Late last year Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old CEO of social-networking phenomenon Facebook, got onstage before a Madison Avenue crowd and declared that he was leading a once-in-a-century media revolution. Long story short: The revolution hasn't panned out. Six months later, advertisers could be forgiven for mistaking Facebook for a smaller MySpace or a much larger Friendster (remember them?). And far from changing media as we know it, the virtual home of Superpokes, Funwalls, and other such time wasters is showing cracks in its foundation.
Clearwire Corp., which is merging its wireless broadband unit with that of Sprint Nextel Corp. to create a $14.55 billion communications company, said Monday its first-quarter loss nearly doubled year-over-year on surging expansion costs.
When Microsoft walked away from its blockbuster bid for Yahoo, the media sought desperately to keep the news coming even when there wasn't much left to say. That seems to be how The Wall Street Journal came up with the notion that Microsoft had approached Facebook about an acquisition. It's not true.
Cable TV provider Cablevision Systems Corp. disclosed plans Thursday to offer high-speed wireless Internet service across its coverage area in the New York region.
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.
WiMax hopes were revived Wednesday morning, and once again the wireless broadband opportunity is huge - in more ways than one. The big buzz around the wealth of mobile Net potential is almost overshadowed by the massive tab that even six tech giants can't fully cover.
Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company.
Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company
Late last year Mark Zuckerberg, the 24-year-old CEO of social-networking phenomenon Facebook, got onstage before a Madison Avenue crowd and declared that he was leading a once-in-a-century media revolution. Long story short: The revolution hasn't panned out. Six months later, advertisers could be forgiven for mistaking Facebook for a smaller MySpace or a much larger Friendster (remember them?). And far from changing media as we know it, the virtual home of Superpokes, Funwalls, and other such time wasters is showing cracks in its foundation.
Clearwire Corp., which is merging its wireless broadband unit with that of Sprint Nextel Corp. to create a $14.55 billion communications company, said Monday its first-quarter loss nearly doubled year-over-year on surging expansion costs.
When Microsoft walked away from its blockbuster bid for Yahoo, the media sought desperately to keep the news coming even when there wasn't much left to say. That seems to be how The Wall Street Journal came up with the notion that Microsoft had approached Facebook about an acquisition. It's not true.
Cable TV provider Cablevision Systems Corp. disclosed plans Thursday to offer high-speed wireless Internet service across its coverage area in the New York region.
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, will add more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies
Facebook, the world's second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.
WiMax hopes were revived Wednesday morning, and once again the wireless broadband opportunity is huge - in more ways than one. The big buzz around the wealth of mobile Net potential is almost overshadowed by the massive tab that even six tech giants can't fully cover.
Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company.
Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company
Clearwire and Sprint Nextel are planning to merge their wireless broadband units to create a new $14.55 billion wireless communications company.
As the bloody battle over subscribers between Comcast and its phone and satellite rivals continues at a virtual draw, the cable giant is looking ahead to a new wireless broadband arena: WiMax.
The future of television is changing before our eyes, as media giants scramble to stake their claims in the wilderness of Internet video.
Sarah Brown is unusually cautious when it comes to social networking.
First it was instant messaging during office hours that gave us the thrill of passing notes in class. Then it was ogling ourselves on Web cams, ranting our minds on blogs, uploading our baby photos on Flickr and poking each other on Facebook. These days, as corporate records show, we choose to spend our lunch breaks watching YouTube, if not chatting over Skype.
The Soviet Union may be in the dustbin of history, but there's one place the socialist utopia lives on: cyberspace.
Six Apart is getting a makeover. On Monday, the San Francisco-based blogging software company announced an ambitious restructuring that includes the acquisition of creative agency Apperceptive, the launch of its own advertising network and consulting services and the opening of a New York office.
The three-year-old social networking phenomenon Facebook, worth more than $15 billion by many estimates, got a good deal on going global.
Facebook, the 71-million-member social network, has attracted lots of adults during the last year as it became a global technology cause celebre. But I'm hearing more and more of these grown-up newbies questioning whether the service is really worth their time. Some find it more annoying than useful, and can't really figure out any benefit.
George Wright figured a construction project was underway when he noticed wood shavings inside a room his company used for customer demonstrations.
Facebook fans are getting a new toy this week. With the launch of Facebook Chat, users will be able to communicate in real time with friends on the site.
MySpace, the world's largest social networking site, is invading Apple's turf with an online music store backed by three record labels.
Internet radios are kind of like the Jerry Lewis of consumer electronics--apparently they're really big in Europe, but you don't hear much about them in the states.
WiMax may not be dead after all.
Remember where electronic mail was 15 years ago? If you didn't already have an e-mail address, you probably knew someone who did. And if you were sending and receiving e-mail, you'd probably discovered that it could be a game-changing business tool.
It's already hooked America's youth, and now Facebook is set on winning the hearts of two potentially lucrative demographics: Adults and the rest of the world.
Dear FSB: Is it wise for a small business to have a corporate homepage on Facebook? One of our employees mentioned it. Some say it's good marketing; others say it's not. What are the pros and cons of doing it?
In three days, Ashley Alexandra Dupre went from being an unknown 22-year-old aspiring musician to the fifth most-searched subject on Google because of her alleged sexual encounters with New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Ever since Microsoft announced its surprise bid for Yahoo last month, the heat has been on Time Warner to figure out its next move for AOL, the former Web juggernaut that could be left out in the cold if its two main rivals merge.
AOL will pay $850 million to acquire global social networking site Bebo.com in an all-cash deal announced Thursday.
So you want to change the world -- or at least a little part of it -- using the power of the Internet? Here are some tips to help get you started.
MySpace galvanizes protestors to attend mass demonstrations; 1.8 million Britons sign an online petition, leading to widespread press coverage and government embarrassment; and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting it out for the Democratic nomination on Facebook.
A new site named Hulu actually makes you want to watch TV shows online
When Fox and NBC Universal announced last March that they would join forces to put their TV shows online, the pundits of Silicon Valley howled with derision. Old media doesn't get the Internet, they said. Michael Arrington, the influential editor of TechCrunch, rattled off the reasons the project would never succeed and suggested that Fox and NBC quickly name their joint venture before it got stuck with the moniker insiders at Google had reportedly given it: Clown Co.
Dear FSB: I sell a unique product through my website. It's a liquid, concentrated, caffeine-free tea that doesn't require refrigeration and doesn't go bad. I've been reading about blogs and wondering if this would be a way to get more customers. Perhaps adding a video to show how easy it is to make my product would be good also. However, I need a good source of information on how to tackle these marketing tools. Any suggestions?
I've never met Pete Carroll. As far as I know, we've only been in the same room once -- at a crowded press conference at the Beverly Hilton the day before Carroll's USC team faced Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl. But this much I know about the man.
Now it's Google's turn to be hounded by an upstart. Facebook, the popular social networking site, has lured top Google executive Sheryl Sandberg to serve as its chief operating officer.
Intel's got a big problem. With component prices falling amid weakening computer spending, the giant chipmaker is betting heavily that WiMax is the future of wireless broadband. That's an expensive gamble.
Online social networking site MySpace has been talking with major record labels in an effort to allow users to listen to copyrighted music for free on the Web site, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Editor's note: This story was originally published Feb. 12, and is being republished to add additional reporting. Dear FSB: Both the name and URL of my company's website were registered with a domain name registration company. After more than five years they have sold the URL for my company's name to another person who now runs it in competition to mine. Do I have copyright to this name and URL?
Rock the Vote uses music and popular culture to get young people involved in politics, so it's probably no surprise that the group is using Facebook to reach plugged-in voters.
News Corp. is not considering a bid for Internet giant Yahoo, said CEO Rupert Murdoch during an earnings call with analysts Monday.
The social networking site lost out to MySpace and Facebook in the U.S., but it's found a new life across the Pacific
Popular social networking site Facebook has been asked to remove the Scrabulous game from its Web site by the makers of Scrabble, agencies have reported.
Chinese are uploading more Internet videos of sex, scandal and protest. It's big business -- and a headache for Beijing
MySpace has long been under fire by parents and politicians alike for exposing children to online sexual predators. Now, the industry's largest teen social networking site is calling on the industry to make kids safer.
How's this for irony? Choosing the software that's supposed to make our work lives easier is becoming horribly complex. Market hegemon Microsoft recently unleashed its most impressive riffs yet on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest, packaged as Office 2007 and built for the new Vista operating system. Meanwhile, Internet search-giant Google has come to market with a reliable and low-cost suite of web-based tools: word processing, spreadsheets, calendar, e-mail, and more, all packaged as Google Apps.
For years, I've been befuddled by LinkedIn. I knew it was supposed to be the social network for work, but to me it was like war. "What is it good for?" I asked myself repeatedly, even as I occasionally poked around and accepted requests to link with people. I belonged to it, but I really didn't know why.
In the space of six months, startup social networking music site imeem has soared to the top of the charts.
JetBlue Airways Corp. will start offering limited e-mail and instant messaging services for free on one of its planes next week as airlines renew efforts to offer in-flight Internet access
"The press rarely grants an autumn reprise for those it loved in the spring," once wrote the great New York Times columnist Russell Baker. How true in the case of Internet-darling-turned-reviled-evildoer Facebook.
Social networks like Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com might seem a little intimidating when you first try them. But if you build a profile and start connecting with people, you'll get in the swing.
A land rush is happening in Hong Kong, but it doesn't involve the high-rise properties for which the city is famous. Instead, it's the epicenter of a brand new patch of cyber real estate soon to go on the global market.
Eight Republican presidential hopefuls sparred during their debate in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Wednesday, November 28. Click on the following links to watch or download video of the debate.
Let's try an experiment. Like most people these days, you've probably spent too much time in front of your computer today. So, quick -- name three brands you saw in online display ads within the past 24 hours.
With social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace now in the digital dating mix, there are plenty of new chances to meet the right -- and wrong -- people online.
Don't compare Facebook's new ad system to anything you've seen on Google, television, or any other advertising medium you can think of.
An analysis of web-surfing data suggests that Gen Y-ers would rather spend their time with Facebook than with sex
Meet the "digital natives." They are the teens and tweens who flock to MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites.
Facebook Inc. is looking to hedge funds and private equity investors for an additional $260 million in investments on top of the $240 million in funding it's already receiving from Microsoft, according to The Wall Street Journal.
With its $240 million equity investment announced Wednesday, along with a commitment to expand its pre-existing relationship as exclusive third-party representative for advertising on Facebook, Microsoft has cemented its connection to the company Silicon Valley is obsessed with.
Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday that it is investing $240 million for a minority 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, a price that values the social networking site at $15 billion.
With Facebook slowly creeping up on MySpace, is there room for two social networking sites?
Forget the price cut on the iPhone. The potentially big deal for the wireless industry was Apple's announcement Wednesday of the iPod touch, a music player that also can access the Internet over Wi-Fi networks.
When Mark Bitterman, who calls himself a "selmelier," was trying to pump up sales at his gourmet salt shop, he knew standard marketing techniques such as radio ads and direct mail wouldn't be enough.
The popular social networking Web site Facebook says it is taking new steps to protect its users from online predators.
Google is the elephant in nearly every corner of the Internet, from search and advertising to web-based e-mail, online mapping, and home-brewed video. With its share price setting new highs this fall, its market cap ($188 billion) is now large enough to buy the New York Times, the Washington Post, Gannett, and Time Warner - twice. Or Facebook many, many times over.
Last Thursday afternoon before the most hyped class at Stanford University was about to start, instructor B.J. Fogg and his four teaching assistants attempted to solve this engineering problem. How do you cram 100 students into a classroom that only seats 56? Arrange chairs at long tables near the fire exits.
I'm one of those early-adopter types, for better or for worse. I bought an IBM PC the week it went on sale in August 1981, ordered my first CD online a few years after that, and by the early 1990s was pestering everyone I knew to get an MCI Mail account. iMac, iTunes, iPod - I was right there, adopting early and often. I also was a proud and enthusiastic user of a Newton MessagePad for about a week.
Skype never emerged as the cash cow eBay had hoped for when it paid a jaw-dropping $2.6 billion to acquire the Internet phone startup in 2005. Now eBay's announcement Monday that it will write off $1.4 billion in charges related to Skype has analysts and investors questioning whether the Internet phone business - known as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) - has any commercial potential at all.
A seemingly innocuous change is coming to Facebook that could pose a threat to business networking site LinkedIn: the ability to separate your work "friends" from your social ones.
Figuring out how to sort through personal profile pages to target ads has become a top priority for both MySpace and Facebook. But in the new California gold rush to turn valuable information that people reveal about themselves into advertising dollars, lesser-known social networking sites are getting left behind.
A security hole in widely used versions of AOL's instant-messaging program could let a crook grab control of a victim's computer, according to a security firm that says AOL's steps to repair the problem don't go far enough.
Been poked by anyone recently? Or maybe you've been turned into a zombie, or perhaps you've added Scrabulous to your applications?
Not a week goes by, it seems, that someone from my past doesn't invite me to join the ranks on the professional networking site LinkedIn. I get pinged by old girlfriends, former classmates and onetime colleagues. I've never felt so wanted.
For all of Facebook's recent successes, MySpace continues to thrive. That's the theme of my recent big Fortune story on the MySpace/Facebook battle, "As Facebook takes off, MySpace strikes back." Meanwhile, innumerable permutations of the seductive social networking model continue to arise, because this is increasingly the kind of Internet that users are showing, with their behavior, that they want.
SpiralFrog.com, an ad-supported Web site that allows visitors to download music and videos free of charge, launched Monday in the U.S. and Canada after months of "beta" testing.
Pitzer College this fall began offering what may be the first course about the video-sharing site YouTube
The creative minds behind such TV shows as "Thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life" are launching a Web-based show, hoping to find the artistic freedom online that they say is lacking on broadcast networks.
The Republican candidate is finding new ways of engaging voters online. But will those results translate into votes?
Consider the Web site LinkedIn a late entry into the already crowded 2008 presidential race.
Watching video online in small, fuzzy boxes is heading the way of rabbit ears.
Acknowledging its proprietary audio technology was a marketplace flop, Sony Corp. is shuttering its Connect digital music store and will open its portable media players to other formats.
An ambitious plan to blanket Chicago with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it
An ambitious plan to blanket the city with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it, Chicago officials said Tuesday.
MySpace is considering lifting a ban on commerce on the popular social networking site as a way to increase its own profits, according to a published report.
Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won't likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name.
It's 2020. You get home from work, kick off your shoes and relax -- on your very own tropical island. That night, your friends teleport over with other glamorous guests, all nipped, tucked and primped to perfection, for a hedonistic cocktail party at your five-star beach house, decked out in expensively understated chrome, crystal and fine Italian furniture.
Social networking Web sites are increasingly juicy targets for computer hackers, who are demonstrating a pair of vulnerabilities they claim expose sensitive personal information
New search sites make it easier than ever to dig up information on people, without their permission
Google Inc. has made its biggest move yet on the U.S. mobile Web market by signing a deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. that positions the Internet company to build services to run on Sprint's planned WiMAX high-speed wireless network.
Mark Halperin scores it a win for Obama, a loss for Richardson and one giant step for user-generated content
Popular Internet social network MySpace said Tuesday it detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported.
Nokia, the world's top mobile phone maker, said Tuesday it would buy U.S.-based photo-sharing social networking site Twango, but did not disclose the price.
These are boom times in an estimated $2 billion industry that involves the buying and selling of domain names
Almost a year after Sprint Nextel Corp. announced it would develop a mobile broadband network using WiMax technology, the wireless provider said Thursday it was teaming up with competing provider Clearwire Corp. to help build it
MySpace and Second Life get two thumbs down
Facebook Inc., the fast-growing Silicon Valley social networking site, said Thursday it has acquired Internet start-up Parakey, which is run by two of the co-creators of the popular Web browser Mozilla Firefox.
It was one of the most talked about moments in the 2006 campaign: "Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
Apple Inc.'s flashy new iPhones may be jamming parts of the wireless network at Duke University, where technology officials worked with the company Wednesday to fix problems before classes begin next month
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