Social Media

For years, those in the know have flocked to one site to get their daily fix of funny pictures of cats.

There's plenty of contenders for the crown, but the king of such sites, I Can Has Cheezburger, has long since left its rivals in the dust in the rarefied field of LOLCats, bringing in countless thousands of people every day who stop by to see images like one of a cat grabbing hold of its human and saying, "You have a pulse. You're well enough to get up and feed me."

The company behind I Can Has Cheezburger, Cheezburger Inc., employs more than 90 people who run dozens of blogs. And over the years, as they've built an audience in the millions, they've spawned two best-selling books. But they've never had a TV show. Until now. … Read more

You can meet a new lover in unexpected places -- like on a bus, at a winery, or at a pharmacy counter.

Such a chance encounter allows for the relationship to develop organically, right down to the bitter organic end.

For some people, though, chance encounters tend not to offer the precision they require. One of those people is Japanese programmer Noriko Higashi.

She, you see, knows precisely what she wants. Please believe me, it's quite a lot.

In order to find the man of her (rational) dreams, Higashi decided to advertise on social-coding site GitHub. Perhaps because she … Read more

Ever since I heard the third debate between President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney was going to be on a Monday night, I've been complaining about the overlap to anyone who'd listen.

Why would you go head-to-head with "Monday Night Football," the sports juggernaut on ESPN? Why remove 10-14 million potential viewers (that's been the range of MNF viewers this season) from the equation?

At least there wasn't going to be a baseball playoff game at the same time, I thought. Well, I was wrong. And so tonight, you have the perfect TV … Read more

Despite all the new ways of learning about someone -- including Facebook and LinkedIn -- Googling others remains a major online activity. A new survey by BrandYourself, an online reputation company, and polling giant Harris Interactive shows that when it comes to voting, business and dating, people place a lot of emphasis on what they find in personal search results.

Here are some excerpts from "Just Google Me":

General -- Almost all online U.S. adults use search engines to look up other people: 86% used a search engine like Google to find more information about another person. … Read more

Figuring out what kind of engagement works on social media is tough. As I wrote in a recent CNET News post, it's hard to predict on Twitter what kind of items resonate online and what kind sink without a trace.

Over on Facebook, it's even more complicated, in part because Facebook keeps changing, er, innovating. Besides, any platform with a billion people is going to be automatically more complicated to figure out than smaller platforms.

Two new efforts to get a handle on Facebook content provide some useful insights.

One of the best minds in digital journalism has … Read more

If you're someone who thinks online dating is a constant slog to find suitable matches, and to avoid feeling like an item in a catalog, The Game could be for you.

Designed to make online dating a little more fun -- and a little less like perusing a catalog -- The Game is an iPhone app built to make meeting potential matches a little less formal and a little more conversational.

The app gets its name from its use of game mechanics. Users download the app and start playing immediately by signing in with their Facebook account, avoiding what … Read more

Adding to a growing number of Zynga executives who have left the social gaming company this year, Zynga Poker General Manager Laurence "Lo" Toney has moved on from the struggling company, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Zynga Poker is the company's first social game and the largest free-to-play online poker game, according to Zynga's site. CNET has contacted a Zynga spokesperson for comment and will update when we hear back.

Toney's departure, first noticed by All Things D, comes as the company faces slowed growth and slumping stock. Its stock closed at $2.43 a … Read more

Zynga is now testing a sequel for "CityVille," the company wrote on its blog today.

The social games creator promises are more "visually rich game" with "CityVille 2," which was released today to specific players for testing.

"It has all the features in CityVille that players love -- from neighbor visits and crews to buildables -- blended with some of the innovations we introduced in CastleVille and FarmVille 2 such a crafting and 3D graphics," according to the post.

The company has said -- and Wall Street seems to agree -- that … Read more

Facebook, a company that has so often seemed as if it flies by the seat of its pants, last week released an ad in which it compared itself to chairs.

Which became quite quickly the butt of humor.

Chairs are rather solitary things. It's hard to see how they bring people together.

It's inevitable, then, that someone has made a parody video, elevating this absurdity by sending it down the toilet.

I am grateful to AllThingsD for being seated when it spotted this homage to Facebook's catatonia.

It seems to have been made by a company called … Read more