Social Networking, Internet Lifestyle And Security News
Passionate about net neutrality? Facebook privacy issues freaking you out? Want to know more about the latest security breach? Here we'll cover the headlines that matter in our ever evolving digitally-connected lives and lifestyles around the world.
Earlier this month, Facebook made headlines for reasons some might consider enraging: It used nearly a million of its users as guinea pigs to gauge the service's emotional influence. An experiment like this is hardly that surprising of a company like Facebook, but that shouldn't make it something we should have to put...
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The world's largest social network -- that would be Facebook, folks -- has agreed to acquire LiveRail, an advertising technology company, for an undisclosed sum of money (online reports have the figure pegged at between $400 million and $500 million). While announcing the planned acquisition, Facebook pointed out that LiveRail has helped several...
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Given the ire Facebook draws when it makes changes to its interface, it’s not surprising that users and governments are hitting the roof over Facebook’s acknowledgement that it ran psychological tests on people. British regulators have already announced plans to speak with Facebook about the experiment...
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Perhaps Facebook is conducting a meta-experiment. The first part of it was the emotional contagion experiment we covered yesterday, wherein Facebook manipulated close to 700,000 users’ emotions via their Newsfeeds without any apparent knowledge, consent, or reasonable ethical oversight. The real experiment...
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How does one even begin a post with the above headline? In what is either a massive troll or an uncomfortable sign of the times, a pair of Brits named Matt Gray and Tom Scott are touting a new social network launching soon that will use only emoji. Dubbed “emoj.li”, the social network contains no words--no...
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Soccer might not be the most popular sport in the U.S., but it's certainly growing on Americans. Of course, soccer enjoys an enormous global audience, and if anyone needs reminding of that, just check out the World Cup activity on Facebook. At only halfway through the tournament, there are more than 1 billion related...
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Here’s an interesting psychological factoid: Emotional states can be transferred to other people via text-based messages on social media, such as Facebook. That means that if, for instance, you view a bunch of sad posts, you’re more likely to pen a sad post yourself shortly thereafter even though you...
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There's a giant microscope hovering over Silicon Valley examining workplace diversity, or the lack thereof, as more and more companies release reports on the topic. The latest to do is Facebook, and as with many other tech firms, the majority of the company's employees are white and male, especially those holding down...
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Can you imagine what it's going to be like playing Candy Crush through an Oculus Rift headset? We only jest and certainly hope Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the gang at Facebook and Oculus VR have some way cooler things in store than that (and we're not talking about the ticket blaster at Chuck E. Cheese). Giving us...
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Last fall, a couple of reports trickled out that didn't bode too well for Facebook's future. They claimed that teens were effectively leaving the social network en masse - it was simply no longer cool, a reality heightened by the fact that so many parents also use the service. Well, as it now appears, some conclusions...
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Facebook has a billion users, but its sights are set squarely on the next billion--or several billion--in developing nations. Sure, some of that drive represents a desire for profits, but Mark Zuckerberg also appears to genuinely believe that Internet access is a human right. In any case, he wants everyone to have Internet access, and he wants...
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Facebook doesn’t go down all that often, but when it does it’s big news. The social network reportedly experienced an outage at approximately 1 a.m. PST that affected users all over the world. Users in countries including Australia, New Zealand, England, South Korea, India, were unable to access Facebook...
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Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the gang at Facebook finally launched a photo and video sharing app to compete with Snapchat. Called "Slingshot," Facebook's version is more than just a clone, though it may appear as such at first glance. After all, it allows you to take a photo or video, scribble some artistic flair...
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Have you ever stopped to really think about you're throwing out there in the social stratosphere? On the surface, they may appear to be a bunch of silly posts and status updates about your weekend or where you went for lunch, but on a deeper level, perhaps posting to Facebook reveals more about yourself than you...
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With only so much top level talent available in the technology industry, it's not uncommon for high ranking employees to change firms. Such is the case for David Marcus, president of eBay's PayPal division, who is joining Facebook to spearhead the company's efforts in mobile messaging. His primary responsibility will...
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Let's not tread lightly here, we all know how the stereotypical video gamer is portrayed on TV, and perhaps in our own minds sometimes as well -- overweight, anti-social, hyperactive (especially on chat), lazy, living in their parents' basement, and the unflattering list goes on. Just reference the "Make Love, Not...
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Facebook rolled out a new mobile feature that uses your device’s microphone to “hear” a song you’re listening to or a TV show you’re watching so you can append that item to a status post. Predictably, a lot of people believe that this is a feature designed for snooping and are not happy...
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The U.S. government is somewhat like that older family member you have that understands the importance of social media but is rather baffled at how to actually use it effectively. Particularly, the Secret Service is trying to find a tool that analyzes social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and it includes a rather...
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Unless you're willing to live out the rest of your life as a hermit, you'll notice there's a pecking order wherever you go. This is especially true among teenagers, but what might surprise you is exactly how their social statuses are determined these days. Instead of name brand clothes, which has been the case for...
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Your life can be an open book on Facebook if you want it to, but the problem for some less savvy users is that it's an open book even they don't want it to be. After all, it's not just experienced PC users posting to Facebook anymore -- anyone and just about everyone users the social network these days, and to make...
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Apparently fed up with being rejected by Snapchat, Facebook for the past several months has reportedly been working on a video sharing and chatting application of its own. It's called Slingshot, and like Snapchat, it allows users to send short video messages to recipients with just a few taps. However, it's not yet...
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Armed with Facebook’s deep pockets and strong backstop, Oculus VR is much better able to poach talent from big companies than when it was just an exciting startup (John Carmack notwithstanding). The big get for this week is Adrian Wong, who left his post as a lead electrical engineer at Google[x], where he...
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