Technology, Social Media | featured news

Social networking platform Facebook racked up the most U.S. hits on its Web site last week, edging past search giant Google to be the country's most-visited site for that period, according to data from research firm Hitwise.

Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say Aol. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com.

The social networking site plans to return to its roots by pushing entertainment content and jettisoning portal-like features. In a last-ditch effort to revive struggling MySpace, owner News Corp. has adopted a new strategy that it hopes will give the site's millions of users a reason to keep coming back.

Investors are pumping more and more money into web services that are heavily reliant on Facebook. So how big is the economy around the world's most popular social network?

Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian venture capital firm that has invested $400 million in Facebook, has apparently made an offer to buy a piece of Chatroulette, the webcam network where you can chat with random strangers. According to Spiegel Online, DST made an offer to 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy to buy a piece of his booming website. He has yet to say yes though, as he is traveling to the U.S. to speak with American venture capitalists before taking any investment.

You know how TweetMeme started out trying to be the Techmeme of Twitter before it ventured off plastering its ReTweet buttons on every blog on the Web?

We already connect with friends on Facebook to share photos, videos, text updates and Web links, but might we also use the service to exchange money?

Most everyone in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street agrees: The eventual IPO of social-networking site Facebook could make its founder the world's richest 25-year-old. Yet CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems intent on deferring that multibillion dollar payday.

Here are 10 weird and truly niche social networking sites that strive to bring together some unusual birds of a feather.

More Americans get their news from the Internet than from newspapers or radio, and three-fourths say they hear of news via e-mail or updates on social media sites, according to a new report.