Addicted to Facebook? You're Likely Urban and Affluent

Twitter, Path blamed in privacy controversy

(NEWSER) - Leading smartphone apps are taking a lot more of our information than we realize. If you use Twitter's "Find Friends" feature, the company receives every phone number and email address in your address book—a fact that Twitter hadn't clarified, the Los Angeles Times reports. The company now says it will fix the problem. But it's just one of many companies storing user information with a view toward ultimately using it for advertising. More»

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

It involves whining about a sandwich

(NEWSER) - How to be an ace tweeter? Megan Garber at the Atlantic pores over a new study and starts her lesson with what not to do. This would be "The Most Annoying Tweet Imaginable":

• "BREAKING: Last week I had a #sandwich that was SO HORRIBLE, it made me want to #scream. Seriously, why can't they make better #sandwiches?"

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»

Facebook engineers come up with way to revert to old Google searches

(NEWSER) - A few Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace engineers critical of Google's new search protocol spent the weekend cooking up a way to modify searches so they revert to the way they used to be. A new "Don't Be Evil" bookmarklet—ripping off Google's own mantra—was created by Facebook software engineers and its product director, reports the Los Angeles Times . The bookmarklet, available on the new website Focus on the User , returns searches to the old days before Google launched Search Plus Your World , which capitalizes on Google+ . The changes infuriated Facebook and Twitter managers and others because users were more likely to be directed to Google+ profiles. "When Google's engineers are allowed to focus purely on relevancy, they get it right," says a comment on Focus on the User. So "try a more relevant Google," urges the site. Google officials were unavailable for comment. More»