facebook

Last week, Facebook announced video capabilities for Instagram, which nobody was surprised about. But I was a little surprised that the presentation ended with that. I was sure that the company would also announce its answer to Google Reader. Lo and behold, recent rumors suggest that Facebook still has a Reader of its own up its sleeve.

Google could be working its own version of Pinterest, called Google Mine. It would be integrated with Google+, and it could have its own Android app. Of course!

And finally, there's that little gleaming unicorn that everyone is speculating about, the iPhone 5S. Recent rumors suggest that it'll have a boosted camera, jumping 12 megapixels from the iPhone 5's 8. What do you think of those specs? Does it sound likely? Leave a comment below, and don't forget to vote in the poll!

… Read more

Seven months after the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft can finally confirm that Facebook will bring an official version of its social-networking application to the platform.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the better-late-than-never reveal during his keynote address at the company's Build 2013 developer conference in San Francisco, though he didn't provide timing on the pending release.

The platform's first official Facebook application will be designed by the social network and built for Windows 8 tablets to start, likely with a fall release date, a Facebook spokesperson told CNET.

The timing around the belated news is a … Read more

Add Instagram to the list of social platforms that the White House is using to share presidential updates with the public.

The official account for President Barack Obama's administration arrived nearly a week after the launch of Instagram video. Yet, the White House decided to break in its brand-new account Wednesday with a photo. How very retro. The first photo depicts the Marine One helicopter taking off as the First Family leaves for a trip to Africa, and potentially sets the tone for a more intimate, "unfiltered," look at Obama's affairs.

A new way to see … Read more

A student group has charged several U.S. technology companies with violations of European law for allegedly cooperating with the NSA to collect data on private citizens.

Known as Europe-v-Facebook (EVF), the group of Austrian students announced Wednesday that it filed formal complaints with the EU against Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, and Yahoo. The group contends that since the five companies do business in Europe through subsidiaries, they fall under European privacy laws.

Such laws allow the export of data only if the company's European subsidiary can guarantee an "adequate level or protection" in the home country. … Read more

Privacy policies, with disclosures about what kind of information Internet services collect about you and how to manage your online profile, are notoriously obtuse, incomplete, and difficult to master.

They aren't as obtuse as the National Security Agency is about its data collection policies, but the vast majority of online users have little interest in trying to parse the language or even in trying to actively manage their profiles with the tools offered today.

The companies that collect data, of course, want to assure you that whatever they collect is in pursuit of creating a better experience for you … Read more

Facebook has dropped in yet another tile to the puzzle that is its intricate data infrastructure serving more than a billion users worldwide.

This time the focus is on TAO, or "The Associations and Objects," a core component of Facebook's data infrastructure that runs on a large collection of geographically scattered server clusters.

Actually already several years into production, TAO is the underbelly of the implementation of most of Facebook's core features.

To get a grasp of just how robust this system needs to be, TAO serves thousands of data types while handling more than a … Read more

A former Oregon gubernatorial candidate has pleaded guilty in a $13 million securities scam to sell pre-IPO shares of Facebook before the social network went public.

Craig Berkman, a Florida financier who ran for governor in 1994, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to one count each of securities fraud and wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors said Berkman, 71, bilked more than 120 investors out of $13.2 million with promises of an early shot at the highly coveted shares. He also admitted falsely telling investors … Read more

So, the HTC First wasn't a complete disaster after all.

AT&T managed to get rid of most of its inventory, according to AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega. The move to a 99-cent price tag helped spur sales of the Facebook phone, which struggled to catch on with consumers.

"We sold a bunch more when we lowered the price," he said in an interview on Monday. "We sold everything we had on that."

It's unclear how many HTC First phones AT&T had in its inventory, and the … Read more

Like with Twitter, Facebook users often share breaking news with their friends on the network. But now the social-networking giant is reportedly looking to add a homegrown news-delivery service to its mobile offerings.

The company has been working on a service internally dubbed Reader that would display content from Facebook users and other publishers in a new visual format tailored for mobile devices, people familiar with the project tell The Wall Street Journal. The project, which has been in the works for more than a year, reportedly resembles Flipboard, the popular news-reading app that aggregates content from multiple sources.

A … Read more