In The Wilderness Downtown, Chris Milk transforms Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait" into an interactive film that takes place in your hometown. More than just another amazing Chrome Experiment, this project serves as the kind of promotion (for AF, Milk, Google Chrome and HTML5) AdSense just can't buy. If Ted Leo, Robyn, OK Go, We Have Band and a long list of others hadn't already made it clear: the internet belongs to musicians brave enough to unleash pure imagination on the world.

Yes, we've seen something like this before from Google. And at first blush, YouTube Movies (which launched today) might look more like a direct threat to the Hollywood Video bargain VHS bin than to the Hulu and Netflix video syndication platforms.

But with a monetization plan already in place and a platform recently optimized for mobile, Google's foray into film may prove to be more gripping than Hulu Plus and the new Netflix iPhone app combined. After all, who else offers a suite of editing, publishing, advertising and rental services under the same roof?

In other words, YouTube now has the keys to the studio, the movie, the venue and the audience. That should be enough to make the competition — which may soon include Hollywood — do a double take.

You know every terrible kids sports movie, where they put together a ragtag team of misfits that goes on to challenge the standing champions in the big game? Well, in the social media world, Google is the coach of that team.

We just got done telling you that Google bought Slide, when it's been reported that Google is buying Jambool, another piece to their social media puzzle. Jambool created Social Gold, a way for developers to monetize their games and applications, and they took a pretty bit hit when Facebook Credits came out.

With all these buyouts, we're starting to get a picture of what Google's social strategy might be: monetized, heavy in gaming, with easily categorized friends.

Google bought Slide, a technology company that makes games, widgets and add-ons for social media sites. Slide is the largest third-party developer of Facebook applications, and is probably best known for the Super Poke function.

Google Engineering Director, David Glazer, stated that they, "don’t have any detailed product plans to share right now," but this certainly strengthens Google's social media presence. And the rumors that Google is starting their own social network, Google Me.

It also strengthen our previously stated hypothesis: Google Me will be a social network without a hub; a Facebook without a facebook.com. Essentially it will be a Like button that's tied to your Gmail account and/or Google Profile that third-party sites will add to their social jewelry section.

You've undoubtedly already heard that Facebook rolled out the beta version of Facebook Questions. Mashable gives you the rundown here.

Maybe not the most exciting feature, but sounds pretty awesome, right? So here's my issue: how long before corporations turn this into platform to promote their own products?

Would you be more likely to check Facebook instead of Googling in the privacy of your own browser?  Let's face it — if you're turning to a 500 million plus user social platform to ask a question, you may not want to know the answer.

OK, I'm off to think up some brilliant questions. Are you going to take the plunge?

Being ranked first for your keywords in major search engines is bound to get you a lot of clicks, but it might also help you get something you didn't expect — unquestioned trust. A Northwestern University study found:

Most students clicked on the first search result no matter what it was, and more than a quarter of respondents said explicitly that they chose it because it was the first result. 'In some cases, the respondent regarded the search engine as the relevant entity for which to evaluate trustworthiness, rather than the Web site that contained the information,' wrote researchers.

It seems to be the case that people trust Google/Bing/Yahoo! and therefore trust the results these companies give them, without question.

The paper quoted numerous students professing their particular love for Google, or talking about how Microsoft's search services are credible because Microsoft is a "more professional" company—basically, search engine brands meant a lot to the students using them, and those students seem to place credibility on the automated search rankings provided by those services.

TechCruch broke the story that Google has been secretly investing hundreds of millions of dollars in social game maker Zynga. TechCrunch spells out the details:

The investment part of the deal closed a month ago or so. A larger strategic partnership is still in process.

The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it’s a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games.

There are some pretty heavy social media implications (beyond the creation of Google Games):

1. If the rumors about Google Me are true, it's pretty clear that Zynga games (Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc) will be included.
2. Zynga benefits from this deal because they are no longer reliant on Facebook as a platform, one of their big downfalls in the latest negotiations.
3. If Zynga gets a better deal on Google Me, this might spell the end of Farmville, et al on Facebook — giving Google Me a large, nearly exclusive market on Zynga's social gamers.

Paul Adams, the User Research lead for Social at Google gives an analysis of Facebook and social media use, based on his case studies, titled  "The Real Life Social Network." A few interesting takeaways via Skepic Geek:

• A single umbrella group of “Friends” in an online network doesn’t mirror real-life and leads to problems. Support multiple independent groups of friends.
• Focusing on technology is a wrong strategy. Focus should instead be on Motivation and Goals.
• Design needs are different for different relationship types – strong ties, weak ties, and temporary ties. One solution doesn’t fit all.
• Different communication channels are needed for different types of relationships.

One of the funniest things I've ever seen is this Louis C.K. interview on Conan (team Coco for life):

Whenever my wife and are being impatient we say "it's going to space" and we both get a giggle and know that we're being ridiculous for expecting everything in life to be instant.

Well, bloggers don't have to worry about that any more. Blogger has launched its new Stats tool, which gives them real-time analytics for their blog. Of couse, some people are running their websites on the Blogger platform with custom urls, which means real-time analytics are now a reality.

Technorati has the back story on Stats:

Anyone remember MeasureMap? For those that don't - Jeffrey Veen and Adaptive Path sold their analytics platform to Google over four year ago. The MeasureMap product was built mainly for blogger. It was a great opportunity for Google to improve its own analytics platform (Urchin), which is now known as Google Analytics.

As after the acquisition, people were guessing that Google would implement it with the Blogger.com, but they never did, 'til now.

Google Analytics is far more advanced and features rich data, but don't forget, Blogger Stats provides the data in real time and there's no coding.

If Google is creating a new social network, they're timing it perfectly. Because old people are totally ruining Facebook.

roiworld reports:

Most online teens belong to a social net, and Facebook is still by far their #1 social network. But, a significant amount of teens report "Facebook Fatigue." Among those teens who have created a profile, roughly one-in-five (19%) claim "they no longer visit Facebook" or "are using it less than they did a year ago."

Of those:

• 16% are leaving because their parents are there
• 14% say there are “too many adults/older people”
• 13% are concerned about the privacy of their personal information
• 45% have just lost interest