q4 2012. But you will find the real numbers in the cost per clicks and return on investments, according to a recently released report. The average CPC rose 7% in the quarter, and paid clicks rose 15%. Are you keeping score?

Pay-for-content services have begun to pay off, especially those supporting services for hyperlocal markets. One of the trends moving up the needle points to local businesses spending more for media. In 2012, spending rose 20%, according to Borrell. The firm estimates it will jump another 31% this year. Traditional media companies such as newspapers have begun to benefit the most, as more start to develop services the research firm believes could spin off into separate businesses, such as search engine optimization, lead generation or recommendations.

Marketers hiding their head in the sand to the impact of real-time social ads and content on search campaigns will miss the avalanche of opportunities that come from integrating the two media. Overall, marketers will invest in U.S. social advertising about $11 billion in 2017-- up from $6 billion this year, according to BIA/Kelsey stats released Wednesday.

Understand human values to help change technology. That's the focus for the Socio-Digital Systems (SDS), one of the research groups at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. Beyond making people more productive and efficient, the team asks how humanity can build technology to help people become more expressive, creative and reflective each day.

It takes bandwidth to build the next-generation Internet. Austin, Texas, the home of SXSW Interactive, will become the next lucky city to give it a try with help from Google Fiber, which supports 1 gigabit-per-second Internet access for computers and connected TVs. While the online buzz points to Austin, job postings to support the network lead to Ontario, Canada.

If you have a Microsoft Surface Pro running Windows 8 operating system (OS) you would have already seen a similar version of the way Facebook Home works. Several things make Facebook's Home interesting, like building the OS overlay on Android rather than Windows, and whether Facebook will further share social signals with Bing.

Text advertising applied to search queries on mobile devices will increase from $704 million in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2017, according to a report released Thursday by BIA/Kelsey. The growth will occur because voice commands will make the size of the screen irrelevant.

Expect Facebook to announce its mobile phone Thursday, according to Analysys Mason's Principal Analysts Ronan de Renesse and Stephen Sale, who published a research note Wednesday pointing to Android as "Facebook's most important mobile playground." Would you dump your phone for one from Facebook, and what would its proprietary mobile ad network look like? The HTC phone will have a custom version of Android, according to reports.