Facebook friend tally is associated with differences in brain structure

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
It remains unclear whether the brain differences are a cause or effect of being well connected on Facebook. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian

The brains of people with large numbers of Facebook friends are different from those of people with fewer online connections, say neuroscientists.

The researchers at University College London found that users with the greatest number of friends on the social networking site had more grey matter in brain regions linked to social skills. The finding suggests that either social networking changes these brain regions, or that people born with these kinds of brains behave differently on websites like Facebook.

In August, Baroness Susan Greenfield, former director of the Royal Institution, made the controversial suggestion that greater use of digital technology might be responsible for increases in the number of people diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders. The researchers said their work did not directly answer such questions but helped show how future studies could be designed to do so.

"Social networks are ubiquitous in human society," said study leader Prof Geraint Rees, director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, whose study was published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"A key question for debate in contemporary societies with online social networks is do people use them in the same way or are they enabling a completely different type of communication and interaction that was never before possible?" said Rees. "People get worried about whether that is in some way affecting or changing our brains or the ways we interact with the world."

He said it was impossible to tell whether the findings meant some people's brains are hard-wired for social networking or whether having a large number of friends on Facebook changes brain structure. "What we're attempting to do is get an empirical handle using the types of data we can generate to try and start that process rolling."

Prof Rees added that future brain scan studies looking at changes to brain structures over time might help unravel whether the brain changes were a cause or effect of having more online social links.

His team carried out magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans on 165 volunteers who also answered questions about how many Facebook and "real-world" friends they had. They identified three brain regions in which grey matter density was greatest in those with the most Facebook friends, but was not linked to the number of real-world friends they had: the superior temporal sulcus and the middle temporal gyrus, which have previously been associated with the ability to perceive social cues from facial expressions, and the entorhinal cortex, which is linked to memory for things like faces and names.

The density of grey matter in another brain region, the amygdala, correlated with numbers of both real-world and Facebook acquaintances.

Comparing different primate species, researchers have previously demonstrated a correlation between the volume of the neocortex, the part of the brain largely responsible for higher functions like language and thought, and social group size.

Anthropologist Prof Robin Dunbar, of the University of Oxford, has proposed that the number of people with whom humans can maintain stable relationships is limited by the size of our neocortex to an average of around 150. The concept later became known as "Dunbar's number".

He recently led research showing correlations between the size of real-world social groups and the density of grey matter in similar brain regions to those identified in the new study.

"It has been demonstrated that across primate species there is a relationship between neocortex volume generally and frontal neocortex volume in particular and social group size," said Prof Dunbar. "This work and our study are some of the first attempts to show this holds within species as well as between species.

"The interesting question left unanswered is whether this is set in stone and those bits of your brain are hard-wired and determined by your genes, or whether if you bring people up in the right kind of social environment, those bits of the brain grow and therefore the number of people they can maintain as friends in adulthood increases."

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Facebook CTO Bret Taylor talks mobile web, apps and Apple negotiations

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AppId is over the quota

Facebook's launch of its mobile applications platform has been an exercise in diplomacy. It plays nice with the iOS ecosystem, pointing people to native App Store apps and Apple's own in-app payments system, while also promoting mobile web apps and the Facebook Credits currency on other devices.

A significant expansion of Facebook's apps platform, deftly executed. No wonder it was a long time coming: rumours about "Project Spartan" had been circulating for months before the official announcement on 10 October.

"It's a pretty cool launch for us," says Facebook's chief technology officer Bret Taylor.

"It really addresses some of the areas I've heard a lot of concerns about from mobile developers, and it plays to our strengths. For startups, it's very difficult to get their apps discovered. They have a honeymoon period in the app stores where they might be in a top 10 list and get a lot of downloads, but once that honeymoon period is over, discovery is very difficult. By integrating with these social channels in mobile, they can get discovered in really organic ways."

The mobile platform went live alongside the launch of Facebook's native iPad app, but for now, the social network isn't talking about how things have gone. Facebook will hold an event towards the end of next week and release some stats.

Taylor describes the challenges of taking Facebook's applications platform mobile well, though, highlighting the need to get apps working across various devices and operating systems.

"iPhone is extremely popular, but so are Android phones. Windows Phone has made a lot of inroads, and a lot of people use BlackBerry devices. Developing for mobile is a relatively nuanced and complex thing for a lot of developers, particularly in the context of social applications. If someone invites a friend to play a game with them, they don't necessarily know what handset they have."

From that point of view, Facebook's solution is elegant. People tapping on application alerts in their newsfeed on iPhone and iPad will be directed to a native iOS app if it exists – Words With Friends is the example cited by Taylor – while people on other devices will be pointed to the HTML5 mobile web versions. The social network is clearly encouraging developers towards creating both native and HTML5 versions of their apps.

"350 million people are using our mobile apps every month, and that's split 50-50 between mobile web and native apps," says Taylor. "We expect that a lot of the developers that really integrate deeply with these mobile features will have a similar mix… When we talk to developers, they don't want to pick just one platform and live or die by that. They want to reach their customers however they want to be reached. It's not really an either/or discussion."

That extends to mobile versus web as well as mobile web versus native mobile app. Increasingly, apps and services are looking to spread across every platform possible: web, mobile, TV, cars and whatever other devices they can run on.

Taylor talks about his own usage of personalised radio service Pandora in this context: listening on his computer at work, on his iPhone while driving home and then via his TiVo set-top box at home.

"Those are some of the most compelling services, when you're talking about mobile as not just something about your phone, but really about the proliferation of devices, and wanting your application to be accessible on all of them," he says. "We hope that we can be the social discovery engine that drives growth across all of these devices."

Facebook has just launched three new elements on its developer website focused on HTML5: a Resource Centre to help people build, test and deploy their apps; an HTML5-focused blog; and a developer group to foster discussion around the area.

One of the key challenges for developers making HTML5 mobile web apps has been making money from them, so Facebook's decision to make its Facebook Credits virtual currency part of its mobile expansion is a significant one.

Taylor warns that it's early days, though, saying that Facebook's team is working "very intensively" on making the payments system as simple as possible on mobile. The social network has made Facebook Credits mandatory for games running on its website, but mobile has required more diplomacy, deferring to Apple in not allowing developers to take payments using the currency from iOS users.

Negotiating with the likes of Apple will be ever more sensitive and important for Facebook's ambitions going forward – Fortune has a very good feature on how the two companies, along with Google and Amazon, are likely to compete in 2012. How challenging is it to find co-operation and collaboration against this backdrop?

"There is certainly a lot of competition in the mobile platforms space, but we have really effective relationships with a lot of those mobile platform owners," says Taylor. "It's complementary. We worked a lot with Apple on this release to improve discovery for iOS applications, and we're actively working to get this working really effectively on Android too."

Rumours of a "Facebook Phone" or fully-fledged smartphone OS have remained just that: rumours. That means Facebook is still able to present itself as "not a mobile platform ourselves, but a social discovery and engagement platform" in Taylor's words.

For now, at least, its promotion of HTML5 and the mobile web as a viable space for applications is aligned with the improvement in the browser capabilities on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. "That's the great benefit of all this competition: everyone's products are getting really good," says Taylor.

"There is so much innovation in the browser space both on mobile and desktop. HTML5 and the other technologies it represents really exist now because of that competition. Apple, Microsoft, Google and a whole bunch of other companies are investing so much in the browser, and it's so good for the web. Most of our developers are hoping the mobile web becomes a viable platform for their applications."

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England riots: couple jailed for four years in order to use Facebook to encourage disorder

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, one of two men jailed for four years at Chester crown court for using Facebook to encourage disorder, although their actions do not cause disturbances

Two men have been jailed for four years in order to use Facebook to encourage disorder.

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Marston near Northwich, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, appeared in Chester crown court on Tuesday. They were arrested last week after the events of violent disorder in London and other cities throughout the United Kingdom.

None of their Facebook posts resulted in a riot-related event.

During sentencing, the recorder of Chester, Elgin Edwards, praised Cheshire police quick actions and said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent to others.

Assistant Chief Constable Phil Thompson said: "if we cast our minds back a few days to last week and will remember the way in which the technology was used to spread the incitement and bring people together to commit acts of criminality, it is easy to understand the four year sentences were handed down in Court today.

"In Cheshire, we quickly recognised the impact of the situation of our society and the way in which social media was used to promote and encourage conduct that would strike fear in the heart of our society.

"From offset, Cheshire constabulary adopted a robust policing approach by means of the information that originates in your organization to move quickly and effectively against any person whose conduct was likely to encourage criminality. Officers took swift action against those people who have used Facebook and other social media sites to incite disorder.

"The sentences passed today recognize how technology can be abused to encourage criminal activity, and send a strong message to potential troublemakers on the extent to which ordinary people value safety and order in their lives and their communities. Anyone who seeks to undermine, will face the full force of law. "

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Bono's Facebook game worth almost $ 1 billion

U2 lead singer Bono's investment firm could look at a profit of nearly $ 800 m on its stake in Facebook. Photo: Samir Hussein/Getty Images

U2 lead singer Bonoinvestment firm could look at a profit of nearly $ 800 m on its stake in Facebook, it has emerged.

The social networking site has just been valued to a fantastic $ 65bn-up from $ 50bn in January- after the sale of a stake of advertising and marketing giant Interpublic Group.

Interpublic was an early investor in Facebook and has just sold half of his 0.4% share in the group for $ 133 m £ 81 m, valuing the site at more than $ 65bn.

This values U2 's Elevation partners games at $ 975 m-more than four times the $ 210 m it paid in November 2009.

Interpublic Group CEO Michael Roth said "attractive opportunity" to sell some of the games had presented itself and it "makes sense" to do.

IPG does not reveal the number shares it sells but said that the sell-off would see a ultimonettoværdi gain of about $ 132 m.

Facebook is now one of the elevation stellar investments. When it bought the equipment, which is difficult to obtain in-company was warm but worth a relatively "modest" $ 9bn.

In June last year, it was worth $ 23bn, and in December last year, Goldman Sachs, canvassed for his wealthy private clients on a potential investment opportunity, had valued it at $ 50bn.

So it looks to Elevation partners got caught in a very profitable moments.

Earlier this year Forbes named U2 as one of the world's highest paid musicians, having taken $ 736 m and profits of about $ 195 m-from record sales and concert receipts in the last two years.

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Salute Williams: Bono's facebook game worth almost $ 1 billion

U2 forsangers investment in the social networking site has paid from handsomelySorry, I could not read the contents of the pious this page.

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Interpublic sells half of Facebook games

IPG said ' ubiquity ' of Facebook reduced the strategic value of the investment. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Interpublic Group, the U.S. marketing services giant that owns the ad agency networks including Lowe and McCann-Erickson, has sold half of its stake in Facebook for $ 133 m £ 81 m.

IPG was a relatively early investor, Facebook, buy "less than half of 1%" in social networks website in 2006 as part of a broader strategic partnership.

The selling price of half of the game, which is believed to have been 0.4%, values Facebook at around $ 65bn.

When IPG acquired game said the deal included working with Facebook on marketing pilot programmes including "sponsorships, consumer research and creation of content on behalf of its clients".

Michael Roth, the Executive Director and Chairman of the IPG, said "ubiquity" of Facebook have now reduced the strategic value of the investment, while admitting the value of the game have the port directive.

"Interpublic formed a strategic relationship with Facebook in 2006, allowed us to fast track growth of our social media offers on behalf of clients," added Roth.

«Facebook has since been a part of everyday life for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Its ubiquity has resulted in the strategic value of our original investment has declined, while the economic value of that game appreciated significantly. "

Roth said an "attractive opportunity" to sell some of the games had presented itself and it "makes sense" to do.

IPG does not reveal the number shares it sells but said that the sell-off would see a ultimonettoværdi gain of about $ 132 m.

In June bought investment fund GSV Capital Corp 225,000 shares in Facebook for an average price of $ 29.28 each, valuing social networks on the Web site for around $ 70bn.

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Zuckerbergs sister quit Facebook can build on its own

Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark, branch on its own. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Who saw the film social network would have no way to know that Facebook founder Mark zuckerberg has a sister. But now Randi Zuckerberg creates headlines of his own — after six years worked faithfully in his younger brother shadow as Facebooks Director market development, she jump ship to create an independent social media company.

Tech bloggers of Silicon Valley, are rubbing their hands at the prospect of some sibling rivalry to follow on from the multiple lawsuits that the younger Zuckerberg — he is 27, she is 29 – have endured over the parentage of his very popular website.

But older business analysts wonder if this cannot be the online equivalent to the great Dunkin' Donuts split of the 1950s, when one of the two original partners behind America's most popular snack shops bread on its own with rival Loses Doughnut franchise. (They were later bought by the same corporate parent and reunited after nearly 40 years.) More confused tech watch Ñgere wonder what Randi hope to achieve, that she has not already been done in one of the world's most rapidly growing companies. Her new outfit has a name, RtoZ Media, but no publicly defined goals, no employees and no fully functioning website – yet.

Randi is unlikely to planning something overly controversial. She appears decided to have fun with his money and his instantly recognizable last name to branch out on its own, without doing anything to harm Facebook brand she worked so long in order to help establish.

"I am proud of what I have done here … but I know I be able to do as much or more, Facebook, when I'm on the outside," she wrote in his resignation letter last week. She said her goal was "to start my own innovative programming and working with media companies", adding: "Facebook will clearly be a key element in all my projects."

She may not have a reputation as a cutting-edge innovator like his brother, but Randi is not sloppy. She also went to Harvard, graduating in psychology at the time Mark drop to focus full-time on the phenomenon he had unleashed. At first she trøde she would study to become a cantor – the singer accompanying the Rabbi in the Jewish services – but changed their minds, when it became clear there was an irresistible new family business connected.

In Silicon Valley, she has always had a reputation as someone unafraid to let their hair down and have a good time. A few years ago, she did a music video, celebrating the demise of the then Facebook rival Friendster with a Cheek ditty accessories are called Valleyfreude.

She has sung regularly ever since, and written a column for Tina Brown's online publication the daily Beast. Her sense of fun is strictly non-scandalous variety, however: she has been with her husband, exit strategy, Brent Tworetzky, since they were both at Harvard. In his professional life, she has been working hardest to marry Facebook with numerous traditional media initiatives – broadcast a presidential debate in 2008, bringing the world economic forum in Davos on Facebooks global audience and launch Facebook Live, which she used to transfer a town hall meeting with President Barack Obama.

Is to classify her as a high-flyer on an equal footing with her brother or Steve Jobs? Not exactly. But it sets up probably her nicely as a high-profile consultant to large and good corporate America, who wishes to understand how to integrate social media into their marketing and customer outreach plans.

Just a few days before she resigned, Randi argued on a round-table discussion hosted by Marie Claire magazine, that the best way to police social networking sites were to force everyone to use their real names. Not be her to the more radical online community, which considers that anonymity and identity-shifting is all part of the great experiment internetof.

It, however, send a reassuring message to conservative inclined executives that could otherwise be unnerved by embracing a communication tool, which has limited control. She is likely to talk to a lot of these people in the coming weeks and months.

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Facebook takes fresh steps to open up for users ' personal information

Facebook is planning to make users ' addresses and mobile phone numbers available for apps, people use on the Web site, even though it says it would require users to give explicit permission for it to happen.

The company reiterated its plan to move ahead with the opening of the users ' personal information, which was first revealed in a blog post on its developer blog in January — encoding entitled "Platform updates: New User-object fields, Edge contents.remove event and more" — but suspended three days later in anger Privacy reactions from advocates.

That included a letter from the US Congress representatives Edward Markey and Joe Barton, who objected to the idea. "Facebook needs to protect the personal information of users to Facebook is not the phone book", wrote Markey. "There is, therefore, I ask for answers to these questions to understand better the Facebooks practice relating to possible access to users ' personal information by third parties. This is sensitive data and must be protected. "

Despite criticism from privacy advocates and lawmakers in the United States when plans were announced, the company said in a letter to the House of representatives by Marne Levine, its vice President for global public policy, published Tuesday, that "we expect atNår function [to share your mailing and mobile data] is reactivated, Facebook again want to allow users to allow the program to obtain their contact information. "But the Facebook" currently assessing methods to further enhance user control in this area ".

The change will make the data available to app developers via a "permissions dialog box," when users enable a app on the social network Web site.

Write on MSNBC, Helen Popkin said about the latest plan to "Facebook pot slowly heating the water and we, my friends, is the frog. Since we noticed our peeling skin, is another any hunk of our private lives long away. "

She commented that the Facebook announcement, writeback, and Re-announcement fit a repeating pattern: "this is how Facebook rolls: removing a large part of your personal information, shouting ' Our bad! ' and scroll back when users and/or personal information advocates complain. Then wait a little, and do whatever it is Facebook planned to do anyway. How! Boiled frog. "

Facebook, in the meantime been experimenting with a new privacy policy, which would be more a guide to how personal information is used, rather than a lengthy legal document.

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Facebook threatens to sue the Daily Mail of paedophiles history

Facebook is threatening legal action against the Daily Mail tekstombrydningsfunktionen a dispute over the header in a story front, are named by using the social networking site in connection with a story of a paedophile gang operating in Devon.

Friday's Mail heel with the heading "how many more victims for Facebook sex gang?", after parents 16,000 pupils in Torbay was warned by an ongoing "complex child abuse investigation" which may involve 20 or more victims in the area.

There are prompted an angry response from Facebook, as I said, there was no evidence in support of the claim, social networking site was used to facilitate sexual exploitation of children in this case.

Facebook complained to the Daily Mail, and the newspaper changed the wording of the headline online until a further investigation. Website – that try to take a hard stance against Mail – also called for an apology in Print.

Mail it considers, however, has no reason to apologize and insiders said the newspaper had good reason to believe that the mention of Facebook in the title was appropriate. A spokesman for the message said: "we stand by our history."

Dissatisfied with showdown, Facebook had decided to recruit its lawyers, Osborne Clarke, to examine whether the social network company can sue the newspaper, or whether it should lodge a complaint with the press complaints Commission.

Answers to questions from MediaGuardian.co.uk, a spokeswoman for Facebook said there was "no evidence" that the site was used to "facilitate these crimes". She added: "While the headline inaccurate switched quickly online, where the damage is incorrectly bound to this story on the front is worthy of an excuse – both daily Mail readers and Facebook – equal prominence."

Mails heading was partly based on a declaration of Detective Inspector Simon Snell, who said that the grooming of children in the area "may have occurred on internet" and that officers "keep an open mind with regard to Facebook, Bebo and other sites".

However, Devon & Cornwall Police, handling of the investigation, this week in private, in this case, sites such as Facebook was not used as grooming tools, but to potential witnesses and victims to communicate with each other.

One man, Jake Ormerod, 19, is charged with two sex offences as a result of the investigation of the Devon & Cornwall Police. Saturday's Mail and Mail Online website featured pictures of Ormerod taken, it is understood from his Facebook page.

Friday's front page story as printed is no longer available on the Mail Online. A heavily rewritten version is displayed instead of pictures of Ormerod, which contains a reference to children will be trained on sites "including Facebook".

It is not the first time Facebook has locked horns with Mail. In March extracted social networks an apology from the Mail after the newspaper said that a man as a 14-year-old girl, who had created a profile on Facebook had been contacted "within seconds" of older men, who wanted her to perform a sex act in front of "". The author of the crunch had actually logged on to someone else, Untitled, "well-known" social network site.

Facebook argues that while it may be possible to soignere child victims on the site – it is also possible to make it through a very wide range of techniques, technologies, and websites. The company also argues, it cannot be held responsible for people who are in a position to have Facebook pages, and that all child abuse at the end of the day takes place offline unlawful acts.

Facebook said it had not "excluded trial" as it waited to see how or if the newspaper would react.

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Facebook goes back, address and phone number API

Facebook has disabled the API that share users ' mobile phone and address details with developers in response to a wave of what it calls "feedback", and what I would call a legitimate concern.

A carefully worded statement on the Facebook Developer Blog listed the potential benefits of using this data in the apps-speeding up the payment process on a shopping website, for example, or to permit the Groupon property-type concerns should be sent directly to your phone. And the post says, users must give permission to each app that may be using these data, it does not share the friends details and there is a program dashboard, where each user can control how their information is used.

Photo by andymangold on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Despite these precautions and benefits ... Facebook admits now, "that we could make people more clearly when they grant access to this data".

"We are making changes to ensure that you only share this information when you intend to do it," said Douglas Purdy in official record. "We must work in order to launch these updates as soon as possible and want to temporarily disable this feature until these changes are ready. We look forward to thawing this improved feature in the next few weeks. "

Facebook's ' seek forgiveness not permission ' strategy is a high risk, but ultimately successful. On the one hand, it means a steady stream of what could be perceived as ' controversy ', as some of the more privacy-related features are rolled out, responded, and rolled out again in some modified form.

But it is the nature of iterating in an innovative company. The strategy also means that the number of problematic launches in relation to the total number of functions that can be rolled out, is very small.

Facebooks incredibly rapid development and growth have a lot to do with this process, and these kind of ' adjustments ' are a sign of a company that constantly pushes his own business forward. Tensions arise where activities overlap with our sense of public and private-an area where Facebook is on the line front redefine what personal information does for us.

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