facebook

Facebook is a mirror while Twitter is a megaphone.

That is the core of a University of Michigan study into the two dominant social networks and how people use them.

Lead researcher Elliot Panek and colleagues carried out two studies. In the first, college students were asked how they used social media and given personality assessments. Among this age group, narcissists preferred to use Twitter to broadcast their opinions to others.

Facebook's star is on the rise, as are its earnings, which were revealed yesterday at $2.2bn. Not a bad chunk of change. Predictably, FB stock rose 15%.

The admission that younger teens are using the network less also had a dramatic impact, deflating the good news and seeing the stock drop.

Facebook has relaxed the rules on page based competitions. We're all familiar with the ubiquitous "press like to win" and, for now at least, it's a legal and encouraged mechanism for building your fanbase. So what has changed?

Five years ago, who would have predicted that 140 million Facebook users would grow to an inconceivable 1.15 billion? Katerina Kardamaki @LimeTreeOnline breaks the story down...

Richard Jones, CEO at EngageSciences, talks us through the recent changes to Facebook's promotion guidelines. While at first glance it seems that you might have to take an awful lot of sour with the sweet, EngageSciences have a solution...

After the fuss, it's fizzled out. Facebook has launched hashtags, but are they working?

Perhaps I follow people and brands that don’t realise that hasthags can be used, but I think it's more likely they just don't give a monkey's about them.

It’s one of the more popular narratives spun by technophobes and the perennially grim: the proliferation of mobile devices is facilitating an erosion of the very fabric of civilisation.

Naysayers delight in the perceived paradox that all of those social media platforms designed to bring people together are instead driving them apart. The online ego, they warn, is eclipsing the collective conscience via the promotion of a life lived inches from a pixelated screen.

Sharing and declaring are the foundation of social media, but businesses are still unable to decide on one issue: is there such a thing as the ideal post?

What makes consumers like a post? What makes them share? Answering these questions is tough, but can lead to an increase in awareness and stronger customer relationships.

Whatever the reason may be, we all use Facebook on a regular basis.

But we have never spotted to ask the question, is Facebook bringing us together or pushing us apart?

Aaron Balick explores this in abridged version of his original post which you can read here.

If history (or comic books) teach us anything is that success needs teamwork. 

Chinwag knows this. With Social Media Week London 2013 powered globally by Nokia, coming up we want to introduce you to the Advisory Board whose support and brains ensure the event succeeds.

Here is the first half of the all-star team...

How does social media affect (or reflect) the basic ways in which we understand ourselves and others? One question seems to resurface: is the development of “Web 2.0” is changing us in some way, or is it simply a technological development in which the same old psychological traits express themselves differently?

Social media has penetrated into the social and interpersonal lives our connected-up society rapidly and continues to grow. Facebook alone reports that it has more than 800 million active users. Unsubstantiated reports across Twitter inform me that it is fast approaching one billion. There must be something very compelling about social networking.

Oversharing or Misunderstood? Automatic Sharing in Social was hosted by Betapond on Thursday 27th September 2012 at the Advertising & Marketing Hub at Facebook.

When Facebook unveiled Open Graph and made it possible for apps such as Spotify, Netflix or social readers for the Guardian, Independent or Washington Post to share automatically, it divided opinion. “Frictionless sharing” is a great way to discover new stuff from friends but some think it’s Too Much Information.