Researchers from the University of Essex have devised a way of actually measuring FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), a psychological phenomenon in which fear of missing out on something (or somebody) more interesting, exciting or better than what you’re doing becomes all-consuming.

Do you suspect you might suffer from FOMO? The researchers created an online test so you can find out.

Read more

Who’s the most influential world leader? It’s a debatable point, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more influential than U.S. president Barack Obama. Obama, of course, is on Twitter – and has been for some time – so by definition he must be the most influential head of state on there, too, right?

Wrong. At least according to one new study, which suggests that it’s Pope Francis who is actually Twitter’s most influential world leader. Pretty good going, when you consider that “he” has only been tweeting since last December.

Read more

What’s the future of Twitter?

It’s a weighty, expansive question that’s proved increasingly problematic to answer in the few years since Twitter first opened its doors to an unsuspecting public back in July 2006. Partly this is because what Twitter is now shifts continuously, making it very difficult to guess where and what it will be in just a few months time.

And partly it’s because you always have the feeling that Twitter themselves don’t really know what Twitter is, which doesn’t really help.

Read more

May 2013 research from CEFRIO reveals major social networking differences in English and French speakers in Quebec.

Canada’s second-largest province has lower penetration rates for all social sites among French speakers compared to English speakers, with one exception: Twitter.

Read more

Remember when the internet was being pitched as the saviour of commerce? Right up until the dotcom crash of 1999?

Pepperidge Farm remembers. But I digress. That dark period seems like a lifetime ago now, and in the world of digital commerce, it absolutely is: more than $50 billion was spent on retail e-commerce sales in the first quarter of this year in the U.S. alone. And that was just on desktops. Factor in mobile and tablet sales, and baby, you’ve got a stew going.

But what about social media? That, too, has been repeatedly pitched as the “saviour” of retail, albeit now in its online flavour. So how much referral traffic are platforms such as Facebook and Twitter generating for your favourite online stores?

Read more

Arbitron and Edison Research have released their 2013 Infinite Dial Report, analyzing the current state of digital platforms, and the results bring interesting insights to bear regarding Twitter.

Read more

Sharing information on the social web is a trend that is already hugely significant and growing both in size and importance all the time. But which devices are people using to share information, and to where?

Over a 30-day period, ShareThis monitored more than six billion desktop and mobile social signals, comparing the nuances between sharing behaviour on both platforms. And the results? The iPhone is the most social of all devices, and mobile sharing is dominated by Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Read more

Slightly more than half of the population of the United Kingdom will be using social networks in 2013, with further growth, albeit at a slowing pace, expected over the next few years, reveals a new study from eMarketer.

Read more

Scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow developed a software algorithm to track Twitter activity, which they used to study 51 million tweets over 11 weeks in summer 2011 and compare with output from news outlets for the same period.

The results? Twitter only breaks news before newswires “in rare incidences,” but for major events the researchers found little evidence that Twitter can replace traditional news outlets.

Read more

Harvard Medical School researchers examined the information flow on Twitter during the Boston Marathon bombings and have announced that Twitter is a valuable tool for emergency workers and others during such disasters.

Read more