Daniele's Blog

This is an article of The New York Times where Larry Carlat talks about his experience with Twitter . He says that he started to tweet in 2008, and before long he started to post 20 to 30 times a day, and soon his life was based on tweeting. He says that it became an obsession: for example, when he was out with his friends, he used to go into the bathroom with his iPhone. He also posted when he was asleep, using a web site that let him tweet. After, he lost his job, but, after a year, he got a job at men's magazine, but his boss told him that someone in H.R.* had found his tweets and was shocked, because they were a violation of the company's socialmedia policy. He had a choice: to delete the account or face termination . He decided to leave . He also separated from his wife, but, finally, he decided to stop posting, and now that compulsion has gone.

A new study has shown that physical activity and exercise are 'contagious' because of social media. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered that people who post details of their exercise patterns and achievements on social media sites motivate and encourage other people to be more active. Researchers tracked the exercise routines of 1.1 million runners over a period of five years. They looked at the geographic location of the runners, their social network use, distance, time, pace and the calories they burned. The researchers concluded that sharing personal exercise data via social media can inspire others to exercise more, exercise harder and do so more competitively. The journal 'Nature Communications' has published the research. The study includes detailed accounts of how inspiring it can be to read about a friend's physical activity. Researchers said: "On average, an additional kilometre run by friends can inspire someone...