All aboard India’s first passenger train with the Google Doodle!

If you’re a fan of spotting Google Doodles, this is a great week for you.

A day after Google honoured Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler with a doodle, the search giant has come up with one more to commemorate the 160th anniversary of the first passenger train in India.

The doodle is a simple affair, with a steam locomotive pulling a train. The engine forms the first “O” in “Google”. The whole doodle wears a very old-worldly look and resembles a painting more than a drawing. The train is surrounded by open fields and palm trees, trying to bring back the charm of the 19th century.

The first passenger train in India ran between Bori Bunder in Bombay and Thane on April 16, 1853, signaling a new era in travel and communication in the country. The train was pulled by three locomotives – Sultan, Sindh and Sahib and had about 400 passengers on board its 14 carriages. The journey of the first passenger train in India lasted for a good 57 minutes between Bori Bunder and Thane and had just one halt.

Celebrating the 160th anniversary of the first passenger train

 

Interestingly, this was only the first time a passenger train was run in India. The first rail line had come up near Chintadripet Bridge in the then Madras Presidency in 1836 as an experimental line.

After the first passenger train was run between Bombay and Thane, the first passenger railway line in north India was opened between Allahabad and Kanpur in 1859.

The train doodle is a slightly less interactive one this time round and slightly inaccurate too, given the fact that the train was actually pulled by three locomotives.

To celebrate Euler’s birthday yesterday, the doodle was a partly animated one. The doodle included geometrical figures and mathematical formulae, scribbled on a partially yellow piece of paper. Some of the mathematical elements on the doodle, included the mathematical constant, his polyhedral formula, now written as v-e+f=2.
 
An important name in the field of mathematics, Euler’s genius can be affirmed from the fact that he is the only mathematician to have two numbers named after him – the Euler’s number in calculus (e, i.e. approximately equal to 2.71828), and the Euler’s Mascheroni Constant (gamma), also called as “Euler’s constant” (approximately equal to 0.57721).

Earlier in December, Google had honoured another mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan on his 125th birthday. The doodle in the memory of this genius was endearing, to say the least and best described what Ramanujan lived for – his love for mathematics. The doodle showed a young lad, believed to be young Ramanujan, on his fours, writing the mathematical constant Pi, which is approximately equal to 3.14159. The word ‘Google’ was thoughtfully etched out of the different formulaes and other mathematical depictions.

Google pays $100 mn to Indian-American Neal Mohan to keep him from #Twitter

Google has paid a staggering bonus of $100 million to Indian-American executive Neal Mohan, just to keep him from accepting a job at Twitter.

Mohan is the man in charge of display ads for Google. He launched and developed the company’s approach and execution for that side of Google’s business. According to Business Insider which carries an excellent detailed profile of Mohan, He has a “special ability to understand what’s newly possible thanks to technology, and how this might be applied to serve a business strategy.”

He is expected to bring in an estimated $7billion for Google this year.

The report added that the bonus had come just as Mohan was on the verge of accepting an offer by Twitter to become chief of product in 2011.

A report in TechCrunch estimated that he was paid $100 million then, and Business Insider says that given the current value of Google stock, those shares are probably worth around $150 million today. The stock options will fully vest in three years.

Mohan graduated from Stanford in 1996 and worked for Accenture and NetGravity, before the latter was acquired by DoubleClick.

According to Daily Mail, “a private equity firm bought the company for $1.1billion and the CEO hired Mr Mohan to help rehabilitation. About 18 months later, after Mr Mohan implemented an aggressive plan to streamline and focus the business, Google bought it for $3.1billion.Since then, he has overseen Google’s acquisition of start-up companies to help bolster Google’s ad market.”

He reportedly also has a free rein to develop the display ad business as he sees first.

Business Insider had also collected a number of descriptions about Mohan from his co-workers who said things like, “He’s not a screamer or a big table-banger” and “”He doesn’t bullshit. If our numbers were going bad, I heard from him”. His clients were equally impressed saying things like “”He is the quiet assassin. He’s not a big show-boater.”

Leonhard Euler honoured by Google doodle

The mathematician introduced most modern terminology and was renowned for his work in mechanics, optics and astronomy

Leonhard Euler, the influential Swiss mathematician, has had the 306th anniversary of his birth honoured by a Google doodle. Photograph: Google

The birth of the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler has been celebrated by Google with the publishing of an interactive Google doodle.

Euler was arguably the most important mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time. He introduced most modern mathematical terminology and notation and was also renowned for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, and astronomy.

Euler was born in Basel on 15 April 1707. He was tutored by Johann Bernoulli, a family friend who was also Europe’s leading mathematician. When Euler’s father tried to make him become a pastor, Bernoulli persuaded him that his son had the potential to be a great mathematician.

He travelled to Russia, where he prospered until foreign intellectuals became unpopular and he moved to Berlin. When Catherine the Great succeeded to the throne, Euler returned to Russia, where he died in 1783.

Four Young Indians Create a True ‘Smartwatch’ Before Apple

Off late, wrist watches have changed their image from a necessary time tracking device to an accessory, which doubles as a phone. It not only tells time but notifies you on incoming calls, previews the text messages, reads mails and a lot more.

However, none of these “Smartwatches” are not exact replica of a phone. They sync with the phone through Bluetooth and works accordingly. But many tech titans including Apple and Samsung are reportedly on final stages of developing Smartwatch, which is said to be the new ‘hot gadget,’ and a ‘killer of Smartphones.’

But before all of them, here is a watch developed by four Indian youngsters, which according to the developers, is a true wearable phone with size and design of a wristwatch, or a “Smartwatch”, reports TOI.

The four lads behind the innovative gadget are three 24-year olds and a school boy- software developer Ankit Pradhan, communications professional Pavneet Singh Puri, lawyer Apurva Sukant and Siddhant Vats, a 17-year old schoolboy the youngest member in the team. Four of them have formed their company, Androidly Systems Private Limited

“There are other such products in the market, but they mostly sync with Smartphones and are not phones in themselves. We have ported Android on to a much smaller board and built a wearable phone,” says Sukant, a Beethoven fan who is the resident designer of the group.

The watch with 2-inch screen has a 2-mega pixel camera and runs on an older version of android operating system. The device is built with a speaker and mic. Besides, the end of the wrist-strap can be plugged into a USB socket to charge the phone as well as to be used as a storage device. According to the developers, the device will be available in Indian markets from March 15 as well as abroad and each set will cost 12000.

The smart watches have been around more than a decade but it has failed to grab the attention as the lucrative touch phones ruled with their innovative designs, finish and software. Apart from the Indian quartet, other multinational companies like Apple and Samsung are also working on the similar, wearable devices with some of them like pebble, already available in the market.

For instance, wearable devices like Sony SmartWatch, LG Watch Phone, Samsung Cell-Phone Wristwatch and Nike+Fuelband were some of the popular ones. But none of them turned out to create a new space in the market.

The story of the device named to be ‘Androidly’ is quite interesting. “We have all been friends for years now and would hang out at Rajinder da Dhaba a lot. I was a member of my college student council then and was getting a lot of calls regarding the college fest. That day, my phone rang at a time when my hands were dripping with chicken curry. And I just couldn’t retrieve it from my pocket,” says Puri, who had been working two jobs in Melbourne during the development stage of the Smartwatch.

Hailing from middle-class backgrounds, the youngsters started their own company will little help from home. Currently, they are on the process of finding investors to have a close contact with Chinese manufacturers.

 

Ten Most Famous Business Cards Of Legends

In an era of Facebook, iPhone and Smartphones; the humble business card is at the brim of turning outdated. But once, the captivating business cards, of rich and famous tech tycoons, celebrities and politicians have marked a remarkable change from being pragmatic to giving an insight into their personality sticking to an old-fashioned manner but in their own unique style.

Here are the 10 famous business cards that belong to the some tech titans and celebrities which everyone would love to have a look at.

#10 Steve Jobs

There was a time when walkman was the future and iPod was outlandish. At that point of time, Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple was in immediate need of business card to flourish his business. Following, he came up with a variety of business cards in a simplistic and unique manner. He started his creation of business cards from 1979.

#9 Eric Schimdt

Eric Schimdt, according to his card holds the title of “Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO of Google”. Schimdt’s card was actually a talk of the town soon after it was created due to its typo errors. It created hype in the media because of his power and designation as the Search Giant’s CEO.

#8 Mark Zuckerberg

“I’m CEO, Bitch”, Facebook CEO and billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, shows the world that you can get away with anything and everything when you’re the boss. The story of this title has been the talk of the town since 2009. The film “the Social Network”, based on Ben Mezrich’s book, announced the phrase to the world. Through his card, he shows that you’re the boss and can put anything on the card and no one can deny it. It marks a bold statement and presents an impression of radicalism or lack of concern and considered expression.

#7 Bill Gates

The colorful visually-appealing business card introduced by Microsoft founder and billionaire, Bill Gates. Back then, Microsoft was headquartered in Albuquerque. The card introduces the founder with a full title.  He might not carry the prestige of a former President, but his contributions to the society are far-reaching. The business card design and possibilities reached a matured stage where he has made the best use of it.

#6 Steve Wozniak

One of the coolest and most modern business cards we’ve ever seen comes from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The card is made of stainless steel with creative design and laser etching. It is custom made and includes designs, both etched and printed. It is sleek, smooth sexy lines wrapped around future-proof metal.

#5 Evan Williams

Evan Williams, the founder of several internet companies, is known to be the creator of two most popular internet websites, Blogger and Twitter. Williams’ business card carries a logo of Twitter on one side along with his name, designation and the company name where he has looked forward to make it simple. It was created soon after he was raised as the CEO of the social networking site, Twitter.

#4 Barack Obama

The Senatorial business card of Barack Obama presents a rare archive of the 2008 Presidential elections. Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois was elected as the first African American President of the United Sates. The business card carries the patriotic raised seal of a gold eagle and his name, designation and office details as United States Senator. It guarantees authenticity as it comes with a certificate.

#3 Walt Disney

The animation giant, Walt Disney, popularly known as Disney, created a business card hand-drawn which obviously sounds and appeals cool. It provided a taste of his passion and illustrative skills on the card which shows a vivid example of who he is and what he does.

#2 Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga teamed up with Polaroid in 2011 with an aim to restore the famous brand. The company designed a business card for the pop-music star which is quite innovative and catchy. It is designed with a logo of the company in bold characters alongside her name and designation as “Creative Director”. The texts, probably supposed to be the company’s address is striked off whch have made it catchy.

#1 Albert Einstein

Known to be the father of modern Physics, Albert Einstein, had a surprisingly plain business card which hardly had any justice to his theories, his personality nor his appearance. He has mainly focused on the simplicity of the card, rather than revealing his identity and profession.

Twenty Biggest Websites In The World

From online candy sales to a website to search other website, everyone has got a website under their name these days. The popularity of a website is the measure of visitors it has garnered, and it is what draws the defining lines between being big and being meager. If you were thinking Google is the biggest website in the world, you are wrong! It is another one from USA. comScore, the digital analytics company came up with the list of most popular Website in the world. If you are curious to know which ones found their way up in the ladder, then here are the 20 biggest websites in the world, compiled by Business Insider.

#20 Amazon.com 163 Million Unique Visitors

The company: Amazon.com is the world’s largest online retailer. Started as an online bookstore, it soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. The company was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos called his “regret minimization framework”, which described his efforts to fend off any regrets for not participating sooner in the internet business boom during that time. Amazon was originally founded in Bezos’ garage in Bellevue, Washington.

The company also produces consumer electronics—notably the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire Tablet—and is a major provider of cloud computing services.

#19 Sina.com.cn 169 Million Visitors

Sina.com is the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal. It is run by Sina Corporation, which was founded in 1999. Sina was recognized by Southern Weekend as the “Chinese Language Media of the Year” for 2003 and in the early 2000s, it was known as the “Yahoo of China.” Sina launched a microblogging service Weibo in 2009, and has grown to more than 400 million users. Sina has said it has more than 60,000 verified accounts, consisting of celebrities, sports stars and other VIPs. The top 100 users now have over 180 million followers combined.

#18 WordPress.com 170.9 Million Visitors

WordPress.com is a blog web hosting service provider owned by Automattic, and powered by the open source WordPress software. WordPress has been able to attract users by offering dead-simple tools for blogging and web publishing. Given that it’s open source, WordPress has the upper hand on other platforms that require licensing fees.

There are nearly 60 million WordPress.com sites, which receive more than 100 million pageviews per day. Everyday over one million new articles and over one million comments are published. Some notable clients include CNN, CBS, BBC, Reuters, Sony and Volkswagen. In September 2010, it was announced that Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft’s blogging service, would be closing, and that Microsoft would instead be partnering with WordPress.com for blogging services.

#17 Apple.com – 171.7 Million Unique Visitors

Apple.com is online destination for Apple products and software. It is the domain for the Apple Store as well as customer support pages for all Apple products. It’s bookmarked as the default homepage on Safari browser that is the default browser in all Apple Internet-connected products which are owned by countless number of people already.

#16 Sohu.com – 175.8 Million Unique Visitors

Started in 1997 as the country’s first online search company, Sohu.com is a Chinese portal and search engine. It offers advertising, online multiplayer gaming and other services. Sohu was ranked as the world’s 3rd and 12th fastest-growing company by Fortune in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

#15 Bing.com – 184 Million Unique Visitors

Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has aggressively advertised Bing, and made huge efforts to make the search engine much easier to use, with the addition of things like the social sidebar and improved algorithms. Microsoft also pays other Websites to link to Bing.
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[6 hat it is: Web search engine.

#14 Twitter.com – 189.8 Million Unique Visitors

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and by July, the social networking site was launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as “the SMS of the Internet.”

The presence of news organizations, politicians, and other industry-specific experts have turned Twitter into the ultimate source of information.

#13 Taobao.com – 207 Million Unique Visitors

Taobao.com is Chinese marketplace for clothing, accessories, jewelry, food, electronics, and more, similar to eBay and Amazon, operated by Alibaba Group. Founded by Alibaba Group in May 10, 2003, it facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly cater to consumers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

#12 Ask.com – 218.4 Million Unique Visitors

Ask is a question answering focused web search engine powered by Google. It founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California.

#11 Blogger.com – 229.9 Million Unique Visitors

Blogger.com is one of the earliest dedicated blog-publishing tools; it is credited for helping popularize the format. It allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a sub domain of blogspot.com.

#10 MSN.com – 254.1 Million Unique Visitors

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.

MSN was once a simple online service for Windows 95, an early experiment at interactive multimedia content on the Internet, and one of the most popular dial-up Internet service providers. Today, MSN is primarily a popular Internet portal.

#9 Baidu – 268.7 Million Unique Visitors

Baidu is a Chinese web Services Company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing. It offers many services, including a Chinese language search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu also offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. Baidu was established in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu.

Baidu is one of China’s most popular search engines. It employs thousands of China’s best engineers to continually update the quality and speed of its search engine.

#8 Microsoft.com – 271.7 Million Unique Visitors

Microsoft.com is destination for purchasing Microsoft products, and downloading MS software and updates. There are a lot of Microsoft Windows-powered computers out there, and most of them come with Microsoft.com bookmarked for customer support and lots of other functions, no wonder it’s on this list.

#7 QQ.com – 284.1 Million Unique Visitors

QQ.com is China-based search engine and portal. QQ is an abbreviation of Tencent QQ, which provides customers with a popular instant messaging software service. Due to popularity of the instant messaging software service, by 10 September 2012, there were 784 million active user accounts with approximately 100 million online at a time.

#6 Live.com – 389.5 Million Unique Visitors

Live.com is Microsoft’s new email service. It was a customizable portal launched by Microsoft in early November 2005 and it was one of the first Windows Live services to launch. Live.com lets users add RSS feeds in order to view news at a glance. Building off Microsoft’s Start.com experimental page, Live.com could be customized with Gadgets, mini-applications that could serve almost any purpose.

Some gadgets integrated with other Windows Live services, including Hotmail, Live Search, and Favorites.

#5 Wikipedia.org – 469.6 Million Unique Visitors

Wikipedia.org is simply the easy and best source of knowledge. It is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 24 million articles, over 4.1 million in the English Wikipedia, are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world.

As of February 2013, there are editions of Wikipedia in 285 languages. It has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide.

#4 Yahoo.com – 469.9 Million Unique Visitors

Yahoo.com is a search engine and platform that connects to users to other Yahoo properties, such as Yahoo Finance and Flickr. Yahoo is one of the original Web portals from the 1990s; it offers news, sports, finance, and email.

#3 YouTube.com – 721.9 Million Unique Visitors

YouTube.com is the platform for uploading, sharing, and watching user-created videos. It was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google, and the site got more popular.

#2 Google.com – 782.8 Million Unique Visitors

Google.com is web search engine, popularly known as ‘search giant’. Google entered a crowded search engine market in the late 1990s, but won because it was the fastest and had a clean design. It was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University.

#1 Facebook.com – 836.7 Million Unique Visitors

Facebook.com is the largest social networking site with over a billion registered users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

#2G Scam: DMK to Back Raja’s Request to Appear Before JPC

DMK will back former Telecom Minister A Raja if the issue of his request to appear before the Joint Parliamentary Committee as a witness on the 2G case is raised at the UPA Coordination Committee meeting here on Tuesday.

“If the Congress raises the issue…, asks us, we have to stand by Raja,” party spokesman T K Elangovan, MP, told PTI when asked whether the issue could be raised by the DMK, a key constituent of the UPA, at the Coordination Committee meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Besides, Elangovan said Raja’s request to appear before the JPC was a “new development” and “our leader may advise us” about future course of action.

The DMK spokesman said his party would raise the issue of Sri Lankan Tamils and farmers suicides in Tamil Nadu at the UPA Coordination Committee meeting.

A DMK member of Lok Sabha, Raja is a prime accused in the 2G spectrum case who had been in Tihar jail for several months before being granted bail.

He had met Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar some days back and handed her a letter expressing his willingness to appear as a witness before the JPC.

Raja has contended that while he has the “fullest respect” for the court, “the fact remains that I have been condemned unheard.” He has sent a copy of the letter to Congress leader P C Chacko, who heads the JPC.

Raja’s request to Kumar comes days after Attorney General G E Vahanvati blamed him for various issues before the JPC.

“The truth of the matter is being suppressed on the basis of preconceived notions, deliberate bias, faulty investigation and erroneous conclusions.

“…Perhaps the most telling example of this situation is the judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court dated 02.02.2012, where specific and prejudicial observations were made against me without giving me a hearing,” Raja wrote in the letter.

Chacko is likely to get back to Raja with a final decision soon on the issue after consulting other committee members, JPC sources said.

Reports had it that Raja’s desire to testify before the JPC could be extremely damaging for the ruling UPA, as it fuels a controversy which the government is now trying to give a quiet burial after over two years of turbulent parliamentary, judicial and media scrutiny since November 2010.

Chacko is likely to get back to Raja with a final decision soon on the issue after consulting other committee members, the sources said.

Raja’s request has come when the three-month-long Budget session has just commenced.

Congress has steered clear of the issue while an AIADMK has leader said it was a fight between DMK and Congress and his party would not get into it.

With Parliament reconvening on Tuesday and the JPC scheduled to meet soon after, Raja’s demand could become a major rallying point for the BJP and Left parties.

At the UPA meeting, besides several issues, the Telangana statehood demand is expected to figure. NCP chief Sharad Pawar had suggested the need for such an early meeting to discuss Telangana.

The meeting will be the first formal interaction between Congress and allies after the AgustaWestland helicopter scam broke out .

Meanwhile, another ally National Conference is apparently upset over the way the execution of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru was carried out. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had said it would increase alienation of Kashmiris from the Indian mainstream.

PTI

Related articles

• 2G Case: Raja Wants to Appear Before JPC as a Witness (ktrmurali.wordpress.com)

2G Case: Raja Wants to Appear Before JPC as a Witness

A Raja, former Telecom Minister and prime accused in the 2G spectrum allocation scam case, today created a flutter by making a strong pitch to appear before the JPC as a witness claiming he has been “condemned unheard”.

Raja’s request to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar comes days after Attorney General G E Vahanvati blamed him for various issues before the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).

He has also been blamed for the 2G scam by other witnesses before the special CBI court.

“The truth of the matter is being suppressed on the basis of preconceived notions, deliberate bias, faulty investigation and erroneous conclusions.

“…Perhaps the most telling example of this situation is the judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court dated 02.02.2012, where specific and prejudicial observations were made against me without giving me a hearing,” Raja wrote in the letter.

Raja’s request has come when the three-month-long Budget session has just commenced.

There was no immediate reaction of JPC Chairman P C Chacko to the request of Raja, who had been in Tihar jail for several months in the 2G issue before being granted bail.

Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi steered clear of the issue while an AIADMK leader said it was a fight between DMK and Congress and his party would not get into it.

Raja, a leader of the DMK, met Kumar at her office yesterday and handed over a letter expressing his willingness to appear as a witness before the committee.

He has sent a copy of the letter to Chacko.

Raja said while he has the “fullest respect” for the court, “the fact remains that I have been condemned unheard.”

DMK members in JPC T R Baalu and T Siva had been pressing Chacko to call Raja as a witness.

They also demanded calling Vahanvati again before the panel after he told JPC earlier this month that the controversial press note regarding 2G licences was changed at the last minute by Raja in 2008 with a different pen.

Vahanvati was then the Solicitor General.

Chacko is apparently against calling Raja as a witness. He has told members that as an accused Raja has legal protection and cannot make fresh revelations before any committee. Therefore, there was no point in calling Raja.

But Chacko is yet to take a final call on the issue.

“If Raja is to be called, he will be the last witness. If DMK agrees on not calling him, then we have concluded calling witnesses before JPC and we would focus on writing the report,” Chacko had recently said.

Parliament sources said the Speaker cannot direct any committee to call a person as a witness. In this case, Kumar can forward Raja’s letter to Chacko.

PTI

Facebook can cause frustration: Study

Social networking site Facebook can make you feel envious of your “successful” friends, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction, a new German study has found.

Researchers led by Dr Hanna Krasnova of the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin surveyed Facebook members regarding their feelings after using the platform.

More than one-third of respondents reported predominantly negative feelings, such as frustration. The researchers identified that envying their “Facebook friends” is the major reason for this result.

Krasnova, explained that, “Although respondents were reluctant to admit feeling envious while on Facebook, they often presumed that envy can be the cause behind the frustration of ‘others’ on this platform – a clear indication that envy is a salient phenomenon in the Facebook context”.

“Indeed, access to copious positive news and the profiles of seemingly successful ‘friends’ fosters social comparison that can readily provoke envy. By and large, on-line social networks allow users unprecedented access to information on relevant others — insights that would be much more difficult to obtain offline,” Krasnova said in a statement.

Those who do not engage in any active, interpersonal communications on social networks and primarily utilise them as sources of information, eg reading friends’ postings, checking news feeds, or browsing through photos, are particularly subject to these painful experiences.

The study also found that about one-fifth of all recent on-line/offline events that had provoked envy among the respondents took place within a Facebook context. This reveals a colossal role of this platform in users’ emotional life.

Paradoxically, envy can frequently lead to users embellishing their Facebook profiles, which, in turn, provokes envy among other users, a phenomenon that the researchers have termed “envy spiral”.

The researchers were also able to establish a negative link between the envy that arises while on Facebook and users’ general life satisfaction. Indeed, passive use of Facebook heightens invidious emotions that, in turn, adversely affect users’ satisfaction with their lives.

“Considering the fact that Facebook use is a worldwide phenomenon and envy is a universal feeling, a lot of people are subject to these painful consequences,” study co-author Helena Wenninger of the TU-Darmstadt said.

Related articles

• How Facebook and Twitter can boost your ego and make you more impulsive in just five minutes (ktrmurali.wordpress.com)

How Facebook and Twitter can boost your ego and make you more impulsive in just five minutes

• Policy-makers need to consider the impacts, warn researchers
• Inability to concentrate found to be one of the effects
• Browsing social networks for just five minutes can cause loss of control

Facebook and other social network sites can cause users to lose control and may lead to violence, obesity and debt.

Browsing for just five minutes on social networks can boost user’s self-belief so much that they become more impulsive.

Effects can include an increase in binge-eating, loss of concentration and lack of application, a study showed.

 

Browsing Facebook for just five minutes can increase impulsive behaviour, the study found.

Researchers are also concerned that the loss of control prompted by using Facebook could lead to social problems such as aggression and violence.

‘Given that self-control is important for maintaining social order and personal well-being, this subtle effect could have widespread impact,’ the study from the US warned.

‘This is particularly true for adolescents and young adults who are the heaviest users of social networks and have grown up using social networks as a normal part of their daily lives.’

Dr Andrew Stephen, of the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr Keith Wilcox of Columbia University in New York, carried out the study with more than 1,000 Facebook users and said it was the first time it has been demonstrated that facebook and other social networking sites lead to loss of control.

They urged policy-makers to investigate social network use to better understand how people behave after using Facebook and other sites.

‘We have demonstrated that using today’s most popular social network, Facebook, may have a detrimental effect on people’s self-control,’ said Dr Stephen.

Research identified an increase in binge-eating as one of the effects of using social network sites.

The researchers found that the key to behavioral changes after using social networking sites is the way they boost a user’s feeling of self-worth.

For people who send and receive posts from a number of friends with whom they have ‘strong ties’ even using a site for a short period of time was observed to increase self-esteem.

This is thought to happen because the social conventions that prevent boasting in face to face meetings are weakened when posting online, the researchers argued.

Users are also likely to focus on presenting positive images of themselves which are reinforced by supportive responses.

Having had their self-esteem boosted, the study showed, the self-control of users was weakened and resulted in different types of behaviour.

Volunteers taking part in one test were instructed to either spend a few minutes browsing social network sites or to look through CNN.com and TMZ.com.

Participants were then asked to choose between a healthy snack or a chocolate chip cookie and it was found that those using social network sites were more likely to opt for the unhealthy option.

‘Social network use enhanced self-esteem, making them more likely to make an unhealthy food choice compared to those who did not browse Facebook,’ the academics reported in a paper – Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control – published online in the Journal of Consumer Research.

A similar test in which volunteers were asked to solve anagrams after going online showed that the Facebook users were more likely to lose concentration and give up on the puzzles.

Researchers also asked volunteers a series of questions to establish their Body Mass Index (BMI), how many credit cards they had and what their levels of debt were.

 ‘The results suggest that greater social network use is associated with a higher body-mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit-card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network,’ the researchers found.

‘This research advances our knowledge of social networks by demonstrating that social networks can have significant effects on consumer judgment and decision-making, even in tasks that are unrelated to social network use or more general social behavior.’

They added: ‘Our research demonstrates that social network use may also have a detrimental effect on well-being by leading certain people to exhibit lower self-control.

‘It would be worthwhile for researchers and policy makers to further explore social network use in order to better understand which consumers may be particularly vulnerable to suffering negative psychological or social consequences.’