Who is influential online?

Via The Boston Globe:

Facebook fascinates social scientistsâas well as advertisersâas a real-time, trackable network of influences. So who really influences whom? Using a Facebook application for discussing the movie industry, researchers at New York University arranged it so that automated messages of usersâ activities were randomly sent to usersâ friends, to see who was more influential in generating new users and which friends were more susceptible to influence. Older users, it turns out, were generally more influential, especially among peers of the same age, while younger users were generally more susceptible. Men were more influential than women, but women were less susceptible to influence and exerted more influence over men than over other women. In addition, users with a definitive relationship statusâeither single or marriedâwere more influential than users with relationships in between. Married users were the least susceptible to influence.