Communications Major

When you commit to disconnecting, you wean yourself off the dopamine rush of external affirmation and information.

Santiago Swallow may be one of the most famous people no one has heard of. His eyes fume from his Twitter profile: he is Hollywood-handsome. Next to his name is one of social media’s most prized possessions, Twitter’s blue “verified account” checkmark. Beneath it are numbers to make many in the online world jealous: Santiago Swallow has tens of thousands of followers. The tweets Swallow sends them are cryptic nuggets of wisdom that unroll like scrolls from digital fortune cookies: “Before you lose weight, find hope,” says one. Another: “To write is to live endlessly.”

And, of course, he isn't real. But rather the figment of one very creative writer's imagination - and $68, which is all it took to get Santiago Swallow up and running.

Let's proclaim 2013 the year of the "Ph" - since we all know no one ever looks back at these statements at the end of the year to see if anyone was right. But if we were the type of blogger to make big predictions (we are), here are three for 2013, and they all start with what should become the 27th letter in the English alphabet - the "Ph": Phablets, Photos (Vaporizing) and Photos (Printed for (Posterity).

To read some people on the Internet, you’d think the election would be decided by who had the most followers and Tweeted the most about his or her favored candidate. The truth of the matter is that, even if you are the world’s most prolific political Twit with gobs of followers… those people (other than the spam bots) self-selected to follow you, meaning you’re either preaching to the converted or the trolls.

In real life, most people don’t use Twitter — and, when they do, it’s not to get involved in politics. Some statistics on that, courtesy of the Pew Internet and American Life Project....

No matter what precautions you may have taken to "prevent" your Facebook account from "catching" the Timeline interface, it appears all preventive measures have failed. Facebook's 955 million users have been being upgraded to Timeline from older Facebook wall designs. Here's a parody video to help you learn to live with this latest "social networking disease".

Within minutes of Monday's announcement that the world's biggest social network (Facebook) acquired the world's hippest (Instagram) for a cool $1 billion, the cries of more lost "privacy" commandeered online conversations.

The study reveals, in part, that we tend to "like" and "share" links from our acquaintances more than our close friends, proving we are open to news and viewpoints that are further afield from our own.

Before Facebook introduced a search tool this month, it assembled a varied team to study what users were searching for and to teach computers how to communicate better with people.

WASHINGTON — Chelsea Clinton tweeted thanks yesterday for all the support for mom Hillary, who remained hospitalized for a potentially life-threatening blood clot.“Thank you to all for...

Klout, the social network service that ranks people based on their influence, is getting two major changes. As a result, Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber are not as influential as we once thought they were. Bill Gates and Barack Obama are more important online than we previosuly thought.

The days of "I don't get Twitter" may be over. Tweets are now a form of self-expression among connected consumers, and it is this connected generation that continues to grow in size and influence.