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.
People have a tendency to get ticked off if you mess with their heads, especially without their permission. Facebook, the world's largest social network, found this out the hard way when it revealed that it had altered nearly 700,000 user feeds to study people's emotions. Not cool, but are these types of studies...
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It seems like a century has passed since Facebook's IPO and subsequent stock performance came under scrutiny. Turns out all Facebook needed was to post a stellar earnings report, as it did earlier this week, and investors would be frothing at the mouth to own a chunk of the world's most popular social playground. In...
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Take a wild guess which technology company now has a higher market capitalization than the mighty Oracle? Facebook, as it turns out. In the latest turn in what has been a wild ride (in both directions) since going public, Facebook's stock has surged on solid earnings to a record high. Now, the world's dominant social...
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Have you fed and loved on your pets today? It's a valid question, especially for people who use Facebook. A new survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that the average American spends around 40 minutes per day flipping through his or her Facebook feed. That doesn't sound obscene, especially when compared to...
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Silicon Valley is suddenly awakened to the fact that workplace diversity is a thing, one in which technology firms as a whole are somewhat lacking. Several companies have vowed to do a better job at building a diverse workplace, including Twitter, the latest firm to come forward with statistics in an industry that...
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For as ubiquitous as Facebook is and for as many features as the social network has, there are a few much-needed items that the company just hasn’t gotten to over the years. (For example, why can’t you comment on a comment?) Facebook is taking care of one of those long-needed features today, though, by introducing Save. Save lets...
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Whether you’re disgusted by the prospect of Facebook owning an exciting grassroots-type product like the Oculus Rift or believe, like John Carmack and Michael Abrash, that combining Facebook’ big moneybags with Oculus’ know-how will make possible all the promise of VR technology, Facebook’s blockbuster deal to acquire...
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If you or your spouse spend a lot of time on Facebook, it can be pretty scary to see a study suggest there's a correlation between heavy Facebook use and divorce. However, it's important to note the distinction between "correlation" and "causation," which is to say that spending an inordinate amount of time on...
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Don’t freak out, but Facebook is testing a new feature that would put “Buy” buttons on ads within the social network. Simply, users would see an ad, and the ad would have a button that you could click to purchase the item you see, all without leaving Facebook. This is an obvious evolution of having ads on Facebook, and it...
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Google has some fantastic news for JoeBlow58736 and F1irtyGirl25, as well as anyone else who prefers to use their online nickname versus their real identity. You are no longer required to use your real name when creating a Google+ account, representing a reversal in policy that's in place since the social network...
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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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