Internet | featured news

Coca-Cola's marketing chief, Joe Tripodi, said that advertising with Facebook probably helps drive sales. The comment marks a powerful endorsement at a time when some advertisers, such as GM, have expressed doubt about putting ad dollars into Facebook.

Social media's quippy queen Kelly Oxford goes from tweeting to screenwriting on the strength of her posts, snagging a book deal and reeling in Hollywood fans like Jimmy Kimmel. From a snow-crested corner of Alberta, Canada, Kelly Oxford made her Hollywood screenwriting dream come true. She did it without leaving her close-knit family or giving up her free nationalized healthcare. She did it 140 characters at a time.

After about a month of speculation, Facebook has finally announced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technology Face.com. We’ve heard from multiple sources that the acquisition price was around $100m, with others reporting that the price was between $80m-$100m. (Update: We’re now hearing from a source familiar with the matter that the price was between $55 and $60 million, and that it was a mix of cash and stock. The exact value of the deal will be changing depending on the price of Facebook’s stock.) This is absolutely not an acqui-hire, as Facebook will be taking full advantage of the company’s technology and the advancements it’s made on mobile — perhaps to finally include mobile tagging options for photos.

Facebook Inc., owner the world’s largest social network, says it’s working on a location-based mobile-advertising product that will allow companies to target users with real-time data showing their whereabouts.

U.S. authorities are leading the charge as governments around the world pepper Google with more demands to remove online content and turn over information about people using its Internet search engine, YouTube video site and other services.

President Obama's order Friday suspending deportations for some young illegal immigrants sent a charge through social media over the weekend, with both the president and his Republican challenger seeing steep spikes in online chatter about them. According to the social media analysis firm VoterTide, about 52,000 messages about Obama were posted to Twitter Friday, a 74% jump over his daily average of about 30,000 and the highest number of mentions since he announced his support for gay marriage May 9. The firm did not offer an estimate of how many of these tweets were positive or negative.

Looking to boost the number of followers you have on your microblog? In China, a country where face often trumphs all in social matters, there’s a quick though dubious solution.

Facebook Inc. investors might finally be catching a break. The social networking titan's stock snapped three straight weeks of losses since going public May 18. The stock surged 6% on Friday -- above $30 a share -- and closed up nearly 11% for the week.

From the looks of this screenshot posted by one of our readers, it appears YouTube is testing a new homepage styled more like the look that recently rolled out on Google+. The current default look rolled out last winter with more focus on channels and social integration, while this new facade features more white space and list of channels and friends to the side. We asked YouTube about the new look and a spokesperson issued a boilerplate statement about experimenting with ways to help users find the videos that are important to them. The statement in full is after the break, however the key part is that they're listening to user feedback so take a close look at this pic and the rest at the source link below then let us (and Google) know what you think.