Social network and groups

Salesforce.com has officially entered into an agreement to acquire Buddy Media, the companies announced today.

According to enterprise cloud-computing firm Salesforce.com, it will pay $689 million in cash and equity to acquire the social media marketing company, confirming earlier reports that the firms were nearing a deal. The companies expect the deal to close during Salesforce's fiscal third quarter ended October 31.

For Salesforce, the synergy between the companies made the deal. Salesforce currently offers a "social media listening platform" called Radian 6 that the company says, will be vastly improved by Buddy Media's … Read more

Spotify suffered an issue that prevented users from logging in this morning, the company has confirmed both on its Web site and Twitter account.

"We can confirm that most users are unable to log in at this time," the company wrote on its Spotify Status Twitter page earlier today. "We are working on a fix. Watch this space."

In a subsequent update, Spotify said that it was working on the issues, and added that the problem also was affecting those who log in to its Web site. However, the company now says that the issue has … Read more

Although Facebook's initial public offering hurt investors and the social network's share price, there appears to be another victim of its troubles.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today, citing sources, that online travel site Kayak decided against holding its "roadshow" with would-be investors around Memorial Day as planned, due to issues with Facebook's IPO. The Journal's sources say that Kayak is trying to determine the willingness in the investment world to drop cash into another Internet IPO.

If investors are concerned, it wouldn't be such a bad idea. Over the last year, … Read more

Are you more apt to buy an item you see pop up on Pinterest or Facebook?

Most of the Pinterest and Facebook users polled by marketing firm SteelHouse said that the sites play a key role in their online buying. But Pinterest users are twice as likely to buy items they see on the site than are Facebook users.

Drilling further the results of the 309 online shoppers polled, 59 percent of Pinterest users said they've already bought something they saw pinned on Pinterest. In comparison, 33 percent of Facebook folks said they've bought a product or service … Read more

Pepsi is trying something new to connect its brand with would-be customers. It involves music, and it involves Twitter, though how exactly this effort is supposed to get people to drink more soda isn't quite clear.

Starting today, Pepsi will post a video summary of music news on its corporate Twitter page each Wednesday, based on trending music topics on Twitter. It will also offer a free MP3 download from Amazon that relates to the video news summary. To get the song, users will have to send a tweet with a Pepsi hashtag.

Pepsi will also stream video of … Read more

Facebook's shareholders can't catch a break.

The company's stock today is trading down to $29.44, shedding $2.46, or about 8 percent, of its market-opening price. The decline comes the same day trading on Facebook was opened to the options market. According to Dow Jones, about 162,000 Facebook options were traded by 9 a.m. PT this morning.

Facebook's continuing decline has struck fear among investors, who wonder how low the company's shares might fall. Facebook went off earlier this month at $38, only to watch its stock plummet in subsequent days. At … Read more

China's Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo has followed through on a promise to institute a "contract" with users over their conduct on the communication platform.

Sina Weibo's new code of conduct, introduced today, takes aim at users who attempt to post messages that speak unkindly of China's constitution, harm the "unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity" of the country, or reveal national secrets, according to Reuters, which was first to report on the news. The code also bans users from spreading rumors and promoting "evil teachings and superstitions."

Sina Weibo earlier this … Read more

Google has released the Android version of an overhauled Google+ app, part of the company's attempt to move to a "simpler, more beautiful Google," in the words of Vic Gundotra, the company's senior vice president of engineering.

The new app catches up with the iOS Google+ app that Google released a couple of weeks ago with a new visually rich, photo-first interface. And in some ways it surpasses it, for example in its support for tablets.

Google trails Facebook by far when it comes to the magnitude of membership on the overt social-network Google+ site, but … Read more

As more details emerge on the behind-the-scenes events surrounding Facebook's initial public offering, the more upsetting the revelations might become to individual investors.

Just before Facebook went public, a large investment firm named Capital Research & Management indicated to the social network's underwriters that it wanted to take a significant investment in the company. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources, Capital Research was warned by one of Facebook's underwriters about the social network's declining revenue forecast, leading the investment firm to buy far fewer shares than initially anticipated. Some of the firm's … Read more