Those people who click heavily have a number of other characteristics of note. "Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000," the study said, and they "are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers."

These numbers probably speak for themselves, and will mean different things to different people, but we do hope that our unusually engaged readers will enjoy checking out the services of RWW advertisers. :)

There has been no mechanism for instruction for and no interaction among MIT OCW students. Until now.

At the beginning of this academic year, MIT OpenCourseWare and OpenStudy joined forces in order to provide an interactive environment for those studying certain MIT courses. OpenStudy, a social study network that originated at Georgia Tech and Emory University, allows users to work collaboratively and to answer one another's questions.

Steve Carson, MIT OpenCourseWare's External Relations Director, told ReadWriteWeb that MIT tried to have a BBS several years ago to foster discussions about courses, but that there were never really enough traffic for any one course. And it's this experience, perhaps that made the pilot program for the OCW OpenStudy groups only tackle three MIT courses: Introduction to Computer Science, Single Variable Calculus, and Chinese I.

The response, says Carson, has been "extraordinary." There are now 3000 students participating in the CS study group, 2400 in the calculus study group, and 800 in the Chinese one.

More Students, More Courses

And seeing this response, MIT and OpenStudy have added more study groups - there are study groups for ten courses now - which in just a couple of week's time, have elicited enrollment from hundreds of students.

According to Phil Hill, OpenStudy's CEO, "Our goal is to bring a more social learning experience to students on MIT OpenCourseWare by ensuring they don't have to study alone. Seeing so many of them now working together from all corners of the globe is a great first step." And this global element is important, adds Carson, noting that participants will almost always find someone online in the study groups.

Carson says that the response points to new ways for the MIT OpenCourseWare program to expand as it's clear OCW learners are interested not just in the availability of the course materials but in a community in which to share and discuss the ideas they're learning.

Reseachers J. Patrick Seder and Shigehiro Oishi at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville discovered that smile intensity from a single Facebook profile photo in the first semester of college predicted self-reported life satisfaction three and a half years later, at the time of college graduation.

This type of study isn't actually unique to Facebook, however. A 2011 study by Harker and Keltner showed that female students smiling in their college graduation yearbook photos from 1958 and 1960 were reportedly happier 30 years later. A similar study by Abel and Kruger (2010) found that professional baseball players who smiled more intensely in archival photos lived seven years longer than those who didn't smile much.

People who smile more in their public Facebook photos tend to have better social relationships. Past research, which the study thoroughly references, shows that people who smile in photos are generally warmer and friendlier than their sad face counterparts. The smilier they are, the easier time they have with social relationships. Heightened smiling intensity in said photos correlates with greater life satisfaction, mostly through good relationships with others.

Wait, but what about extroverts? The researchers found that smile intensity did not significantly correlate with self-reported extroversion. Of the subjects they studied, they did, however, find that first-semester social relationships satisfaction (when the study began) was an important link between smile intensity and future self-reported life satisfaction. So just because someone appears extroverted on Facebook doesn't mean they're satisfied - it just means that they're extroverted and so they probably know lots of people.

One caveat to the study (specifically study one): Researchers worked with students who were college freshmen in the fall 2005, and used Facebook when it became available to most colleges. In September 2006, Facebook became available outside of the academy. The first study worked with 92 participants (35 male), which is a rather small sample size. All study 1 participants are Facebook early adopters.

The news coverage of this study seem to make the assumption that generally, Facebook was at least partially (or even in the case of Yahoo! News, completely) responsible for the students' scores being lower. But it seems to me that there are too many outside factors that aren't being accounted for to make a causal link with Facebook in this case. First, the student themselves denied Facebook use was causing their bad study habits and lower test scores. It makes just as much sense to say those students are looking for distractions from their studies, and socializing is certainly a popular student pastime, whether it be in person or on Facebook.

It was noted that undergraduate students and students who participated in extra-curricular activities were both more likely to use Facebook and have a lower GPA. If there is a connection with Facebook use, I think it would be more reasonable to say that these students would be distracted by online socialization whether Facebook existed or not. This is also a theory that was put forth by Aryn in the report:

"It may be that if it wasn't for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades.  But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online."

As long as everyone is guessing what the data in this report really means, you might want to read up on the term continuous partial attention, the state in which you multitask, but are motivated by a desire not to miss anything. More studies have proven that people who multitask (think texting on a phone while driving) already end up doing each of the tasks worse, and if you include the willingness to be continuously distracted by online goings-on, it could definitely mean that critical scholastic skills such as rote memory and concentration are noticeably affected.

A new study suggests that people are more likely to give into the urge to check email and their Twitter account than they are to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. While the study headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University's Booth Business School was limited in size, covering just 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85, it seems to confirm what many of us have suspected for years.

The study was primarily focused on willpower as opposed to addiction, and the moments when people were forced to resist urges to partake in an activity or deal with conflicting urges, such as the urge to sleep and the urge to stay out socializing. Sleep and sex generally trumped other urges, but checking media and work were generally put ahead of socializing and shopping urges.

"Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success," Hofmann said.

The study found that resistance to all urges declined as the day wore on, and that people seem to do a better job of resisting the urge to smoke or drink than many may have thought, given the addictive nature of both.

"With cigarettes and alcohol there are more costs - long-term as well as monetary - and the opportunity may not always be the right one," Hofmann said. "So, even though giving in to media desires is certainly less consequential, the frequent use may still 'steal' a lot of people's time."

Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.

SimpleUsability studied four of the 21 brand pages that went live last month. While Twitter had previously allowed promoted tweets and corporate accounts, the brand pages launched in December more closely resemble the way Google+ and Facebook handle corporate presences. Twitter brand pages include space for company logos and taglines, as well as space to embed videos and other media.

While some initially heralded Twitter brand pages as a "game changer," that scenario may not play out. One of the major problems facing brand pages, as noted in the SimpleUsability study, is that once someone starts following a Twitter account or brand page, there is usually no reason for them to return to the page as all of the new and relevant information will show up as tweets in the followers own timeline.

Among the study's other findings:

• Too much of a "corporate feel" will deter users, but it's still important for companies to use their Twitter pages as an invitation for consumers to learn more about their brand.
• Contests and promotions help draw repeat visitors to a brand page and get them to stay on a page longer.
• Brand pages that come across as sales-heavy will lose visitors.

Users ultimately want brand pages to show a "more human side" to the company, the study said. The HP site, for example, scored well because it did not emphasize sales and advertising, and even made an effort to respond to individual followers. Some of the tweets on the page responded to customer complaints, which improved transparency and credibility as viewed by page visitors.

Advertising network Chitika released a study today showing that when perusing Google search results, users are more likely to scroll past the first couple of results than they are from a PC. The study showed that 20% of iPad users click the top search result in Google, a decline from the 34% who do so from a personal computer.

"It appears from the data that iPad users are more willing to scroll to find the answers to their queries, and even go to multiple pages," Chitika wrote in the study. "Perhaps this can be attributed to the touchscreen interface, or the fact that search behavior isn't yet ingrained in tablet users like it is in desktop and laptop users."

Chitika said that it is not certain if this is true across all tablet or touch screen devices or whether it is just an "iPad phenomenon" and has promised to study mobile gadgets

Chitika is active in studying analytics of web trends. In August, 2010 it was one of the first to report that Bing had overtaken Yahoo in search market share and did a study shortly after the first iPad was released on where the early adopters call home. The company spends a lot of time studying on search trends, which would make sense for an ad network that wants to know where the eyeballs are going to be.

The increasing use of text-messaging by teens - and increasingly often, by younger children - has given some people cause for concern. They argue that the abbreviations used in texting are detrimental to literacy development. Spelling, grammar, phrasing - these are all somehow poised to suffer, critics of texting contend, because of the use of shortened words and sentences. Soon, they predict, students' essays will be filled with LOLs and L8Rs.

But a new study from Coventry University finds no evidence that having access to mobile phones harms children's literacy skills. In fact, the research suggests that texting abbreviations or "textisms" may actually aid reading, writing and spelling skills.

Better Spelling Through Texting?

Based on a series of reading and spelling tests, researchers found a "significant contribution of textism use to the children's spelling development during the study." The study made it clear that it wasn't the access to the phone per se, or even the text-messaging as much as specifically the use of textisms that aided the development. The reason, writes Dr. Clare Wood, one of the authors of the study, "is partly explained by the highly phonetic nature of the textisms that are popular within this age group, as the phonological and alphabetic awareness that is required for the construction and decoding of these textisms also underpin successful reading development."

It's also possible, the researchers add, that textisms add value because they are "another way in which students are exposed to print outside of school." And while sure, it's not the same as having students exposed to "great works of literature" on the weekends, it looks like texting is a good influence nonetheless.

"Users will experience a slow, subtle degradation, so it's back to the bad old days of dial-up," Nemertes President Johna Till Johnson told USA Today. "The cool stuff that you'll want to do will be such a pain in the rear that you won't do it."

According to the report, cable and phone companies, which provide 94% of the United States' broadband access, must invest about $55 billion to upgrade their networks to cope with the coming bottleneck. That is far more than planned, says Nemertes.

"Two years ago, nobody knew what YouTube was," said Johnson. "Now, it's generating 27 petabytes of data per month."

Much of the cost of upgrading will be in installation of higher-capacity lines, according to the Nemertes study. Verizon's new fiber optic service, FiOS, which reaches 1.3 million users in the US (myself included) is a start, but the study implies that the upgrade may not be happening fast enough to stave off an impending bandwidth crunch.

91% of the girls in the study said they used Facebook regularly, while only 28% said the same about MySpace. Demonstrating that teens do not eschew Twitter, 38% said they had a Twitter account, and averaged about 8 Tweets per day.

Girls' Self-Image, On- and Offline

The study also found that girls see a disparity between their online and their offline image. 74% of girls agreed with the statement that "most girls my age use social networking sites to make themselves look cooler than they really are." And 41% admit that this describes themselves.

But many girls also indicated that they think they portray a more well-rounded image in person than they do online. In person, girls say they come across as smart (82%), fun (82%), funny, (90%), kind (76%), and cool (55%). But when they describe how they come across based solely on their online profiles, they describe themselves as fun (54%), funny (52%) and social (48%). These results suggest that girls downplay positive characteristics about themselves online, particularly their intelligence and their kindness.

And the study also found girls who have a low self-esteem are more likely to admit that their social networking image doesn't match their offline image. Furthermore, girls with low self-esteem are more likely to claim the image they portray online is sexy (22%) and crazy (35%).

"Safe" Social Networking

Although the vast majority of girls say they've talked with their parents about how to be safe online (85%), 50% admit they aren't as careful as they should be. And only 59% said they think they have complete control over what happens with the videos, photos and other information they post online.

Many girls said they're concerned with how things they've posted online may hurt them in the future. 42% say they fear they won't get into the college of their choice, 40% say they worry they might miss out on a job opportunity, and 40% fear they'll get in trouble with parents or teachers based on their social networking posts.

Girls' Online Reputation

68% of girls have had a "negative experience" on a social networking site, such as being bullied or harassed. And nearly half of the girls in the study - 46% - said they think that social networking actually damages their personal relationships, causing jealousy among friends. 40% said they'd lost respect for a friend because of something she or he had posted online.

But the news isn't all bad. 56% said that social networking does help them feel more connected to their friends. And 52% say they've gotten involved in a cause they care about through a social network.

But overall, this research suggests that social networking does not necessarily boost girls' confidence and self-image, and girls online are (often knowingly) taking risks - with their reputations and their self-esteem.

But now, we shop online for everything from books to sporting goods to clothing to organic food and a recent study

Amazon.com was the only online-only brand of the top-10 trusted brands.

The results released today in the report come from an ongoing study, which has been running for 12 years and includes respondents from more than 30 countries.

According to a summary (.pdf) of the full report, only 1% of brands achieve scores of over 120, with 27% getting scores of 105 or higher.

When it comes to choosing which option to go for, the most you can do is take each service for a spin, run a couple searches for stuff you like and see what comes up. You can get a general feeling of which one's a better fit and go with your gut, but wouldn't some hard data be nice?

The results show Rdio coming out on top by a number of measures, despite the fact that Spotify is known to have a bigger selection overall. Several respected artists were only availble on Rdio, including Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Queen and Thelonius Monk. Both services have a ton of exclusive albums, but only Rdio can boast Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon or London Calling by The Clash.

Spotify (at 4.8%) had slightly fewer exclusive albums than Rdio, on which 6.8% of the albums were available exclusively. Nine of the 100 most popular albums were only on Rdio, while only one of them was exclusive to Spotify.

To be fair, Rate Your Music is probably not the most authoritative source of what's popular. A more complex analysis might mash together datasets from Billboard, Last.fm and, if possible, Amazon user reviews to come up with a more comprehensive list of popular albums.

Not included in the study were services like Grooveshark and MOG, the latter of which does not make an API available to developers.

As much as the CTAM tries to spin these current results as positive, though, the current discussion feels somewhat reminiscent of the debate over the "death of the newspaper." The CTAM's study and press release completely ignores that bringing the Internet to your TV was barely worth the hassle until just a few months ago. Now, however, with the arrival Google TV, cheap boxes from Roku and the Boxee Box, bringing the Internet to the living room is getting easier and with online services like Hulu+ and Netflix, getting interesting content to these devices is also pretty straightforward. DVRs are now a standard feature in most households, so switching from time-delayed viewing to online TV is a relatively easy transition for many households, though the fact that a lot of live sporting events and a number of prominent shows aren't available yet is surely holding some potential cord-cutters back. The CTAM study ended in August. It'll be interesting to see what these results look like 6 to 12 months from now.

The study tracked data from 2006 to 2009 in the 408 U.S. cities with the highest rates of Twitter adoption. The findings clearly demonstrate that mainstream media mentions, coupled with the geographic and socioeconomic proximity of users, fueled its growth. A video mapping the data shows initial growth in San Francisco, where Twitter is based, then spreading to Boston.

"The big question for people in industry is 'How do we find the right person or hub to adopt our new app so that it will go viral?' But we found that the lone tech-savvy person can't do it; this also requires word of mouth. The social network needs geographical proximity," said Marta González, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering systems at MIT, in a statement. "In the U.S. anyway, space and similarity matter."

While the MIT study only looked at Twitter, the broader implications are clear. From an economist's view, the current period of free apps and Web services gives them a chance to look at why some succeed and others do not. The MIT study could also theoretically be used to understand the growth of more recent social success stories like Instagram and Spotify.

"Nobody has ever really looked at the diffusion among innovators of a no-risk, free or low-cost product that's only useful if other people join you. It's a new paradigm in economics: what to do with all these new things that are free and easy to share," said MIT graduate student Jameson Toole, a co-author of the paper.

The study was also novel in that it did not keep mainstream media mentions as a constant, but instead tried to track when the media responded to user mentions and vice versa. The study, and the video, covers through April 2009, when Kutcher challenged CNN to see who would become the first to reach one million followers, bringing Twitter decidedly into the mainstream.

Each circle represents a U.S. city containing Twitter users. Circles grow in size as more users sign up in that location over time. When a location has reached a "critical mass" of users, or 13.5% of all eventual users have signed up, the location turns red. The line being drawn across the center of the screen is a time series of the number of new users that signed up across the whole country in a given week.