Posts tagged Study
[STUDY] Your Facebook Friends Influence How You Feel
Feb 10th
“A cute baby dolphin for your weekend-viewing pleasure” a Facebook friend of mine writes. Under the text, I see a link to an imgur-hosted image of that amazingly adorable marine mammal. Suddenly, my day is feeling a lot better. Did I just catch a mood… on Facebook?
A new study by Facebook data scientists shows that Facebook users can spread emotions to their friends through messages, posts and status updates. It suggests that emotional contagion happens quite frequently on the world’s biggest social network. Facebook’s Chief Data Scientist Adam Kramer presented these findings at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology on January 27, 2012.
“It’s time to rethink how emotional contagion works, since vocal cues and mimicry aren’t needed,” said Kramer.
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To test this out, Kramer used a program that identified words implying positive and negative emotions in Facebook status updates. Kramer looked at status update from one-million English-speaking users over a three-day period in 2010. Each Facebook user he studied had on average 150 friends, which means that this study included approximately 150 million people. The status updates that Kramer looked at were undirected, meaning they were not directed at a specific person.
He discovered that if a user’s status update had more positive than negative words, updates from the user’s friends averaged 7 percent more positive words and 1 percent fewer negative words. The inverse results were similar for negative words posted in a status update. The results were the same regardless of when during the week they were posted.
Did friends view a users’ updates from three days before? Or did they just randomly see stuff in the news feed? Kramer said that there was no way to know. But one thing is for sure.
“Facebook users’ emotions leaks into the emotional worlds of their friends,” Kramer said.
Here’s that cute baby dolphin for your weekend viewing pleasure.
Image courtesy Shutterstock.
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Study Suggests Content Matters On Twitter
Feb 10th
Will this article get re-tweeted? According to a new HP Labs white paper, we can now predict whether or not it will become popular on Twitter.
The findings are crucial because most previous analysis of how tweets travel have focused on who has been tweeting as opposed to what they have been tweeted. If someone influential on Twitter tweets something, the conventional thinking goes, it will spread. That thinking still plays a big factor, but the new research highlights that content matters.
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Researchers analyzed 40,000 articles posted to Twitter over the course of a week in August and collected information on the agency that wrote each article, the outlet that first tweeted the article, the article’s information category and the emotion of the article’s language. What they found is some articles are more tweetable than others.
Among the key findings predicting the likelihood an article will be tweeted and retweeted:
- Sourcing was the biggest indicator. The more reliable the source, the better chances of a tweet.
- Stories in popular categories will spread more rapidly (as Megan Garber at The Atlantic notes, “Health! technology! cats!”).
- Mention a known person, place or organization and you’re also more likely to get your story tweeted (which explains why celebrities’ names often litter the trending topics column whenever I log into Twitter).
What does not, however, seem to influence an articles tweetability is emotion. Emotional articles were no more likely to be spread than objective articles, the researchers said. “Brand matters; information matters; tone, however, doesn’t seem to make much of a difference when it comes to sharing,” Garber wrote in her thorough analysis of the study.
The researchers classified articles “low-tweet,” “medium-tweet,” or “high-tweet.” They said their model is 84% accurate.
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[STUDY] 61% of Social Media Users Feel So Close To You
Feb 9th
Sometimes little things like a sweet comment on Facebook or a Twitter friend calling your tweet a “favorite” can really make a social networker bee’s day.
A new study from Pew finds that for the most part, adults are kind to each other on social media sites. In fact, 85% of adults say that most of the people they come across on social media are rather kind; only 5% say that people are “mostly unkind,” which would imply rude or mean. An additional 5% say that it’s all situational. On the whole, adults have positive experiences on social networking sites. A total 68% of SNS users had an experience that “made them feel good about themselves,” 61% said something on social networks “made them feel closer to another person.” Of the generous and helpful variety, 39% of users said they saw acts of generosity and 36% said they see other user behaving in generous and helpful ways.
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Not everything is peaches and cream, though.
There are some social media users who don’t feel so happy-go-lucky. Not everyone experiences kind, helpful behavior on social networking sites. That would be about 18% of users; another 5% claim to never see any generosity or helpfulness at all.
Sometimes interactions on social networking sites have negative outcomes. Of the people surveyed by Pew, 26% of adults experienced negative outcomes. Of that percentage, 15% said bad experiences ended friendships, 12% resulted in a face-to-face argument or confrontation, 11% said those interactions caused family-related problems, 3% got into a physical fight with someone based on an interaction, and 3% got into trouble at work. About 13% of adult SNS users say that someone else acted rudely toward them in the past year.
Unless you live in a world that resembles the movie Young Adult, you probably don’t think of yourself as an adolescent. On social networking sites, adults tend to be more positive and less negative than teenagers; 41% of SNS-using teens had at least one bad experiences versus 26% of SNS-using adults.
Dear White Guys, Please Read This
Pew points out that non-white people, women, parents and millennials are more likely to see content that offends them. Of that group, 42% of black SNS users and 33% of Hispanic SNS users frequently saw language, images or humor that they found offensive compared to 22% of white SNS users. Taking a look at this in terms of age, 34% of millennials (ages 18-34) found some material offensive, compared with only 17% of Gen-X users (ages 35-46). The survey doesn’t even give the tiny percentage of Baby Boomers who felt offended by material on SNS sites. Additionally, 29% of women were offended versus 22% of men, and 29% of parents with small children found offensive material versus 24% of nonparents.
Who Did Pew Survey?
Pew surveyed 2,260 adults ages 18-and-up over the period of July 25-August 26, 2011. Of the people surveyed, 1,047 were SNS and Twitter users. The margin of error is plus-or-minus three percentage points. A total 64% of adults surveyed used social networking sites. 87% had a profile on Facebook, 14% on MySpace, 11% on Twitter, 10% on LinkedIn and 13% on other social networking sites.
Images courtesy Shutterstock.
Do your friends on social networks make you feel good about yourself? Share your experiences in the comments.
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Unmasking an SEO spammer and rewarding their competition (a case study) – ZDNet (blog)
Feb 9th
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Unmasking an SEO spammer and rewarding their competition (a case study)
ZDNet (blog) By Stephen Chapman | February 9, 2012, 2:26am PST Summary: Starting with the comment of an SEO spammer, I bite off more than I can chew when I investigate just who the spammer is. If you read just one case study all month, let this one be it! |
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[STUDY] 59% of Customers Don’t Know About Their Banks’ Social Media Presence
Feb 9th
In ComScore’s report on The State of Online and Mobile Banking, it cites social networks as a space where banks are creating a presence, and improving their capabilities. But do any of the banks’ customers even know about this? Apparently not.
Even though financial institutes have increased social networking activity, ComScore says that only 18% of customers knew that their financial institutions had a presence on social networks. A total 59% had no idea, and 24% were unsure of what their financial institutions were doing on social media sites.
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The data shows that customer visits to banks’ Facebook pages have increased by nearly 25%, whereas on Twitter and LinkedIn that number has enjoyed less much less growth.
For institutions that are creating a presence on social media sites, take heed: customers are not interested in solving customer service issues on those sites. If Facebook did update its brand pages to include private messaging options, this might change. For now, however, customers who do follow their financial institutions on social networking sites are mostly interested in retail, credit card and online shopping offers.
As social commerce continues to try and find its place on Facebook thanks to new social apps, and payment services like PayPal build a presence on Facebook, will banking be the next move? Or are social networking sites just a place for banks to build their brand? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Image via Shutterstock.
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Study: PDF May Be Creating More Paperwork Than It Saves
Feb 8th
In 2008, a UK-based Adobe Acrobat engineer remarked, “I believe in striving to minimize the use of paper, but I do believe that we will probably never reach a position where paper is eliminated from our workplaces.” This morning, his predictions were clearly confirmed by a study published by the information professionals organization AIIM.
The study shows that while the exchange of PDF files as e-mail attachments has reduced the volume of paperwork traded between IT professionals, that reduction is not only minimal, but quite possibly made up for. Over three-quarters of IT professionals surveyed say one of the first things they do with a PDF-based invoice… is print it out.
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And after those 77% of AIIM’s 395 respondents print out their invoices, some 16% then scan them right back into the system for use as PDF attachments… some 77% of whose recipients print them right back out again.
Of the 358 respondents who provided detail for AIIM’s study, entitled “The Paper Free Office: Dream or Reality?” some 10% said they actually print out their PDF invoices multiple times. And 10% say they print out at least one copy for archival purposes.
“Although many of the larger companies are pressing to have all-electronic billing and payment systems, we are still a long way from this ideal,” the study reads. “Around a quarter or respondents are able to feed PDF invoices and fax images directly into a capture and/or workflow system. Another fairly common paper-intensive practice with faxes, especially with contracts and application forms, is to print the fax, sign it, and feed it back into the scanner or fax machine.”
Ironically, some 45% of the documents being printed on paper originated, respondents said, not from scanned paper to begin with but from a word processor.
AIIM’s respondents tended to fall into two groups: those whose companies do not scan their paper-based forms (including invoices) prior to their being processed, and those who do. Both groups were asked to list all the costs involved in the handling process, including labor. For the former, the average cost for processing each paper form prior to mailing it was $3.63 per form. For those who do scan, the cost falls to $2.83 per form.
So companies look at the 80¢ they’re saving per form, and conclude they have the right to proclaim themselves “green.” As AIIM noted, these businesses are failing to recognize that their business processes continue to revolve around paper. One astounding finding is that almost 30% of respondents scan their mail upon arrival, ostensibly for archival purposes, but many of them with the intent of printing out the scans since businesses tend to believe paper storage to be more permanent than electronic.
The study makes this… fairly obvious suggestion: “Keying the data at source into a Web form or a mobile device, rather than filling out a paper form, will save all of these costs.”
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SEO Link Monster Review – Shocking Case Study? – CubsNet.com
Feb 7th
 PR Web (press release) |
SEO Link Monster Review – Shocking Case Study?
CubsNet.com As the day looms we realize just how much SEO Link Monster has had an impact on Internet Marketers. I've created a detailed SEO Link Monster Review video which you can watch using the link below, In that video I pretty much explain what this software … SEO Link Monster Now Available With 2012 Best Ranking Strategies – Brad and … SEO Link Monster Alert – Brad Callen Opens the Doors SEO Tips |
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Twitter is Impossible to Resist: Study Indicates Social Media Urges Stronger than Sex
Feb 6th
A new study just released by the Chicago University’s Booth Business School suggests that people find it more difficult to resist the urge to use Twitter or Facebook than to resist sex, sleep, cigarettes or alcohol. The study, which examined 205 German men and women between the ages of 18 and 85, concluded that social [...]
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[STUDY] Jonesing For A Retweet: Twitter Harder To Resist Than Cigarettes And Booze
Feb 4th
Sleep, sex and…Twitter?
A new study suggests that people are more likely to give into the urge to check email and their Twitter account than they are to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. While the study headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School was limited in size, covering just 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85, it seems to confirm what many of us have suspected for years.
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“Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist,” Hofmann told the Guardian.
The study was primarily focused on willpower as opposed to addiction, and the moments when people were forced to resist urges to partake in an activity or deal with conflicting urges, such as the urge to sleep and the urge to stay out socializing. Sleep and sex generally trumped other urges, but checking media and work were generally put ahead of socializing and shopping urges.
“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” Hofmann said.
The study found that resistance to all urges declined as the day wore on, and that people seem to do a better job of resisting the urge to smoke or drink than many may have thought, given the addictive nature of both.
“With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one,” Hofmann said. “So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”
Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.
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[STUDY] A Friend of a Friend in Real Life But Not on Facebook
Feb 3rd
Picture this: You’re at a party, and your good friend introduces you to one of their friends. You two hit it off, and boom – a new friend! You’ve just become friends with a friend of a friend. In real life, this is a common occurrence. On Facebook, a friend of a friend isn’t necessarily an actual friend.
A new study from Pew Internet discovered this and an array of other interesting facts about peoples’ Facebook friendships. The researchers found that most peoples’ friend lists were not very interconnected. In a friend list with a density of 1, everyone knows everyone. On Facebook the density is quite low at .12 with a maximum density of .42, which means that your chances of knowing a friend of a friend on Facebook fall between 12% and 42%. In its its S-1 filing on Wednesday, Facebook toted 100 billion friendships. What it probably meant to say was 100 billion connections, many of which are dormant.
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To understand the friend ties idea, here’s an example. Say you have 10 friends; this means that the number of possible friendship ties among everyone in network is 45. The average Facebook user has 245 friends, which means there are 29,890 possible friendship ties in the network. With an average density of .12 and a total number of 245 friends, that means there are only 12% of 29,890 friendship linkages between “friends.” A 1992 study from Pew found that offline social ties had a density of .36, or three times the density size of Facebook’s.
“We suspect that Facebook networks are of lower density because of their ability to allow ties that might otherwise have gone dormant to remain persistent over time,” the study says. Those ties that should have gone dormant are the people who you’ve Facebook friended from grade school, middle school, high school and other pubescent times in life. These are the people whose friend requests you naïvely and curiously accepted. This is where the Facebook “drama” potentially begins. “Facebook is a giant emotional locker,” writes Andy Kessler on the Wall Street Journal.
“We expect that new Facebook users typically start with a core group of close, interconnected friends,” the study says.”But over time their friend list becomes larger and less intertwined, particularly as they discover (and are discovered by) more distant friends from different parts and different times in their lives.”
The study also reports a curious finding: People are more likely to be friends with people who have more friends than they do. They are less likely to become friends with people who have less friends than them. Hence, the popular kid syndrome: Everyone wants to be friends with the popular kid, and few willingly try to buddy up with the loner who sits alone at lunch.
Tagging friends in Facebook photos is the only activity that the study says is associated with having more close ties. These people tend to be friends who the user interacts with both online and offline. This does not account for those awkward photo taggings that happen on the fly, without a user’s permission. Lifehacker’s Jason Chen argues that no, you shouldn’t tag someone in a photo without their permission. For if someone is truly your friend on- and offline, they’ll show some rexpect by first asking if you’d like to be tagged in the photo they’re about to upload. When it comes to more innocuous taggings, such as a status update or photo, permission isn’t completely necessary, but it’s still quite welcome.
The study reinforces findings from past research, which suggest that heavy Facebook users are more trusting than others.
Images via Nikki Lynette’s Facebook page and Shutterstock.
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