Lepas Stressssssssssssssssss!!!

Happiness can be contagious. Researchers from the U.S. said that the emotion and happiness can infect others who are in a social network. No wonder why Facebook much-loved, because social networking sites that can infect the happiness just by looking at the status of other people happy.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego says that happiness is collective and contagious among social networks. The study involving 5,000 people over 2 years was performed to determine the effects of unhappy person in the surrounding environment.

"We found that the emotions of people affected by someone else, perhaps even strangers at all. The effect will be felt from others, others, and others," said Nicholas Christakis, a professor from Harvard Medical School as from ScienceDaily, Monday (10/19/2009).

Over 2 years, researchers conducted a survey and analyzing the data that links between happiness and health of a person with a situation in which the scope of its social network-family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and others.

By using the standard system of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index, note that when someone is happy, a friend who lived 1 mile away to increase happiness as much as 25 percent. Meanwhile, siblings increased 14 percent and neighbors will increase 34 percent.

Not only that, a friend from your friends who may not know anything you can increase happiness by 10 percent.

"Although separated from the 5 people who are not known, but still within a network of friends or relatives, the happy effect was still there. This indicates a strong effect in a network even if they do not know each other intimately," Christakis said.

But Christakis says that the impact will be limited by distance and time. The closer the friends who stayed and are close to you, the stronger the transmission. This is what causes the neighbors had a big impact on happiness.

Researchers also found that people who become central in social networks tend to be happier among others. "With more and more people around him, the risk of transmission would be happy more and more," Christakis said.

In the social networking site, or Facebook are the current trends for example, one of the most commented on its status as a person who used to be the center of attention. They also will be happier as it gets attention and comments from the crowd.

This study shows that happiness and health of a person was highly influenced by the social environment around them. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine is expected to help those who are obese or someone who is isolated from its environment.

According to a study commissioned by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm, 54% of U.S. companies say that they have banned workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace while on the job. The study, released on Oct 6th '09, also found that 19% of companies allow social networking use only for business purposes, while 16% allow limited personal use.

Only 10% of the 1,400 CIOs interviewed answer that their companies allow employees full access to social networks during work hours.

"Using social networking sites may divert employees' attention away from more pressing priorities, so it's understandable that some companies limit access," said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology and a Computerworld columnist, in a statement. "For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes."

A study released last summer concluded that social networking use could hurt the bottom line.

Nucleus Research, an IT research firm, reported in July that employee productivity drops 1.5% at companies that allow full access to Facebook in the workplace. That survey of 237 corporate employees also showed that 77% of workers who have a Facebook account use it during work hours.

Nucleus said that the survey found that "some" employees use the social networking site for as much as two hours a day at work. It did not say how many workers fit into that category, but it did note that one in 33 workers surveyed said that they use Facebook only while at work. And of those using Facebook at work, 87% said they had no clear business reason for accessing the network.

And in August, the U.S. Marine Corps reaffirmed its ban on the use of social networks by its soldiers.

Planning on firing off a short missive on Twitter or posting an update to your friends on Facebook from the office?

Better check your employer's rules first!

Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of a book given to incoming students at Zuckerberg's high school alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. The book shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 250 million active users worldwide.

Facebook has met with some controversy over the past few years. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria, China and Iran, although Iran later unblocked Facebook in 2009. It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service. Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook is also facing several lawsuits from a number of Zuckerberg's former classmates, who claim that Facebook had stolen their source code and other intellectual property.

A February 2009 Compete.com study has ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.

Menggunakan Facebook, menambah banyak teman di laman jejaring sosial itu merupakan sesuatu yang menyenangkan. Namun itu tidak lagi berlaku bagi Bill Gates.

Demikian curhat Gates dalam forum para pebisnis di New Delhi, India, Sabtu 25 Juli 2009. Gates mengaku pada awalnya dia tertarik bergabung masuk Facebook - laman jejaring sosial dan pertemanan yang didirkan Mark Zuckerberg pada 4 Februari 2004. Namun, Ia kewalahan menampung permintaan banyak orang yang ingin menjadi teman di Facebook. "Bayangkan, lebih dari 10.000 orang mau menjadi teman saya," tutur Gates seperti yang dikutip laman stasiun televisi NBC.

"Bagi saya itu sudah keterlaluan, akhirnya saya menyerah," lanjut Gates. Dia pun mengaku tidak begitu suka main SMS atau berlama-lama di depan layar komputer. "Saya bukan pengguna teknologi selama 24 jam penuh dan lebih suka membaca buku," tutur Gates, yang berada di India untuk menerima penghargaan atas perannya sebagai donatur lembaga amal.

Sumber: VIVAnews