Social network and groups

Twitter could be planning a major update to its search and discovery feature later today, according to one of its employees.

Twitter's Pankaj Gupta, who runs the company's Personalization and Recommender Systems, sent out a tweet yesterday congratulating his team on an improvement to its search and discovery tools that, he says, will dramatically change the service.

"Search and discovery in Twitter [is] set to change forever after tomorrow," Gupta tweeted. "Team -- congrats and enjoy the enormity of your impact few understand today."

Twitter has quickly realized that improving the user's ability … Read more

After a very public falling-out, Facebook and General Motors may be on the road to rekindling their advertising relationship, according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing sources, that GM and Facebook are in talks to determine what it would take to bring the automobile company back to the social network's advertising platform. The Journal says that Facebook will give GM better data on how the company can increase ad effectiveness.

GM made waves back in May, just ahead of Facebook's IPO, when it decided to pull its $10 million ad campaign from Facebook, … Read more

Facebook has let slip a purported plug-in that would allow users on Web sites across the Internet to "want" specific items.

Developer Tom Waddington of Cut Out + Keep, a site allowing users to make and share craft tutorials, revealed on his personal blog earlier this week that he came across a "Want" button in the social network's JavaScript SDK. The button is not currently listed on Facebook's list of available site plug-ins, seeming to indicate that the company didn't want the news to slip just yet.

Waddington says that he tried to execute … Read more

It's well known that Pinterest is growing in leaps and bounds. But is that success starting to outpace even popular microblogging site Tumblr in the U.S.?

Royal Pingdom today revealed the results of data it compiled comparing traffic for both Pinterest and Tumblr. The blog first turned to Alexa, and found Pinterest to be just inching out Tumblr in traffic. On Google Trends, Pinterest scored more daily unique visitors than Tumblr. However, analytics services Compete and Quantcast gave the nod to Tumblr.

Not satisfied with the results, Royal Pingdom moved on to research firms, and found that Experian … Read more

The Twitter client MetroTwit is now a full-fledged Metro app available free through Microsoft's Windows store.

MetroTwit users who install the app in the Windows 8 Release Preview will find it similar in many ways to its Windows desktop counterpart.

The app starts off by displaying a column for your traditional Twitter timeline. Clicking on a tweet opens an app bar at the bottom of the screen with a variety of options. You can view the tweet full-screen, reply to it, retweet it, and mark it as a favorite. More options let you open the tweet at Twitter's … Read more

If you have a teen in the home, beware: there's a good chance he or she is hiding what they're doing on the Web.

According to security firm McAfee, a whopping 70 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 have admitted to hiding their online activities from parents. McAfee found that 43 percent of the surveyed teens access simulated violence on the Web, while 32 percent view nude content or pornography.

Interestingly, parents don't necessarily think that their children are doing anything wrong on the Web. In fact, McAfee, which surveyed a total of 2,017 people, … Read more

Facebook has grabbed its latest managerial hire from the ranks of Apple.

Chris Weeldreyer, a former user interface design manager for Apple, is now a product design manager for the popular social network. Weeldreyer joined Apple in 2003 before leaving the company this past February, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Facebook had been looking to fill the design manager slot with the right person to lead a team of designers.

The job has been advertised as primarly a management role. But the company also needed someone who could do hands-on design work.

"Candidates must have strong visual and interaction … Read more

A U.S. House of Representatives committee chairman has sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking what went wrong with Facebook's recent IPO and suggesting that it's time to overhaul the landmark Securities Act of 1933.

"As we consider means to improve capital formation, we must revisit the Securities Act of 1933," Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wrote on behalf of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in a letter obtained by The Wall Street Journal. "The investment banks were given almost 80 years to enjoy this flawed law, fraught with … Read more

Google isn't ready to open up a Google+ interface to just anybody yet, but it has done so with one important partner, Flipboard.

An application programming interface (API) lets third-party software tap into a service, and opening the Google+ API will let people use Flipboard to read and publish Google+ posts and to comment on those posts.

Bradley Horowitz, the Google vice president of product management in charge of Google+, announced the move at the LeWeb conference in London. He showed off a prototype of the Google+-connected Flipboard software on an Apple iPad, but didn't say when … Read more