As soon as social media activism became a thing, it was inevitably subjected to criticism by skeptics who hurried to point out that, well, it doesn't necessarily achieve much in the way of concrete results. No surprise, the spread of the marriage equality meme has some columnists and bloggers raising this profound -- or is it profoundly obvious? -- point yet again.

Well, I shoulda known: I write a post about financial advisors using social media only to find out a week later that some of the data is out of date. Please consider this post a correction. It turns out that almost 50% of financial advisors are using social media to communicate with clients on a daily basis, according to a new survey of 400 financial advisors conducted by Accenture.

You know how people are always saying Facebook is addictive? And you know how some drug addicts will commit crimes to get their fix? Well, the Facebook Felony is now a thing, judging by the latest news from the bottom of the social media barrel.

If the headline sounds like an episode from "Game of Thrones," that's on purpose: the spectacular rise and fall of Orkut, Google's social network in Brazil, is nothing if not epic.

Neanderthals' bigger eyes and bodies meant they had less brain space to dedicate to social networking, which may explain why they died out and Homo sapiens conquered the planet, according to a new study. -- Agence France-Presse, March 12, 2013

Ideological extremists and terrorists have taken to the Internet and social media in particular to spread their beliefs and recruit like-minded individuals, and Middle Eastern governments need to start countering extremist messages through the same channels, according to speakers at a conference of Arab interior ministers called to address collective security issues last week.

A new survey of affluent investors by Cogent Research found that 34% use social media -- including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and blogs -- as a source of information for personal finance and investment decisions. Within this group, 70% -- or 24% of the total -- said they have shifted investments or begun (or changed) their relationships with investment providers due to information derived from social media.

It's becoming clear that social media isn't always necessarily so social, at least to the extent that it is discouraging or displacing, rather than complementing, actual "face-to-face" personal interactions. And this is a real phenomenon, according to new research from Weber Shandwick and KRC Research (a subsidiary of WS), which surveyed 2,000 U.S. and Canadian women as part of its "Digital Women Influencers" study.

Social media is still a relatively new phenomenon, but after ten years there are already quite a few cases of accounts left behind by people who have died. And the realities of this universe being what they are, two things are guaranteed: that group is only going to grow, and someday every single one of us will join it.

While social media might seem like a confusing tangle, there are actually discernible structures underlying and ordering online communities like Twitter, according to a new study by professors from Royal Holloway University and Princeton University.