Social Media News

Here’s what we REALLY thought about this week’s news (video)

Skyrim is awesome; Pinterest users need to calm the hell down; and Facebook users need to stay away from the gun cabinet.

In this week’s episode of VB Weekly, the VentureBeat writing staff takes a front seat, with a range of our editors and reporter spouting off about the stories they found most interesting.

This week, we’re talking about:

Steve Jobs’ FBI file
the crazy coming features for hit game Skyrim
Facebook’s all-new lightbox for

… Continue Reading

LinkedIn revenue up 105% in fourth quarter 2011

LinkedIn announced its earnings today, with revenue making an impressive jump up 105 percent, beating street estimates.

The company is a business-centric social network that aims to connect people for networking, job opportunities, resources, and more. In May of 2011, the company completed its initial public offering, to a good reception, but then leveled out in the third quarter. LinkedIn’s revenue topped at $167.7 million in the fourth quarter, 67 percent of which was revenue … Continue Reading

140 characters can get Indonesians 12 years in jail

Indonesia’s Communications and Information Minister has declared that anyone tweeting illegal content, such as blasphemy, pornography, and threats, could spend up to 12 years in prison.

Indonesia has a strained history with free speech issues and open media, so a law that would punish Twitter users harshly for their words isn’t entirely surprising. The case of Prita Mulyasari is one big example of how uncomfortable the country is with online communication. Mulyasari was jailed and … Continue Reading

When the Google+ Platform is opening for developers and why it’s taking so long

The Google+ Platform is still a relatively small collection of read-only APIs, but Google is definitely preparing for a wide and varied set of features for developers.

At the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco Thursday, Google+ engineering director David Glazer (pictured) revealed that Google will roll out more enhancements to the social networking platform “when we’re delighted with how it’s working.”

It’s a vague answer to an important question, and it has a … Continue Reading

Obama shows further mastery of social by tweeting Spotify campaign playlist

Many analysts think President Obama won the 2008 election partly due to his campaign’s ability to use social networks and the web to rally and influence voters. And now with the 2012 election season upon us, Obama is showing he still gets it with the release of a subscribe-able 28-track Spotify playlist.

Obama’s official Twitter account today posted a new Spotify playlist titled “2012 Campaign Playlist” with the message: “A little Wilco, a bit of … Continue Reading

Glam Media cooks up new Foodie.com social site

After months of silence, Glam Media finally revealed its plans for the company’s next big site launch, Foodie.

VentureBeat broke the news that Glam purchased the Foodie.com domain for $100,000 back in June 2011. At the time, we theorized that the company was planning some sort of gender-neutral food/cooking vertical, despite already having food sections on both Glam.com and Brash.com, Glam’s male-focused site.

“We were completely unprepared to talk about Foodie when VentureBeat published the … Continue Reading

Path-ological: In 2010, founder Dave Morin said Path never stored user data

It’s the privacy snafu that will not die. A day after a developer discovered that mobile social network Path was storing users’ entire address books on its servers, the startup seemed to have defused the incident by apologizing and deleting all the personal data it had stored.

But now Gawker’s Ryan Tate has published an email he got from Path CEO Dave Morin back in 2010 in which the CEO acknowledges that his company looks … Continue Reading

Foursquare for iPhone, Android enhanced with new Explore features and menu info

A hungry sojourner should have an easier time tracking down a good meal if updated iPhone and Android applications from Foursquare deliver on their promise to simplify place discovery.

The New York location-based company, currently in the midst of a rebrand, has shipped colorful Explore tab updates to its most popular mobile applications.

The Explore tab, the home of place discovery, now features smarter search capabilities, a new navigation for quick access to top picks … Continue Reading

Path CEO: We screwed up by uploading your personal data, and we’ve erased it

The CEO of Path, a startup focused on sharing your life with just close contacts, has apologized after a hacker showed that Path’s iOS app uploaded extremely personal data to its servers without permission.

The company’s purpose in uploading that data was to help users better connect with friends and family in Path’s systems. But Path users, naturally, were up in arms that their contacts, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers were taken, and some called … Continue Reading

Facebook woos photographers with new lightbox viewer, launching end of week

Facebook is rolling out its new lightbox photo viewer feature to all 840 million users by the end of this week, a spokesperson for the company has confirmed to VentureBeat. The new display helps make photos more attractive by showing them larger, moving comments off to the side, and graying out the background to minimize distraction.

“The new photo viewer is rolling out to everyone on Facebook and should be available to people worldwide by … Continue Reading

Gameloft Live enters the social mobile fray on Android, coming to iOS soon

Global games publisher Gameloft announced today its new gaming hub service, Gameloft Live. In a move that should surprise no one, the company has taken the concept and the name of a console gaming service (Xbox Live) and repurposed it for the mobile space with a dedicated Android app, available now, and a soon-to-be-released iOS app.

According to the press release, Gameloft Live is a new version of the multiplayer service already in many Gameloft-published … Continue Reading

Yammer possibly seeking a new $50M investment

Rumors are circulating that enterprise-focused social network Yammer is raising a new mega funding round of more than $50 million, which would push the startup’s valuation near $1 billion.

Yammer provides companies with their own private social network that employees use to quickly communicate and update their activity throughout the day. A company’s Yammer network is closed off from public view and is only accessible to people who have a company-branded email address. Over 200,000 … Continue Reading

Lance Tokuda’s SchoolFeed rounds up $1.75M for fast-growing classmates network

Lance Tokuda was looking for an old high school friend, but instead he found his second big social networking startup. The co-founder of game publisher RockYou happened to find an old acquaintance from high school on Classmates.com, which has more than 60 million users. But when he was going to email her, he found that Classmates.com was going to charge him $60 for that privilege.

There had to be a better way to hook people … Continue Reading

A change we don’t hate: Facebook updates photo viewer

It seems Facebook has rolled out its new lightbox photo viewer to more people today, and some are saying it’s a ripoff of Google+.

The new feature is similar to the old “theater view” in that it takes the user into a pop-up carousel of photos. What’s new is that Facebook has moved the comments to the right side of the photo and added advertising below the comments field. In order to like or tag … Continue Reading

How Pinterest is secretly profiting from your links

Is surprise-hit Pinterest covertly capitalizing on the product-sharing behaviors of its burgeoning user base? Evidence amassed by savvy observers suggests as much.

Pinterest is the invite-only digital pin-board site where people, mostly arts and crafts enthusiasts between the ages of 25 and 44, “pin” products, recipes, and photos to themed boards. The two year-old company is an insanely buzzy up-and-coming social network that attracts millions of visitors each week.

But unbeknownst to the average user, … Continue Reading

LinkedIn reportedly buying contact manager Rapportive

Business social-media giant LinkedIn is acquiring Rapportive, a Gmail add-on that enhances contact information.

Sources close to the negotiation disclosed the news and said that LinkedIn is paying over $10 million to buy the company, All Things D reported. The final purchase price is undisclosed, no deal has been finalized, and both companies are keeping quiet about the details. VentureBeat reached out to Rapportive’s chief executive Rahul Vohra for comment and didn’t get a response.… Continue Reading

Jive still makes enterprise tech cool, reports Q4 earnings

Jive Software reported its first earnings as a public company today, and introduced a secret new product called “Project Thunder.”

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Jive increased its revenue by 53 percent over the same period last year, earning $22.5 million. Revenue directly associated with product was up 61 percent at $19.2 million. Jive provides social business software, which allows businesses to communicate with each other outside of instant messages and e-mails. Indeed, Jive … Continue Reading

Biggest Super Bowl loser is Netflix: Traffic down 40 percent during the game

The next time a nefarious organization wants to keep people off the Internet, it would do well to engineer its own championship professional football game.

Web traffic dropped significantly during this past Sunday’s Super Bowl football match between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, according to a Sandvine report published today. But with this year’s game bringing in a record 111.3 million viewers, the Sandvine’s findings aren’t entirely surprising.

Overall internet traffic … Continue Reading