A recent study analyzes the mood of Twitter which can be used to predict Dow Jones Industrial Average movements in the very near future.

Large changes in the stock market are preceded by phases of “calmness” in the Twitterverse.

The study’s authors are quick to note that they have no idea why this should be the case. The researchers say their findings “offer no information on the causative mechanisms that may connect public mood states with DJIA values in this manner.” While “calmness” might predict market movements, it doesn’t necessarily cause them.

Also perplexing is the fact that the tweets came from around the world, and the researchers don’t know how many of them were conceived in the U.S., where the DJIA is based. And of course, other influences, such as news, can trump the “calmness” factor. As the researchers put it, “The deviation between Calm values and the DJIA … illustrates that unexpected news is not anticipated by the public mood yet remains a significant factor in modeling the stock market.”

Still, as Technology Review notes, these potential flaws don’t detract from the fact that the findings could be “hugely influential.” If nothing else, the results suggest the influences on the DJIA extend far beyond the financial community.

Now we can add Twitter to the ranks of such futuristic oracles as the Global Coherence Initiative (ionospheric monitoring) and Half Past Human (analyzing the language of the web).

Two to six days after Twitter goes quiet something enormous will happen. If you’re committed to altering the current reality – quit Twitter.

Speaking of quitting social networks, Facebook was recently hit with another huge privacy violation.

Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.