Social Networking

OPINION

Facebook Shouldn't Wall Off Minors

Neelie Kroes, EC vice president for the digital agenda, has expressed concern that most social networking sites don't make younger users' profiles private by default. "I am disappointed that most social networking sites are failing to ensure that minors' profiles are accessible only to their approve...

Fact #1: Facebook's iPhone app is one of that platform's all-time most popular applications. Fact #2: Apple's iPad has been on the market for well over year. Why, then, does Facebook still have no native app specifically built for the Apple tablet? Perhaps that's soon to change. Reports emerged Frid...

The hacker group LulzSec has been carrying out a security-busting blitzkrieg across the Web over the last few weeks, and its targets are getting bigger and bigger. You can tell where it's been by the path of sites left shivering in a fetal position -- sites belonging to organizations like PBS, Sony,...

Facebook is working on an HTML 5-based platform code-named "Project Spartan" that will seek to distribute apps to iDevices, TechCrunch has reported. The project purportedly has about 80 outside developers, including people from Zynga and Huffington Post, creating a variety of apps for the upcoming p...

Four consumer protection organizations, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have filed a complaint with the United States Federal Trade Commission over Facebook's use of facial recognition technology. The complaint states that the process creates an image identification system under th...

Facebook has begun rolling out worldwide a tag suggestions feature that uses facial recognition software to automatically suggest tags for the faces appearing in new photos uploaded to its site. The announcement has raised concerns that the feature will impinge upon users' privacy. When a member upl...

Google has introduced a new tool to the social networking world using one of its strong suits: Gmail. In the next couple weeks, Google will debut a feature for Gmail called the "People Widget." The widget will appear to the right of messages and display information about contacts, including recent m...

Facebook hopes to one day be permitted to draw young children into the Facebook fold. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested altering legal restrictions that prevent children younger than 13 from signing up for a Facebook account. Currently, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal la...

Facebook is having a tough month. First, it was revealed that the company hired a PR firm to portray competitor Google in a negative light, and now it is facing an even worse scenario: government regulation. The Social Networking Privacy Act, introduced into the California Senate, would force any so...

Facebook and other Internet sites have joined forces to oppose the Social Networking Privacy Act, pending California legislation that would require them to change the way they handle user privacy online. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Skype, Match.com, eHarmony and Yahoo are among the companies that sig...

Gabe Zichermann may have coined the term "funware" to describe applications with game-like mechanics and game-like behavior that really aren't traditional video games, but his neologism just may be expanding to encompass much more than initially intended -- the extraordinary paroxysm of technologica...

You've gotta love social networking. It lets us make zillions of "friends" all over the world, it's making corporations scramble to meet customer requirements, and it's made Mark Zuckerberg and a few other people very, very rich. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are among those other people enriched by...

Facebook has introduced a number of security improvements aimed at better safeguarding users' privacy. These enhancements came a day after Sophos published an open letter asking the site to tighten up its security. By all accounts, Sophos was not impressed. Not that Facebook hastily revamped its co...

Google has launched what many see as its answer to the growing phenomenon of social search in general and Facebook's "Like" button in particular: the +1 button. It is similar in concept, although in Google's case it will eventually be included in search results. When users see something they like on...

Succeeding with social media marketing was one of the keynote topics at the Web 2.0 conference Thursday. Others involved tips on going mobile, while some touched on the subject of design, which seems to be gaining new importance, judging from the number of keynotes focusing on that topic at the conf...

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