Surfing internet, excess use of social media networks like Facebook can make you lose track of time

Image: Reuters

  09 Feb 2017 , 15:58

Facebook addicts, take note! Using the social networking site or surfing the web may impair your perception of time, warn researchers including one of Indian-origin. Using well-established internal clock models, researchers attempted to separate the roles of ‘attention’ and ‘arousal’ as drivers for time distortion. They found that Facebook-related stimuli can lead to an underestimate of time compared to general internet use, but that both lead to a distortion of time.

In the study, Lazaros Gonidis and Dinkar Sharma from the University of Kent in the UK monitored the responses of 44 people who were shown 20 images for varying amounts of time. Five of the images were associated with Facebook, five had more general internet associations with another ten as neutral ‘control’ images. Those taking part had to say whether the image they had just seen had been visible for a short or long time.

The key finding was that people tended to underestimate the time they had been looking at Facebook-related images to a greater extent than other more general internet related images, but that in both cases time was underestimated. This suggests that Facebook-related images affect time by changing how we pay attention to them. The findings are likely to have implications for future study into addictive behaviour. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

PTI

Facebook bids for IPL digital rights; the social network is invading culture, media, news and governance

By Aditya Madanapalle /  18 Oct 2016 , 13:04

Facebook has purchased tender documents worth $10,000 (Rs 6.6 lakh) to join in the bidding for the digital rights of IPL, according to a report in Livemint. Amazon, Twitter and Reliance Jio are other contenders. BCCI sources confirmed to the Economic Times that Facebook had picked up the documents, but Facebook did not comment on the reports.

It makes sense for Facebook to bid for the digital rights considering the massive Facebook campaigns on IPL. The title sponsors have their own campaigns, and each team has their own strategies. The players themselves post multimedia content of training and celebrations during the tournament.

The campaigns are spread across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Facebook also owns Instagram, so two of its platforms see a surge of activity during the IPL. According to areport by Hiveminds (PDF), a digital marketing firm, Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians are the most engaged with teams on Facebook. On Instagram, the top performing teams are Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Facebook and IPL 2016

This social media share by Royal Challengers Bangalore creatively shows the cricketers as Sith lords from Star Wars.

On Facebook, the strategies by the teams included reposting selfies of fans, posting quotes from players on game strategies, posting selfies of the

The big picture on big data about the election from mobile photo social network Instagram.

Images: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump | Instagram

By Dan Patterson | October 13, 2016, 10:50 AM PST



The 2016 election has sparked the most mobile, connected campaigns in history. Both campaigns use social media vociferously, and how each campaign uses the social web is a reflection of the campaign's personality and strategic style. Trump fires multimedia missives about an assortment of topics, while the Clinton campaign creates vertical social media tailored to specific networks with careful precision.

This year has also arguably been the most photographed election in history. Technologically, the 2008 and 2012 campaigns were defined by the emergence of social media, primarily Facebook and Twitter. In 2016, for both presidential campaigns, Instagram is an indispensable tool.

And for good reason: the social network acquired in 2012 for $1 billion in 2012 by Facebook is growing rapidly. As of June 2016, Instagram had over 500 million monthly active users, 100 million more active monthly users than September, 2015. This puts the company ahead of prominent social networks like Twitter, 320 million monthly users, and LinkedIn, 100 million monthly users. Facebook has approximately 1.57 billion monthly users.



Instagram recently improved its brand management and advertising brands. In September the company announced it had half a million advertisers, double what it had six months ago. An additional 1.5 million profiles had been converted to brands pages, giving companies access to