Researchers at Western Illinois University studied the Facebook habits of 294 students, aged between 18 and 65, and measured two "socially disruptive" elements of narcissism – grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and entitlement/exploitativeness (EE).
For a few seconds, Lovey studied the Facebook photograph: Bernadette in a short dress, holding a cigarette and a beer bottle, Aaron to her right, another man to her left, the two of them equally in possession of her in a flagrantly drugged and drunken state.
I'd studied the Facebook and Twitter rankings of the contestants to see if that could indicate strong grassroots support...and it was a bust at predicting who would go home.
It has been observed that the average interaction level with neighbors in the social network is very low [14] and often decreasing with time [13]; in agreement with this, studies on the Facebook interaction graph [11] reveal that the social links that are effectively exploited for user-to-user communication are a minority.
Another study using the Facebook dating app Are You Interested reached a similar conclusion: black women have the lowest rate of response.
However, the YouGov study relates to the Facebook newsfeed, which prioritises posts using a complex algorithm based on numerous inputs, such as how often it is liked, how long someone spends reading it, how much it is shared and who is sharing it.
While this study will make the Facebook ads team cringe, I suspect it makes Mark Zuckerberg quite happy.
"You can identify adolescents and young adults on Facebook who are showing signs of being at risk, who would benefit from a clinical visit for screening," said Dr. Megan A. Moreno, a principal investigator in the Facebook studies and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As with the Facebook study, the LinkedIn report uses the Bebo acqusition to generate a valuation (which I doubt is particularly accurate given the very different natures of the sites).
What's potentially more intriguing about the Facebook study is that it sheds light on how the site could be used to study other questions.
