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 past 30 minutes, and whether or not the succumbed to that desire. They were also asked to gauge each desire on a scale from mild to “irresistible.”

In total, 10,558 responses were recorded and a total of 7,827 “desire episodes” were reported by participants. The results of the team’s study will soon be published in the Psychological Science journal, however preliminary data provided to The Guardian suggests the highest rate of “self-control failures” were tied to social media services.

“Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success,” said Wilhelm Hofmann, the leader of team conducting the study. Hofmann suggests people may fail to resist social media so much because there is no obvious or immediate downside to checking services like Twitter or Facebook. He does warn that these services can ultimately be a huge drain on users’ time, however.

“Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist,” Hofmann said. ”With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs – long-term as well as monetary – and the opportunity may not always be the right one. So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still ‘steal’ a lot of people’s time.”

President Obama will be hosting his first Google+ hangout tonight at 5:30 p.m. Eastern. In the discussion, the president will be answering questions that were submitted over the past few weeks through YouTube. Google maintains that the White House has had no role in which questions will be selected. Google’s team will instead choose the top-rated questions among those submitted, ensuring there will be several different issues discussed. The event will take place in the Roosevelt Room of the White House and is scheduled to last 45 minutes. The hangout will also be streamed on the White House’s web site, and reporters and press cameras not permitted inside during the event. Obama has previously hosted town hall meetings on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, all of which received harsh criticism and claims that the President ignored subjects that drew the most questions.

Read [Google+] Read [CNN]

Twitter announced recently that it now has the ability to, and will begin to, censor content on the social network by country. “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” the company said in a blog post Thursday. “Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there.” Twitter gave France and Germany as examples, two countries that ban pro-Nazi rhetoric from being posted on the Internet. Previously, Twitter would have had to delete specific content worldwide in order to prevent it from being visible, but it can now remove content on a country-by-country basis. Read on for more.

The company’s announcement has caused some to worry Twitter might cross a line that is already blurred. For example, the new policy could prohibit a country’s citizens from using Twitter as a means to band together and stage an uprising. No doubt much of 2011′s Arab Spring uprisings were fueled by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and censorship could have killed the powerful voices that helped topple a number of regimes.

“We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld,” Twitter said. “One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can’t. The Tweets must continue to flow.”

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Twitter finally appears to be preparing a new wave of attacks on the malicious spammers that have overrun the popular social network during the past year. Web security firm Dasient on Monday announced that it has been acquired by Twitter. ”Since its inception, Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse,” the firm noted in a blog post. “In 2009, Dasient launched its web anti-malware platform, capable of scanning URLs and websites for the presence of harmful content. In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads. Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites.” The firm is seen as playing a large role in securing new self-service advertising efforts Twitter is preparing to roll out in the near future. A secondary benefit to end users, however, is that the link-spam currently plaguing members of the social network may be quelled as part of Twitter’s efforts with Dasient technology.

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Twitter on Thursday announced a complete redesign of its twitter.com homepage and its iOS and Android applications. “It’s now easier and faster to see the information that matters most to you,” Twitter explained. “Immediately access your favorite features from the left-hand side. Photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in Tweets so you can see the whole story at a glance. And now everything in Home will appear consistently across computers, iPhones, and Android mobile phones.” We found that Twitter’s homepage has been tweaked ever so slightly: information about your profile, trending topics and “who to follow” has been moved to the left side of the page and the timeline is now on the right. It’s clean, though, and easy to use as always. The iOS application seems more limited than before, and it takes more digging to get to what we want. We’re sticking with Tweetbot on iOS for now since it offers a much more robust feature set.

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Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system is poised to give Apple’s iPad and Android-powered tablets some tough competition according to social chatter following Microsoft’s public unveiling of the OS earlier this month. Social media listening firm Mashwork analyzed Twitter conversations between June 15th and September 22nd of this year, and found that opinions of Microsoft’s next-generation operating system are overwhelmingly positive at this early stage. Read on for more.

The majority of the 65,968 tweets Mashwork analyzed were posted during the period in time surrounding Microsoft’s recent BUILD conference, of course, and the firm says the bulk of Windows 8 chatter comes from developers, tech savvy individuals and early adopters. About 15% of the tweets analyzed were comprised of people sharing their initial reactions of the OS, and the sentiment was positive; 47% of people were excited about Windows 8 while 20% were skeptical.

17,811 of the Windows 8-related tweets compared Microsoft’s upcoming platform to iOS on the iPad or to Android, and the chatter was overwhelmingly in favor of Windows 8. 63% of tweets comparing Windows 8 to iOS found Microsoft’s OS more compelling, and almost all conversation comparing Windows 8 to Android leaned toward the former.

Interestingly, early opinions of Microsoft’s next-generation OS favored tablets for the most part, and opinions on the platform’s potential on laptops and desktops — Microsoft’s bread and butter — were mixed. 44% of tweets discussing Windows 8 on traditional PCs did not believe Windows 8 would work well in this environment, but that could be due in large part to Microsoft’s focus on tablets and the Metro UI during its BUILD keynote. Almost all of the 5,271 tweets Mashwork analyzed discussing tablet hardware were optimistic or intrigued.

41% of all Windows 8 tweets analyzed focused on features. In this group, 34% people were interested in Windows 8′s speedy boot time, 24% were interested in Xbox integration, 20% discussed Microsoft’s Metro UI and 22% covered other features such as live tiles, cloud integration and Microsoft’s app store.

An infographic outlining all of Mashwork’s findings follows below.

We’ve already seen an 11-minute walk-through video comparing a new Windows 8 beta tablet to an iPad 2 running iOS 5, but there are plenty of features Microsoft is cooking up that didn’t make it into the beta release of the OS. In a new video, Microsoft highlights a handful of currently unavailable applications that make use of the oft-praised Metro user interface Windows 8 borrowed from the Windows Phone platform. In the video, Microsoft shows off several apps including Mail, Calendar, People, Messaging and Photos, which features seamless Facebook and Flickr integration. The People application also features Facebook integration, pulling Facebook friends and address book contacts into a single stream. Microsoft’s full demo video follows below.

Facebook is expecting to acquire a total of 20 new companies in 2011 in an effort to better compete with Twitter and Google, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The social network purchased 10 new companies last year and just one in 2009, but has already acquired 13 various firms this year. Most recently, Facebook purchased the group-messaging service Beluga, which was created by several former Google employees, and re-released it as the “Facebook Messenger” product for the iPhone and Android smartphones. In an interview with Bloomberg, Facebook’s director of corporate development Vaughan Smith explained the strategy behind Facebook’s acquisitions. “Two years ago we didn’t have a track record in acquisitions,” Smith said. “While we expected them to work well, it was still a crapshoot how they’d turn out. We’ve built a culture that supports entrepreneurs, and it’s working incredibly well.” Facebook other big purchases this year include Snaptu, design firm Sofa and Push Pop Press.

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BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has agreed to work with London authorities as they begin their investigation into recent riots. According to some Londoners, rioters were using RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service, along with social networks such as Twitter, to organize the attacks. “It is clear that technology is being used, including in demonstrations, to direct people and undermine the police,” London’s deputy assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh told Bloomberg. “It is not for us to to moan about this, but to adapt policing style and deal with it.” RIM typically prides itself on the security of its BBM service and has denied access to governments worried the chat platform could be used for planning terrorist attacks. “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London,” RIM wrote in a recent tweet. “We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.” Read on for more.

Despite RIM’s efforts, one Member of Parliament, David Lammy, has called on the Canadian company to suspend BlackBerry Messenger services while the riots continue, Reuters said. “This is one of the reasons why unsophisticated criminals are outfoxing an otherwise sophisticated police force,” Lamme tweeted. “BBM is different as it is encrypted and police can’t access it.”  Twitter isn’t giving up information as quickly. A spokesperson for the social network told Bloomberg that it would require a “subpoena or court order” before giving the police access to private user information. Read on for more on how one group of hackers is reacting to RIM’s cooperation.

A hacker group who calls themselves “Teampoison,” recently broke into RIM’s official BlackBerry blog and warned the company to stay out of the riots. In a letter, the group said:

If you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, we have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we_WILL_make this information public and pass it onto rioters.

Teampoison said it was afraid that “innocent members of the public” carrying BlackBerry smartphones “at the wrong place at the wrong time,” could be “charged for no reason at all.”

Read [Bloomberg] Read [Reuters]

Microsoft has released a new video that shows off several of the People Hub enhancements in Windows Phone Mango. The video walks viewers through a new notification Live Tile system for contacts that can be pinned to the homescreen. After a contact has been pinned, the Live Tile will quickly alert you of a new email, message, Twitter or Facebook status, missed calls, and more. If you tap into the card, Windows Phone Mango will show you an entire history of the conversations you’ve had with that person. We’re loving what we see so far and can’t wait for the release. A recent leak has suggested we can expect it, along with new devices, in September. Hit the jump for the video.

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Microsoft accidentally spilled the beans on a new social network it has been working on called “Tulalip.” According to VentureBeat, a splash page for the the social network appeared shortly on Socl.com on Thursday before it was immediately taken down. In an effort to conceal its mistake, Microsoft issued a statement. “Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest,” Microsoft said. It’s unclear if Tulalip is a legitimate social network or if it really is just an “internal design project,” but given the similarities between Tulalip’s user interface and the tiles found in Windows 8 and Windows Phone, it would certainly be a nice fit.

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Twitter now delivers an astonishing 350 billion tweets each day, the company said on Friday. ”Delivering 350 billion Tweets a day is a terribly fun engineering challenge. But, it doesn’t capture how passionate our users are,” the company said from its official Twitter Engineering account. Coincidentally we’re sure, the news comes just one day after Google bragged that it had amassed 10 million Google+ users in just two weeks, and that these users collectively share 1 billion items each day. Google+ has quite a way to go before it is anywhere near as popular as Twitter, of course, but it’s certainly doing well for a 2-week-old product.

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We recently caught up with singer and entertainer Sean Paul, who’s in the middle of promoting a brand new single, to check in with him about how technology influences his life and career. From his addiction to his iPad and how he uses GarageBand for music production, to Twitter, to how he recently dumped his iPhone to switch back to a BlackBerry… we covered it all. Check out the full video interview after the break.

BGR Interview is a series of interviews and conversations with executives, influencers, tastemakers and innovators, covering the mobile and consumer electronics industries.

Spotify has teamed up with Klout, the online social influence measuring website, to offer U.S. invites to its unlimited streaming music service that launched Thursday morning. Simply sign up for a Klout account to get started and, if you have enough influence across various social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you could qualify for immediate free access to Spotify. Spotify’s free ad-supported service is currently available by invite only in the U.S., though the paid services are open to all. Klout is also offering one month of Spotify Premium service if you get five of your friends to sign up. We’re loving Spotify so far and if you want to skip the wait without paying, Klout is definitely your best bet.

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When we last heard from social media listening firm Mashwork, we learned that future smartphone buyers were much more interested in purchasing the Samsung Galaxy S II than the 4G-friendly Motorola DROID BIONIC. Mashwork is back on Monday with some more interesting findings: according to the firm’s latest research, 45% more people prefer Netflix over Hulu Plus than vice versa. Pulling data from 10,283 relevant tweets between June 28th and July 6th, 2011, 29% of all users prefer Netflix over Hulu Plus for streaming movies and TV shows, while 20% prefer Hulu Plus over Netflix. Also of note, 51% of those accounted for in Mashwork’s study use both services and are hoping to cut the cord with their cable or satellite TV providers. Hulu certainly would like to have been positioned better in the study; Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed at a recent Allen & Co conference that Hulu owners NBCUniversal, News Corp and Disney/ABC Television Group are currently trying to sell the company. Mashwork’s full infographic follows below.

As an aside, Mashwork is looking for feedback from BGR readers. The company was blown away by the feedback it got after we covered its Galaxy S II vs. DROID BIONIC study, and it wants to know what comparisons our readers might like to see in the future. Do people want a more expensive high-end iPad 2 to compliment the current model? Does QNX really stand to right the RIM ship? Let us know what questions you want Mashwork to help answer in the comments section below.

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