Social Networking | featured news

Social mobility is big business. Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to the rumor mill. But in the case of a Facebook “affinity” phone, even if 90% of existing Facebook subscribers decide not to buy such device, it still represents a very big market; 50 million or so phones.

A redesign is part of the Web site’s plan to regain momentum as it has lost ground in a crowded field that includes Facebook and Twitter.

Google is set to renew its search deal with MySpace at a more “realistic” price than the $900 million guarantee it paid out four years ago, Kara Swisher reported yesterday.

With the release of the new Digg on August 25th, anybody with the ability to understand how a story, which is promoted to the popular section, is composed, has an edge in attaining viral exposure ranging from tens of thousands to millions of pageviews. Diggs users constitute a large proportion of bloggers. Thus stories promoted to their popular section, which was previously their homepage and now the Top News page, can attain anywhere from less than 10 to hundreds of links pointing to their websites.

Fans who want to keep up with John Mayer will no longer be able to do so via Twitter. The singer-songwriter deleted his account, leaving behind 3.7 million followers.

Google plans to infuse its core products with social-networking elements, its chief executive said, ratcheting up the Internet giant's rivalry with Facebook.

Twitter unveiled a new Web site on Tuesday that it hopes will be user friendly. The redesigned site, which will be available to all users in the next few weeks, makes it simpler to see information about the authors of Twitter posts, conversations among Twitter users, and the photos and videos that posts link to.

A group of New Hampshire men have been robbing houses based on the status updates of their victims on Facebook.

U.S. Web surfers are spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google, according to new data from researchers at comScore Inc.