Two thousand and nine was undoubtedly the year of the Social Network. In a world of loose economic foundations and falling advertising revenue, the social aspect of the Internet became even more important in the lives of many people.

The largest name in social networking has some mind-blowing statistics behind it: Facebook just hit the 350 million user mark; the average member spends 25 minutes a day on the site; there are over 90 000 apps on the site and an astounding half of all users go to the site everyday.

So how can newspapers take advantage of this social boom?

One of the easiest, and more effective ways is to install Facebook Connect on their websites. Facebook Connect allows for user interaction from a larger source than a typical site or blog is capable of creating for itself. Facebook has the fifth highest level of traffic on the web; that's a lot of potential uniques waiting in the wings.

Telegraph Media Group has been including paid links in some of its online content. Links to sites like Tradedoubler and Boy.at allow the company to earn a small commission each time a reader clicks these links to external websites, and links to Amazon.com give TMG a percentage commission on Amazon purchases by visitors who followed their link.

Search marketing expert David Naylor investigated UK press links and exposed the paid links on Telegraph.co.uk on his blog. Naylor doubts the journalistic integrity of the practice, but TMG maintains that these links are completely independent from the journalism and that they do not harm editorial standards.

Speaking to Online Journalism Blog reporter Paul Bradshaw, a TMG spokeswoman confirmed the presence of the links but stresses that "this is an accepted means by which online publishers monetize their content." She claims that the TMG editorial team plays no part in the commercial aspects of the website and that the links are added post-publication by the commercial department.

Four journalists from different media companies in different locations demonstrated how link journalism is the key to efficient news coverage. Using Twitter and a couple of links, they collaborated from different newsrooms to cover the floods in western Washington, Publishing 2.0 reported.

Elaine Helm, new media editor at The Herald, collaborated with three other journalists in different parts of the country to launch a Twitter feed to pool coverage of the floods, avalanches, evacuations and the closed highways. With newspapers depending increasingly on the internet, link journalism takes advantage of unlimited writing space on the internet. Scott Karp recently wrote for Publishing 2.0 to explain how linking can change the face of online journalism.

Publishing 2.0 talked of the advantages of link journalism back in October when they argued how newsrooms must integrate it to become more efficient.

Tuesday morning, WashingtonPost.com rolled out a new hyperlink technology, powered by tech start-up Apture, for two of its blogs: The Fix and Celebritology. When a reader puts the mouse cursor over a link, an article, photo, or video will pop-up on the same page without clicking.

This technology not only keeps readers on WaPo's site, but also generates new advertising inventory as advertisers demand proof of engagement instead of simple page views. Also, each pop-up window contains a banner ad.

"We want to give people the ability to find related content that doesn't necessarily take you to another page," Jim Brady, the site's executive editor, said. "This allows them to keep our articles in focus as opposed to sending them to a wholly different page that requires a back-button functionality."

Problems that WaPo had to deal with were avoiding Apture links to content that might pose copyright issues and experimenting with the windows that would pop up. They decided that a "delayed hover" of the cursor instead of a mouse click, which would launch the pop-up.

"Some people don't like the action on rollover," Brady remarked. "It's something we're going to look at to see the impact on our readers. God knows they're not shy about telling us what they think of new features."

If the pop ups are well-received, WaPo plans on implementing them on all the blogs and most of the articles.