INFLUENCE: A study finds that Facebook friends played a big role in getting hundreds of thousands of people to vote in 2010.

HOW IT WAS DONE: Facebook researchers and scientists at the University of California, San Diego conducted a massive online experiment in the mid-term congressional election to test and measure the political power of online peer pressure.

THE FINDINGS: People who got Facebook messages that their friends had voted were a bit more likely to go to the polls than those who didn't get the same reminder.