Say what you want about the New York Post, it doesn't shy away from a fight. New York City's newspaper of discord appears to be locked in an epic statistical pissing match with Facebook over the number of active users at Instagram (note to self: try to fit "epic statistical pissing match" into more conversations).

Given the prominent role of social media in his first presidential campaign, it's no surprise that Barack Obama is bullish on social media as a means of communication between the government and citizens. But given the size and general unwieldiness of the federal government, it's also no surprise that implementation of social media initiatives has been uneven.

Could Facebook ever go the way of MySpace? Given its ubiquity and continued growth around the world, that may seem unlikely, but here's an interesting fact to consider: more 10th graders are using Tumblr than Facebook, according to a survey of 1,038 teens and young adults conducted by blogger and techie Garry Tan.

Rumors disseminated via social media could "wreak havoc" on the world economy, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum titled "Global Risks 2013." The deliberate or accidental spreading of misinformation, poetically termed "digital wildfires" by the report, could result in mass stock sell-offs as well as (even) more serious consequences like disorganized, panicked mass evacuations -- basically stampedes on a giant scale that could cause thousands of deaths.

While it's great for casual stalking, gossip, and relentlessly comparing yourself to other people, social media actually has some potentially useful applications too. One of the biggest is emergency information of various kinds, including alerting people about criminals on the loose, impending inclement weather, public health crises, and so on. Now we can add earthquake warnings, delivered in real time, to the list.

Boy kids are dumb, aren't they? I mean, in general. Not your kids. Unless you think they are, in which case, I'm sure you're right. Teenagers and social media, in particular, are such a bad combination it's astounding. Social media basically allows teens to take all the idiotic things they do as a matter of course, and give those things the gift of immortal life.

One way to measure the ROI of social advertising on Facebook is by incorporating a social element into promotions, for example by requiring users to share offers or redeem them together with other users. With that in mind, San Francisco-based social media ad firm Aditive is combining display ads on Facebook with social utilities to produce ads that can be measured in terms of sales at "brick-and-mortar" retail establishments.

More than a third of young people in the U.K. (34%) say that something posted on a social network has made them feel depressed, including negative comments and bullying, according to a survey of 2,136 British respondents ages 16-25 conducted by YouGov, a British online research outfit, on behalf of the Prince's Trust, a British youth charity.