http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/social networks http://io9.com/tag/social networks

My life is increasingly mediated by the internet, even more than it was in college. I'm blogging more, using OKCupid, and repping the shit out of my writing all over Facebook. I stay up late drinking and chat with people, which is what I also did when I was in middle school (without the drinking). It's in times like these that the lyrics of Gary Numan seem to speak to my lifestyle, one that I'm sure many share. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5762415&view=rss&microfeed=true

There are many ways to find the location of people on the internet. Some people are located through technology — but some people give away their location by their word choice. Internet speech is more regional than we'd previously thought. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5727290&view=rss&microfeed=true

Vincenzo Cosenza has partitioned the planet according to nations' preferred social networks, and you can read more about these global trends at his site. Facebook's making inroads in Mongolia! [Spotted on Next Nature] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5712538&view=rss&microfeed=true When you ask someone to name a friend of theirs, the person they name is almost always more popular than themselves. It's called the friendship paradox. But the cool kids with thousands of Facebook friends may find a major downside to their popularity. They're likely to get sick far quicker in an epidemic. During the 2009 flu season, researchers at Harvard compared a random sampling 319 students to 425 of their more popular friends, and the latter group got sick two weeks before the control, and a whopping 46 days before the epidemic peaked. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5638740&view=rss&microfeed=true

What if the websites we choose to frequent weren't merely websites, but nations that reflect our homes and ideals? The comic War imagines a world where website membership equals citizenship, and the reddit aliens "liberate" Diggers from their oligarchy. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5429351&view=rss&microfeed=true

One of the latest crazes in Japan is virtual boyfriends, which you can order up special on the newly-launched Web-kare social network. Two of the possible boys for you are pictured here, and I have to admit they're both kind of hot — you know, in an anime way. I like that one of the options is a boy with glasses for dorky girls like me. Apparently the site, which is a "dating simulator" set in a high school, acquired 10,000 members in its first five days after launch. [Web-kare via Technovelgy] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5055640&view=rss&microfeed=true

If you're sick of bonding with people over Scrabulous and superpokes and pop music, then maybe it's time to migrate to a social network where the only thing people have in common are their rare diseases. Rareshare.org is a new social network like MySpace which is totally devoted to connecting people who have the same rare diseases. As the internet enables more self-diagnosing and self-medicating, I suspect that Rareshare will become a source for (legal) drug-swapping as well as strange disease fetishists. Also, it's probably a great idea for those of you looking to find other people with Morgellons or chemtrail-related ailments. [Rareshare] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5025022&view=rss&microfeed=true

The New Weird, the awesome new anthology edited by io9 contributors Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, has its own MySpace Page. That means you can make friends with a whole literary movement, which focuses on urban settings and visceral, disturbing imagery borrowed from horror. The anthology follows the genesis of the New Weird school, starting with writers like Michael Moorcock and China Mieville, and covers the theory of New Weird writing. And then it moves us into the future of the sub-genre, with a shared writing exercise based on a piece by Paul DiFilippo. The book's MySpace site includes a free download and podcast of Jay Lake's bizarre story "Lizard of Ooze," plus music and images. [The New Weird on MySpace] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=372218&view=rss&microfeed=true

Transparently-shared ideas, like those that circulate on popular social networks such as Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon, may be destroying people's creativity. According to a new study published today by two cognitive scientists, people who share ideas in large groups tend to stagnate rather than innovate. They "glom onto" popular ideas and then don't pursue new discoveries or breakthroughs because they've already accepted the common wisdom of the crowd. Small groups, however, offer a different story. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=358492&view=rss&microfeed=true

I've got some good science news for you, and some bad.

• Wind power may not be a clean energy source of the future after all. Though Sweden has just built a massive wind farm at sea, most countries have found wind an inefficient and unreliable energy source. [New York Times]

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=325801&view=rss&microfeed=true