Facebook Spreads Your Good Emotions (and Bad)

A good mood really is contagious, even on social media. According to a new study, the mood of your Facebook updates is directly influenced by the moods of those in your newsfeed. The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of California, Yale, and Facebook, examined statuses on the popular social network with a particularly positive or negative emotional bent, as identified by algorithm.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of California, Yale, and Facebook, examined statuses on the popular social network with a particularly positive or negative emotional bent, as identified by algorithm. The researchers first proved that rainy days caused fewer positive statuses and more negative ones—even when the program eliminated statuses explicitly about the weather. During a rainy day, they found, a city’s number of negative posts will increase by 1.16%, and positive ones will decrease by %1.19.

The researchers then looked at friends of the rained-in parties—but ones who lived in other cities, where the weather was fine. This group was affected by their wetter friends: For every negative post from the rainy group, dry friends posted 1.29 more negative posts than would normally be expected. Positive posts had a slightly stronger effect, inspiring 1.75 more positive posts. “Effectively this means that 1-2 people were indirectly affected,” researcher Massimo Franceschettitold Quartz.Not exactly an epidemic of goodwill, but a notable increase. “We showed,” says Franceschetti, “that social networks can actually magnify and promote social synchrony. This could mean that social networks actually make the world more volatile, because people are more prone to synchronize emotionally with peers around the world.”

Contagious emotion isn’t a new idea: “We know that emotions are contagious in a sense,” saysFranceschetti. “When you go to a restaurant and you’re greeted with a smile, this makes you feel better. It improves your experience. But isolating this network effect on such a massive scale—with the help of a huge online social network—allows us to measure the contagion more effectively.” The authors hope that knowledge of this effect will inform everything from marketing tactics to acts of good will. “The benefit of a good action can spread,” says Franceschetti. “Providing better care for the suffering could effect numerous others’ happiness as well.”

We all expect to have our opinions influenced by peers on social media, and it seems that their moods may sway us as well. If your newsfeed is full of grousers, perhaps it’s time to find new (Facebook) friends.

The Future of Social Media with Kate Buck Jr.

katebuckjrKate Buck Jr (aka “kbj” or @katebuckjr on Twitter) is the Founder and CEO of KBJOnline, a social media management and consulting agency in Austin, Texas. Kate has worked with some of the top names in Internet Marketing as well as consulted with dozens of entrepreneurs, businesses and nonprofits both around the globe. She is the creator of the Let’s Get Social training program, in which more than 10,000 social media managers have participated.

In addition to speaking at leading interactive marketing conferences and conducting training events around the country, Kate has also hosted wildly popular social events. Prior to founding KBJOnline, she served for three years as the LandmarkConnect Community Manager for Landmark Education, a leading global training and development company.

A student herself, Kate is fascinated with the technology that connects people of like minds and interests around the world. Kate is passionate about training and developing social media managers and teams in the most effective strategies for online marketing using social tools.

More Social Networking Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Warren Whitlock on BlogTalkRadio

 

 

How To Get Rid of That Song Stuck in Your Head

Blogs, Social Networks and the Internet in general are great for spreading a meme

While reading the history of mememtic theory, I found a link to a Mark Twain story.

If you have ever had a song stuck in your head, you’ll like his cure found in this post that includes the entire story.

A Game for Authors Who Want to Sell Books Online

There are two reasons you should see this site:

http://www.webasagame.com/

1) The topic.. You get just what you need to get up and running on Digg, YouTube, and Facebook (and every author should have account on each)

2) The book is a free ebook from posted using Lulu.com.

The book won’t win any award for writing or presentation.. but it’s a quick read, and exactly what you need if you aren’t using all three of the above.

I came up with 3 new ideas while reading and will soon post a video, tell my friends on Facebook, and hope they DIGG it.

Post a comment here (you can DIGG too) and tell me how you are using social networking to promote your book.

How effective are the ads on social networks?

As it stands, Facebook does not know all that much about us, and the ads that we are shown are not relevant as a result. The jury is still out on whether social networks can get big via highly targeted advertising. Early trials have shown that CPC is not a likely route and CPM plays are just not as interesting. Yet, Facebook is certainly very aggressively pushing for monetization, likely in preparation for a future IPO. Will they be able to turn it all around and re-invent contextual advertising? The company is full of brilliant people so it’s certainly possible, but so far it does not look impressive.