Five myths about Facebook

Hi Gang, for those of you who don't buy the social media hype, or correctly wonder where this will go, this article offers some simple points to make you think.
I especially like the fact that a significant sign ups overseas are middle aged women. Lets think about why that's the case.

Not an easy one to answer, of course, we could ask some of the women. Facebook has become the new aol for nongeeks. A facebook page is a point and click webpage for everyone who only wants to point click and share with their friends, real or imagined. Would be nice to have some real info from facebook users, wouldn't it?

Five myths about Facebook
. Facebook is used mostly by college kids.

When Zuckerberg started Facebook in the spring of 2004, it was just for his classmates -- but that chapter lasted only a matter of months. The site opened to students with e-mail addresses from other colleges later that year, to high schoolers in 2005 and to all adults in 2006. While Facebook's base still skews young, about two-thirds of its 134 million American members are older than 26. Outside the United States, Facebook's fastest growth has been among middle-age women.

In country after country, it has become so central to social life that if you are not on it -- regardless of your age -- you are probably not in very close contact with your friends. In my own research, for example, I have found that Facebook messaging is beginning to replace e-mail among the Italian educated elite and among businesspeople in Colombia. And in Indonesia, Facebook's third-largest country, if you use the Internet you are almost certainly a member: Of the 30 million people online there, 27.8 million of them use Facebook.

The New Gold Mine: Your Personal Information & Tracking Data Online - WSJ.com

A great article here on status of semantic web. You would get the impression from this that your tastes are as simple as knowing what movies you like. Bulletin from Dr, Media, having examined these technologies and what that can deliver, I will say one thing. They cannot distinguish between irony and sarcasm. As a trained clinician I can assure you , that if you can't make this distinction you can't tell what people mean, regardless of what the engineers like to believe.

This is an effort to sell data-mining to advertising agencies who are desperate for anything that will allow them to figure out how to deal with the tsunami of data and metadata.

Rapleaf says they have 400m email addresses with info attached gathered from just on line sources.

There are a number of these companies, Glue.com, for example, who are on the right track in thinking aggregating choices helps with profiling, however, people lie, and unless you have an ability to cross reference things so you can confirm the validity of your projections,you can't create accurate pictures.

In psychology we have dealing with these issues for only about 80 years,.

Most of these firms have no social or clinical psychologists or researchers on staff, they just make it up, there are no standards. Good luck!

The New Gold Mine: Your Personal Information & Tracking Data Online - WSJ.com

Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty's computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.

The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tenn.

The code knows that her favorite movies include "The Princess Bride," "50 First Dates" and "10 Things I Hate About You." It knows she enjoys the "Sex and the City" series. It knows she browses entertainment news and likes to take quizzes.