Social Networks Make You Fat and Happy

Social networks can make you fat and happy.

That's not an opinion, that's a fact revealed by medical data collected over the past 50 years.

Simply put, our friends heavily influence our habits and happiness, from our weight to smoking (and quitting) and our overall joy.

All these things have a viral quality to them. You eat more, they eat more. You stop smoking, they are more likely to quit. Happiness is similarly contagious.


This image shows the Framingham social network, mapping the people of Framingham, Mass. in 2000.

Blue = sad
Yellow = happy
Green = shades in between

A quick look makes clear that sadness (blue nodes) and happiness (yellow) tend to cluster and spread together.

And the technology that powers online social networks does not change the basic dynamics common to all social networks.

It turns out that Facebook operates like most other social networks. It transmits the happiness virus just as well.

Just knowing that makes me happy.

This is Your Brain on Twitter (vs. Facebook)

The science of social media is starting to attract attention.

At least one scientist is investigating the effects on working memory of using Facebook vs. Twitter.

His conclusion (oversimplified) is: Facebook makes you smarter. Twitter makes you dumber.

More specifically, Twitter requires less mental processing and fewer synapses firing. And reduces attention span ... as if people these days didn't already suffer enough from this problem.

MySpace … the Next AOL?

MySpace is looking like the first AOL of the 21st Century. And not in a good way.

TechCrunch noted that Twitter has overtaken MySpace in traffic in the UK. That day is surely nearing in the US and globally.

The question: Is an AOL-like decline inevitable for MySpace?






One data point suggests that MySpace’s downturn is not only relative.

Daily pageviews per user has dropped by 50% for MySpace over the past 2 years.

It is steadily losing the competition for eyeballs.


Obviously, the rise of both Facebook and Twitter has been at the expense of MySpace, still the second largest social network in the world.

But MySpace is heavily dependent on US users and traffic.

Facebook has successfully broadened beyond the US, which now accounts for only 31% of Facebook’s user base. Twitter draws 59% of its traffic from outside the US.

For MySpace, 65% of its users still come from the US. And it’s been around for years. That is a recipe for stagnation.

Twitter and Facebook have room to grow, as uptake rises in other countries.

Unless MySpace identifies some new, compelling services or finds a way to grow its brand globally, it looks like a contender for the next AOL.