social-networking

A Facebook app that mimicked the real-life lethal game of Russian roulette in deleting user accounts apparently did not leave the social network fired up.

Social Roulette, which launched Saturday, gave players a one-in-six chance of deleting their own Facebook account, a form of social suicide, if you will. If you lost (or won, depending on your level of exasperation with social networking), the app would delete all aspects of the user's account, including posts, likes, photos, and friend connections, before deactivating the account.

According to its description, the app was intended for people looking to burn their Facebook … Read more

Facebook may be aiming to spend anywhere from $800 million to $1 billion to acquire Waze, an Israel-based company that offers a socially informed GPS app for drivers.

Talks reportedly kicked off six months ago, according to Israeli business-news site Calcalist, which says that due diligence is currently under way. This would mean that the two companies are checking each other out before signing on the dotted line. The two also have signed a term sheet, or an agreement in principle on the sale, according to Calcalist.

An agreement sounds like it could be close. However, sources close to Waze … Read more

Even though Hipstamatic and Instagram are photo-sharing partners, it seems like Hipstamatic is looking to add a little more social networking to its world.

The company announced Wednesday that it's launching a Hipstamatic spin-off app called Oggl for iOS. The idea is for people to take Hipstamatic-like photos and then share them with friends and family.

According to a Hipstamatic blog post by co-founders Lucas Buick and Ryan Dorshorst, Oggl is "a community for creative people to capture and curate their lives through photography." The company is clear that it doesn't want Oggl to be full … Read more

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

After the Associated Press' Twitter account was hacked into on Tuesday and the accounts of CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, it's been made clear that Twitter needs to boost security. But, it may be doing just that.

According to Wired's Mat Honan, the social-networking site has reportedly been working on creating a two-factor authentication for user password verification. Honan writes that the company is currently carrying out internal testing before rolling out the new security control.

This isn't a huge surprise considering Twitter posted a job advertisement … Read more

Salesforce.com is turning things up a notch for its Marketing Cloud platform with a new product styled similarly to its other cloud-based products: Social.com.

Social.com stems from Salesforce's acquisition of Buddy Media and its subsidiary, the London-based Brighter Option.

Thus, the Marketing Cloud now boils down to three core areas: social media listening (Radian6), publishing content (Buddy Media), and branding (Social.com). The new service is described as a self-serve application for use by agencies, brands, developers, retailers and advertisers in developing, automating, and managing social ad campaigns.

Touting it as the first platform that connects … Read more

Perhaps there is such a thing as too much Facebook.

In 2012, U.S. consumers on personal computers spent about 27 percent of their Internet time with social networking sites and forums, or 16 minutes for every hour, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.

Though that's an alarming finding for some, the figure, which doesn't reflect mobile browsing, is actually down 3 percentage points from the previous year. In 2011, social networking in the U.S. peaked at 30 percent of all time spent online, according to Experian.

U.S. consumers are not alone in their adjusted … Read more

Would you spend $1 million for a video ad on Facebook?

That's allegedly what the popular network is aiming to squeeze out of advertisers when it starts rolling out video ads sometime this summer, says a story today in Ad Age.

Citing information from one "executive briefed on the product," Ad Age reported that the video ads would carry a price tag upwards of $1 million, run for no longer than 15 seconds, and be scheduled so that no Facebook user sees more than three such ads per day.

Facebook has been chatting up ad agencies to … Read more

People in the Boston area, and those close to people possibly affected by today's explosions there, are understandably worried about their ability to find or communicate with each other. As a result, a number of organizations have created resources to help. This is a collection of several of them.

Tracking friends and family

For those trying to track down people they worry might have been victims of the explosions, there are at least two people finders. First is one set up by Google, and a second comes from the Red Cross. A third service is a list of runners who checked in … Read more