Social networking

Some people take Twitter more seriously than they do many other things. Jury duty, for example.

At least that seems to be the case after an Arkansas judge decided today that death row inmate Erickson Dimas-Martinez deserved another trial. Dimas-Martinez had been convicted in 2010 of murder by a jury that may, or may not, have been paying full attention.

One juror was apparently caught napping. Then there was Juror 2. He was subsequently revealed to be named Randy Franco and he seemed frankly engrossed in his Twitter feed. So much so that he kept on tweeting even after the … Read more

After reading through Walter Isaacson's new biography of Steve Jobs, any technology lover is left with myriad regrets. Here's another: Too bad Jobs never got a chance to design Twitter.

Twitter has been a smash success almost from the moment it hit the transom in 2006. Moving beyond the circle of early adopters into the mainstream, it fast became an indispensable tool of communication, and in North Africa, a handmaiden for revolution. But that doesn't mean it was elegantly laid out or easy to understand. Anything but.

Maybe one of the founders was born under a lucky … Read more

Twitter's redesign today has one major goal: To get the microblogging service out of Facebook's shadow.

And whether Twitter execs are aware of it or not, in so doing they're taking advice from Sean Parker--the founding president of Facebook, who might know a thing or two about social media.

I spoke to Parker about Twitter during a conference last month in Tucson, Arizona. Parker was late to join the Twitter bandwagon. He blasted out his first tweet--an apology to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg--in early October. "Sorry Zuck, I had to do it eventually," he wrote. … Read more

Google’s strong commitment to Circles, the contact grouping feature in Google+, is undeniable as the feature is being integrated deeply into Gmail.

Google executives have asserted repeatedly in the last few months that we would be seeing Google+ integration across the spectrum of its products. So far, we have seen just that from the tie-ins between Google+ and Reader to the social networking platform effectively replacing Picasa and Blogger.

These updates are really only noticeable and beneficial if you actively subscribe to Google+. And if you don’t, maybe the idea is to get you to become an active … Read more

Twitter rolled out a clean redesign for its Android and iOS apps today, and while it might seem like only a cosmetic change, some big updates are buried in the new app.

But as you dive in, you might notice that some features are missing, too.

Here's what's fresh (and what's missing) in the new Twitter app for iOS (iPhone only) and Android:

1. Keep tabs on important topics with Discover Perhaps the most obvious change, the new "Discover" tab is a revamped portal for hash tags and trending topics. Trending hash tags--which were initially … Read more

Twitter rolled out a major redesign that revamps some of its biggest features and includes new apps for iOS and Android, in a bold attempt to make itself more relevant--not to mention more attractive to advertisers.

The main idea behind the redesign is to fundamentally change how users will access their most important tweets and the most significant information they convey. For instance, Twitter has decided to link its service to the notion of "home," and to try to rebrand the hashtag--one of its users' most ingenious inventions--as the "discover" tool.

At the same time, … Read more

Some might imagine that, before he died, Steve Jobs had left instructions on what could and could not be done with his likeness.

If such instructions did exist, they might be put to the test by the creation of a 7-foot bronze statue that is being created in his honor.

Hungarian Gabor Bojar, chairman of software company Graphisoft, commissioned sculptor Erno Toth to depict Jobs in a dynamic, rather than passive pose.

Toth chose the Jobs who was seen on stage telling the world that the iPhone was the first coming of something very important.

The sculpture will, therefore, show … Read more

PARIS--Bad news, would-be social networking startups.

"Social is running out of hours. Social is also running out of people," concluded George Colony, chief executive of analyst firm Forrester Research, speaking today at the LeWeb conference here. What he means: people don't have any extra time for social networking, and it's a saturated market.

The company bases its findings on consumer research. For example, regarding saturation, Forrester found that 86 percent of people have adopted social networking services. In Canada, it's 88 percent, and in Poland, 95 percent. Urban areas of China are at 97 percent. … Read more

Russia seems to be experiencing a little tension currently.

The ruling party is being confronted with something very dangerous--apparent opposition. Small but perfectly formed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was recently booed during an appearance at a wrestling match.

Then the nation held elections that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested might not have been the apogee of democracy.

Perhaps this odd state of affairs might explain why President Dmitri Medvedev's Twitter feed was adorned with a retweet that included the phrase "Stupid sheep getting f***ed in the mouth."

The way Reuters' mouth expresses it, … Read more