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.

Woofer: Antidote to Twitter, or More of the Same?

With a 1,400-character minimum, Woofer in theory offers salvation from our growing Twitter-dom. Or Twitter-dumb.

The three principles of woofing: 1. Be eloquent. 2. Use adverbs. 3. DEA (don't ever abbreviate).

Noble statements.

Encouraging a person to think, compose and express. Macroblogging over microblogging. The anti-Twitter.

Not so fast. In reality, Woofer seems to merely encourage more idiocy and verbal spam.

Hence, a “woof” ten minutes ago that reads:

I am Awesome. I am [Name Deleted]! Hear Me Type! Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis …

When people have nothing to say, why can’t they just say nothing?

Twitter Babble

I have nothing against Twitter. I have an account, rarely used and never tweeted. Mostly because I have neither the patience nor the interest for useless chatter, and Twitter is full it.

Don’t take my word for it. A new study looked at a large, random sample of tweets and found – surprise! – nearly half of all public tweets (40.5%) are empty babble.

Most tweets were not shameless self-promotion (think Ashton Kutcher), just pointless drivel. Think tweets like “I am scratching my ass right now.” Pure noise. Twitter spam.

Yes, Twitter proved invaluable to Iranian protestors risking life and liberty to protest recent elections. But “news” came in last place among categories counted, less than 4% of all tweets.

So who is projecting all this mindless crap? Twitter reaches 27 million people per month in the U.S., so the answer is easy …Tweets like us.