Social Media

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not pull any punches Wednesday in describing the U.S. government's communications approach to revelations that the National Security Agency has been accessing digital conversations around the world -- and using tech companies such as Facebook in the process. "Frankly...

Twitter is acquiring mobile advertising exchange MoPub in order to support advertisers' efforts to optimize their ad buys. MoPub helps advertisers and publishers buy, manage and maximize performance of a variety of ads, especially those on mobile platforms. Twitter plans to invest in MoPub's core bu...

Facebook and Twitter both added embedded-post capabilities to their platforms last month, and now Google has brought similar functionality to Google+. Both embedded posts and an author-attribution feature were unveiled by Google earlier this week, in fact, giving individuals and businesses a way to ...

Facebook on Monday began rolling out new tools designed to help news organizations uncover the real-time conversations people are having across the social network. The company released two APIs to a handful of online publications. The Public Feed allows news organizations to integrate Facebook conve...

One short year ago, Facebook had virtually no presence on the mobile platform, at least in terms of ad activity and monetization. Today, it's not only flourishing but showing real signs of leading the pack one day. The latest indicator comes from eMarketer, which on Wednesday released upwardly revis...

Twitter has hired former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard as its first head of commerce, with the goal of adding an online shopping component to its offerings. Twitter plans to provide partners with tools to more effectively offer their goods and services, perhaps then taking a commission on any tran...

Canonical raised more than $12 million over 30 frantic days of crowdfunding its ambitious Ubuntu Edge superphone project, but it was still short some $20 million by the time the effort closed on Wednesday. The company's target was $32 million. "We raised $12,809,906, making the Edge the world's bigg...

In an abrupt about-face, Instagram has begun cracking the whip over developers using "insta" and "gram" in the titles of their apps. In a letter sent to several developers earlier this week, Instagram said it had "clarified" its guidelines and determined that "use of 'INSTA' and 'GRAM' for an applic...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday launched Internet.org, a project with a goal no less lofty than to provide Internet access to everyone on the planet. With other founding members including Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung, the project aims to develop joint projects, shar...

Twitter on Monday unveiled a new feature that adds related headlines to embedded tweets, an addition that will help to tell the "story behind the tweet," the company said. "Starting today, you will see a new 'Related headlines' section on the permalink page of tweets that have been embedded on websi...

LinkedIn, the go-to social network for professionals, is opening its tent wider to include young people aspiring toward a career -- namely, budding college students and high school students with an eye on higher education. Specifically, the social network on Monday debuted University Pages, a sectio...

The war of the words between tech giants Microsoft and Google heated up considerably this week when Google blocked a relaunched YouTube app for Windows Phone, causing Microsoft to lash out and question the validity of Google's complaints. "It seems to us that Google's reasons for blocking our app ar...

Facebook reportedly is testing a VIP-only mobile app that would encourage celebrities to choose it over other social networks for posting photos and updates, as well as interacting with fans. The mobile app would make it easier for celebrities or their staffs to post content and status updates, as w...

Facebook on Monday announced that it will acquire Mobile Technologies, a company that specializes in speech recognition and voice technology. "It has always been our mission to make the world more open and connected," said Tom Stocky, Facebook's director of product management. "Voice technology has ...

Nielsen this week released a study that indicates there is a causal relationship between Twitter conversations and TV ratings. The findings suggest the volume of tweets could actually increase the number of TV viewers for certain shows. Nielsen's conclusion -- along with research projects including ...