Reddit names are unconnected to real-world identities and it's commonplace for users to create 'throwaway' accounts to reveal sensitive information.

If I use Facebook to stay in touch with my high school friends who are church-going Republicans, I may be getting more ideological diversity than in hanging out with secular progressives on the World Politics sub-reddit.

[According to Twitter] 24 percent of American Twitter users are African-American. That's about twice as high as African-Americans are represented in the population.

People who know me well have learned to insist that I commit to obligations by opening my laptop and putting them onto the appropriate calendar or list - a verbal agreement and a promise to remember won't work.

Moments of crisis, like the shooting in Newtown, tend to produce brief spikes of popular interest in gun control. My research on media attention suggests these spikes are extremely short-lived, and that they may be decreasing in intensity.

People want to be thought of as something other than a source of money. They want to be thought of as creative, thinking people.

Cute. I'm on the waitlist to beta a new product, and have been offered the chance to move up in the list if I tweet about it. Not doing so.