Tag archive: Social Networking

The persistent rumor that Facebook will someday charge its users to access the site simply will not die. Since Facebook’s early days, users have clamored around the myth that someday the social network would take captive their years’ worth of photos, comments, friendships, and check-ins. And time after time, the myth has been busted. Now the announcement of Facebook's IPO process has resurrected old fears, and yet again the rumors about a… Read More

Rabid sports fans like to talk. They like to trash rivals, they like to hype fellow revelers, they like to argue with Charles Barkley and John Madden from their living rooms and scream at referees from the safety of their seats. And that’s why it’s only natural that legions of sports fans have taken so enthusiastically to social networking. Fantasy leagues and sports-centered social apps have continued to thrive, thanks to the insatiable need of… Read More

The original Twitter was incredibly sparse, which is saying a lot for a site that still remains rather singularly-focused. The site was nothing but its constant stream of tweets. Eventually, developers began creating tools to build on top of the site, like URL shorteners and image uploaders. As Twitter has risen in popularity, so has its platform for developers. In the beginning, the site’s constant outages were a plague for those trying to… Read More

Try as you might to avoid it, the “blogging is dead” narrative is inescapable. The debate rages on, with both sides refusing to let it go: Opponents of the blog argue that Internet readers have gotten savvy enough to pick the real experts from the crowd and prefer connecting with them on social sites – and that Web marketing has ruined the medium. Defenders say that more than ever the Internet has put tools into our hands, and that the blog is… Read More

The Facebook IPO has been looming on the horizon for some time now. Recent speculation has increased the ever-building hype around the company’s S1 filing, and the latest rumors say that the process could begin as soon as Wednesday. According to the Wall Street Journal, insiders suggest as much and say the company is expected to raise somewhere between $75 and $100 billion.  Beyond the fact that this means some very fortunate people are about to… Read More

Today Twitter announced it will be censoring information based on global codes of conduct. “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” the company wrote on its blog. “Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or… Read More

Geo-social has proven to be somewhat tricky territory. While it appears that many users want to interact with their location, how and how much remains undecided. Privacy implications arise at every turn, and what exactly crosses the line into over-sharing in this segment is an important and unanswered question–all while developers are reinventing how we broadcast our whereabouts.  Manufacturing serendipity Location apps have been trying to… Read More

We’ve been on our guard, waiting for the fully launched Facebook Timeline since September. Once it became clear that Facebook planned to replace the profile with this new format (which wasn’t made explicit initially), the panic set in. Nobody likes change, especially Facebook users, and anti-Timeline sentiment was strong. Which is why Facebook drew out the launch for nearly four months, incrementally introducing Timeline slowly but surely. And… Read More

The Facebook vs. Google war has been brewing for quite some time—its origins can likely be traced back to Facebook’s launch, when Google was put on notice that it needed to jump on social and soon. Things have only escalated since, with both companies chopping at the bit to control as much consumer data as possible and taking measures to keep the other from doing exactly that. So it’s no surprise that Facebook–and others–are fighting… Read More

Things are happening at Facebook. Well, of course, things are always happening at Facebook, but news emerged on Friday that the social networking giant is considering doubling the size of its European headquarters in Dublin. If you double something that’s small, it remains pretty small, but Facebook already has a sizable presence in the Irish capital. Indeed, doubling its current 5,000 square meters (54,000 square feet) of office space would… Read More

Twitter has acquired social reader Summify, and will likely work in the site’s content summary technology into its own application. “Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scheme,” the startup… Read More

Trying to carve out a space on the Internet is becoming difficult. A visual image of the Web is like globe with its seams literally bursting from the onslaught of content we’re producing. Retweets and reposts and likes and +1s are all virtually pushing against the surface and generously spilling over. So social platform creation comes with its pros and cons. On the plus side, you will always find a user base – even if it’s a (relatively) small… Read More

We’re not really going out on a limb when we say that death can be a sensitive subject. While we all accept that death’s cold grasp is always within reach, some prefer to ignore the inevitability of our mortality until it’s too late. That’s where, “If I die”, a new Facebook app, steps in to help. “If I die” aims to help Facebook users before and after they meet their end by letting them record a video or text message and posting it on their… Read More

Facebook has conducted a study to defend itself from old arguments. In 2010, the social network conducted research to see who people associate most with most on Facebook. Strangely, more than a year later, Facebook has chosen to publish results of the study, which proves that “Facebook isn't the echo chamber that some might expect” and that users tend to view more information from “friends” they don't… Read More

Facebook rivals and detractors have been springing up online for awhile now. It most significantly started with Diaspora, the anti-Facebook, open source social network that launched with the idea of segmenting how you share online. Anybeat (formerly Altly) has also tried to execute these ideas, as has Path and newcomer Unthink. While these networks were born of a desire to connect without Facebook and to potentially do it better, none of them… Read More