Social networking

Korea's backhander to Bill Gates for one-handed handshake

Etiquette, politeness, and decorum are not words that normally bother the tech world.

When your life's work consists of disrupting existing systems, you can hardly spend a moment considering whether the fork goes on the left or the right side of your burger wrapper.

Today, though, there is much consternation concerning Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and the hand that stayed in his pocket when he met Korean President Park Geun-hye on a visit to her country.

There are many moms reading this who would be appalled if their male offspring greeted any adult with their right hand extended and … Read more

Breakthrough: Order Pizza Hut from your Xbox

It's well-known that pizza helps gamers' concentration. It allows them to shoot more accurately and endure more obdurately.

Pizza and gaming go together like fish and chips in England or plates and large portions in America.

Previously, though, whenever gamers had to order pizza, their concentration was destroyed. They had to use ancient machines, like their phones and laptops, to get that pepperoni knocking on their apartment door. In the name of progress, Pizza Hut and Microsoft decided to get together in a darkened room and chew over a new salvation.

Please, without letting go of your controls, welcome the Pizza Hut Xbox app. … Read more

Facebook spending millions to make friends in Washington

Facebook is spending fast and furious to advance a social-network-friendly agenda with U.S. lawmakers.

In its first quarter of this year, Facebook, according to its lobby disclosure form, shelled out $2.45 million on lobbying costs. The figure amounts to a 75 percent increase from the $1.4 million it spent in the previous quarter, and a 277 percent increase from the mere $650,000 it spent in the first quarter of 2012. In 2012, Facebook spent a total of $4 million on lobbying efforts.

The company's lobbying budget is now in the same ballpark as that of … Read more

A bad day in Twitterland

Twitter is having a tough day. First, parts of the service were having performance problems, and then the @AP Twitter feed got hacked, causing the stock market to tank nearly 150 points before recovering.

Twitter has vastly improved in the last few years in keeping the site up, but the hacks are escalating. The Twitter accounts of CBS News programs  "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, with bogus messages going out, such as "The US government is hiding the real culprit of the Boston bombing." In February, an estimated&… Read more

Google execs' 'New Digital Age' resists cyber-siren song

When two executives at the world's most optimistic technology company write about humanity's digital future, you might expect a book brimming with excitement about the wonders to come.

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen offer plenty of that, but what makes "The New Digital Age" worth reading is the correspondingly healthy dose of pessimism. The book, released today, ultimately is persuasive in making the case that people can steer technology so it helps us more than it harms us.

The book, with straightforward writing and compelling details, seeks to predict what happens as today's online population … Read more

Reuters fires social media editor after Anonymous hacking probe

News agency Thomson Reuters has fired Matthew Keys a month after federal prosecutors accused the social media editor of conspiring with the hacktivist group Anonymous to break into the Los Angeles Times Web site.

Keys announced the development Monday morning on his Twitter account, saying he had just learned of his dismissal and that his union would file a grievance:

Just got off the phone. Reuters has fired me, effective today. Our union will be filing a grievance. More soon.

— Matthew Keys (@TheMatthewKeys) April 22, 2013

Prosecutors alleged last month that Keys, a former Web producer for a TV station … Read more

Securities regulators balk at employee social-media privacy

Securities regulators are advocating for special exemptions to new and pending state laws that prevent employers from snooping on employee Twitter or Facebook accounts.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an independent U.S. securities regulator that seeks to protect investors, is asking lawmakers in around 10 states to amend their legislation to allow financial firms to peak at social media accounts when employee misuse is suspected, a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

The fear seems to be that brokers could use their social media accounts to spread information that would influence stocks, and that misdeeds would go unchecked without … Read more

Reddit regrets role in 'online witch hunt' for misidentified suspect

Reddit General Manager Erik Martin used the company's blog to publicly apologize for the site's role in fueling an "online witch hunt" for Sunil Tripathi, a missing Brown University student falsely identified as a possible suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.

"The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened," Martin said. "We have apologized privately to the family of missing college student Sunil Tripathi, as have various users and moderators. We want to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they … Read more

Twitter reportedly bags huge payday with 'milestone' ad deal

Twitter's been hammering home its value as an advertising medium, and Madison Avenue is apparently nodding in agreement. The company has reportedly nailed a multiyear deal with Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Financial Times.

It's a big deal -- a really big deal, which the FT describes as a "milestone" -- and one which undergirds the argument the social media giant has been making to advertisers still sitting on the fence about whether to sign on the line which is dotted. According to the report, which … Read more