Internet, Social Networking | featured news

A federal judge ruled that Twitter must give information to the Justice Department about three of its account holders who are under investigation for their links to WikiLeaks.

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus wants some of the online game company's early employees to give back stock they own ahead of the company's initial public offering of stock, according to a published report Thursday. The Wall Street Journal said that Pincus, who gave out stock freely to keep top talent early on, developed "giver's remorse."

The real test of Google’s social network is what people do after they join. As far as anyone can tell, they aren’t doing a whole lot. Traffic-analysis firms have consistently reported Google+’s traffic to be declining from its early peak. Even Google’s own executives seem to have gotten bored by the site.

Competition's all relative. Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL all compete for ad dollars, but they all agree that marketers ought to put their budgets into premium content, not search or social.

"You know, Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook," Zuckerberg says. "But you know, when I look at Amazon and Apple and I see companies who are extremely aligned with us, right? And we have a lot of conversations with people at both companies just trying to figure out ways that we can do more together, and there is just a lot of reception there."

The search giant's social network poses a further challenge to Facebook by allowing companies to set up their own pages. The US firm says the Google+ Pages facility will help companies and campaigns engage with their audience. Organisations will not be charged to use the scheme and Google says it will not put adverts on their pages.

In a strong affront to the Chinese government’s attempt to censor artists and internet users, fans of the artist Ai Weiwei have raised more than $830,000 in three days through social media to help the artist fight a $2.4 million tax bill from the state.

In August, Ms. Zuckerberg, 29, quit her job at Facebook, where she had been among the first two dozen people hired. Most recently, she was the director of marketing. In its early days, Ms. Zuckerberg was a buoyant presence, representing her reticent brother to an eager press. Later, she earned attention (not always favorable) singing at company functions with a band composed of colleagues. And she came up with the idea for Facebook Live, the social network’s video channel, which has featured interviews conducted by Facebook executives with Oprah Winfrey and President Obama. Now Ms. Zuckerberg has started her own business, R to Z Media, to help companies take advantage of social media.

Scientists have found a direct link between the number of "friends" a person has on Facebook and the size of certain brain regions, raising the possibility that using online social networks might change our brains.