What it reveals is how people are taking control of their online lives and the shift in behaviour that is fundamental to the online experience. It shows how User Generated Content can mean many different things.

• Wikis are charting the development of how knowledge is acquired and processed.
• There are also clear differences between those people creating content, those editing content, and those viewing this type of new content.
• Social networking describes the linkages between people and the communities that cluster around content.

"The era of content creation has begun and it's here to stay", explains Caroline Vogt from Microsoft's Digital Advertising Solutions team. "We need to stop thinking about internet users and more about internet participants. People really recognise this power that they now have and that presents specific challenges for the marketing industry. This is a democratic environment in which the consumers can be the creators of content."

Brazil was revealed to be the most flirtatious with the Google-owned Orkut site proving to be 'ultra-addictive': photos of social life are big. In France there was a strong culture of personal expression and blogging, with the most personal photos being placed on Windows Live spaces. In the US there was a more sophisticated behaviour with different spaces reflecting work and private life. In the UK the strongest characteristic emerging is the photos of people's social life and the importance of how these web spaces are providing a glue between people's work and personal lives.

For advertisers there's a fear of going into an unmanaged media environment and Microsoft have taken the learnings from this research and developed some simple guidelines for how to harness these new spaces.

One of the key elements emerging is how virtual connectivity is deepening real world friendships.