SocialMediaNews

SocialMediaNews

Pingdom Names Facebook “Most Engaging Social Network”

Some people use their Facebook account like another email address, logging in, checking their messages, and logging out.  Others just add a couple of friends, skim a few status updates, and call it a day.  But data from Pingdom proves that Facebook does a far better job of engaging people than other social networks.

Facebook, McAfee Partner

Win-win-win situations don’t crop up too often, but Facebook and McAfee seem to have orchestrated one on a very large scale.  The two companies announced this morning that they’ve partnered to provide Facebook’s users with free security software.

Facebook Becomes Sponsor Of Apache Software Foundation

Today, the Apache Software Foundation gained a new sponsor: Facebook.  Facebook is a gold sponsor, too, which means that the social network expressed its support for open source software by volunteering to donate $40,000 per year to the ASF.

Cynics shouldn’t waste their time looking for an ulterior motive.  Facebook won’t get much out of this deal aside from a link on the ASF’s "Thanks" page, an ASF logo to put on its own site, and a PR blurb.

Twitter Sees an Increase in Tweeting Frequency

Each month we’ve been looking at Twitter’s growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. Last month we saw a decline in the number of new Twitterers in November continuing a trend that began in July.

In December, however, new Twitter user registrations leveled out. Number of tweets grew significantly, and the number of tweets from new users grew as well, possibly indicating that people aren’t just signing up for Twitter and not using it.

Dissecting Zuckerberg’s Privacy Comments

For many in the online space these days the words “Facebook privacy” would be called an oxymoron. Then of course there would be the usual calling others at Facebook morons and then it would get worse from there but I digress. Michael Arrington recently interviewed the poster child for the “Privacy? What privacy?” movement, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

National Weather Service Asks For Twitter Storm Reports

It seems that a lot of government scientists are betting people will turn to Twitter when Mother Nature lets loose.  Earlier, we wrote about the USGS’s Twitter Earthquake Detector, and it turns out that the National Weather Service has cooked up something similar for storms.

Facebook Launches Fellowship Program For Ph.D. Students

Facebook said today it is launching the Facebook Fellowship Program aimed at Ph.D. students in the 2010-2011 school year.

The goal of the Facebook Fellowship Program is to find candidates who can help solve problems surrounding the social web and Internet technology.
Facebook

Gov’t Agency Turns To Twitter For Earthquake-Tracking

The fact that reports of earthquakes (or at least messages reading "EARTHQUAKE!!!") are quick to surface on Twitter is a key reason many people first recognized the site as useful.  Now, the U.S. Geological Survey has decided to have a closer look, unveiling the Twitter Earthquake Detector.

PandaLabs Detects 25 Million New Malware Strains

The past year set a new record for malware creation with 25 million new strains, according to a new report by PandaLabs.

The latest surge of activity included new examples of banker Trojans, which accounted for 66 percent of all new samples, as well as a number of fake antivirus programs.

During 2009, spam was also highly active, accounting for 92 percent of all email traffic. The tactics used to dupe potential victims into opening these spam emails have focused on exploiting current events and dramatic news stories.

Hitwise: Facebook Beat Google On New Year’s Day

As Facebook employees went back to work this week, they may have been smiling more (or at least less frowning less) than most other people returning from vacation.  Their site performed admirably over the holidays, actually attracting record-breaking amounts of traffic.

On Tuesday, we documented the fact that Facebook received more traffic than Google on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  That made it the most visited U.S. site for the first time ever.