social networking

New app ups Pheed's challenge to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Pheed is a celebrity-infused startup that -- as CEO OD Kobo tells it -- took the best parts of the most popular social networks and put them together in one platform. Throw in a bit of Hollywood flair and add adoring fans, and it's a network that attracted about 1 million users in its first two weeks of existence.

The company is hoping to make those numbers stick with a new iPhone app, released today. Pheed isn't releasing its current number of users, so it's unclear if the "pheeding" frenzy is still going on, but … Read more

Critics raise specter of police state in challenge to new Calif. law

California voters yesterday approved a new law billed as curbing human trafficking. A lesser-known section of Proposition 35, however, requires residents convicted of indecent exposure and other sex-related crimes to register their social-networking profiles and e-mail addresses with police.

That violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, including anonymous speech, the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a lawsuit (PDF) filed today.

Prop 35 takes effect immediately and sweeps broadly. It says that California residents convicted of crimes since 1944 including misdemeanor indecent exposure -- courts have included in that category nude dancing on a … Read more

Young people talk about election on social media. Well, duh

This may come as a shock, but social media is a "significant" part of the voting process for young people.

A new report from Pew Research finds that 22 percent of voters have told others how they voted via social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. For young people between the ages of 18 to 29, that percentage jumps to 29 percent.

And even more people -- about 30 percent of registered voters -- have been "encouraged to vote" for a certain candidate via posts on the sites. For the 18- to 29-year-olds, a whopping … Read more

Twitter's Election Day 2012 event page is live

There's no shortage of places to catch up on the latest Election Day coverage, but Twitter is aiming to make it easier for political junkies to get news by creating a one-stop shop Election 2012 event page.

Curated by Twitter, the page is loaded with tweets from the presidential candidates, political parties, and news sources such as the Electoral College, CNN, and the Washington Post.

"It highlights tweets from candidates and their staffers, media, and other key players so you can hear directly from those close to the action," Rachael Horwitz, Twitter's senior manager of communications, … Read more

Pew: Social media as a political tool on the rise

Check out your Facebook news feed and see opinion, links to news articles, and dialogue all concerning the presidential election and campaign. Twitter? There's more than enough there to to keep you occupied.

And it seems like it may be a phenomenon that is here to stay.

A recent research report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that "the use of social media is becoming a feature of political and civic engagement for many Americans." Sixty percent 2,253 U.S. adults surveyed use social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter, and of these users, … Read more

Social-networking app Path finally forges its way to the iPad

Path, the social-networking app that helps family members and close friends stay in touch, is now making its way to the iPad.

According to Path, the app was built from the ground up and supports both landscape and portrait orientations. Path is especially excited about the landscape orientation, saying that it will provide a full collage of the day's events in a single pane, thanks to the iPad's larger screen screen size. Upon clicking on a photo in the collage of images and videos, users will get a full-screen view and see comments associated with it.

The iPad'… Read more

Twitter tests 'star,' 'like' to replace 'favorite'

Twitter's long-standing "favorite" option might be going away.

The company has reportedly been testing two replacements for the favorite option, called "star" and "like." So far, it appears that the changes are limited to only a few users, so it's not clear if the function works any differently.

Favorites have been on Twitter for several years. According to The Next Web, which first reported on the testing, a source told the publication that the feature has been used "billions of times."

In its current implementation, clicking the "favorite" … Read more

Icelanders 'like' their crowdsourced constitution

Iceland's government tried a social networking experiment a year ago.

In the wake of a crushing recession and raging protests, the government decided to rewrite its constitution and asked its citizens for help. Rather than requesting petitions, letters, or phone calls, the government asked people to help draft the new constitution through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

Over the course of the year, Iceland's citizens offered roughly 3,600 comments and 370 suggestions on the draft constitution, which was then drawn up by 25 members of a constitutional council, according to Reuters.

Today it was announced that the … Read more

Radical experiments in fiction -- on Twitter

Twitter may still be thought of as a place where people share what they ate for breakfast or pictures of their cats, but some think of it as a home for serious storytelling.

Already some have used the microblogging service as a home for innovative fiction projects, including Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" and a creative use of a faux-"Mad Men" narrative.

With that in mind, the company today announced the first Twitter Fiction Festival, a five-day event starting November 28 that will showcase "creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world." … Read more