Internet Psychologist
Who is your best friend? Is it someone who you see fairly frequently or someone who you only bump into once in a blue moon? Whose opinion do you value most in your circle of friends? The person who you know well? Or the person who you have hardly any …
Small business owners believe social media usage is a complete waste of time. That’s the conclusion from a study completed by Ad-Ology, a marketing research organisation. For each question asked, over half of the 1,000 respondents said that social media was “not beneficial”. And in some surprising data, the research …
Most business people do not use Twitter; they can’t see the point. But, shortly into the New Year, the point is going to hit them sharply between the eyes thanks to two business deals that Twitter has just signed with Google and Microsoft. If you are not using Twitter in …
Even people who are avid users of social networking sites prefer to be face-to-face. According to a study by the audience analysis company Crowd Science, 92% of social networkers prefer face-to-face communication. Interestingly, though, a significant slice of people prefer social networking communication to the telephone. We would rather …
Entertainers top the charts on a study of Twitter influence. According to the phone manufacturer, INQ, the most influential people on Twitter are mostly entertainers and celebrity sports people. Fourteen of the Top 20 influencers are entertainers and well-known sporting legends. There are only two business people in the list …
Children who get bullied online should rightly be protected; so too should adults who get “cyberbullied” as it is called. Today, though, a major row has erupted between the police and Facebook over a seemingly innocuous little “button” that helps people cope with online abuse. Jim Gamble, the CEO of …
What’s the biggest breakthrough in human health in the last couple of hundred years do you reckon? is it antibiotics? Or, perhaps, anaesthetics? Or what about scanner technology? In spite of these significant developments in human medicine, they are not as revolutionary in health terms as the installation of sanitation. …
Imagine teenagers in their bedrooms right now, hunched over their laptop, tapping away on their keyboard and checking out their favourite tracks on iTunes or MySpace. It’s an image that many “do-gooders” would have us believe is all too common and which is really bad for youngsters. Will using the …
Twitter users love the system and are very passionate about the benefits it brings them. But increasingly, Twitter is looking like it is on its deathbed. High profile celebrities, such as Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) have left Twitter and Stephen Fry threatened to leave but returned. Facebook continues to rise, …
Now don’t get paranoid, but as you sit there reading this, someone, somewhere in the world is probably talking about you. If you are in business – and particularly if you run a big business – there’s little doubt that people are mentioning your name, or your products, in pubs, …
Business leaders in the corporate world are showing double standards as far as social networking is concerned. A new study reveals that half of American companies ban the use of Facebook in the office. Yet at the same time businesses use Facebook to research potential employees. It seems that what’s …
Most business people are social networking “wallflowers”. They sit on the sidelines looking in, but don’t take part. Indeed, in spite of all the buzz about Facebook, for instance, 80% of the world’s Internet users haven’t even signed up for it. And of the 300m people who have joined, most …
Social networkers often find they are in breach of “rules”. Last week, for instance, players in the US Open Tennis championships were warned against using Twitter. They are not alone, the National Football League in the USA has banned the use of Twitter in some circumstances. And social networks themselves …
American social scientists have been spying on mobile phone users to find out exactly what they are doing. It’s all part of an ongoing international research project in the USA, Finland and Kenya which has shown that we tend to prefer to network with people close to us. In spite …
Twitter users have forced the owners of the popular website to change direction. The users have effectively hijacked the site and led to a visible change in what Twitter is about. When Twitter was launched it asked “What are you doing?”. But the front page now says “Share and discover …