Good news travels fast.

Especially on social networks. So says Jonah Berger, a social psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of new book (and recent SXSW talk), Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Berger and his Penn colleague Katherine Milkman dove into people’s social networking habits, analyzing the types of content people share most, with whom, when, and why. The results are pretty fascinating.

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If you’re under the impression that once something is put on the web it’s there forever, you might be mistaken. New research suggests that when it comes to major events documented on social media, we’re losing up to 11 percent of our content every year.
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Despite the massive number of followers that folks like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber boast on Twitter, they’re not necessarily the social media leaders they appear to be.

A new study suggests that the demographic makeup of fans and followers means more than the sheer number of connections you have.
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Can you predict whether someone is a psychopath in 140 characters or less? The organizers of this crowdsourced data science contest think so!
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A new study suggests that social networks like Twitter are closely linked to how our brain operates. When we tweet about our super-delicious lunch, our newest tech gadget purchase or how we’re so sick of having to wait in this link, our brains feel a rush of pleasure, much like when we get money or eat food.
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Everyone wants to be ahead of the market. If you can predict it, you can own it – making millions in the process.

We might not be able to predict the stock market yet, but Twitter is sure helping us along. According to a new study, reading into the patterns within Twitter chatter might be able to predict trends in stock prices.
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You might see them as annoying, distasteful, uncouth or exasperating, but Twitter bots are evolving. A new breed of bot can make connections between humans and grow its follower count more quickly than some Twitter newbies, having ditched the auto-tweets that try to sell you $89 iPads.
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Maybe the whole world is becoming depressed. Or maybe Twitter users are just less happy than the average person. Either way, new research shows that happiness is on the decline – at least according to billions of tweets sent over the past 33 months.
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We’re all chipper when we hop out of bed and start our morning routines, but as the mid-afternoon rolls around our mood gradually sours, says a new study which examined half a billion tweets over a two year period.
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Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that whether you used “koo” or “coo” to say something is cool gives away your location just as accurately as if you had tweeted it.

A new study reveals that regional slang is alive and well – on Twitter. Certain dialects have distinctive slang – such as the Southern “y’all” – which researchers have shown is used on Twitter as well as in everyday conversation.
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