One of the main advantages of social media, from a marketing perspective at least, is that it allows consumers to propagate marketing messages and essentially create free advertising reaching their own social networks -- except it's better than advertising because it comes from a trusted source. But marketers are still coming to grips with how to measure social influence and (the key part) identify individuals who wield the most influence in their networks.

It's no secret Americans have taken to social networking in a big way, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults are even more avid users of social networking sites than the mainstream population, according to a new survey from Pew.

Most Americans who use social media have "liked" a brand on social media, with 57% affirming this behavior, according to a new global survey from Adobe. That makes Americans a bit more brand-friendly than social media users in Australia, where 54% said they have liked a brand on social media, but a bit less than social media users in South Korea, where 59% reported liking a brand. Social media users in Germany and France were much less likely to lo like a brand on social media, at 33% and 38%, respectively.

Narcissism, feelings of superiority, and vanity are all innate characteristics of humanity, but social media may serve to encourage these tendencies even more, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan's Department of Communication Studies and its Institute for Social Research.

Social media accounts for roughly a third of the time Americans spend on smartphones, and also accounts for a good chunk of their tablet time, according to Nielsen's latest "Cross Platform Report," based on data drawn from a panel of 5,000 smartphone owners and 1,300 iPad owners in March of this year.

Contrary to the fears of neurotic bosses, social media access in the workplace actually increases productivity, according to a survey of 9,908 information workers around the world conducted by Ipsos for Microsoft (all respondents worked at companies with 100 or more employees).

Social media norms are still evolving, and eventually people will probably wise up about what they put on their social media profiles. In the meantime, however, they are posting some pretty ill-advised content -- ranging from awkward to embarrassing to incriminating to indictable -- and that turns out to have consequences. Like, not getting jobs they applied for.

Wednesday brought more disturbing parallels between Turkey and its less democratic neighbors, as several dozen Turkish Twitter users were arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation and making "libelous" comments on the microblogging site, as well as "inciting rebellion," which may or may not refer to simply using Twitter to organize protests against the government.

Stop the presses and take a seat everyone: you're going to want to be sitting down when you hear that your kids have probably lied to you -- yes you, the person reading this right now -- according to a new study from McAfee titled "Digital Deceptions," based on a survey of 2,474 young people (ages 10-23) and parents conducted in April. Among other things, the deceitful little traitors are lying about engaging in potentially dangerous online activities which would alarm their parents. But it's actually your fault, you see, because you're all just so darn trusting.

Twitter is a "menace" and a "curse," according to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who lambasted social media as a means for spreading lies in an interview over the weekend, following a surge in protests around Turkey, fueled in part by social media sharing of images of injured protesters.