A recent study showed that social networks like Twitter and Facebook are potentially more addictive than cigarettes or alcohol, and now we may have an idea why. A group of scientists from MIT in Massachusetts, IULM University in Milan and two other laboratories in Italy found that people showed physical and psychophysiological responses while using Facebook similar to those exhibited by people while playing a musical instrument or engaging in other creative activities. Beyond wanting to use Facebook for obvi...

A new study suggests that social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are more difficult to resist than cigarettes or alcohol. A team from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business recently conducted an experiment involving 205 people in Wurtzburg, Germany to analyze the addictive properties of social media and other vices. Participants in the week-long study were polled via BlackBerry smartphones seven times per day and asked to report when they experienced a desire within the p...

Erik Qualman from Socialnomics recently published a new video that shows the power of social networks today. The most stunning fact, to us, is that social media has surpassed porn as the top activity on the web. The video, which lists a number of compelling facts, also said that — in the United States — Facebook gets more weekly web traffic than Google. Similarly, 20% of all divorces are now being blamed on Facebook. Have you ever thought about taking a class online? This stat may pique your interest: a r...

There are countless methods research firms use in an attempt to amass useful data for their analyses, and perhaps one of the most underutilized sources of sentiment at this point in time is social chatter. Several progressive firms have emerged recently, however, and they see the value in scouring the social web for freely-available data, and that data can be extremely valuable to researchers and businesses alike. Case in point: using online social mentions and opinion between April 1st and June 21st as a g...

BGR recently had a chance to catch up with actor, comedian, musician, producer, host, tech-lover, and now father, Nick Cannon, to see how tech has impacted his life and career. Nick is one of the most prominent Sidekick users around, so we wanted to find out if T-Mobile’s first Android-powered Sidekick managed to keep him reeled in. We also wanted to see how the advent of social media has impacted his life and career — Nick has over 2.5 million Twitter followers, and we’re sure many of you will...

We’ve just been given word that AT&T will be launching the LG Encore in four days on September 5th. The Encore is a full touchscreen feature-phone that packs a 3-inch display, dual band HSDPA/UMTS, quad band GSM, 3 megapixel camera with video recording, micro-SD card slot, and aGPS. The device will run AT&T’s Social Net, Adress Book, and Navigator programs and will have up to three hours of talk time. Hit the jump to check out the full AT&T memo. (more…)

Lost in the hubbub surrounding smartphone powerhouses like the DROID X and iPhone 4 is the fact that the average person simply wants a phone that makes calls. To satiate this need, and throw in a few extra feature for good measure, T-Mobile today announced the immediate availability of the LG Sentio. An affordable device that brings to the table a 3″ touchscreen, 3 megapixel camera, visual voicemail and 3G connectivity. A UI with a set of customizable widgets as well as Social Buzz, an application that ...

Yesterday, social networking site foursquare announced that it had successfully secured an additional $20 million in series B venture capital funding from: Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Foursquare, explains exactly what the VC will be used for:With this new round of financing, our main priority will be to expand our organization to supplement the amazing core team we’ve assembled already. [...] We’re hoping to build a world-class engineering organization, ba...

Another day, another scandal involving social media websites. Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook — along with MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga, Digg and Twitter — have been sending personal information about their users to advertisers without consent. Depending on how much information users opted to make public on their profile, advertising firms such as Google’s DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media were able to obtain information as innocuous as the user’s I...

The timing could not be better worse. In the middle of a privacy crisis which has seen countless users delete their accounts, a script for an upcoming movie based on the youthful exploits of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has leaked out. Produced by Kevin Spacey, “The Social Network” portrays Zuckerberg (played by 26-year old Jesse Eisenberg) as a drunk satyriatic whose creation of the popular social networking site was spurred on by heartbreak after his girlfriend dumped him at the age of 19. ...

Even with thousands of curious people picking away at the file system, it’s always amazing how some things slip through the cracks for a relatively long period of time. Gunning For Safety was snooping around in iPhone OS 4.0′s file system and found multiple references to social media integration for the Contacts app. More specifically what as found was a .plist file for Facebook contacts. It would allow users to add their friends Facebook profile to their contact card just as they would their emai...

According to The New York Times, Twitter will today announce its first serious attempt at a revenue earning model. Through an advertising program known as Promoted Tweets, companies will be able to purchase the rights to keywords and have their ads strategically placed into related user search results. Not without transparency, Promoted Tweets will labelled as such. According to Twitter, the key benefit of the program is companies will be able to spread their message without fear of it being overlooked. How m...

One of our trusty Verizon Wireless sources has let us know that Verizon will be launching the Samsung Reality on April 22nd. It’s definitely not a smartphone, but the Reality will pack enough punch to get most people happily through the day with 3″ touchscreen, horizontal QWERTY slider, 3.2 megapixel camera, VZ Navigator, V CAST, visual voicemail, 3.5mm headphone jack and one-touch access to your favorite social networking sites. We’ve yet to establish what the Reality will go for, but we c...

If you didn’t skip past this post, the odds are that you’re a BlackBerry user and Twitterer. And if our assumption is correct, then you’ll probably want to set your alarm clock for 9PM ET, as RIM has informed us that’s when it will release a public beta of Twitter for BlackBerry. We gave you a sneak peek of the app in February and weren’t very impressed with some of it, but that was a very early beta. By the looks of the change log we were sent (available after the jump), a lot o...