“Don’t judge a book by its cover?” Well according to a new study, it seems that’s exactly what social media users tend to do with Facebook pictures.

“Photos seem to be the primary way we make impressions of people on social networking sites,” said Brandon Van Der Heide, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University. “If your profile photo fits what they expect, observers may be unlikely to look very closely at the rest of your profile – they have already decided how they feel about you.”

“People will accept a positive photo of you as showing how you really are, but if the photo is odd or negative in any way, people want to find out more before forming an impression,” said Van Der Heide. “If your photo is not quite normal – either positively or negatively – people are going to pay a lot more attention to what you wrote.

Source: Mashable

Facebook‘s growth in the U.S. will drop for the first time to the single digits this year, but Twitter‘s presence will expand by 20% or so, according to a report.

EMarketer estimates that Facebook grew 13.6% in 2011, which comes after a 38.6% surge in 2010. By contrast, Twitter grew 31.9%, which comes after a 23.5% jump in 2010. The relative growth numbers are greatly influenced by the respective sizes of the networks.

At the end of 2011, Facebook claimed nearly 133 million U.S. users out of a total population of around 308 million. Twitter had a U.S. user base of 24 million.

However, while Facebook’s growth seems to have hit a plateau, Twitter’s size will double by 2014, eMarketer predicts.

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Source: Mashable

According to a study, women are more likely than men to delete friends from their onlinesocial networks like Facebook and tend to choose more restrictive privacy settings.

The study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project also found that men were nearly twice as likely as women to have posted content online that they later regret.

Sixty-three percent of social network users have deleted people from their friend lists, according to the study, up from 56 percent in 2009.

Source: Yahoo News!

One new Facebook music app is not allowed to use the word “listen” and the creator isn’t happy. Colin Costello, the disgruntled app creator of MusicsTalk.com, was told his app should use “play” to be an approved Facebook app.

Facebook music app developers who list “play” instead of “listen” have a better chance of getting their app onto the social media site.

To use “listen” in an app, Facebook says the developer must have a relationship with the rights owners, All Facebook was told in an email. Using the word “play,” requires no rights relationship between rights owner and app developer.

Source: Mashable

Do you want to know how that applicant you just interviewed will actually perform on the job? Check out her Facebook profile.

That’s the advice of a new study from the Northern Illinois University, the University of Evansville and Auburn University. The researchers recruited a group of four Facebook-savvy human resources professionals and students to evaluate the Facebook profiles of 56 users. The four perused each of the profiles for about 10 minutes each before grading them according to the so-called Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism).

Six months later, the researchers compared the evaluations of the 56 users’ work supervisors and found a strong correlation for traits including intellectual curiosity, agreeability and conscientiousness. The evalauations are, of course, subjective, but job seekers shouldn’t necessarily worry that they need to clean up their Facebook profile.

Source: Mashable

In September when Facebook introduced Timeline, its new profile interface designed to “tell your life story,” many of us scratched our heads and wondered whether this would turn out to be a serious misstep — a blunder significant enough to knock Facebook from its throne of power.

While the long-term consequences remain to be seen, the short-term verdict is in, and Facebook’s members give Timeline a decided thumbs down.

A full 70 percent of people polled by opinion site SodaHead said they want to see the new feature bite the dust. Only 20 percent of respondents said they like the Timeline.

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Source: Social Media Today

Billy Clay Payne, Jr. and Billie Jean Hayworth, a Tennessee couple, were killed after they “defriended” Jenelle Potter, the daughter of one of the suspects, from their “friends” list. Both were shot in the head and the man had his throat cut.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece said, adding he had never seen anything like it in his 27 years in law enforcement in the area. “We’ve had murders, but nothing like this. This is just senseless.”

The couple’s 8-month-old baby was in the mother’s arms, unharmed, when the bodies were found.

Source: Yahoo News