It’s been said before, but this is something worth bringing up again as it’s becoming more relevant: as our level of connectivity increases, the lines of distinction between the social web and the real world are blurred accordingly.  

One interesting statistic that emerged over the past week is that Facebook users uploaded 750 million pictures in a single weekend. I’m guessing that a lot of this was done on the go, as users posted pictures of that fun New Years Eve party that was happening as they welcomed in 2011.

On New Years Eve, Twitter exploded the world over, with users greeting each other a Happy New Year at the stroke of midnight. Most notably, Japan’s New Year celebrations logged a record-breaking estimate of nearly 7,000 tweets a second. Again, something like this wouldn’t be happening from the front of a PC or laptop, but as users rang in the New Year with family and friends. In terms of year-end statistics, Twitter saw 100 million new Twitter accounts created over the past 12 months and roughly 25 billion tweets.

But how does this tie in to what I mentioned about our levels of connectivity increasing? 2010 saw a plethora of social media apps created for mobile use.  These apps helped us stay in touch and keep our friends and family in the loop (for better or for worse) about the goings-on in our lives.

With this in mind, one thing that was definitely big for me was the emergence of location-based applications that allowed users to tell friends where they were at a given moment. Foursquare, the popular location service, released an update towards the end of 2010 that gave users the ability to post comments and pictures of places where they checked-in. Need menu suggestions at a restaurant? Forget asking the waiter. Instead, consult Foursquare, see if any friends visited the location before you, and check out their food selection along with pictures of the dish.

Augmented Reality technology also stood out with Layar, a smartphone application that makes use of a phone’s camera and GPS capabilities to create a visual “layer” (a collection of information that corresponds to a given location) on a phone's screen. Different “layers” exist, each providing a different type of information, from restaurant and hotel locations to entertainment ideas and even historic tips. If you're in an unfamiliar city and looking for a coffee, put away your travel guide and pull out Layar to find the closest coffee shop and point you in the right direction. The newest update to Layar now supports interactive “layers” that are designed to enhance a user's experience with the physical world. You’ve heard of Internet browsers before? Layar is a Reality Browser.

Location-based and augmented social media seem poised to change the way we see and experience things in the real world, and also (if it already hasn't) the way we conduct business. So it’s 2011! The future’s here, and while it may not include the flying cars that we saw in the Jetsons, it’s an exciting time in the world of social technology.