The proportions may have evened up somewhat since the early days immediately following its launch, but Google+ is still a mostly male milieu, according to calculations by Website-Monitoring.com, a service of Siteimpulse, based on figures from the Google blog, SocialBakers.com, and elsewhere. Overall the Google+ user base is 67% male and 32% female, with 1% "other," which can of course mean any number of things. The first two figures suggest that despite the surge in user numbers, there is still a pronounced skew towards tech types, and thus Y chromosomes, in the Google+ user profile. Indeed, software engineers represent a …

Just in case the workplace isn't confusing enough, the rise of online social networks has added a whole new layer of (potentially) awkward and uncomfortable dynamics to the relationship between bosses and employees. But this situation doesn't have to be awkward and uncomfortable -- just probably.

85% of social network-using adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project think people on social networks are "mostly kind," compared with just 5% of respondents who said people on social networks are mostly unkind. Similarly, 39% of social network users surveyed said they frequently see acts of generosity on their networks, while another 36% say they sometimes see acts of generosity.

By most accounts mothers are responsible for the majority of household purchases, and they collect information about brands and products from a wide variety of sources -- but not all these sources are equal in their eyes, according to a new study, "The Shopping Mom's Mindset," released this week by The 360PR MomSquad. For one thing, fewer moms get information from social media than other kinds of online sources.

Most businesses are adopting social media for marketing purposes, reflecting a generally positive sentiment about its utility, but that doesn't necessarily translate into high priority when it comes to allocating resources and time spent, according to a new study from the Software & Information Industry Association and Lopez Research.

With marketers focusing more and more on the intersection between TV watching and social media activity, HootSuite conducted a comprehensive analysis of the social media efforts mounted by Super Bowl advertisers to see which did the best job (and which maybe not-so-good) when it came to engaging with fans before, during, and after the big game. HootSuite then ranked the players and produced a nifty word cloud, reproduced below, to show which brands came out on top.

When you have become so famous that there is no more famous to become, what do you do next? Found a social network devoted entirely to yourself, naturally. That's the word from Lady Gaga, the world's most unsettling pop diva, who is preparing to launch littlemonsters.com, an online home for her millions of fans, in collaboration with Backplane, a social media start-up that counts Gaga as one of its investors with a 20% stake. The network is still being set up, but visitors to the Web address can register for an invitation by submitting their email addresses.

Like so many big brands before it, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, arguably the world's leading breast cancer charity and advocacy group, discovered the power of social media when it wandered into what is technically termed an online s---storm with its decision (since reversed) to pull funding from Planned Parenthood. Now the question is: how can Komen use social media to undo some of the damage to its brand?

While it's probably not nearly as bad for you, social media may be even more addictive than alcohol and tobacco, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. The study, led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago's Booth Business School, tracked the daily activities and attitudes of 250 people ages 18-85 from the German city of Wrzburg as they attempted to abstain from social media use for one week; the study subjects were given BlackBerrys to register their responses.

Social media showcases humanity at its best and its worst, on one hand allowing users to share interests, meet new people, organize for worthy causes, and so on -- but on the other also allowing unbalanced individuals to terrorize victims through stalking. Two British advocacy groups, Women's Aid and the Network for Surviving Stalking, have released a report, "Digital Stalking: A guide to technology risks for victims," warning that the rise of social media, and especially mobile access to social network sites, is enabling a new and particularly dangerous form of stalking.