Social networking

NEW YORK -- Twitter and Medium co-founder Evan Williams loved reading magazines growing up in rural Nebraska in the pre-Internet days. It was a way to experience the world outside of Clarks, Nebraska, population 369.

"I wanted to get out of there and see the bigger world. [Clarks] is not a bad place to be, but I yearned to see the rest of the world," Williams said in conversation with Wired senior writer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference here.

Since leaving Nebraska for the West Coast, the 41-year-old serial entrepreneur has become one the Internet's … Read more

Who wouldn't want to create an image of themselves smoking a joint, wearing wrap-around shades, and holding a wad of cash? The new Snoopify app aims to let users do just that.

West coast rapper Snoop Dogg rolled out his new mobile app on Monday, giving users the option of adding photos into the app and then dressing them up gangster style or Rasta-inspired. Free and available on both Android and iOS, the app seems to be making its money with the new trend of the moment -- stickers. While a handful of stickers in the app are free, … Read more

Ever had the need to show what you're feeling on Facebook Messenger with an image of a cute pink critter holding a heart-shaped pillow? Well, you're in luck.

The social network updated its iOS Messenger app on Monday with a grab bag of stickers. For those people unfamiliar with stickers, they're basically emoticons that users can tack onto messages for added sentiment, gusto, or laughs. Facebook will be rolling out the stickers on its iOS Messenger app over the next few weeks; Facebook Messenger for Android already has the stickers.

Currently, Facebook's stickers are free, but … Read more

Last week, Apple announced that its App Store is approaching 50 billion app downloads. In celebration of the milestone, Apple is giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card to the lucky person who initiates the 50 billionth download.

As part of the celebration, Apple listed the top 25 apps -- both free and paid -- for iPhone and iPad. None of the apps listed is particularly surprising (especially to someone who studies the most-popular list every day), but one thing that did strike me is that a lot of the all-time best sellers still sit near the top … Read more

Jim Breyer, the early Facebook investor who is leaving the company's board, has dumped roughly $38 million worth of Facebook stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing published Monday.

Breyer is a venture capitalist whose firm, Accel Partners, was one of the social network's first investors. The filing from Wednesday shows that he sold 1.3 million of his own shares, valued between $28.19 and $29.03. The amount is a drop in the bucket for Breyer, who is still hanging onto 7.8 million shares, which were worth roughly $223.6 million at the … Read more

It's been well-chronicled that when Instagram was sold to Facebook last year, it spurned similar interest from Twitter, probably leading to bad blood between the two companies and a tit-for-tat series of feature shutdowns and one-upmanship.

But a new Vanity Fair story by AllThingsD co-founder Kara Swisher spells out in detail just how disappointed Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was upon learning that he'd lost out on the opportunity not just to buy Instagram, but to acquire the talents of the photo app's co-founder, Kevin Systrom, a friend.

Social-gaming company Zynga staked its claim with FarmVille. And now -- when Zynga has been reaping more than sowing -- the company will rely on that same title to restore its ailing operation.

In a Reuters interview published Monday, Pincus said his company is relying on FarmVille 2 to rebuild. The company's revenue jumped to $1.2 billion in 2012, but losses continue to pile up.

A key component to the turnaround plan is to give FarmVille players the same experience on mobile as on desktop.

"The ideal is to make that one seamless experience between Web and … Read more

"Did you hear that? I'm cool."

These are the words by which all parents will be greeted, the minute they exchange their iPhones for a Samsung Galaxy S4.

This is the conceit, at least, of one of the latest ads for Samsung's new Phone, which will launch from Monday.

Parents live for grains of approval from their upstart, self-righteously technological children.

Last Thursday, Samsung offered some chilling brutality in a graduation pool party ad that suggested all iPhone-owning parents were gormless social Neanderthals.

With these new ads, it wants them to know all hope of cool … Read more

"Only natural pure-bred lambskin condoms."

This is but one of the requirements on Martha Stewart's "new" Match.com profile.

Perhaps you have been too busy wondering if the world will end this week to focus on its most important news: the fact that Martha Stewart has joined Match.com.

Many will be fascinated to see how the rather fetching 71-year-old doyenne of domesticity will fare when her writing skills are tossed to the hordes of dubious males who wander that site in search of, well, who knows.… Read more