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It's probably a big "duh" but a new study has found that Twitter doesn't reflect actual life experiences (kind of like Facebook).  Or emotions. Researchers have found no evidence that social media content shared on Twitter is a truthful reflection of how its users feel, according to newswise.com It's no surprise to anyone who tweets but the study demonstrated that  Twitter users "have developed their own unique cultural behavior, conversations and identities, which shape the ways in which they present their views online," the web site reports, adding that social convention, power relationships and identity influence online conversation just as much as off-line interactions, but in ways that are not yet fully understood. Research has also shown that Tweeters are not representative of the general population. In just one example, men are much more likely to use Twitter than women.  Those who may tweet many times a day may be over-represented in any ...

We've talked about this before but yet another study says do not put a smiley on your work emails , unless you want to be thought of as well, a jerk. According to newswise.com, people who pepper their emails with smileys, or any kind of emoticon, run the risk of being thought of as frivolous or flippy, or just not serious enough to do the job. A new study has found that a smiley is not regarded the same way as a smile, and can actually have a negative impact on the initial impression created in formal work-related emails. “While an actual smile has a positive impact on creating an initial impression, adding a smiley can harm the person who included it in their email,” explains Dr. Arik Cheshin of the University of Haifa, one of the authors of the study, the website reports. In recent years, physical work meetings in offices have been replaced by email correspondence and online textual interactions. In these types of communication, it is impossible to see facial expressions....

Did you know your tweets could get sick, too? Apparently, it turns out that they change when we ourselves are sick.  According to newswise.com, opinion and emotion in tweets change when you're sick. "Opinions and emotions are present in every tweet, regardless of whether the user is talking about their health," says Svitlana Volkova, a data scientist at Richland, Washington's  Department of Energy's  Pacific Northwest National Laboratory  ( PNNL) and lead author of a recent study. "Like a digital heartbeat, we're finding how changes in this behavior relate to health trends in a community." It takes health workers weeks to discover influenza trends the traditional way: by monitoring how many sick people visit clinics. By discovering trends in real time, social media could be the game-changing solution public health workers have been looking for. But can tweets replace a health exam for detecting a rise in the flu or other health threats? Vo...

It should come as no surprise.  But did you know that m essages with moral  or emotional content go viral quicker than just about anything? According to newswise.com, t weets about political topics that include moral and emotional language are more likely to spread within the ideological networks of the sender, a team of researchers has found. Its study, which examined Twitter messages related to gun control, climate change, and same-sex marriage, points to both the potential and limits of communicating on social media. “The content that spreads the most may have the biggest impact on social media, so individuals, community leaders, and even political elites could see their influence enhanced by emphasizing morality and emotion in their online messaging,” explains William Brady, the lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in New York University’s Department of Psychology at the web site. “However, while using this type of language may help content proliferate wi...

Now I've heard everything. Want to hear from your spouse after he's buried?  Tuck an iPod logged onto twitter into his casket and you'll keep hearing from him. Though the new app, LivesOn, places users have tweeted before will keep updating the information so you'll feel like you still have a link to your loved one. Using artificial intelligence, this app -- developed by a London advertising group, of all things -- analyzes likes, Web sites visited in the past, even scours the Web for news related to these subjects, according to Damien Gayle of The Daily Mail in the UK. Not everyone agrees this is a good idea.   “I think memorializing is a good thing…but I can't see why/how this sort of service would be remotely beneficial. Coming to terms with loss is to accept that once a person has gone, they have gone for good. Who would benefit from this?” Naomi Laver, a psycho-therapeutic counselor, told the Wall Street Journal, as Michael Allen reported. And what about ...