Bob Rinderle / Business & Beyond

Fed Up With Facebook Friends?

Deals site Eversave talked to 400 women about their Facebook relationships and uncovered the love/hate dynamic that exists between women and their online friends; 84% admit to being annoyed.

 
Story source: Jolie O'Dell at Mashable; click on images to enlarge

.05% On Twitter Generate 50% Of Tweets

Interesting info from Yahoo! Research: "Who Says What To Whom On Twitter."

"By studying the flow of information among five categories (media, celebrities, organizations, bloggers, and ordinary), our analysis sheds light on some old questions of communications research.

First, we find that although audience attention has indeed fragmented among a wider pool of content producers than classical models of mass media, attention remains highly concentrated, where roughly 0.05% of the population accounts for almost half of all attention. Within the population of elite users, moreover, attention is highly homophilous, with celebrities following celebrities, media following media, and bloggers following bloggers.

Second, we find considerable support for the two-step flow of information - almost half the information that originates from the media passes to the masses indirectly via a diffuse intermediate layer of opinion leaders, who although classified as ordinary users, are more connected and more exposed to the media than their followers.

Third, we find that although all categories devote a roughly similar fraction of their attention to different categories of news (World, U.S., Business, etc), there are some differences; organizations, for example, devote a surprisingly small fraction of their attention to business-related news. We also find that different types of content exhibit very different lifespans. In particular... content such as videos and music, which are continually being rediscovered by Twitter users, appear to persist indefinitely."

8% of Online Americans Use Twitter

A new survey from Pew Research reveals surprising Twitter user data including what, to me, feels like a relatively low level of adoption given the prominence of Twitter as one of the primary social media platforms.

Twitter is most popular among Hispanic, Black, and younger urban users; 65% of users live outside the U.S.

Value Of The Easily Influenced

The most influential may not be the most popular.  In this Fast Company interview, Duncan Watts talks about the power of the easily influenced. 

Gotta love Clive Thompson's fascination with his own hair.  For more information in this area (influence, not Clive), click on Watts in the tag cloud.

Power of Relationships

The following video of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg from Nielsen 360 was publicized in Fast Company and other digital properties with regard to her comments about email going away.  I think that focus misses the real essence of her speech, which is the power of individual relationships and the unlimited ability to connect online.

Zuckerpunched!

Revealing - but not surprising - article from SAI on the founding of Facebook and the alleged, questionable tactics of Mark Zuckerberg.  I'm not willing to draw conclusions from one report, but Facebook has always struck me as a bit suspect and disingenuous in their dealings with users.

Bedrooms: More SMS, Less S&M

A Retrevo survey reveals that 16% of people think it is fine to text during sex.

"Social media is embedded in our lives. It's why people go to a restaurant and check Foursquare before they sit down with their friends," said Manish Rathi, co-founder of Retrevo, a consumer electronics shopping and review site, as reported in Ad Age. 

Bedrooms are the place to get social, but not necessarily for sex.  Retrevo found that 48% of social-media users check or update Facebook or Twitter once they are in bed, and/or before they get out of bed in the morning. That number jumps to 76% for the 25-and-under crowd, with 19% of millennials claiming they check in whenever they wake up during the night.

In-bed social media users also scan the news before leaving the sheets, although increasingly their news does not come from network morning shows; 17% check in before they turn on the TV, and 16% rely on Facebook or Twitter exclusively for their morning news.

"It's what they want to know - it's local and it ties into their social graph," Mr. Rathi said. "Will it replace 'Good Morning America'? Maybe not, but it might play an equal role, especially with breaking news as we've seen."

image credit: Gawker

Facebook Facts & Figures

Facebook.  A long infographic, but cool.  Found via Simon Mainwaring.   

Spectrum Of Online Friendship

Chart is courtesy of Mike Arauz of Undercurrent.