Social Media

Facebook will simplify its advertising structure in an effort to make it easier for marketers to determine which products will help them best reach consumers, the company announced this week. Advertisers currently face a choice of 27 different formats on the social network, but the streamlining effo...

Twitter's Vine sprouted on Android devices Monday, allowing users to post 6-second videos in their tweets. Earlier this year, Twitter launched its Vine app for Apple's iOS, but until now, Android users have been left out of the fun. Now they can get into the thick of it as well. "Android owners: Wel...

It has been about a month since Facebook unveiled the keys to its mobile strategy -- its Facebook Home app and the HTC First, a smartphone designed specifically around Home. To date, though, the progress of these duel initiatives has been less than encouraging. European carriers Orange and EE have d...

Pinterest on Monday announced new features and relationships with brands that will bring more functionality to its pins. The features, according to the social bookmarking company, will make the pins more "useful." Pinterest introduced its new features in a Monday blog post. Pins now show more inform...

Yahoo is reportedly looking to purchase microblogging platform and social networking website Tumblr for $1 billion. Tumblr is considered one of the coolest companies on the Internet because of its appeal to younger users -- the very demographic that Yahoo, which recently characterized its users as ...

Rumors that Facebook is deep into the process of purchasing Waze -- maker of a mobile satellite navigation app that leverages crowdsourced mapping and traffic tips -- are making the rounds. Facebook has apparently signed the terms and is conducting due diligence after six months of negotiations, acc...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

Where Your Social Media Accounts Go When You Die

One of my childhood friends, who was also a Facebook friend, died in 2009. Yet I still get messages from Facebook encouraging me to connect with his Facebook page. Has that ever happened to you? Or have you ever sent an email to a colleague, only to learn from other sources that the person is deceas...

Despite revenue gains that beat expectations for LinkedIn's quarterly earnings report Thursday, investors sent the company's stock falling when the company forecast lower-than-expected guidance. LinkedIn reported revenue of $324.7 million for its most recent quarter, a 72 percent jump from the 188.5

Facebook on Wednesday beat analyst expectations for revenue in its first quarter earnings and showed slight growth in the increasingly important mobile advertising space. The world's largest social network reported revenue of $1.46 billion, a 38 percent bump from the same time a year ago. Net income...

Asana on Wednesday announced Organizations, a feature that stakes its claim in the enterprise space. What is new with Organizations is its scalability; it is designed to support companies of 100 employees or more. Asana was launched by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and Google and Facebook vet...

The FTC recently updated its guidelines for online advertising to address the growth in mobile and social media marketing. Now a paid tweet has to begin with the word "ad," as obvious disclosure now must be included with all commercial speech. Is the link you're tweeting from an employer? A client? ...

LinkedIn unveiled a new contacts application for Web and mobile users this week with the goal of helping members manage the relationships they build on the professional social network. The company is billing LinkedIn Contacts as a digital personal assistant. It will pull information from user addres...

Zynga reported an unexpectedly strong Q1 this week, but investors chose to focus on its lower guidance for future growth in the casual gaming industry. The company brought in $264 million in revenue on the quarter, down 18 percent from the same time a year ago but beating estimates that were closer ...

Shortly after 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the world just about ended as far as Wall Street was concerned, when the AP tweeted that President Obama had been injured by explosions at the White House. Within minutes, the Dow dropped 145 points. Shortly afterward, the AP reported its Twitter account had been ...

Salesforce.com expanded its advertising initiatives this week with the launch of Social.com, a platform designed to help brands tie ad campaigns to what's trending on social networks. The new platform bundles Salesforce.com features that resulted from the company's acquisitions of Buddy Media, a pro...

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