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Will this article get re-tweeted? According to a new HP Labs white paper, we can now predict whether or not it will become popular on Twitter.

The findings are crucial because most previous analysis of how tweets travel have focused on who has been tweeting as opposed to what they have been tweeted. If someone influential on Twitter tweets something, the conventional thinking goes, it will spread. That thinking still plays a big factor, but the new research highlights that content matters.

Go ahead and check those work emails on your smartphone: a new study says it's time spent checking Facebook and other "personal" social networks that is stressing you out.

It gets worse: the more times you check your smartphone, the higher your stress levels. The study also suggested people who are used to getting lots of text messages and push notifications on their phones will feel stress levels rise if they hit a stretch where their phones are silent. In the worst cases, study subjects experienced "phantom" vibrations when, in fact, they had not received an alert.

Students who share certain tastes in movies and music - but not in books - are more likely to friend each other on Facebook, according to a study released in November that has been getting attention in academic circles.

The study has its limitations, according to authors Kevin Lewis, Marco Gonzalez and Jason Kaufman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. But it is significant in that it demonstrates how social networks can help sociologists better understand social relationships and how they are influenced by cultural preferences, while also suggesting online friendships may not be effective in helping spread cultural tastes.

Sociologists have long known that so-called "weak ties" between acquaintances are particularly effective in helping push cultural trends. What the most recent study suggests is that online friendships like those fostered on Facebook are more about strengthening ties between people with similar interests than they are about influencing neighbors.

The takeaway from an MIT study released Wednesday, tracking the early growth of Twitter, is that new Web technologies - particularly social networks that rely on adoption by other users - cannot depend solely on online buzz (or even Ashton Kutcher, for that matter).

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.

Latitude recently completed a multi-phase innovation study, Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet, which asked kids across the world, ages 12 and under, to draw the answer to this question: "What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can't do right now?" In our last post, we highlighted three themes that recurred across kids' ideas for new technologies.

1. The Digital vs. Physical Divide is Disappearing (Tech = World)
2. Why Aren't Computers More Human? (Tech = Me)
3. Technology Can Improve and Empower Us (Me = World)

We also pinpointed three key recommendations for creators of new content and technology experiences (for both kids and adults):

Download the study summary (PDF) for Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet.

Over the course of 2010, Latitude Research completed a multi-phase innovation study, Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet, asking kids across the world to draw the answer to this question: "What would you like your computer or the Internet to do that it can't do right now?" This study is part of a larger research initiative by Latitude that positions younger generations as a window into the future of technology, capable of informing tech experiences that resonate with people of all ages.

Download the study summary (PDF) for Children's Future Requests for Computers and the Internet.

At last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the GSM Association (GSMA) partnered with mobile analytics firm Zokem to publish highlights from Zokem's recent smartphone research study. Its report found that mobile applications are overtaking mobile Web browser usage in terms of monthly use. In addition, apps are now second only to messaging in usage activity, beating both voice and Web for the #2 spot.

The first in-depth user research study on the usage of the "Location" field within Twitter profiles has just been published by the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). With a sample size of 32 million English language tweets in hand, PARC summer intern Brent Hecht selected a group of 10,000 active users to study. Remarkably, he found that 34% of Twitter users do not provide a valid geographic location on their Twitter user profiles. Instead, some of these users co-opt the field to make jokes, express their love for a particular celebrity or to shout back at Twitter that their location is "NON YA BUSINESS!" Others, meanwhile, provide no location information at all.

For any related service or other research study that leverages this field to determine Twitter users' actual location, the implication is obvious. Without first parsing the tweets to remove those that don't use the location field as intended, the sample data could be corrupted. PARC already found one study where that was the case.

In November, a German market research firm released a study indicating that outside of Apple's iPhone, most smartphone owners had little loyalty to their smartphone. 56% of Apple users in global markets would remain loyal to their device, it said. Now that data has been reconfirmed by a second study, this one from mobile analytics firm Zokem. It shows that within the U.S. market specifically, iPhone loyalty is even greater.

Looking just at U.S. users, Zokem found that the iPhone beat its competitors in terms of user loyalty in 2010 by a wide margin, scoring 84% higher in loyalty rankings than its nearest competitor, Android.

Social networking will be a more popular communication mechanism than either voice or SMS, according to 31 global mobile operators cited in a new report from Airwide Solutions. The report, commissioned by Airwide and performed by research agency mobileSQUARED, asked operators across Europe, North America and in the Asia-Pacific regions what they believed would be the most popular applications and the top forms of communication in 2015.