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ADDICTION: Study Finds Social Media to Be Like Smoking Cigarettes

Firing off a tweet or status update is not unlike smoking a cigarette, new research suggests. According to a study conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, social media may be just as addictive as cigarettes and alcohol.

Over 200 subjects delivered more than 8,000 reports and the results were clear: the toughest urge to resist was to check social networks online. Now, it wasn't the most desired activity—sleep and sex overpowered lust for tweeting—but many of the subjects actually had more trouble resisting the urge to social network than ignoring their desires for booze and smokes.

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Twitter: Google+ Does Not Concern Us

Twitter has spoken. And Google+ is not on its radar.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey spoke at a technology conference yesterday and stated that his company was much more than a social network and that Google's latest bid in the social space was not a concerning issue.

Describing Twitter as a personal news service as much as a "social network" like Facebook is considered, Jack called his microblogging platform an "information utility" in which "the biggest value is finding out what's happening in your world in real time." He also said that Twitter was still busy building itself and not focused on the competition.

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Connexinet: a Canadian Location-Based App Building Success Story

Recently, we put up the 10 most used Android Apps by Canadians. Eighth on that list was Connexinet's Tim Hortons Finder. 

Connexinet's founder Samir Al-Battran realized that Canadian mobile app developers were not really building Android apps, so he took it upon himself in his free time over the past couple of years to build apps targeted to Canadians to compensate for the lack of Canadian content on the Android Market. 

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Vancouver's Summify acquired by Twitter

Vancouver's Summify announced this morning on their blog that they have been acquired by Twitter.

Congrats to Romanian co-founders Mircea Pașoi and Cristian Strat (pictured below). Terms of the transaction are not known at this time.

Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most time efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scale. Since Twitter shared this vision with us, joining the company made perfect sense.

But don't worry Summify fans, the current product won't be shelved anytime soon although they have disabled new account registration and will be removing a number of key features.

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Half of Canadians Don't Want to Engage with Brands on Social Networks

Many Canadians don't really think brands and social networks mix. According to new data from research firm TNS Canada, 54% of Canadians don't want to engage with brands on social networks. Calling it a "digital wasteland" for businesses, TNS vice president Ron Caughlin says that "winning and maintaining brand loyalty is now harder than ever."

Even so, 44% of consumers agree that they'd consider engaging with a brand recommended by a friend. "The online world presents massive opportunitiy for brands," Ron notes, but "misguided digital strategies are generating mountains of digital waste, making it harder for brands to be heard."

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How Many Twitter Users Have Over One Million Followers?

Some people are happy with 100 followers; others, 1,000. Some don't care at all, while others have dreams of hitting 100,000. Twitter is a vast community, and many of its users are content creators or curators, so it benefits those people to maximize their following. Now over 5 years old and with more than 200 million users, I was curious to see how many accounts have entered the Million Followers Club.

According to my research, there are nearly 700 Twitter users with one million or more followers—691 at the time of writing this, although someone new enters the club about twice a week these days. The most recently added member is actress Christina Applegate, and rapper Lupe Fiasco looks poised to be number 692. This club represents about 0.00003% of total users, so it's a very exclusive membership. 

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Google Reacts to Twitter's Response in Civil Manner, but We Know That Blood is Boiling

Yesterday, Google announced salient changes to its search engine. Most notably, it placed an emphasis on Google+.

We’re […] introducing three new features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 

2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and, 

3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community. 

This immediately caught the eye of venture capitalist and tech journalist MG Siegler, who called the move "a slippery slope for Google" and believes the U.S. Justice Department will launch another antitrust inquiry on the company as a result.

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HootSuite Indexes What's Hot on Twitter: RIM Was the Top Canadian Brand in 2011 [INFOGRAPHIC]

What's the top brand on Twitter? Why, Twitter, of course.

Vancouver startup HootSuite today released Part 2 of its Twitter 2011 Trends, courtesy of What the Trend?, a company it acquired in 2011. An infographic indexes a few lists such as the top 15 brands on Twitter, the top 10 trending topics, the top 10 hashtag trends, and the top 10 "in memorium" trends, and the top 10 holiday trends.

Just barely squeaking it at number 15 on the Top Twitter Brands list was Waterloo's Research In Motion. The BlackBerry maker was the lone Canadian company on the list, but tech companies overall were popular: Google, Facebook, Apple, HP, NetFlix, PlayStation, and even MySpace made the list (is it sad that MySpace still manages to trump RIM by a wide margin?).

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Three Facebook Users Die Every Minute. How Will Your Online Legacy Look After Death?

Three Facebook users die every minute, leading to millions of worldwide accounts that have deceased owners. Will the account remain as it were, frozen in time? Is that how the person who passed would have preferred it? A new hot topic is posthumous "online reputation management," which looks at how friends and family can retain control of the online legacies of the dead.

“While many people prepare a will to manage what happens to their possessions after their death, most have likely not considered what happens to their digital information,” said Jeff Quipp, the founder of Canadian internet marketing company Search Engine People. “Photos from wild parties might not be the lasting impression a person may wish to leave when they die.” 

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