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We're pretty keen on optimal timing for social media here at Buffer, and I figured it was high time I collected all the information we have about online communication into one place. I've collected research and stats on Twitter, Facebook, email and blogging to help you find the best time to communicate with others in each format.

""I mean, man, it's like not real life. Not. Real. Life. Why would you be on there when there's this," he gestured, with his chin, to everything around him, the bottleneck of teens, grouping off, chattering. Then he looked over at a small pack of guys dressed a little like him, ambling towards us. "Those are my boys," he said, then offered me his hand to shake. "Hope this helps," he said, adding, at the last moment, "Obviously, like, Facebook is not cool.""

"Gmail is one of the most popular email services with more than 500 million users, so chances are pretty good that you're one of them. But are you making the most of your email account? Many of us complain that our inboxes are too full and that responding to email is too time-consuming, but several tools are available that will streamline your email experience. Take a look at these 10 plugins--most of which are free. They might just make your inbox a friendlier place to visit:"

"I was aware that my daily routine and lifestyle were unsustainable."

"Just as the elevated noise from ubiquitous blogging and publishing tools led to the rise of content curators and apps that filter wheat from chaff, today's hyperconnectivity presents a "drinking from the firehose" challenge to networking. Shrinking degrees of separation often leave people with a lot of "friends" but few relationships, and little indication of which potential relationships might provide real, mutual value."

"The advent of the Web brings the ability to disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field," says Cathy Casserly, a senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who in her former role at the Hewlett Foundation provided seed funding for MIT's project. "We're changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge.""

"Blog posts became Facebook updates and Tumblr posts, which shrunk to Tweets and finally to Instagram or Pinterest. Here's how smart brands are navigating the new visual social-media era."

"If you're managing social media for your business, it might be useful to know about some of the most surprising social media statistics this year. Here are 10 that might make you rethink the way you're approaching social media."

"All visionary entrepreneurs must, at some point, find their own sense of romance in the compromises they make to build a profitable business, and the size of the crowd is where Thrun finds his. He's moved by the idea of many, many students from many, many places learning something because of him--even if it's something as mundane as a Salesforce.com API. I have a hard time believing that he really wants his son to get Salesforce certified rather than Stanford educated, but in this one thing Thrun seems entirely earnest."

"The problem is that we get interrupted frequently in the modern workplace. Rituals become habits, and that means we run through the transition cycle every time we stop doing what we're doing. One famous 2007 study found that when people responded to email or instant messaging alerts, it took them 10 to 15 minutes beyond time spent on the interruption to really get back into their original tasks. Those 10 to 15 minutes of headline checking add up."

"Most Google+ fans I know don't mourn its closure as much as they mourn the loss of Google+ circa 2014. Imagine a social network where geeks have higher follower counts than celebrities. Where there's no advertising. Where trolls get crushed and ordinary people have a voice. Where smart people gather for long, detailed and interesting conversations. Where most streams aren't algorithmically filtered. Where photographs appear at full quality. Where social networking engagement leads to actual, real-life friendships. Imagine a social network that strikes fear into Facebook, and forces them to improve the site for their users. It's all hard to imagine. But for about three years, this was Google+. Google+ is dead. But the best version of the site died in 2014. We should all mourn its loss."

"Welcome to the other side of the uncanny valley of profile photographs. The attention of generated imagery has so far focused on "deepfake videos," in which a real person's face is grafted semi-realistically (for now) onto someone else's body. There's a different impact with deep-learning AI-generated fake still-photo faces that look realistic but aren't attempting to match the appearance of any actual person. And they're so new that these images have yet to get a name-perhaps deepfaces will win out. Deepfaces have a greater potential to add to the noise of troll farms, social-media griefers, and outright scammers and fraudsters because they look legitimate and fail reverse-image searches. As Craig Silverman, a long-time exposer of online frauds and BuzzFeed media editor, says, "I think it presents a big challenge for some of the existing approaches used by investigators, journalists, and police and others to follow a breadcrumb trail.""