The Social Network paradox

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Hi there. Wanna chat? I’m hip, scruffy and funny.

Over the years, there’s been a radical change in the way we interact with our networks of friends online. It used to be that we had a few of our friends (online or offline friends) on a service, allowing us to connect to friends through the Internet and see what their activities were. Where the Internet used to be a somewhat scary world full of strangers, we suddenly had friendly anchors to explore that world with. Sure, most of our friends weren’t online, or at least not using the same services, but the familiarity was comforting and the ability to see what a few of our friends were doing allowed us to find new content and new friends.

We fell in love with sites that made us feel like there are people out there who are similar to us, who we are talking to and having common experiences with. But then, some of these networks — Facebook and Twitter in particular — began to grow explosively…

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Does Facebook promote drug and alcohol abuse in teens?

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Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and others, which displayed images of teens abusing alcohol and drugs, “constitutes electronic child abuse”.

 According to a  new study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University suggests that teens who use social media are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.

 

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Facebook climbs to no. 3 video site in US

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Facebook is gaining momentum in the video realm.

Facebook is already the largest photo site in the U.S., and now it is climbing up the charts for online video. Facebook now ranks as the third largest video site on the Web in terms of unique viewers according to comScore, with an estimated 51.5 million people on Facebook watching a video during the month of July. The month before it was No. 6. It passed Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom. Only Vevo (with 62 million monthly viewers) and YouTube (158 million) are bigger.

It is only a matter of time before Facebook passes Vevo, but can it ever take the crown from Google/Youtube?

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NYPD forms new unit to track troublemakers on social media sites

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The NYPD has formed Facebook and Twitter units in order to track down and monitor criminals and criminal behavior on social media sites.

The New York Police Department has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

 

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College students are addicted to technology: study

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Students love technology.

It’s a fact that college students are obsessed with technology.  Key surveys were performed recently to gauge students’ tech use scientifically.  And OnlineEducation.net has made an infographic based on results from the student/technology study. (Infographic)

 

 

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Five ways technology is getting worse

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Our technological world has plenty of pitfalls.

If you feel like you’re scrambling to keep up with technology, you’ve got plenty of company as technology has been moving forward in leaps and bounds. There’s not a gadget on the market that doesn’t aim to make our lives easier, but now we’re tangled up in a strange new world. It’s a complex web of tweets and roaming charges in which we we hunt for open power outlets with the urgency of our ancestors foraging for their next meal.

 

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A third of gamers use real world money to buy virtual goods

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Visa-owned PlaySpan with research firm VGMarket have released a new study on how and what gamers are spending on virtual goods. Nearly one-third of the general gamer population has used real world money (as opposed to virtual currency) to purchase virtual goods, according to the study. Console games with online play account for the majority (51%) of virtual purchases using real world money, with social networking games (30%) coming in at second.

 

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