"Wow! I totally just watched the awesome cell phone video you shot at that concert!"
Facebook is the fast food of the Internet: easy, quick, satisfying and requiring minimal effort. And the new Facebook Home smartphone interface is for people who live and breathe the social network above any other site or service, depending on it as a news source and communication hub.
Misinformation can spread quickly on Twitter, each retweet exposing it to wider audiences and even resulting in real world impacts.
Twitter lit up Friday with dramatic reports from confused and terrified residents of suburban Boston, where a massive manhunt was under way for a suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon bombings.
The five-minute video opens with a man cruising along in his car, cracking open a bottle of what appears to be Beck's beer and taking a swig.
In the aftermath of dramatic events like Monday's bombing attack at the Boston Marathon, it's a truth of our times that millions of people will get early bits of news via social media.
Comedian-actor Patton Oswalt may not seem the most likely person to soothe the wounded national psyche after the deadly bombs that struck the Boston Marathon. Oswalt has no obvious ties to Boston, and he makes a living telling jokes, not comforting the afflicted.
Abraham Lincoln once said, "In life, what counts is the size of a man's heart, not the size of his disproportionate willie."
Barack Obama is a busy man, what with budget negotiations, gun control issues, international crises and the ever-present back-and-forth political foolery of Washington.
The new Facebook Home Android app isn't scheduled to launch until Friday, but the Internet is getting some early peeks.
When something big and exciting happens right in your own backyard, you sort of have to stop, pull up a chair, and enjoy the moment. Especially when it's quite literally in your backyard.
It was on the pages of newspapers and in the coveted aisle seat on television's "At the Movies" that the world met Roger Ebert, the passionate lover and sometimes combative critic of film who virtually defined cinema critique for a generation.
Facebook and online privacy: For several years now, it's been hard to talk about one without talking about the other.
A blinking dinosaur eye. A nod to Eminem. A crude effort at connecting friends and "friends of friends." Were these the awkward first steps toward a multibillion-dollar social media empire?
When people come to my house for the first time there exists only a handful of personal items worth showing off as part of the tour.
Publicly expressing deeply held emotions is not always easy. When attending a rally, displaying a clever sign can attract more attention than even the most powerful chant.
In an October 2012 report, an Australian TV personality confronts Twitter "trolls" who sent her abusive messages.
In what may be a sign of their resurgent popularity, Google+ announced Monday that members can now use animated GIFs for their profile photos.
Facebook announced on Monday it is rolling out a new feature so users can reply directly to comments left on their page. Finally.
Does a special woman in your life spend far too much time thinking for herself?
In January, Facebook unveiled Graph Search, a more robust search tool that's being slowly rolled out to users. It uses the mountains of data the site collects to expand what a query on the site can find.
Twitter turns 7 on Thursday, and in some ways, it's like a lot of 7-year-olds.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey lives in San Francisco, not New York.
Say what you will about Facebook, but the social network is not too proud to copy. Facebook is reportedly considering co-opting the hashtags that first emerged on Twitter, following its previous aping of the Twitter model of following strangers and sharing content publicly.
Do a quick search on Facebook, and you're sure to find job talk. A friend who got laid off. A family member turned down for a promotion. Or an old high-school pal celebrating their dream job.
As 150,000 people gathered in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican to cheer the election of the new pope, millions joined in Wednesday on Twitter and Facebook. Some chimed in with praise, others with social media's trademark humor and snark.
Your Facebook "likes" might be revealing more than you know about your private life.
Sheryl Sandberg is a role model, say her defenders.
"North Korean social media." In the famously restrictive country, where people have almost no Internet contact with the outside world, it sounds like an oxymoron.
If I've learned anything after many years in news, it's that people love cute, baby animals. And car chases.
Facebook is rolling out a fresh design for its central page, the News Feed, at an event Thursday.
It's become a go-to tool for journalists, a digital man-on-the-street interview when big news breaks: see what they're saying on Twitter.
Despite the fact that basic math and science cause me to bleed from my ears, I once confidently oversaw the design and construction of a fully functional nuclear power plant that provided safe energy to thousands of people. Hell, I even placed it next to a playground. And for decades it never once experienced so much as the slightest hint of disaster.
For the first time in nearly 600 years, a reigning pope has resigned. And in what might also be a landmark event, Twitter was not flooded with jokes or parody accounts when the announcement was made two weeks ago.
Watching Sunday's long, sometimes awkward Academy Awards broadcast was made more entertaining by the steady stream of commentary on Twitter.
I'm fairly certain there's nothing haunting my house, save maybe the leftover Super Bowl cheese dip still in the fridge. But so far, its intentions seem friendly. You just have to ignore the constant paranoid screams from the tofu.
Death already has a surprisingly vivid presence online. Social media sites are full of improvised memorials and outpourings of grief for loved ones, along with the unintentional mementos the departed leave behind in comments, photo streams and blog posts.
If you're sick of cheerful, happy people, it might be wise to avoid Hawaii or Napa, California. They were found to be the United States' happiest state and city, respectively, in a recent study of geotagged tweets.
An Atlanta-area woman is angry after she says police used a little-known messaging feature on Facebook to contact her after her son was killed.
Facebook says it was recently hacked, though it says no data about its more than a billion users was compromised.
By now you've heard the news about the meteor that caused an enormous explosion in Russia. Officials say up to 1,000 people were hurt. Most suffered minor injuries.
I drive a Saturn. It's a 4-cylinder, the seats are cloth, and the window sills are permanently caked with dog drool. Which always works out rather well for the guys at the car wash who regularly enjoy the financial benefits of my shame.
As Facebook continues the slow rollout of a tool to let users search out others by using common interests or other personal information, the site emphasized Thursday that minors will get special privacy protections.
Jon's plane taxied to a gate at Los Angeles International Airport, and although he had been flying for 30 hours on a journey from South Asia to California, his heart pounded at the prospect of wrapping Katie, his fiancé-to-be, in a bear hug.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife were the second-biggest charitable donors in the United States last year, appearing behind only billionaire Warren Buffett on a list of the nation's most generous philanthropists.
Twitter is getting into e-commerce. It's now possible to buy goods online in two steps by tweeting a special hashtag.
Assuming Pope Benedict XVI steps down as planned at the end of February, his tenure on Twitter will have been fleeting.
For a few minutes Thursday evening, Facebook was redirecting users visiting dozens of websites -- including Mashable and CNN -- to cryptic error pages.
When I was young, I remember that encountering an individual with a nose piercing seemed to mean something. Specifically: This person kills puppies.
Twitter is revamping its iOS and Android apps as well as the mobile version of its site to condense its many pieces of information into more steamlined sections.
For most of its roughly two-year existence, Instagram has trapped its bounty inside mobile apps.
Facebook follows you everywhere. It's on phones and computers, at work and home, and in the news. So it's understandable that people might need a little rest from the social network.
Between the bad commercials, Beyonce's halftime gig, the Harbaugh brothers and the action on the field, the jokesters of Twitter had plenty to snicker about during Sunday's Super Bowl.
Twitter is coming forward as the latest site to be hacked. The social network said in a blog post Friday afternoon that approximately 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information including user names and email addresses.
I once had a pet iguana. His name was Kramer, and he was the biggest, meanest thing you've ever seen. Without question, he spawned from the land of darkness, soon deciding his evil role in life was to make every day miserable for the Bellinis.
Facebook is expanding its Gift feature to include plastic gift cards that carry balances for multiple stores and restaurants.
For the first time, the number of active daily visitors checking Facebook on mobile devices is higher than the number of people checking the social network on the Web.
Complaining on social networks about being sick might annoy your friends and followers, but it can be useful for tools that track the spread of illnesses.
Amid concerns over adult content popping up on its new Vine video app, Twitter appeared Tuesday to have restricted how users can share sexually explicit clips.
Online, you can project whatever identity you like. But for some people, it's easier to have no identity at all.
In 2009 the U.S government dubbed January 28 "Data Privacy Day." Four years later, it's the government's own actions to obtain personal information that are in the spotlight, thanks to new reports from Google and Twitter.
Perhaps it was a foregone conclusion, what with the Internet's proven ability to turn any new technology into a platform for showing naked people.
I have absolutely no business reviewing restaurants. Consider the facts: I like Ramen noodles. I burn my meat. And I'm pretty sure a Klondike Bar is the pinnacle of modern cuisine.
For some people, it's been an open question: Is six seconds, the limit before a Vine video starts looping over and over again, enough time for real creativity?
For months now, the French-language twittersphere has lit up with a rash of racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic tweets using the hashtags #UnBonJuif (a good Jew), #SiMonFilsEstGay (if my son is gay), and #SiMaFilleRamèneUnNoir (if my daughter brings home a black guy).
Facebook and Google are battling it out to dominate your smartphone time and, for now, Facebook is winning.
In a perfect world, our most popular Twitterer might be a brilliant scientist, writer, philosopher or spiritual leader.
Maybe it didn't have quite the grandeur of President Barack Obama's historic inauguration four years ago. But Monday's Inauguration Day events showcased the pomp and circumstance of the U.S. government at its finest.
I have a dog. A dog who, as I write this, is curled up quietly on the sofa, probably dreaming about dog things: Chasing squirrels. Riding in the car. His fake doggy girlfriend in California whom he's never actually met.
Sometime on Sunday, the world will lurch a little on its axis. There'll be a thunderclap heard around the globe, a blinding flash of light, and the people of the Internet will fall to their knees in reverence.
According to Facebook's new search feature, only two of my 526 friends like cats. Judging by the number of cat photos filling my feed every day, this is obviously not accurate.
Manti Te'o's Twitter bio reads: "Life is a storm.. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes."
When Mark Zuckerberg set out to build Facebook in the fall of 2003, he was still trying to figure out exactly what the website should be. One conclusion he arrived at pretty early on was that it shouldn't be branded as a dating site.
Facebook's new "Graph Search" promises to let users sift through the network's vast trove of posts and photos to produce more helpful results.
The search feature on Facebook has traditionally been pretty limited. You type in a name of a person or a business, and it pulls up their Facebook page.
Warner Bros. scored a huge victory in the long-running and byzantine legal battle over the copyright to Superman yesterday, thanks to a ruling by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that cements the studio's control over the lucrative superhero character.
Relax. Those "My Birthday Calendar" requests on Facebook might be annoying, but they're not dangerous.
An effort by the Library of Congress to archive Twitter posts has amassed more than 170 billion tweets, which the library is now seeking to make available to researchers and other interested parties.
On Sunday morning, a strange word suddenly started trending for me on Twitter. The word was Ruzzle. I had no idea what it meant, so I did the smart thing and asked my dog.
This year, maybe you think you got everything you ever wanted for Christmas (so long as everything you ever wanted was socks and underwear).
The sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there are no hard feelings after a "leaked" family photo raised questions about online etiquette and privacy on the social network.
A class action lawsuit against Instagram has been filed in San Francisco federal court, following user outrage regarding the mobile photo sharing app's changed Terms of Service.
Back when Facebook only had millions of users instead of a billion, before Timeline and the bungled IPO and outrage over privacy issues, people "poked" each other on the social network. The poke, which is still around but rarely used, is a minimalistic form of communication -- the digital equivalent of a head nod or wink.
After days of intense backlash from users over changes to its terms of service and privacy policy, photo-sharing service Instagram has backtracked. On Thursday, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said the company was switching one section of its updated terms of service back to its original text.
How much would you pay to contact a stranger? Facebook is sprucing up its messaging system, and the most interesting change is a move to charge people to send a message to someone outside their network.
Two very different images captivated Internet viewers on Wednesday.
Having trouble remembering how you worded that awesomely clever late-night Twitter post from last New Year's Eve?
Faced with a loud and angry backlash from some of its most active users, photo-sharing app Instagram backtracked Tuesday on new language that appeared to give the company ownership of their images.
In the crowded world of social media, with its virtual currency of likes and followers, some people will do anything for attention.
UPDATE Tuesday 4:30 pm ET: The NRA broke its recent silence Tuesday afternoon with a statement saying the group was "shocked, saddened and heartbroken" by the Newtown shootings and is prepared "to help make sure this never happens again." The gun lobby has scheduled a news conference for Friday.
There's a lack of trust between Internet users and the websites that collect their private data.
Residents of Newtown, Connecticut, took to social media Friday to share their fear, shock and horror over the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
CNN's Dan Simon reporters on how Twitter played a crucial role in the 2012 election.
During a rare press event, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the poor performance of the company's stock.
Ahead of Facebook's first earnings report, many are wondering whether the company can deliver on advertising revenue.
Tim Berners-Lee talks about the honor for him and the Web to be featured in the London Games opening ceremony.
Napster co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched Airtime, a video chat service built on top of Facebook.
Napster co-founders launch a new social media site. CNN's Laurie Segall reports.
A Texas mom is raising some eyebrows with her punishment for an inappropriate photo that her daughter posted online.
Richard Quest takes an online test explaining how much money each user is worth to Facebook.
CNN's Jim Boulden goes back to school to talk to 14-year-olds about Facebook and it's future.
Sen. Chuck Schumer says he won't let Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin dodge capital gains taxes by leaving U.S.
A look at the economic impact of the Facebook IPO, from taxes to the broader economy. CNN's Dan Simon reports.
Henry Blodget and Ali Velshi discuss Mark Zuckerberg's decision to skip investor meetings and court Wall Street while wearing a hoodie.
CNN's Dan Simon looks back at Mark Zuckerberg, camera shy and sometimes awkward, in a 2006 interview with CNN.
CNNMoney's Laurie Segall and HLN contributor Mario Armstrong tell us how to keep your Facebook page employment-ready.
CEO Dave Morin says greater transparency from tech companies will ease some of the privacy concerns of social network users.
KLIK's facial recognition tech identifies users' facebook and twitter friends and could one day identify anyone.
Fortune's Miguel Helft explains why Facebook waited years to file for its IPO and how the company protects its hacker culture.
CNN's Diana Magnay takes a look at the scrutiny of social media after the UK riots.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick speaks to social networking expert Denise Evans Elsbree on how to make social media work for you.
A Florida woman who injured herself while doing laundry reached out to a Facebook group for help. WPTV reports.
CNN's Dan Simon reports on one high school teacher's effort to integrate Twitter into his classroom.
In 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg defended his company against privacy concerns raised about its practices.
Facebook rolls out new safety tools aimed at keeping users safe. CNN's Karin Caifa reports.
Controversy involving footballer Ryan Giggs has sparked debate over UK privacy laws. CNN's Atika Shubert reports.
Social media and the apps market create new job opportunities. CNN's Karin Caifa takes a look.
The man who unwittingly tweeted the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound says he learned of the death on Twitter.
CNN's Phil Han takes a look at some of the best stories across social media from the past week.
Joe Sullivan, Chief Privacy Officer for Facebook addresses parents' concerns about the social media website.
Microblog Sina Weibo lets users embed pictures, post comments and easily communicate. CNN's Kristie Lu Stout reports.
Developers of a new social networking app unveil their secret project. Dan Simon reports.
Startups at SXSW do whatever they can to attract attention, which includes offering free shots of alcohol.
The hashtag #PrayforJapan has been trending on Twitter during the weekend. CNN's Reggie Aqui reports.
CNN's Josh Levs looks at some of the most powerful videos from the earthquake in Japan and an interactive map.
Facebook is defending its policy of not allowing fake identities to create profile pages. CNN's Dan Simon reports.
CNN's Errol Barnett looks at the crucial role social media played in the Egyptian revolution.
CNN's Josh Levs talks about how technology plays a part in protests around the world.
In September 2010, the cast of the Facebook movie "The Social Network" answered your iReport questions.
CNN's Kristie Lu Stout examines the major factor social networking sites have become in Tunisia's protests.
In May, CNN's Tony Harris talked to an expert about what's true and what's false regarding Facebook's privacy claims.
CNN's Erin McLaughlin reports on how social media worked behind the scenes during mass UK student protests.
Actor Ed Norton addressed the Mashable Media Summit about the Crowdrise fundraising site.
Facebook announced an overhaul of its messaging system, which will compete with e-mail. Josh Levs reports.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer - an avid tweeter himself - gets the scoop on Twitter from co-founder Biz Stone.
CNN hits the streets to find out if anyone is brave enough to talk trash about their boss on Facebook.
Tudou.com's Gary Wang talks to CNN's Kristie Lu Stout about how China's "netizens" use video sharing to highlight issues.
Matthew Froggatt of TNS discusses the largest global research project into people's online activities and behavior.
Errol Barnett highlights some parodies of the dramatic Facebook movie trailer.
A security glitch impacts users of the popular social networking site. CNN's Karin Caifa reports.
Twitter users were hit by a security bug that allowed content to appear without warning. CNN's Brooke Baldwin reports.
Tech Guru Mario Armstrong has more on Explorer 9 and new features on Twitter.
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