One question: who's this Scotty guy everyone is talking about? Enjoy this video of one mother's reaction to his American Idol win.

Have you noticed how much bolder organizations are when they have momentum? We're like that aren't we?

When we have momentum we'll take more risks because it feels safer. It feels like we can't lose. We want to keep pushing ahead and ride the wave as long as possible.

But where does momentum come from?

After all, momentum doesn't appear out of nowhere.

It doesn't arrive under the tree for you to unwrap one lucky morning.

You can't pick up a box of momentum at the local superstore.

It grows out of hundreds of uncomfortable, uncertain, unassured movements.

The funny thing about momentum is that in order to get it you have to work through the hard part of moving in the first place.

You have to take a first step. You have to start pushing and keep pushing ahead.

Everyone likes momentum except when it means it's time to move when you don't have it.

In those times the feel of momentum's wind in your hair is less enticing than the familiarity of stale air where you are.

This is not a time to be scared, reserved, or timid.

Business and marketing opportunities have never been more in your favor.

You've never had this much access with so few barriers.

The secret to momentum is moving in the first place and doing it again tomorrow.

Now move. Momentum is out there.

141.4: There were 141.4 million unique U.S. online video viewers in April. The average viewer spent an average of 4 hours, 31 minutes viewing video over the course of the month, according to the Nielsen report.

30% of "prime time" Internet traffic: According to new data, Netflix is the largest single source of Internet traffic in North America. With 30% of Internet traffic during "prime time" evening hours, it's clear that Americans want options instantly available. The study showed that Netflix accounts for 22% of daily Internet traffic. [Thanks to Ray for sharing this stat.]

34 hours, 39 minutes per week: The average American watched 34 hours 39 minutes of TV per week in the last quarter of 2010. Interestingly, the heaviest users of traditional TV are adults 65+ (47 hours 33 minutes per week), followed by adults 50-64 (43 hours per week). Trailing all other age groups, teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV (23 hours 41 minutes per week). I have to admit I was surprised to see the older adults watching so much more TV than teenagers.

I guarantee this will be one of the strangest things you'll watch this weekend. Who would have ever thought that combining Darth Vader with trombone skills and salsa dancing would work. Oh wait, it doesn't. Enjoy the salsa dancing, trombone playing, Darth Vader. This is why I love the Internet. I could have gone my whole life and never known this existed!

23 hours per week: This research from the University of South Carolina shows that men who sit (driving, at desks, watching TV, etc.) for at least 23 hours per week have a 64% higher risk of dying from heart disease than men who sit less than 11 hours per week.

The study of men as risk even included those who exercise regularly. Here's the key quote of the whole story: "Let's say you do 30 minutes of walking five days a week (as recommended by federal health officials), and let's say you sleep for eight hours. Well, that still leaves 15.5 hours in the day."

346 billion ad impressions on Facebook: According to the new comScore report, display advertising is as strong as ever. Facebook is leading the way with 31% of all display ads.

16.7 million people check-in: Though momentum seems to have slowed on services like Foursquare and Gowalla, the idea of checking in is far from dead. In March, 61.7 million mobile users checked-in somewhere. That's just over 7% of the mobile market.

Funny, unexpected, and a great way to get to know your friends a little bit better. Enjoy the human bicycle video.

By conservative accounts we could say social media is now five years old. Blogs have been around since the late 90s, Facebook launched to college students in 2004, YouTube launched in 2005, and Twitter launched in 2006. While these well known technologies were born several years ago I think somewhere in 2009 I began to get the sense that social media was going mainstream.

In 2009 it felt like we really began to see brands promoting their Facebook pages all over the place. Most websites were including a blog for the first time, and people were talking about "the Twitters", "Tweeter", "Twits", and other adaptations of Twitter all over the place. In 2010 we saw this increase further still. This year it doesn't appear to be slowing either.

So here we are. Social media is mainstream. Or is it?

The technology is mainstream in that there are few companies who aren't trying something in social media.

The awareness is mainstream in that there are few people who haven't at least heard of Facebook or blogs or YouTube.

Subscriber numbers to Facebook are slowing because so many people are already in. There's just not nearly as much room for growth as there was a few years ago.

I think social media is mainstream if that's all we're talking about.

Unfortunately, social media is more than technology.

It's more than just knowing what Twitter is or creating a Facebook page that you never update anymore.

Social media is mainstream but the way to think about it isn't. The technology is mainstream but the best mindset to approach the technology isn't there yet.

The social media mindset understands that you don't have to ask for permission to set up hashtag.

The social media mindset understands that people don't want you selling stuff to them all the time.

The social media mindset understands that a short, genuine blog post written by you is better than something twice as long written by a professional to sound like you.

The social media mindset realizes that automating your efforts doesn't help you even if it saves you some time.

The social media mindset is more interested in earning attention by creating remarkable, share-worthy stuff instead of safe, typical, expected things that don't accomplish anything.

Social media is simultaneously mainstream and not. The technology is. The mindset isn't. How much of your time do you spend working on improving your technological efforts rather than the mindset necessities?

If you're thinking about things like content quality, conversation transparency, creative angles, counterintuitive possibilities, and other things like that, you're thinking with the social media mindset. If you're only thinking about more followers, more "Likes", qualifying the people who are allowed to Tweet, or which keywords to load into a boring blog post so Google likes it more, you're not thinking with the social media mindset. You're just aware of social media and treating it like everything else you've always done.

Social media works with technological awareness and the savvy of understanding how it connects with people. The mindset is vital to using social media well. The good news is you can still get it.

[HT to Laura Click for sparking some of these ideas in a conversation she and I had recently. Thanks Laura!]

40%: the percentage of iPad owners who "have not used the device to read a single ebook." Are we to assume that Angry Birds is more interesting than ebooks? Hmm.

20%: the percentage of people who show support for local businesses by clicking the "Like" button on the business Facebook page. Only 13% write a review.

100,000: the number of subscribers who have paid for digital access to the New York Times since they decided to stop giving all online content away for free. This will be interesting to watch in the coming year to see if this trend continues.

This video is surprisingly funny. It's a dog wanting to play catch...with a statue. What more can you ask for in a video of the week?

It's easy to rent a mailing list and blast a million people on email.

It's better to have a list of people who chose to hear from you.

It's easy to use a service to automatically follow people on Twitter and target people who will likely follow you back so your numbers are more impressive.

It's better to be followed by people who actually want to connect with you because you're interesting.

It's easy to run a contest to boost your Facebook fans.

It's better to be engaging regularly so people want to talk with you often.

It's easy to have someone else write your blog posts for you.

It's better to do it yourself since nobody can really be you as well as you can be you.

It's easy to start without a plan.

It's better to know why you're doing what you're doing.

It's easy to seed the comments on Amazon so your product reviews are favorable.

It's better to fix the product when the reviews aren't favorable.

It's usually easier to do the easy thing.

It's often better to do the hard thing.

Social media done right requires hard work. Don't look for shortcuts that undermine everything that makes social media strong.

62%: The percentage of Americans who feel like they're stuck with out of date mobile phones due to the rapid advances in technology and mobile phone agreements that lock customers into plans and limit upgrading.

27 million: The number of individual pieces of online content that is shared between people in the United States each day. Social media and email are the two primary channels for sharing content.

48.5%: The number of people in a recent survey who said they are connected to the web  "from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed."

88%: The number of smartphone users who have looked up local information and taken action on the information they looked up within one day of the search. Mobile search and business opportunities continue to be a place that organizations need to be thinking about regularly. [Thanks John Ellis for sharing this research.]