Social network and groups

The turf battle between Instagram and Twitter shows the sites have the wrong priorities, said Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic and its WordPress.com blogging service.

There's a danger when a company focuses too much on its own properties and pleasing its own advertisers at the expense of giving its users what they need, Mullenweg said here at the LeWeb 2012 show. Those problems are what's afflicted microblogging site Twitter and photo-sharing service Instagram, which Facebook recently acquired.

Twitter has been restricting access to third-party tweeting software and limiting access that third-party companies such as Instagram get to … Read more

Twitter users who post tweets to their feeds via SMS could be vulnerable to a security flaw, according to a security consultant.

Jonathan Rudenberg yesterday posted to his blog an SMS vulnerability he discovered in Twitter that allows anyone who has knowledge of someone's mobile number to post tweets to that person's feed.

In order for the vulnerability to be exploited, victims must have SMS tweeting authorized on their accounts. From there, the would-be poster needs only to spoof their actual mobile number through an SMS gateway -- something Rudenberg says can be done very easily -- and … Read more

Pope Benedict XVI will make his way to Twitter on December 12, the Vatican announced today.

The pope will start tweeting on December 12 under the username, "@pontifex," the Vatican has confirmed. Speaking to Reuters in an interview posted today, Greg Burke, senior media advisor to the Vatican, said that the name means "pope," as well as "bridge builder."

When the Pope takes over his account next week, it won't be the very, very first time he'll have shared his thoughts in 140 characters. Last year, when the Vatican portal launched, the … Read more

Google and Twitter have restarted their Speak2Tweet service to let people disseminate voice messages over Twitter as a way to sidestep Syria's Internet blackout.

The Speak2Tweet service got its start during Egypt's Internet blackout in February 2011 but has been largely dormant since then. Late yesterday, Google announced on Google+ that it's brought the service back online:

In the last day, Internet access has been completely cut off in Syria. Unfortunately we are hearing reports that mobile phones and landlines aren't working properly either. But those who might be lucky enough to have a voice connection … Read more

Facebook is testing a couple of new features that, as usual, some people may like and others not so much.

The two features would add notices of upcoming events and recently released albums to a user's news feed, according to The Next Web.

The upcoming events feature would suggest nearby events. But these would be events that you wouldn't necessarily have been invited to join, revealed blog site AllFacebook. This is also a follow-up to the upcoming concerts feature that the social network started testing last month.

The recently released albums feature would list new albums by artists … Read more

Andreessen Horowitz, the famed venture-capital firm run by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, is not selling the Facebook shares it acquired through direct investment.

Reports surfaced yesterday saying that Andreessen Horowitz, one of the earliest and biggest investors in Facebook, was offloading some shares it directly acquired through investment in the social network following a mandatory lockup period. However, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing has revealed that only Marc Andreessen himself has personally offloaded some shares. According to TechCrunch, which was first to report on the news, a spokesperson from Andreessen's firm said that the sales will only … Read more

Reddit has seen its user population skyrocket, but that growth is forcing it to spend money to keep up with the flow.

The company revealed its latest traffic stats in a blog posted yesterday.

Last month, Reddit recorded more than 3.8 billion page views and more than 46 million unique visitors. Those page views alone are double what the Web site saw a year ago, according to VentureBeat.

The huge increase in traffic means Reddit has had to add more servers and other equipment and bring in more staff to maintain its site. That raises the question of how … Read more

Facebook members who use FedEx might want to check out a new app that makes it easier to send items to your friends.

Dubbed "Ship to Friends," the new Facebook app lets you handle the entire shipping process without leaving Facebook. You can ship a package to anyone. But the process is a bit quicker if you're sending something to a Facebook friend since you can select the person from your friends list.

Here's how it works:

Launch the app's Facebook page. Click on the Start shipping button. Like all Facebook apps, this one will … Read more

Facebook investors finally have something to celebrate.

The social network's shares have soared in early trading today, jumping 23 percent to nearly $24. Facebook closed the day yesterday at $19.50.

For a stock that has slid and slid since IPO day in May, the jump marks the biggest single-day gain yet for Facebook.

Investors are responding favorably to Facebook's better-than-expected third-quarter earnings report that came out yesterday. The company revealed that its adjusted earnings per share hit 12 cents during the period that ended September 30, beating analyst estimates by a penny. Facebook's revenue rose 32 … Read more