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13 Feb 2012 15:26

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Culture: Having too many Facebook friends can make you depressed

  • 354Facebook friends ought to be your limit source
  • » There’s nothing wrong with denying that friend request: A recent study presented at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology meeting asked a group of participants to check their friend’s status updates. After doing so, they rated their lives as “much less satisfying” than a group that didn’t check their news feed. They looked at how many friends the users had, and found that 354 friends was roughly the point at which reading status updates started making them sad. The theory is that status updates often paint a disproportionately positive picture of peoples’ lives. Readers of said updates compare their own lives to those represented in status updates, and figure that they’re having a lot less fun than everybody else. The solution, then, is to either clean up your friends list, or befriend a bunch of depressed misanthropes.

11 Dec 2010 20:07

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Culture: A sad story of childbirth and death, told through Facebook

  • A heartbreaking tale, told in a postmodern way. Shana Swers of Gaithersburg, Md. wanted to reveal the joy of her childbirth to the world, but the medical complications that followed meant that she would never be able to live to enjoy the motherhood that came along with it. Beyond the story itself, what’s fascinating is the way that The Washington post presents it – as a Facebook stream. This is one of the best story layouts we’ve seen the Post do online. It’s a shame that it had to come with a story so heartbreaking. source

10 Sep 2009 19:09

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03 Mar 2009 10:25

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Tech: Facebook + Twitter: They almost merged. Almost.

  • It became pretty clear it wasn’t going to happen. The deal would have to be done with Facebook stock. And then you have to figure out how much the stock is worth.
  • Peter Thiel • Facebook board member and a co-founder of Paypal. Thiel confirmed a proposed merger of Facebook and Twitter, which only fell apart because nobody knew how much Facebook’s stock was really worth. Structurally, it makes sense: status updates are essentially tweets. • source