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LAS VEGAS -- There is one class of people ill-represented at CES. Yes, the rampant, destructive force that is the teenager.

Here we are, witnessing the future, and the only teens here seem to be dressed in Lycra or shorts and trying to sell you a fascinatingly pointless accessory for your bicycle.

How convenient, then, that before CES opens its doors for a second day of joy, word reaches me of a teenage rebellion in social networking.

Yes, Facebook is passe. Dreary, dull, old. It's the Wrangler jeans of social networking.

This sprightly information is courtesy of a survey … Read more

After a lengthy investigation into Google's business practices by the Federal Trade Commission, the Web giant has agreed to make minor changes to resolve complaints by competitors and advertisers. It avoided any fines.

The commission found that Google's search results were not biased in favor of its own results in a way that was anti-competitive. However, the FTC did rule that Google must stop blocking the use of standard essential patents by competitors. The patents, which it acquired when it purchased Motorola, are used to comply with technical standards.

Google also agreed to remove restrictions on the use … Read more

New information from Web analytics firm Experian Hitwise suggests Instagram has recovered nicely from a seemingly disastrous privacy policy uproar last month.

For the 15 days since December 18, Instagram.com received more than 41.7 million total U.S. visits, an increase of 18 percent compared with the 15 days prior to the controversial proposed policy changes. The data was provided to CNET by Experian Marketing Services on request.

"The holidays see a spike in traffic as people are sharing more pictures than perhaps normal," Experian Marketing Services spokesman Matt Tatham told CNET, adding that the data … Read more

Millions of Instagram users are documenting their night as confetti is thrown, party horns are blown, and revelers count down to 2013. The photo-sharing social network has decided to put all of these photos in one place -- a desktop-optimized New Year's Eve photo stream.

"We love seeing photos shared from all different parts of the world," Instagram wrote in a blog post today. "At instagram.com/nye, you can see photos from every part of the world as the clock strikes midnight in a given time zone."

What's really behind today's reported decline in Instagram numbers? AppData -- which touched off a firestorm today when the New York Post used its data to suggest that Instagram had lost nearly a quarter of its daily users -- says that the holidays are likely to blame, rather than proposed changes to its terms of service.

"Though the terms-of-service change spurred a lot of negative media attention and complaints from users, the decline in Facebook-connected daily active users began closer to Christmas, not immediately after the proposed policy change," said Brittany Darwell, speaking on behalf of … Read more

Android and iOS devices were apparently popular gifts this Christmas -- more popular than ever before.

Device activations soared from their daily December average of 4 million to 17.4 million on Christmas Day, a 332 percent increase, according to analytics firm Flurry. That's more than double the 6.8 million devices activated on Christmas last year, the previous single-day record holder. And in a first, more tablets were activated on Christmas this year than phones. Apple tablets dominated the category, but the Kindle Fire HD 7-inch made its strongest showing ever.

iPhone and iPad app downloads jumped 87 percent … Read more

The number of people using Instagram daily reportedly declined sharply over Christmas, just a week after a flap over the Facebook-owned company's revised terms of service led to widespread user outrage.

As first reported by the New York Post, analytics firm AppData recorded a nearly 25 percent drop in the number of daily active Instagram users in the wake of the controversy. Instagram had 16.4 million daily active users before it announced new plans to introduce advertising into the service; seven days later, that figure had fallen to 12.4 million users by AppData's reckoning.

AppData records … Read more

If there was one thing you could say about Twitter's 2012, it was that it wasn't boring. Over the course of the year, the service became bigger than ever, hosted major events like a Q&A with President Obama and another with Pope Benedict XVI, and became an essential tool for those looking for information about everything from Hurricane Sandy to the civil war in Syria.

But 2012 was also contentious for Twitter. The microblogging service put new restrictions on what it would allow third-party developers to do, and then had to deal with a rebellion by … Read more

When you think of social media these days, you probably think primarily of Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps Instagram. But while those services have massive -- and growing -- user bases, they're of course not the only games in town.

The world of social media is filled with other services, and millions of people get a daily fix without ever going near Facebook or Twitter. There are big general networks like Tagged, and plenty of smaller, purpose-built ones like Path or celebrity-focused ones like Lady Gaga's Little Monsters. There's even a revamped MySpace.

So what does 2013 … Read more