We have recently witnessed the growth of hyperlink studies in the field of Internet research. Although investigations have been conducted across many disciplines and topics, their approaches can be largely divided into hyperlink network analysis (HNA) and Webometrics. This article is an extensive review of the two analytical methods, and a reflection on their application. HNA casts hyperlinks between Web sites (or Web pages) as social and communicational ties, applying standard techniques from Social Networks Analysis to this new data source. Webometrics has tended to apply much simpler techniques combined with a more in‐depth investigation into the validity of hypotheses about possible interpretations of the results. We conclude that hyperlinks are a highly promising but problematic new source of data that can be mined for previously hidden patterns of information, although much care must be taken in the collection of raw data and in the interpretation of the results. In particular, link creation is an unregulated phenomenon and so it would not be sensible to assume that the meaning of hyperlinks in any given context is evident, without a systematic study of the context of link creation, and of the relationship between link counts, among other measurements. Social Networks Analysis tools and techniques form an excellent resource for hyperlink analysis, but should only be used in conjunction with improved techniques for data collection, validation and interpretation.

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A set of 1.4 million biomedical papers was analyzed with regards to how often articles are mentioned on Twitter or saved by users on Mendeley. While Twitter is a microblogging platform used by a general audience to distribute information, Mendeley is a reference manager targeted at an academic user group to organize scholarly literature. Both platforms are used as sources for so-called "altmetrics" to measure a new kind of research impact. This analysis shows in how far they differ and compare to traditional citation impact metrics based on a large set of PubMed papers.

Youth-orientated social networking sites, like MySpace, are important venues for socialising and identity expression. Analysing such sites can, therefore, provide a timely insight into otherwise hidden aspects of contemporary culture. In this paper, MySpace member home pages are used to analyse swearing in the US and UK. The results indicate that almost all young MySpaces, and about half of middle-aged MySpaces, contain some swearing, in terms of both males and females. There was no significant gender difference in the UK for strong swearing, especially for younger users (16–19). This is perhaps the first significant evidence of gender equality in strong swearing frequency in any informal English-language context. By contrast, US male MySpaces contain significantly more strong swearing than those of females. The assimilation by UK females of traditional male swearing in the informal context of MySpace, suggests deeper changes in gender roles in society – possibly related to the recent rise in `ladette culture'.

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