<p>The social network's structure optimizes the sharing of information in a way that Twitter's hierarchical setup does not.</p><p>Mike Segar/Reuters</p><p>PROBLEM: The goal of a social network, we constantly try to convince our sharing-everything-on-the-Internet-averse friends, is to connect to others in a way that enhances -- not replaces -- the real-world communities in which we exist. But if we were to zoom out and look at everything happening on Facebook beyond the limited vantage point of our newsfeeds, would we see that this is actually the case?</p><p>METHODOLOGY: Sampling something as large and amorphous as Facebook is no simple task. Emilio Ferrara, of both Indiana University and Italy's University of Messina, used sophisticated data-mining to identify public profiles, developed complex algorithms to track users' interactions with other users, and mapping the networks that emerged. Users remained anonymous -- Ferrara reduced us all to numbers in order to understand our interactions from a statistical viewpoint.</p><p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/study-facebook-builds-better-communities-than-twitter/266149/">Keep reading...</a></p>