NewsTrust - Social Networks - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Web Piracy Bills Invite a Protracted Battle

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jenna Wortham, Somini Sengupta - Jan. 16 (News Report) - The Obama administration’s statement of opposition to antipiracy legislation let the technology industry claim a victory, but few in Silicon Valley or Hollywood consider the battle over.

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@MentionMachine tracks the presidential candidates: Who’s up, who’s down on Twitter?

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Cory Haik, Amanda Zamora, Natalie Jennings - Jan. 03 (Special Report) - When Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination Aug. 13, the same day as the Ames Straw Poll, those watching social streams could have rightfully assumed he had won the Iowa contest. Twitter exploded with Perry mentions, even though he didn’t participate in the straw poll, while the winner, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), drew far less attention. Social media was the writing on the wall. Perry would soon trend up in polls, surpassing Bachmann and the rest of the field. Twitter was the early — scratch that — Twitter was the real-time warning ...

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The Apologies of Zuckerberg: A Retrospective

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Liz Gannes - Nov. 29 (News Analysis) - At this point, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pattern on privacy is clear. Launch new stuff that pushes the boundaries of what people consider comfortable. Apologize and assure users that they control their information, but rarely pull back entirely, and

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Escaped Pet Birds Are Teaching Wild Birds to Speak English

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Treehugger - By Stephen Messenger - Sep. 15 (News) - Across parts of Australia, reports have been pouring in of strange voices chattering high in the treetops -- mysterious, non-sensical conversations in English. But while the phenomena is certainly quite odd, its explanation isn't paranormal.

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Facebook users jailed over 'riot that never was'

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

MSNBC - Aug. 17 (News Report) - Two British men have been sentenced to four years in prison for trying to organize riots on Facebook, according to reports.

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How Twitter tracked the News of the World scandal

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jonathan Richards, Alex Graul, Martin Shuttleworth, Mariana Santos, Ranjit Dhaliwal, Alastair Dant - Jul. 14 (Special Report) - The Murdochs' decision to close the News of the World was greeted with a frenzy on Twitter. The Guardian has analysed half a million tweets sent with the #notw hashtag over the past four days to capture…

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Facebook's Fake Friends Epidemic

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PC World - By Dan Tynan - Jun. 30 (Investigative Report) - A few weeks ago I got a Facebook friend request from a cute young blonde thing named Marjorie. I did not know Marjorie from Adam, but she was certainly enthusiastic about friending me. She even initiated a chat session before I had a chance to respond. In fact, she continues to chat me periodically at random, even though we are not officially "friends." When I asked why, she says she just "wants 2 b yr frnd." There was something strangely familiar about Marjorie, and it took me a couple of days to figure it out. Her profile photo - the only one on her page - was of country star Taylor Swift. (On closer inspection, one can see the MTV Awards logo behind her. Duh.)

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Another Try by Google to Take On Facebook

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Claire Cain Miller - Jun. 29 (News) - Remember Google Buzz? What about Orkut, or Google Wave? Google has tried several times, without much success, to take on Facebook and master social networking. Now it is making its biggest effort yet.

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Social Media Join Toolkit for Hunters of Disease

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bronwyn Garrity - Jun. 14 (News) - Social media — Facebook, Google, Twitter, location-based services like Foursquare and more — are changing the way epidemiologists discover and track the spread of disease.

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‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ comes clean

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Melissa Bell, Elizabeth Flock - Jun. 13 (News Report) - The persona Tom MacMaster built and cultivated for years — a lesbian who was half Syrian and half American — was a tantalizing Internet-era fiction, one that he used to bring attention to the human rights record of a country where media restrictions make traditional reporting almost impossible.

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Reid's advice to Weiner: "Call somebody else"

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Washington Post Staff - Jun. 08 (News Report) - Call somebody else.

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Summers Says Technology Bubble Concern Shows Sentiment Gain

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Zhang Dingmin - May. 20 (News Report) - Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said rising concern that technology stocks are in a bubble shows how sentiment has rebounded since the 2007- 2009 American mortgage and credit collapse. “Who could have imagined that the concern with respect to any American financial asset, just two years after the crisis, would be a bubble?” Summers, who is now a professor at Harvard University, said at a conference today in Shanghai. “Yet that concern is increasingly raised with respect to American technology, with respect to certain other American assets. That is a reflection of the resumption of confidence.” LinkedIn Corp., the largest professional-networking website, more than doubled yesterday after its initial public offering, an echo of some of hottest stocks in the dot-com boom. Yahoo! Inc. rose 154 percent when it first traded in 1996. Elsewhere, U.S. farmland prices may be in a bubble, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said earlier this year. “Today there are very substantial risks, to be sure, but the economy is growing, unemployment is falling and financial conditions are normalized,” said Summers, who was director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2010. Summers said the “central irony” of a financial crisis is that it’s caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and is resolved by more confidence, borrowing and spending. He was Treasury chief from 1999 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton, a term that coincided with the collapse of technology shares. The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 39 percent in 2000.

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Overwhelmed Internet users choose to unplug — for a little while

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Gus Sentementes - May. 15 (News) - Consciously avoiding using the Web may seem impossible to many in this era of information overload. Researchers on the issue say addiction to information may be similar in some ways to the effect that certain drugs have on the human brain — and some people may need to take disciplined breaks from their gadgets.

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Ten Unforgettable Web Memes

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Smithsonian Magazine - May. 15 (Special Report) - Cats and failures highlight this list of the memes that have gone mainstream. Which ones did we miss?

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Facebook 'planking' craze claims life in Australia

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Agence France-Presse - May. 15 (News) - A new craze sweeping the Internet known as "planking" claimed a life in Australia Sunday and police fear the tragedy may not be the last. Planking involves someone lying flat on their stomach with their arms against their bodies in unusual and sometimes dangerous situations, with photographs of their exploits shared through social media sites. It has gone viral in recent weeks with Facebook page Planking Australia boasting over 55,000 fans and hundreds of photos of people lying on train tracks, escalators, fire hydrants, motorbikes and other objects. Police last week warned "plankers" of the dangers and their fears have been realised with the death of a man in Brisbane who plummeted from a seventh-storey balcony and died at the scene. "This morning we have seen a young man take this activity a step further and attempt to plank on a balcony. Unfortunately he has tragically fallen to his death," Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett said.

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Facebook, Foe of Anonymity, Is Forced to Explain a Secret

Sat, 14 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Miguel Helft - May. 14 (News Report) - Now, Facebook is being taken to task for trying to conceal its own identity as it sought to coax reporters and technology experts to write critical stories about the privacy implications of a search feature, Social Circle, from its rival, Google. The plan backfired after The Daily Beast revealed late Wednesday that Facebook, whose own privacy practices have long been criticized, was behind the effort. It didn’t help that some of the technology experts who were encouraged to criticize Google dismissed the privacy concerns around Social Circle as misplaced.

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NPR’s Andy Carvin, tweeting the Middle East

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Paul Farhi - Apr. 13 (News Report) - Since December, Andy Carvin, a social-media strategist at NPR in Washington, has become a one-man Twitter news bureau, chronicling fast-moving developments throughout the Middle East.

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Where even cellphones aren't safe

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Apr. 10 (News Report) - Mohammed Maskati's cellphone was his lifeline to fellow human rights activists in strife-torn Bahrain. So when his line went dead in mid-March, he checked with the local phone company. His account, they told him, had been canceled. Even worse, Maskati said, he discovered that Bahraini authorities used records of his calls, plus texts and emails sent from his phone, as a secret road map to crack down on his network of pro-democracy advocates. Nor did the harassment stop when Maskati got a new phone and number. He soon received anonymous death threats. Then, in a predawn raid Saturday, armed men in masks and black uniforms forced their way into his home. They bound and beat him and, to humiliate him, shaved half of his head.

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Nic Robertson's harrowing tweets from Libya

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Jeff Jarvis, Nic Robertson - Mar. 26 (News Report) - Woman came into restaurant of journalists' hotel today claiming she’d been detained at govt chkpt, held 2 days, tied up, beaten and raped. Within mins of beginning to tell her story, govt officls and hotel staff moved in to shut her up. CNN cameraman on scene said she showed journalsts bruises, scratches on thighs, bruised face, rope burns on wrists & ankles

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Money Rushes Into Social Start-Ups

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Geoffrey A. Fowler - Mar. 25 (News) - As Wall Street and other investors clamor for a piece of social-networking giant Facebook Inc., Silicon Valley venture capitalists are betting on a new generation of companies that hope to unshackle social networking from personal computers—and shift it to the cellphone.

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JPMorgan fund eyes 10% stake in Twitter

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Financial Times - By David Gelles - Feb. 27 (News) - A JPMorgan fund is in talks to acquire a substantial stake in Twitter, one of the fastest-growing social networking sites.The fund hopes to acquire 10 per cent of the online messaging service for $450m, valuing Twitter at $4.5bn, according to people familiar with the plans.

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Oscars Buzz: And Social Media Monitoring Says the Winner Is …

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By John C Abell - Feb. 26 (News Report) - If internet chatter is any indicator, James Franco, Natalie Portman and The King’s Speech are going to be among the big Oscar winners Sunday, according to social media monitoring firm Meltwater. Things didn’t go so well for Meltwater when they took a similar stab at the Grammys two weeks ago, so we’re impressed they want to get right back up on the horse. Social media monitoring isn’t so much predicting as it is, in the best case, showing how well-aligned the thinking of stakeholders is with an uninvested rooting section. Meltwater didn’t go out on a limb much with such Grammy picks as pop ‘tween heartthrob Justin Bieber for Best New Artist. But that honor went instead to relatively obscure Esperanza Spaulding, who had about 6.5 percent of Bieber’s social media score. Feel their pain: Spaulding was the first jazz musician to win a Grammy in this category, and unprecedented is hard to predict. “Right” is almost not the point. Using social media channels to approximate a water-cooler consensus can be invaluable to stakeholders one way or another because it can expose an anti-intuitive disconnect with fans or clients — at least as far as filtering a loud and unstructured forum is concerned.

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Middle East nations scramble to contain unrest

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Kim Murphy - Feb. 14 (News) - Governments step up political concessions, dole out benefits or prepare the riot police in attempts to keep order after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which showed people that strongmen may not be needed to protect against sectarian violence or Islamic extremism.

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Egypt unrest enters third day, ElBaradei to return

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Reuters - By Dina Zayed, Shaimaa Fayed - Jan. 27 (News Report) - For a third day, pro-democracy activists continued the largest anti-government protests in three decades. Prominent Egyptian reformer Mohamed ElBaradei is set to return home, potentially providing a leader to the movement.

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Broad Protests Across Egypt Focus Fury on Mubarak

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Kareen Fahim, Mona Eli-Naggar - Jan. 25 (Breaking News) - Thousands of people calling for the end of the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak clashed with riot police in this Egyptian capital on Tuesday, on a day of some of the most serious civil unrest in recent memory here.

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