The New York Times reports that more than happiness is passed along through friendship networks: so is the likelihood of gaining weight or giving up smoking!

H/T @chrisgarrett

To MU or not to MU, that is the question...

Immersion is vital, I think in large part because of the need to pay attention to and learn from the community. As children, we all struggled to learn to have adult conversations, but only did so by being allowed to become immersed, and to make mistakes.

Since its public boom in 1996, the Internet and social media has mirrored human development in one important manner: we’re now in the middle of the awkward, hormone-ridden age of middle school. As sites like Digg, Propeller, and Reddit begin to blossom from niche political communities and into girls sought after by acne-ridden social media marketers such as ourselves, we must keep a few things in mind...

Oh Hai. I mind mapped Ur Biznezz

Social Media Pyramid graphic by Valeri Gungor, illustrating a concept laid out by Lee Aase (SMUG - Social Media University - Global):

To qualify as a serving your tweet, status update, video or blog post needs to…serve. Others, not just you. Any “servings” that don’t serve are actually subtracted from your total…they’re the social media equivalent of what Mom used to call “empty calories.” No nutritional value whatsoever.

In the food pyramid a serving is something you consume. In the Social Media Pyramid a serving is something you produce. It has to be of value to others to qualify. Otherwise it’s a negative. Five good tweets plus two pointless, self-promotional or “spammy” ones gives you a net of three servings, not seven. And some might even say a bad tweet is worth -2.

My favorite tweet, which captured perfectly, the level of hysteria we were seeing on Twitter as people learned Gmail wasn't working, was this one:

@scalzi: MIN 30 OF GMAIL OUTAGE THE CITIES ARE IN FLAMES & PEOPLE EATING PETS TO SURVIVE.TO FUTURE GENERATIONS: WE MEANT WELL