A study released last month breaks down patterns on how narcissists use social networks and finds differences in patterns on Facebook when compared with those on Twitter.
An individual’s level of narcissism is displayed not in how many Twitter followers they have, but is more closely correlated to how many Tweets they send about themselves, according to a study by Bruce C. McKinney, Lynne Kelly, & Robert L. Duran in the spring issue of Communications Research Reports, an academic journal. But on Facebook, the opposite holds true: Narcissism was directly correlated with the number of friends a person has on the social network, and not necessarily by the number of status updates they post about their personal lives.
Social scientists are increasingly looking at online friendships and trying to figure out if they carry the same emotional baggage that real-world friendships do. A preliminary study suggests that breaking up, even if it’s on Facebook, is hard to do.
A Boston-based company is creating a system to make the workforce more accountable and eliminate inefficiencies, starting with the restaurant industry. Objective Logistics works through a restaurant's point-of-sale system to create data points. These are fed into a cloud to make your waiter or waitress more accountable and make the restaurant more money.
Google Ventures thought it was a good idea. Along with Atlas Ventures, Objective Logistics raised a $1.5 million seed round this morning to further expand its reach and capabilities. The use-case scenarios are endless.
The Digital Public Library of America, an organization dedicated to building a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all, held its first plenary meeting in Washington DC this morning and announced $5 million in funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund. "What Carnegie did for public libraries a century ago, the DPLA could--if successful--accomplish for our era," Peter Baldwin, Chair of the Donor Board at the Arcadia Fund.
The organization says it is founded on four key elements: open source code, linked meta-data, multi-media content and tools and services. What would a new world online be without a new public library?
As we mentioned last week in our article on "geospatial humanities," we have covered the use of new technology in the service of the humanities for some time here at ReadWriteWeb. Further, this trend is one that institutions are starting to pay serious attention to.
In the van you will find UCLA. The university has begun a Center for Digital Humanities that offers students an interdisciplinary minor in the use of new technology for non-technological study.