social networking

Stories 221 - 240 | << Prev   Next >>

Facebook Gets Closer to 'Face' Trademark

Patent office gives notice of allowance

(Newser) - Facebook is thisclose to getting its desired trademark on the word “face,” at least when it comes to online chat rooms or bulletin boards. The US Patent and Trademark Office gave the social networking giant a notice of allowance this week, Inside Facebook reports. Now, Facebook must file...

Facebook Strengthens Relationships
 Facebook 
 Strengthens 
 Relationships 
study says

Facebook Strengthens Relationships

Those 'friends' you don't know may serve a purpose

(Newser) - Facebook "friendships" may seem superficial—but they actually strengthen social ties, a study suggests. “Facebook is not supplanting face-to-face interactions between friends, family, and colleagues,” a professor behind the study tells Reuters . After surveying 900 college students and recent grads about their Facebook activities, researchers found “...

Cops Using Facebook to Bust Dumb Criminals

Lack of privacy can be a good thing for investigators

(Newser) - Oversharing on Facebook makes it easier for your boss to fire you , your insurer to hike up your rates , and, apparently, your local police officer to arrest you. It seems not-too-bright criminals have a habit of bragging about their misdeeds on social networking sites—sometimes even including photos—which has...

1 in 4 Page Views Are for Facebook
1 in 4 Page Views
Are for Facebook

1 in 4 Page Views Are for Facebook

It also accounts for 10% of Internet visits

(Newser) - Hitwise has some new stats that qualify as impressive even by Facebook standards. Mark Zuckerberg's baby accounts for 25% of page views and 10% of Internet visits, notes the Tech Talk blog of CBS. Trailing is Google, with 7% of Internet visits and YouTube with 3%. Those two also combine...

Life Insurers Mine Web to Profile Customers

Buying data Is cheaper than blood tests

(Newser) - Life insurers have traditionally relied on medical tests to get an estimate of a candidate's longevity—screening for things like drug use or high cholesterol. But they're experimenting with a much cheaper, and clandestine, method: gathering up the vast amount of information about people from the web via social networks,...

MySpace 'Mashup' Marks Surrender to Facebook

It's now all about entertainment, not social networking

(Newser) - If you can't beat 'em, join 'em—and that's what MySpace has done with its former rival Facebook, ComputerWorld reports. Although eclipsed as the premier social networking site years ago, MySpace is formally throwing in the towel with the debut of what it calls a "Mashup with Facebook."...

New Social Network Limits Friends to 50

Founders believe people will share even more

(Newser) - If you were moved by Jimmy Kimmel's recent push for a National Unfriend Day , you should be glad to hear this news: New social network Path launches today, and it limits you to your nearest and dearest 50 friends. Path's limit is in keeping with the work of evolutionary anthropologist...

Facebook Can Beat Google as 'King of the Web'

Analysis: It's got the trump cards on display advertising

(Newser) - There's plenty of buzz about Mark Zuckerberg's launch of a potential "G-mail killer" on Monday, but that's a relatively small battle in what's shaping up to be an epic fight between Facebook and Google to be "king of the Web," writes Ryan Singel at Wired . And Google...

19 Bizarre Social Networks
 19 Bizarre Social Networks 

19 Bizarre Social Networks

You're not on Facebook, anymore, Toto

(Newser) - Everyone and their mother is on Facebook these days, so where's a girl to go when she wants a little exclusivity? If she likes to crochet, Ravelry , the network for yarn lovers. The Huffington Post lists 18 other out-of-the-ordinary Facebook alternatives.
  • MyFreeImplants : A site for women who want a boob
...

Cops Screen Recruits' Texts, Facebook Posts

Racy pics, suicide threats get would-be cops dumped

(Newser) - Law enforcement agencies are probing potential recruits’ digital lives for information that might make them unfit for the job, USA Today reports. More than a third of police agencies look into applicants’ social media presence, says a new report conducted for police executives. Reviewing postings to sites like Facebook, MySpace,...

Facebook's No. 2 App Is a Surprise

Trailing Farmville is ... Microsoft's Live Messenger

(Newser) - The main finding of a recent survey of Facebook apps is not at all surprising: FarmVille remains the most popular application, with more than 16 million users logging in daily to tend their virtual crops. Plenty of other games populate the top 10. The occupant of the No. 2 slot,...

Can Facebook Predict Breakups? Don't Bet On It

Status updates might not be best data

(Newser) - A graphic attracting attention across the web purports to show when it's most common for couples to break up—based, of course, on Facebook status updates. By searching for the phrases "broken up" or "break up," it delivers supposed revelations. For one, we are collectively shrewd about...

How to Break With Facebook
 How to Break 
 With Facebook 

How to Break With Facebook

But before deleting account, consider lesser steps

(Newser) - Annoyed with Facebook or, more precisely, with everyone in your Facebook orbit? Chris Gaylord offers a primer on various ways to make the pain go away, up to and including the "nuclear option" of deleting your account. Gaylord offers step-by-step instructions in the Christian Science Monitor on how to:...

Surprising Election Predictor: Facebook

Twitter may have done well, too

(Newser) - Who needs polls? If you want to know who will win an election, maybe you just need to see who has more fans on Facebook. The candidate with the biggest following prevailed in 74% of House contests and 81% of Senate ones, according to the site’s blog . There were,...

Evites Have Made Us Unable to Commit

'Maybe' button has affected real-life social interaction

(Newser) - The engineers of Evite et al probably thought they were doing the world a favor by building a "maybe" button into electronic invitations. Little did they know they were degrading the very fabric of social interaction, writes Elizabeth Bernstein for the Wall Street Journal . Before, invitations required a definitive...

Mom Kills Baby for Interrupting Farmville

3-month-old cried as Florida mom tended Facebook farm

(Newser) - A Florida woman who killed her baby when his crying interrupted work on her virtual farm on Facebook has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Alexandra Tobias, 22, told investigators that she shook her 3-month-old baby boy because he was crying as she played Farmville, the Times-Union reports. She may have...

MySpace Leaks User Data, Too
 MySpace Leaks User Data, Too 

MySpace Leaks User Data, Too

But, apparently, it's not quite as bad as Facebook

(Newser) - Poor MySpace: Even in a privacy flap, it has a hard time competing with Facebook. In the wake of the latest Facebook privacy uproar—some apps on the social networking site have been leaking user data —comes news that MySpace has similar problems. Both MySpace itself as well as...

It's a Snap to Impersonate Someone on Facebook

So maybe it's time fix this little loophole?

(Newser) - Impersonating somebody on Facebook is way too easy, writes Michael Arrington at TechCrunch . To prove his point, he recreated a fake profile for Google CEO Eric Schmidt and soon started adding friends such as YouTube founder Chad Hurley and Facebook VP Elliot Schrage. "One person even sent a fairly...

Feds Tracked Online Sites for Evil Plots

Before inauguration, DHS kept tabs on Facebook, others

(Newser) - The Department of Homeland Security monitored the social network postings of millions of Americans during the Obama inauguration, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has found. DHS set up a “Social Networking Monitoring Center” that kept tabs on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, DailyKos, and NPR, looking for potential conspiracies...

Why Quitting Facebook Is Impossible
 Why Quitting 
 Facebook Is 
 Impossible 
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Why Quitting Facebook Is Impossible

'Dropping out can be construed as falling off the face of the earth'

(Newser) - No matter how much you enjoy playing Farmville, paging through photos of your friends’ pets, or “looking up old boyfriends and trying to find photos of their wives and kids without actually ‘friending’ them,” you have to admit the hours killed on Facebook aren’t “a...

Stories 221 - 240 | << Prev   Next >>