Social networking

You might have heard that UBS Bank recently lost $2 billion under what may well have been slightly fraudulent circumstances.

A 31-year-old man in a very fetching blue sweater, Kweku Adoboli, was arrested and charged with allegedly perpetrating this fraud through his trading activities as a bank employee.

He is now, therefore, referred to as a "rogue" trader. Although some might feel a more accurate description, should the accusations be proved, would be "trader whose nefarious activities got him into trouble where other traders get away with it."

Still, those for whom social networking is first … Read more

Facebook is set to announce stronger ties to Hulu next week at its F8 developer conference, according to a report in the New York Post.

Citing anonymous sources, the Post offered little detail, saying only that the social-networking giant would announce deeper integration between the two companies--integration, the Post said, that could lead to "the potential for users to see what their friends are watching on Hulu and share video content between their personal networks."

The Post also reported that other video providers could be involved, and mentioned that Netflix is "also very close" to Facebook.… Read more

Defections at Twitter are mounting. Not only is Chief Scientist Abdur Chowdhury the latest ranking technologist to resign from the San Francisco-based company, but two key board members are also stepping down.

Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet, two of Twitter's earliest investors, will be leaving at the end of the month. Twitter confirmed this to Peter Kafka at AllThingsD. In early August, Twitter announced that it closed an $800 million venture deal--the largest in history--led by Yuri Milner's Russian venture capital firm DST Global. This brings Twitter's valuation to $8.4 billion. DST also invests in Facebook, … Read more

We now know that Americans blow billions of minutes each month on Facebook. It's no wonder folks get in a tizzy when a new feature rolls out.

This week has been a particularly busy one when it comes to Facebook-related improvements. Which of these shiny new features are you most enamored by?

Subscribe option: The subscribe button makes it easier to get just the information you want. Click on it and get updates from that profile in your news feed. This will even work for public updates from some profiles that you're not directly friends with.

Smart Lists: Smart Lists will automatically shuffle your gazillions of friends into groups related to school, work, city, and family. You can then make manual adjustments.

Skype adds Facebook for Mac: Mac users finally get the full Skype-loves-Facebook treatment that Windows users had already been enjoying. The Skype 5.4 for Mac beta lets you message friends, update your status, and read posts from within the program.

Less frequent e-mail alerts: Facebook e-mailed some users telling them to start expecting fewer e-mail notifications from the company. If you prefer to keep your e-mail alerts just the way they are, however, you can turn this new feature off.

Take a moment from updating your status to let us know what floats your social-networking boat. Which new Facebook feature are you most excited about? Vote in our poll and be sure to elaborate in the comments section.… Read more

Google is working on a social-news magazine that will be accessible on the iPad and Android devices, according to reports.

"Mind-blowing good," is how digital pundit and blogger Robert Scoble said a source of his described it in a post late on Wednesday on Google+.

Google representatives did not respond to a CNET request for comment. However, AllThingsD confirmed the news from several sources and reported this evening that Propeller is the name of Google's attempt at making a "Flipboard killer."

The news comes at a time when the social-publishing arena is heating up, with … Read more

Move over, Cameron Diaz, there's a new leader in the race to be the "world's most dangerous celebrity."

Former Victoria's Secret model and current host of "Project Runway," Heidi Klum is the Internet's "most dangerous celebrity," security firm McAfee announced today. According to McAfee, when people type Klum-related queries into a search engine, nearly 10 percent of the results are "malicious."

"Fans searching for 'Heidi Klum and downloads,' 'Heidi Klum and 'free' downloads,' 'Heidi Klum and screensavers,' 'Heidi Klum and hot pictures' and 'Heidi Klum and videos' … Read more

Google+ has a hidden feature that lets people who start a hangout evict others from the video-chat feature, raising the prospect that Google's social network will get better moderation tools.

Programmer Mohamed Mansour, of Facebook data export fame, brought the hangout eviction feature to light late last night.

"The Google+ Hangout DOM [document object model] has an invisible kick button (just remove its visibility style) and when you click on it, you will see a nice kick bar!," Mansour said in a Google+ post.

The feature is one of a series of tweaks to Google's social network site. More substantive changes--corporate profiles or the ability to search Google+, for example--remain in the offing. In the meantime, the dominant social network, Facebook, is changing, too.

Yesterday, Facebook added the ability to follow another person's public posts, something easily done on Google+ and Twitter. It's also developed "smart lists" to better categorize contacts and added a group chat feature. … Read more

I have been a best man at five weddings, but have never myself managed to be a ring-slipper.

However, I understand the need for one human being to permanently attach themselves to another. Even if that attachment is virtual.

So I find virtual tears coursing down my virtual cheeks as I receive information that there is a problem with virtual marriages.

The game-makers (and matchmakers) at online-game site Nexon tell me that of the 26,982 in-game marriages that have joyously occurred in a game called MapleStory, 20,344 have ended in divorce.

Because I happen never to have played MapleStory, nor indeed even wondered what it is, I am grateful to Nexon for offering me correspondence with respect to the details of the world's next great social plight.

"I was young, naive, and thought I had met 'the one'," declared one player from Vancouver. "She asked me what I wanted in MapleStory for my birthday, and I told her that the only thing I could ever want was for her to marry me."

I feel virtual sniffles coming on. My shirt is becoming virtually damp. What could have possibly gone wrong?

Tyler--for that is the Vancouveran warrior's name--continued: "She started saying that I wasn't the person she fell in love with. That I had changed, and that I didn't seem to care about her anymore."

So far, so not very virtual. This sounded like an everyday occurrence in our venal little world. Spouses change their minds. Spouses feel insecure. Spouses decide you aren't "the one" any more. But wait, there was more.… Read more

Twitter users tweeted this afternoon about a "rather large Internet outage" that was affecting access to the site, but an Internet traffic expert said he didn't see any major problems today.

The Internet Traffic Report showed problems for a period of time today for some routers serving North America. Specifically, three routers in Canada were registering zero response time and 100 percent packet loss, as were one in Mexico, New Hampshire, Texas, and Wisconsin. Routers in Nevada and Iowa appeared to be having less severe problems.

Representatives of the Internet Traffic Report did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, or immediately respond to a phone message left for someone in Arizona listed as the administrator via the Whois domain lookup later today.

Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, told CNET that he was not aware of any major Internet performance problems today.

"I know that there was an outage on Level 3's network in Phoenix between noon and 1 p.m. [PT]," he said. "There was certainly no general widespread outage at that time."

Level 3 provided this statement tonight: "At approximately noon PT, Level 3 experienced an isolated network issue that resulted in temporary voice and IP traffic disruptions for customers in the Phoenix area for approximately one hour. The company acted quickly to resolve the issue and service is now restored for those customers."

Meanwhile, at about 3:30 p.m. PT, Twitter's Support account said it was investigating "site availability issues some folks are experiencing." … Read more