The Next Big Viral Thing on Facebook: a Virus

A minority makes the experience more rewarding for the majority: Study

(NEWSER) - This might help explain why Facebook is closing in on 900 million users: Most people "receive more from their Facebook friends than they give," concludes a new Pew study . Among the findings from the one-month analysis:

• 40% of users made a friend request in the one-month period, but 63% received a request themselves
• Users hit the like button 14 times on friends' content, but received 20 likes on their own content in the same span
• 12% tagged a pal in a photo, but 35% were tagged by others

Users shatter Guinness World Record

(NEWSER) - A team of about 100 Facebook pals has collaborated to comment more than a million times on a post—setting an official Guinness record, KTXL-TV reports. The initial post was made in October in the Facebook group Ffgpioneers/gwr/attempt . (It was an innocuous post made just for this purpose.) To garner 1,001,619 comments (and counting), each user had to post some 9,300 times on average, the Huffington Post notes. The previous record was 529,335. "I'm no spring chicken anymore and I really haven’t done anything phenomenal," one of the posters said. Now she has. More»

Koobface Gang not bothering to hide their identities, location

(NEWSER) - You might think a cabal of cyber criminals who'd ripped off 400,000 to 800,000 Facebook users would be on the run and living deep underground. You'd be wrong. The so-called "Koobface Gang," makers of a Facebook worm that's done just that, is living large in St. Petersburg, Russia, the New York Times reports, and not only aren't they bothering to hide their identities, they regularly broadcast the location of their offices by checking in on Foursquare. More»

Those who use it more often think others are happier: study

(NEWSER) - One quick way to feel better about your life: Delete your Facebook account. Or, at the very least, spend less time on it. A new study suggests that the more you use Facebook, the more likely you are to believe that your friends are happier and lead better lives than you, Miller-McCune reports. Also contributing: the number of Facebook "friends" you don't actually know. The more of them clogging up your news feed, the more likely you are to think others are happier than you. More»

Mercedes installs new system, swears it's safe

(NEWSER) - Facebook has found its way inside what could be its most unlikely device yet: a car. Mercedes-Benz will soon be installing Facebook in its new cars, with a specially-designed, bare-bones version that, it hopes, minimizes the chance of someone crashing off the road while using it. The app, which was designed by Mercedes and will be announced at CES this week, focuses on a limited range of location-centric tasks—it will, for example, alert you to any friends who are nearby, or any businesses you've "liked." More»