I lead VentureBeat’s coverage on social media news, but also cover news and industry trends in e-commerce and mobile.

Previously, I was a senior reporter at Mashable. I also have experience in broadcast television and introduced social media reporting to the NBC San Diego newsroom.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts in English from UCLA.

You can find me pretty much anywhere on the web under the handle “jbruin.” I often tweet, instagram, facebook, and path on tech and the world at large. Sometimes I get a little NSFW on these channels, so consider yourself warned.

I also abide by VentureBeat’s Ethics Statement. I don’t hold stock in any company that I cover and I don’t accept gifts of any kind for coverage (though I do possess some startup swag collected from parties and such over the years). On occasion, companies send me samples and test products, but I disclose these details in stories whenever applicable. I do have a Bruin-bred bias against USC, a fact that causes more conflict in my personal life than it does in my reporting.

stories by Jennifer Van Grove

StumbleUpon finds its way to Windows 8 with its most distinctive app yet

StumbleUpon is fueling new life into a 10-year-old product that was once teetering on the edge of irrelevancy. The most dramatic evidence of such can be seen in the company's just-released application for Windows 8.

Facebook’s mobile-only user base up 24% to 126M people

Facebook said that roughly 126 million of its mobile monthly active users accessed the social network exclusively through mobile devices in September.

News.me pulls app from App Store, makes Twitter the scapegoat

News.me announced Wednesday that it's shutting down the digital presses to focus on other things -- mainly remaking Digg into a desirable destination for news.

Engineers, want to work for Facebook? Just map the entire Internet

Engineers looking to skip to the front of recruiting line and land a job at Facebook have a new, unconventional way to get themselves noticed. All they have to do is successfully map the entire Internet.

Chirpify, not Facebook, swoops in to help brands sell on Instagram

Chirpify has masterminded an ingenious system to do what Facebook can't: help people and brands sell to their fans on Instagram, and pocket a piece of the action in the process.

Facebook looking better on mobile: 600M users help generate $150M in ad revenue

In what normally would strike the fear of God into investors, Facebook announced that it grew mobile monthly active users to 604 million people. The quarter was ultimately a rather lackluster one for the company financially speaking -- save for mobile advertising growth.

Final presidential debate provoked most social trash talk

Third-party data on last night's presidential debate confirms what we already know: Politics can bring out the worst in people.

Sexed-up StumbleUpon.com goes live for all

StumbleUpon is shaking off the beta label and introducing all 25 million of its members to the colorfully redone and hyper-personalized version of its site first launched one month ago.

Square prepares for big move to accommodate 1K employees

Putting its new money to good use, Square signed a lease on a 150,000 square-foot space at 1455 Market Street in San Francisco's Central Market neighborhood.

Firefox goes social with Facebook Messenger integration

Firefox users can now respond in record time to pressing pings from Facebook friends thanks to a collaboration between Mozilla and the social network.

Billionaire Peter Thiel toys with $150M investment in Airbnb

Psst. Word on the street is that famous serial investor Peter Thiel wants to pump $150 million into community-powered hotel alternative Airbnb.

Yelp publicly shames businesses that pay for reviews

Business reviews company Yelp has started affixing the equivalent of a scarlet letter to the pages of vendors that try to game its review system by inappropriately garnering stellar ratings.

Facebook overhauls Android SDK to help app makers reach more people

In what the company is describing as the biggest overhaul yet, Facebook today released a reworked SDK for Android designed to help app makers on the platform get their Facebook-enhanced applications in front of more of the social network's 1 billion members.

More mobile ads headed your way as Facebook opens new ad unit to all app makers

Two months into testing a program for promoting sponsored applications in Facebook's iOS and Android applications, the social network has opened the service to all developers.

Klout perks up, adds influence card to Apple’s Passbook

Klout updated its iPhone application to allow members to receive rewards on their phones and add an influence identification card to Apple's Passbook application.

Target to match rivals’ online prices for holiday shopping season

No longer content to serve as a showroom for gadgets that consumers go on to buy from online competitors, Target committed to match the prices of items offered at rival online retailers for the bulk of the holiday shopping season.