Technology, Social Networking | featured news

Investors appear to be souring on social networking shares, a development which bodes ill for the eventual IPOs for Facebook, Twitter and other players in the industry. Perhaps unnerved by the lackluster reception for Zynga shares, the sector took a pounding in Monday's trading.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment company said Monday they are investing a combined $300 million into Twitter, giving the microblogging site a cash boost as it looks to entice more users and paying advertisers.

Zynga is poised to harvest some cold hard cash in its initial public offering. Who knew that selling virtual cows and digital corn on Facebook would create a $7 billion company?

Social games maker Zynga is preparing to set a final initial public offering price on Thursday, a day before it begins trading on the stock market, in what is shaping up to be the biggest U.S. Internet IPO since Google.

The most anticipated stock market debut of 2012 is expected to value Facebook at as much as $100 billion and mint at least a thousand new millionaires.

Micro-blogging site Twitter is joining the ranks of Facebook and Google+ as it launches 'brand' pages as part of a service-wide redesign.

You heard right. Eighteen months from now Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos—one of the largest information technology companies in the world, plans to have eliminated email as a communication and collaboration medium within his company. “If people want to talk to me, call or send me a text message,” said Breton. “Emails cannot replace the spoken word.”

Facebook has settled a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that the social networking giant deceived consumers by promising privacy protections while it shared and made user data more public, according to the FTC.

Facebook is targeting dates between April 2012 and June 2012 for an initial public offering of its stock. The company is exploring raising $10 billion in an IPO that could value Facebook at more than $100 billion.

With Google incessantly branching out into even more ventures such as music and social networking, its search business could continue to act as a minor Catch-22 situation in future by helping competition in other business lines.