This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Scordit

Quick Pitch: A social site where you share the stuff you’ve bought or want to get, and win prizes by doing it!

Genius Idea: It’s nice to share your new purchases or “scores” with friends or to let people know what stuff you really want to score in the future. Likewise, it’s fun to see what your friends are scoring or adding to their wishlists. Scordit handles both tasks, plus integrates with Facebook and Twitter, making sharing and wishlisting easy.

Similar services to Scordit exist — we covered one called Hollrr last month — but Scordit is a little bit different in that you can browse or search for items (and it can poll places like Amazon.com for images or product names) you both have and items you want.

Scordit also issues users points for doing certain tasks — like adding scores or wishes to your profile, inviting a friend to the service, or discussing products you already have. Each point gets you a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card each week and towards a bigger prize each month. The prize this month, for example is an iPad.

In the future Scordit will also let you earn coupons and discounts on items in your wishlist, based on the points you a have earned.

We like that Scordit supports account creation with both Twitter and Facebook and that you can selectively tweet or share your scores or wishes on those services.

Like Hollrr, we do wish that there was a bookmarklet that could make adding items to your scores or wishes even faster. These sorts of sharing sites have a lot of potential but being accessible from outside the main app is something we really want to see.

How do you share your scores with friends? Let us know!

Disclosure: Scordit is founded by Shane Snow, who has contributed to Mashable.

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Tags: getglue, hollrr, product sharing, scordit

Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the "social rut." What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they're being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone. While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it's not really social. That's why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that's exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.

A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active.

The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By that definition though, only 21% of Twitter users are active users.

There’s a great deal of interesting data in the breakdown. Only 26% of Twitter users had 10 followers or more by December 2009, while only 40% were following 10 people or more (in fact, a majority of Twitter users, 51%, were following less than five people).

In terms of tweets, the report estimates that 34% of Twitter users hadn’t tweeted even once, while a whopping 73% of Twitter’s users tweeted less than 10 times. That means nearly all of the tweets on the social network were coming from about 1/4 of the userbase. Power users dominate.

Barracuda Labs also analyzed Twitter’s growth over time, and the numbers are consistent with previous reports that show while Twitter grew like wildfire in early 2009, it has dramatically slowed down in recent months. Going back further to early 2008, the report estimates that the microblogging tool grew by just 0.31%. However, with the quick rise of media coverage and the influx of celebrities such as Oprah and Shaq, Twitter use grew by 20% in April 2009 before dropping off to 0.34% growth in December 2009.

While the news isn’t stellar, it isn’t all bad for Twitter — these metrics are moving in the right direction. A full 79% of users had less than ten tweets in June 2009, but that number dropped to 73% by December. 80% of users had less than 10 followers in June 2009, but that percentage dropped to 74% by December. If that trend continues, you’ll hopefully see a more diverse and active Twitterverse going forward.

[via MediaMemo]

Tags: Barracuda Labs, followers, stats, twitter

Over the last six months, doubleTwist, the iTunes alternative that lets you manage your music, videos, and photos, has really been stepping up its game. In October the company integrated an Amazon-powered MP3 store, allowing users to download and sync their music directly with any of hundreds of compatible devices, much as they would with the iTunes/iPod combo. And today it's adding a new feature that makes it an even more viable iTunes competitor: support for podcasts. Co-founder Monique Farantzos says that doubleTwist has built and integrated a podcast search engine with 20 times as many podcasts as iTunes offers. Rankings are based on popularity (as opposed to a simple listing that would grow unmanageable with that much content). The new feature is launching on Windows now, with Mac support for podcasts coming next month.

Since it launched last July at our Realtime Stream CrunchUp, Brizzly has been one of the best web-based Twitter apps. It offers support for viewing pictures inline, shortened link expansion, multiple Twitter accounts, and even some Facebook support. But they've been quiet in recent months. Now we know why. The Brizzly team went into hibernation because they made a couple of acquisitions, and have been working on a new feature. First, they bought one of my favorite Twitter iPhone apps, Birdfeed. One of the earliest apps to gain Twitter geolocation support, I had been worrying that Birdfeed would go extinct because developer Buzz Andersen recently joined Jack Dorsey's mobile payment startup, Square. But since the acquisition (which actually occurred in the November/December timeframe), Andersen has been working closely with the Brizzly team to wrap the app in its new skin.