The Facebook Effect: Social Media Dramatically Boosts Organ Donor Registration

A social media push boosted the number of people who registered themselves as organ donors 21-fold in a single day, Johns Hopkins researchers found, suggesting social media might be an effective tool to address the stubborn organ shortage in the United States.

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Making Sense of Patterns in the Twitterverse

If you think keeping up with what’s happening via Twitter, Facebook and other social media is like drinking from a fire hose, multiply that by 7 billion – and you’ll have a sense of what Court Corley wakes up to every morning. Corley has created a powerful digital system capable of analyzing billions of tweets and other social media messages in just seconds.

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Facebook Profiles Raise Users’ Self-Esteem and Affect Behavior

A Facebook profile is an ideal version of self, full of photos and posts curated for the eyes of family, friends and acquaintances. A new study shows that this version of self can provide beneficial psychological effects and influence behavior.

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Teens May Be Getting Picky, but Don’t Count Facebook Out Yet

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Casting a Cultural Spotlight on History of Internet

The Internet has been understudied as a political and cultural formation, Stephanie Ricker Schulte argues in her new book, Cached: Decoding the Internet in Global Popular Culture.

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How to Get More Followers on Twitter

What do all Twitter users want? Followers – and lots of them. Looking at a half-million tweets over 15 months, a first-of-its-kind study from Georgia Tech has revealed a set of reliable predictors for building a Twitter following.

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Boston Bombings Unhappiest Day in Five Years, New Sensor Shows

The day of the Boston Marathon was the saddest day in nearly 5 years of observations by a team of scientists from the University of Vermont and The MITRE Corporation. For the first time, results from their "hedonometer" are being made available to the public for free at a new website.

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Study Examines Why People Quit and Come Back to Facebook

With more than a billion active accounts worldwide, it can be easy to forget that some people don’t use Facebook. A study by Cornell University researchers suggests that “non-use” of the social networking site is fairly common – a quarter of Facebook users take breaks from the site by deactivating their account, and one in 10 completely quit.

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AP Twitter Hack Proof That ‘Kids’ Social Media Is All Grown Up

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What Drives Activity on Pinterest?

Researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Minnesota have released a new study that uses statistical data to help understand the motivations behind Pinterest activity, the roles gender plays among users and the factors that distinguish Pinterest from other popular social networking sites.

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