The majority (87%) of young people between the ages of 12-17 use some form of electronic personal communication, including text messaging, email or instant messaging, or post comments on social networking sites according to a new report from Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Sixty percent of teens do not view these electronic texts as “writing.” They will use both computers and longhand to write depending on the circumstance.  Fifty-seven percent say the revise and edit more when they write using a computer. Sixty-three percent say using computers to write does not affect the quality of their writing.

A majority (73%) of teens say their personal electronic communications (email, IM) have no impact on the writing they do for school, and 77 percent said they have no impact on their own personal writing.

Sixty-four percent of teens say they accidentally use some informal writing styles used in personal electronic communication for the writing they do for school. (Some 25% have used emoticons in their school writing; 50% have used informal punctuation and grammar; 38% have used text shortcuts such as “LOL”).

“There is a raging national debate about the state of writing and how high-tech communication by teens might be affecting their ability to think and write,” noted Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew who co-authored a report on the findings titled Writing, Technology and Teens.

“Those on both sides of the issue will see supporting data here. There is clearly a big gap in the minds of teenagers between the ‘real’ writing they do for school and the texts they compose for their friends.”

YouTube accounted for 73.18 percent of all U.S. visits out of 68 online video sites for the month of March, according to Hitwise.

MySpaceTV had the second highest percentage of visits with 9.21 percent followed by Google Video with 4.06 percent. Yahoo Video received 2.16 percent of visits and Break.com rounded out the top five with 1.82 percent.

Online video accounted for 1.09 percent of all U.S. Internet visits in March, a decrease of 7 percent compared to March 2007. YouTube was the only video site in the top five that did not see a decrease in year- over- year growth, gaining 32 percent.

MySpaceTV saw its year- over- year growth slip 48 percent and Google Video dropped 52 percent. Yahoo Video decreased by 18 percent and Break.com dipped 16 percent.

Even with the decline in visits to video sites, the amount of time spent on the Web sites increased 7 percent. Hulu.com, which came out of beta the week ending March 15 was the 22nd most visited video site for March 2008 receiving .22 percent of visits.

“As online video becomes more mainstream with Internet users, the share referred traffic from the younger audiences of social networks is declining, shifting instead toward search”, said Heather Dougherty, director of research, Hitwise.

“Integration into search engine result pages through universal and blended search is increasing both the exposure of online videos and the importance of search as a traffic driver in the online video category.”

Digital sales of music accounted for 10 percent of the total global music market in 2007, up from 6 percent in 2006, according to In-Stat.

By 2012, digital music sales will represent 40 percent of all music purchased worldwide. Contributing to the growth include the global expansion of broadband, demand for single-track downloads and expanding music catalogs.

Another factor is the potential of growth in full-track downloads to mobile handsets outside of Japan, the main market for this kind of digital music format.

“Digital piracy continues to represent the primary challenge to online music service providers,” says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. “Other obstacles still include the lack of interoperability between services and devices due to differing digital rights management (DRM) technologies, and weak consumer demand for subscription-based services.”

“Another potential market inhibitor is the fact that content owners, cellular service providers and handset manufacturers are increasing the amount of marketing and promotion for mobile music.”

Sales for online digital music reached $3.05 billion in 2007, up 48 percent from 2006. Revenue for global full track downloads will hit approximately $4.2 billion by 2012.

Apple’s iTunes has surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number one music retailer in the U.S. according to the NPD Group.

Apple now has 19 percent of the market and Wal-Mart has 15 percent including both online and brick-and-mortar sales.

Best Buy holds the third spot with 13 percent, followed by Amazon.com with six percent.

Physical CD sales have dropped dramatically as the music industry adapts to the digital world. NPD reports that close to half of all teens in the U.S. did not buy a single CD in 2007, up from 38 percent in 2006.

Apple said its iTunes Store has sold more than four billion songs, has 50 million customers, and has the largest music catalog with more than six million songs.

“We launched iTunes less than five years ago, and it has now become the number one music retailer in the world,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We are thrilled, and would like to thank all of our customers for helping us reach this incredible milestone.”