Internet, Social Networking | featured news

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.

Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming "feed" technology -- more specifically, "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network," complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.

Digg took a big risk when they added in-line advertisements that users could digg or bury. Four months later, however, early signs indicate that DiggAds are a win for all parties involved: users, advertisers, and especially Digg.

A Conan O'Brien Twitter account surfaced this evening under the name @ConanOBrien and it is growing rapidly.

So did Conan O'Brien just join Twitter?

At first, it wasn't certain, but just an hour and a half after the inaugural tweet, Twitter added a "verified account" stamp to the page.

Conan's first tweet, posted at approximately 6 p.m. Feb. 24, 2010, said: "Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me."