Morning Advantage: What You're Really Using Facebook For

People were sharing messages and links long before Facebook and Twitter came along, points out The Atlantic’s Alex Madrigal, in this thoughtful revisionist history of social networking. And more than two-thirds of all that sharing, he’s got the data to show, is still going on elsewhere, through peer-to-peer links like e-mail and instant messages, which he calls “dark social,” because it’s essentially untraceable. Facebook accounts for only about 20% of the social networking activity going on over the web; Twitter a mere 6%.

Since you can’t game people’s e-mail, he maintains, the only way to optimize the influence of your social networking messaging is through the compelling nature of the content itself. What’s more, he adds, we’re not really using Facebook the way most people think. We’re not exchanging our personal data for the ability to share stuff with friends; we’re giving it up in exchange for access to a publishing and archiving platform. That might be a deal you want to make, he concludes, but it’s not the one you’ve been told you’ve made.

BRICI? BRIIC? IBRIC?

A Middle Class Takes Off (CNN Money)

While times are (relatively) tough for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, Indonesia’s economy is going gangbusters, thanks to a rising middle class engaged in strong domestic consumption. Right now, with 45 million middle-class consumers heading up the value chain purchasing increasingly more expensive goods, Indonesia is the 16th largest economy in the world. By 2030, McKinsey predicts, the country will add 90 million more to its middle-class ranks, fueling a virtuous cycle of spending, job growth, and more spending that will vault the country into 7th place (and earn it membership in the G8) in less than a generation.

I’D ACCEPT ANYWAY

There’s a Downside to Winning a Nobel Prize? (The Guardian)

No one disputes the glory, and no one’s returning the money. But winning a Nobel Prize apparently isn’t an unalloyed joy. The main downsides, offers 2004 laureate Frank Wilczek, are the twin temptations to rest on your laurels and to pontificate on grandiose questions. Others, like 2001 physiology or medicine winner Tim Hunt, feel uncomfortable being singled out for work they did in the course of their day jobs. Perhaps worst of all though, offers Brian Schmidt (who shared last year’s physics prize for work on the accelerating expansion of the universe), is that “everyone now takes everything I say so seriously.”

BONUS BITS:

Human Factors

Amazon’s Next Big Business Is Selling You (Wired)
Bionic Revolution: The Tech Getting Disabled People into Work (BBC News)
Why You Should Never Name Drop Your Significant Other at a Work Event (Boston Inno)