Social network and groups

Facebook seems to have understood from the very beginning that in order to make some cash, it would need help from advertisers.

Digiday today published an early Facebook media kit purportedly developed in the spring of 2004. The kit was designed to inform marketers on why they should place their ads on TheFacebook, the original name of what has become the world's largest social network.

The slides published by Digiday show off Facebook's earliest features -- which at the time, were only accessible by college students -- including personal information like relationship status and political views, as well … Read more

The first of Facebook's "lockups" has expired, meaning that insiders can start selling their stock. But so far, it appears that a flood of shares and a plummeting share price aren't in the offing for the social network.

In early-morning trading today, Facebook shares started out down about 5 percent to $20.15. It's by no means a reassuring performance, but things could have been much worse.

Today, 271 million shares were freed from their lockup, allowing insiders included in that grouping to sell as many of those pre-IPO shares as they'd like. However, … Read more

Google+ on iOS and Android has been updated.

The search giant yesterday offered up an update to Android-based devices, adding, most notably, support for joining Hangouts on Air from handsets. Unveiled last September, Hangouts on Air allows users to stream video chats with people around the world. It's differentiated from Google+'s standard Hangouts feature, which lets users hold video chats with a close group of friends.

In addition to that update, Google+ for mobile now allows teens using both iOS and Android to create and join their own Hangouts from their handsets. Hangouts were initially only offered to … Read more

Facebook has quickly become a top destination for game play, according to new data from the social network.

More than 235 million people globally are playing games on its site, the company said today. That figure is up from 205 million gamers using the service a year ago at this time. Facebook also noted that its total gamer userbase has grown 8.4 percent since the beginning of 2012 and that last month alone, it drove its users to Apple's App Store and Google's Play marketplace over 170 million times.

Facebook is packed with games, including the popular … Read more

Facebook's $1 billion proposed Instagram acquisition is one step closer to approval.

The U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading today approved the deal, saying that it has decided "not to refer this merger to the Competition Commission." The agency had until August 23 to refer the acquisition inquiry to the commission.

Back in June, U.K. news outlet Guardian reported that the Office of Fair Trading was considering investigating the deal. The publication said, citing sources, that the agency was concerned that the deal would hurt competition in the marketplace by combining two of the most … Read more

Twitter users who want to know how many spammy or "fake" accounts are following them can check out a new service called Fake Follower Check.

Designed by a group named StatusPeople, the service looks at your Twitter account to scan a certain number of followers. In return, it tells how many of your followers are good, inactive, or fake. In my instance, it informed me that 77 percent of the accounts were good, 19 percent inactive, and 4 percent fake.

You can also get results for other Twitter accounts. Just plug in the name of the account, and … Read more

Google has added two new features to Google+ in response to user requests.

The first feature lets you view another person's photo albums as a slideshow. To check this out, surf to this album set up by a manager at Google+ Photos. Click on the Slideshow button in the upper right corner. Then just sit back and enjoy the show.

Hovering your mouse over any photo displays forward and backward buttons so you can quickly move to the next or previous photo. You can also pause the show or click the X button to stop it and return to … Read more

Following their amazing performances in the Olympics, many of the world's top athletes now have a lot more Facebook fans.

With the summer games coming to a finale yesterday, their influence on Facebook was examined in a report released today by Wildfire, Google's new social media marketing business.

Gold medal Olympic gymnast Gabrielle Douglas now boasts more than 590,000 Facebook fans, a surge of 3,944 percent since before the games. The page for fellow gymnast Marcel Nguyen holds more than 197,000 fans, an increase of 2,451 percent.

Athletes such as Steve Lewis, Camille Muffat, … Read more

People who didn't follow the Olympics on TV or streaming media could still keep up with all the action via Twitter.

The micro-blogging site saw more than 150 million Tweets about the summer games, the company blogged yesterday. Now that the games have ended, which athletes and events won the most interest among tweeters?

Jamaica's Usain Bolt win of the gold medal in the 200-meter sprint scored a record on Twitter with 80,000 tweets per minute. His gold medal for the 100-meter sprint came in second with 74,000 tweets per minute. Bolt also was tops on … Read more