Social Networking

Facebook on Monday denied a weekend report that it is preparing to launch a branded phone designed to make the mobile phone experience more social, Facebook style. Although rumors spread following an anonymously sourced report that first appeared on TechCrunch purporting that such a phone is coming,...

Twitter is revamping its Web page so that users will actually stay on the site. With its reliance on 140-character messages that typically link to other content, Twitter's model was tailor made to send users elsewhere. The design changes and new partnerships with content providers are meant to keep ...

Out in the Florida swamps, where men may be swamp things and believe in a jealous divinity, a crackpot pastor decided to commemorate Sept. 11 by the time-honored practice of book burning. In this instance, the book was the Quran. That act of lunacy roiled the nation, arousing criticism from the Whit...

Facebook rolled out its Places feature this week to much fanfare -- so much, in fact, that the official Facebook Blog has an update note posted that users who are unable to access the service should try back soon to see if they can check in. The app, available on the iPhone as part of Facebook for i...

Foursquare began nudging social networks out of the virtual world and into the real one when it launched its "location-awareness" service roughly a year ago. On Wednesday, Facebook pushed real-world social networking smack into the mainstream by unveiling a location awareness service of its own. The...

How many times have we all seen comments like this on a Facebook status update: "Not like, but dislike," or "I'd press Dislike if there was a button." It's a common complaint about the social networking site's comment options; one can press the "Like" button to give a thumbs-up to a friend's post, b...

Google announced on Wednesday that it has killed off Google Wave, the sharing and communication Web app it kicked off last year. Wave "has not seen the user adoption we would have liked," wrote Urs Holzle, Google's senior vice president of operations. Google won't continue developing Wave as a stand...

The time Americans devote to social networking sites and blogs has jumped dramatically in the last year, according to new figures from Nielsen. People in the U.S. spent nearly a quarter of their online time -- 22.7 percent -- on social networks and blogs in June 2010. That was up from 15.8 percent i...

Facebook has jumped into the online Q&A space with Facebook Questions, a beta feature that can be viewed by all Facebook users. This is how it works: Click on the "Ask Question" feature, which can be found in the status bar. Type in a query -- say, "What is the best pizza restaurant in Adams Mor...

Google's "Facebook killer" came a step closer to reality Wednesday, when it was revealed that the company has been talking with game makers for potential inclusion of their wares on a new social network. Originally brought to light by a tweet last month from Digg Founder Kevin Rose, the new "Google ...

And you thought Apple was the only Teflon technology company out there. Despite a brief six-year lifespan filled with privacy complaints and user gripes over neck-snapping design changes, Facebook just signed up User No. 500,000,000. Businesses continue to pile onboard the Mark Zuckerberg express, t...

Twitter has announced that it will be working toward consolidating management of its data centers within its own organization. The company's first custom-built data center, located in the Salt Lake City area, will fire up later this year. Twitter will keep its relationship with NTT America to mainta...

Facebook is expected to announce sometime this week that it has topped half a billion users. That's 500 million globally. For a website that began life in the humble environs of a college dorm room, it's quite a milestone. However, many of those users are concerned about how their information is bei...

How's this for tying together Old Spice's winning social media strategy and Apple's current iPhone problems: While the cologne and deodorant company is ending the week smelling like a rose, Steve Jobs' tech colossus is in danger of stinking up the joint. Follow along with me as I attempt to marry th...

Outlook Friends Facebook

Facebook has joined the list of social networking sites available in the in-boxes of Outlook users, thanks to Microsoft's Outlook Social Connector. Outlook users have been expecting Tuesday's announcement since November, when Microsoft said the service would be included in its Office 2010 suite. The...

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