'Passive affection' of Facebook and Twitter saves me money

There may be few things more annoying than reading the results of yet another study in the press. The only thing more dispiriting, I guess, would be one more self-serving article about Twitter. Enough already!

Yet here's one that dares to be exponentially more pretentious by being both at once. Don't worry. I'll boil it down to the essential fact: HarvardBusiness.org reports that on Twitter, only 10% of its users account for 90% of the activity. That means only a few people are saying much at all, and everyone else is just watching.

It only confirms my big theory about social networking. Participation, in social networking terms, is not about what people put into the system. It's measured by what people take out of it. Here we have the statistical proof that people are indeed sponging up the benefits of these new systems.

I am one of them. Facebook has given me a new way to connect with the people from my past. Its gift to me is passive affection.