social networks

It takes researchers years, sometimes decades, to pin down subtle, important findings about your health, but it takes bumbling journalists (or their editors) just a few seconds to screw it all up. Here, a selection of the most misleading headlines, and a few tips to help you spot the hype early.

As you have heard (by now, ad nauseum), the protests surrounding Iran’s troubled and disputed presidential election this past Friday have highlighted how technology and social media are redefining the way moments of mass political unrest are reported, live. Instead of watching CNN, you can observe the same on-the-ground reporting--all in real time--that the CNN folks are watching and then passing on to you. Here's where to find it.

There was some wisdom behind that stoner pop-culture game you used to play in college, but it turns out the “six-degrees of separation” hypothesis was a few tenths off the mark. According to data gleaned from Microsoft’s Messenger IM service, all human contacts in a social network can be connected in 6.6 degrees.

MySpace, the popular online community and social networking site, announced plans to add games, email and other features developed by outside providers next month. Adding applications from the outside is possible now, but its a little too difficult for the average member, involving cutting and pasting the relevant code from a third party.

My favorite moment at the Web 2.0 Summit so far happened this afternoon, when Bill Tancer, the global research manager of online research firm Hitwise, described how five months ago, his company predicted the success of seemingly out-of-nowhere chart-topping rapper Soulja Boy.

In case you're not familiar, Soulja Boy is the auteur of the incomprehensible but highly dance-able song "Crank That," which has been number one in the Billboard 100 for the past six weeks.

Apparently, Hitwise charted the Soulja Boy boom by tracking the amount of traffic streaming from social networking sites to search engines to his official Web site, and predicted back in May that the rapper (who was virtually unknown at the time) would become a major mainstream success.

"If theres buzz on the social networks, we track traffic going from those sites to a band's official web site. Buzz bleeds over to search and you can chart that and see the tipping point in advance," Tancer said.

Who knew Hitwise was so hip? —Megan Miller