Social networking

Crowdsourced ask-a-question, get-an-answer site Quora announced a new bookmarking product today called Boards.

In a post on Quora's site, co-founder Adam D'Angelo calls a board created using the new product "a lighter-weight version of a blog," and says Boards lets users "write new posts...repost questions, answers, topics, or anything else that already exists on Quora, and...also post a link to any page from the Web."

Users can create as many boards as they desire--focusing each on a particular topic--and set them up as public or private. (Other Boards users can choose to … Read more

Marc Andreessen's view of the world boils down to software.

From where he stands, as the guy who co-founded Netscape Communications and now co-runs the powerful Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, no industry is safe from software. Or, as Andreessen put it in a much-discussed piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal, "Software is eating the world."

Software has chewed up music and publishing. It's eaten away at Madison Avenue. It's swallowed up retail outlets like Tower Records. The list goes on.

No area is safe--and that's why Andreessen sees so much … Read more

Moved as I am that North Korea's Supreme Leader died from "great mental and physical strain", I find myself wondering how much mental and physical strain went into a new survey about Facebook.

You see, this survey, performed by NM Incite--a company that appears to be a friending between McKinsey and Nielsen--offers a picture that is hard to accept.

It claims that 82 percent of Facebookers simply friend people they already know. However, should those people they already know say something they deem offensive, 55 percent of them will immediately defriend those people from their firmament.

This … Read more

Google+ is giving its members a few stocking stuffers designed to enhance the social network.

Touted in Google's official blog today, the enhancements are part of an ongoing effort to make Google+ more effective and more user friendly.

One of the tweaks will let you customize your Google+ stream. The more people you follow, the more cluttered your stream can become, increasing the odds of missing important posts. To help unclutter your stream, a slider at the top of a particular circle will let you control how posts from that circle should mesh into the overall stream.

The red … Read more

Facebook has landed in some legal hot water over its use of ads that snatch the names of members of the social network to promote a product or business.

In a ruling issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., denied Facebook's request to dismiss a lawsuit over the practice of so-called sponsored stories. Such "stories," which started popping up this past January, create an ad based on the "likes" of a member's Facebook friends.

The ads typically display the friend's name, photo, and a caption asserting that the … Read more

Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, through his investment firm Kingdom Holding Co., has dropped $300 million into Twitter.

Alwaleed, an active investor, is one of the world's richest people, with an estimated $19.6 billion fortune, according to Forbes. He's also the nephew of Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Alsaud. Over the years, Alwaleed has invested in a host of markets, including banking, real estate, and hotel management.

In the technology market, the prince has given capital to or bought stock from, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Motorola, and countless others. During the dot-com boom, he was heavily focused on Web companies.… Read more

Has Santa fired the elves?

Were they too short, too ridiculously dressed, too squeaky-voiced?

Whatever the reason, a new Apple ad suggests that the great white-bearded hope has decided to rely on Siri for all of his most pressing needs this Christmas.

In truth, Santa seems to have become a lazy, sluggish capitalist like so many who become serfs to technology. He's always on his iPhone 4S and asking her some of the most basic questions imaginable.

Will it be cold in Cleveland tonight, he wonders. It's always cold in Cleveland. Cleveland exists in order to ensure that … Read more

Facebook extended Timeline access to iPhone users with an app update released today.

In addition to the social network's new profile design, version 4.1 of the iPhone app provides mobile users access to their friend lists, subscribers, and subscriptions. Facebook says the app also makes it easier to view, upload, and comment on photos.

Facebook says iPad support for mobile Timeline will be coming soon. Timeline, which shows all the updates a person has added to Facebook since they joined the site, was rolled out to Web browsers and Android devices worldwide on Thursday.

The update may help … Read more

For the first time ever, Android is being used more frequently than iPhone to access Facebook.

Facebook for Android has 58.3 million average daily users compared with an average of 57.4 million daily users who access the social network via an iPhone app, according to stats complied by AppData.

The Android app, which was released in September 2009--a full year after the iPhone app--still trails the iPhone in monthly average users accessing Facebook, tallying 85.4 million users to the iPhone app's 99.1 million. However, the monthly user data doesn't reflect the "stickiness" … Read more