Social Network

Binky Is a Perfect Pacifier App for People Who Can’t Stop Looking at Their Phone

The fact that we all walk around with our heads down compulsively tapping on our phones is no longer even worthy of satire, it’s just a fact of life. Binky is an app that’s kind of like a social network that doesn’t connect you to anyone. It understands the banality of our mobile screen time…

Why Did Facebook Kill the ‘Yay’ Button?

We have no way of knowing why Facebook rejected the “Yay” button. But it’s kind of funny because “Yay” is slang for cocaine! Realistically, however, the world probably won’t be getting a “Yay” button because joy is confusing. In case you don’t live and breathe Facebook news (which I sincerely hope you don’t), Zuck and…

Taio Cruz Builds Social Network, Reminds Us Of His Existence

It already feels like time for I Love The 10s. There’s plenty of throwback material. Example: Inception. Alternate example: Gangnam Style. And Taio Cruz would definitely make the cut for Break Your Heart and Dynamite. But he also apparently exists in the here and now. And he made a social network called KeWe (pronounced kiwi).…

Twitter’s trialling a new “Embedded on these websites” notification system, which shows a list of articles that appear in popular tweets. That means you can quickly see the sources lurking behind a post—which is kinda neat.

Apparently the Wall Street Journal has plans to launch a business-focussed social network, presumably along the lines of LinkedIn. Well, that sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?

Study: Your Facebook Likes Alone Reveal Gender, Ethnicity, Religion and More

Every little piece of information you give away online can reveal something about you—but it seems your Facebook likes could reveal rather more than you bargained for. New research by the University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research has been analyzing Facebook Likes to see how much information they really contain. After quietly—and, apparently, innocuously!—collecting data…

How Twitter Can Predict When Individuals Will Get Sick

If you’ve been walking around a public place lately, you’ve come in contact with a lot of people. Some of those people may have been sick. And if you’ve been hanging around enough of them as they cough and sneeze, then you might be about to get sick too. That may sound obvious, but Adam…

Facebook Is Testing a Pay-For-Promotion System Everyone Can Use

If you don’t feel people pay enough attention to your Facebook status updates, here’s some news you’ve been waiting for. Facebook is reportedly testing a scheme which will allow any user—not just businesses—to promote their status, in exchange for cold, hard cash. The new feature, called “Highlight”, lets a user pay a few dollars in…

Why You’ll Soon Be Using a Wonderful Little Service Called Pinwheel to Discover the World

“We’re doing things a little bit differently,” Heather Champ told me.1 No, wait. That’s not right. “We’re trying to stay under the radar,” is what she said, which I interpreted to mean she was doing something new and different that they didn’t want anyone knowing about. We were sitting in my office, in a comfortable…

Is Google Going To Conquer The World With Google +?

Google Co-founder and CEO Larry Page spoke candidly about the future of Google during the company’s recent earnings conference call. Page wants to make Google’s products more social and the best way to do that is through Google +. Page said this about his idea of the new social Google which, ironically, sounds a lot…

Wal-Mart And Facebook To Serve Up Local Offers

Wal-Mart and Facebook are unlikely bedfellows, but here they are cozying up together in a partnership that’ll create custom Facebook pages for the retailer’s 3,500 stores. This is the first time a retailer has used Facebook in this way. The idea is to make the shopping experience more personal by letting customers interact with their…

Who Should Play Steve Jobs In the Now Inevitable Steve Jobs Biopic?

I very much doubt Steve Jobs would have approved of a movie about his life, beyond what’s been produced already, but in this case it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Word is Sony Pictures has inked a deal with Steve Jobs biography writer Walter Isaacson for $1 to $3 million to produce a movie…

Myspace Wants To Become The Quintessential Online Music Hub

At at a Tuesday event, Myspace and new owner Specific Media will detail plans to revive the dying social network. According to a document leaked to AllThingsD, the key to a successful resurrection will be music, music, and more music. The leaked pitch deck suggests Myspace wants to become “the #1 online community music destination.”…

Does 50 Million Users And a 1269% Traffic Increase Mean Google + Is Now Relevant?

Google + went public last week and its growth has been explosive. So explosive, it has some people wondering if it’s time to take closer look at the social network. According to Experian Hitwise, traffic to Google+ climbed to 15 million this week, a 1269 percent growth from the 1.1 million visits the week before.…

Propeller May Be A Social News Reader From Google

Google is finally make strides in the world of social. Google + is gaining traction and the company is supposedly working on several new apps including a social news reader known as Propeller. https://gizmodo.com/this-is-google-changing-all-of-information-sharing-5816311 Propeller is supposedly a tablet application that’ll run on Android or iOS. A few people have seen the app in action…

Americans Spend 53 Billion Minutes A Month on Facebook, Wait, What?

Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other US website. And cumulatively, it’s not a small amount of time, it’s a lot of time. Nielsen estimates that Americans spent 53 billion minutes on Facebook during the month of May. These 53 billion minutes are equal to 100,000 years or 36.8 million days. Before your…

Facebook Improves Its iPhone App, iPad App Still MIA

Download the new Facebook app for iOS and you’ll be able to tag your friends and places, share external links from a web view and bring some improved privacy settings to your iPhone. Though the iPhone app is better than ever, the iPad app is still MIA. And it looks like it won’t be arriving…

Google+ Posts Coming Soon to Gmail

Google is gradually rolling out a new Gmail people widget that lets you view recent Google+ posts within Gmail. To see these Google+ posts from the sender of an email, you have to be a Google+ member and the sender has to include you in a circle. This limits what you see, but Google may…

Twitter Makes Its Photo Upload API Available to Third-Party Apps

Twitter users that prefer Echofon or Tweetcaster will soon be able to upload photos using Twitter’s new photo upload service. The social network released its Photo Upload API so third-party developers can use it in their apps. The API initially supports jpg, png and gif. Thankfully, animated gifs are not supported so we won’t have…

Researcher Predicts Your Facebook Friends With Frightening Accuracy

Stanford University’s Jure Leskovec knows more about than you think. With the right tools and information, the computer scientist can predict the next person you will friend on Facebook. Leskovec picks this lucky person by compiling and analyzing all your online social activity. Tweets, retweets, friends and likes, he looks at them all. With about…