Facebook, Social Media News & Practices

A shot was heard 'round the world this week, as Microsoft, Google, AOL, Yahoo!, and Facebook teamed to lead the fight against email spam scandals. It's news even the least savvy of Internet consumers can understand. Finally, justice for all! Or at least a step in the right direction.

Twitter is eyeing an international expansion, and with this, the company wants to overcome regulatory and political hurdles, particularly from governments that practice online restrictions. As such, in light of the ideal that "the Tweets must flow," Twitter will be imposing a selective country-based censorship, to ensure that Tweets do flow, albeit with some limitation.

For those fed up of skipping between social sites, RockMelt offers all your social activity front-and-center in a highly customizable browser environment. Check out the latest beta with more sharing, interactivity and smarter information displays.

Internet security company Dasient announced in a blog post that it had been acquired by Twitter.

Chinese authorities have recently decided to expand its "online accountability" regulations, with users of microblogging services now required to verify and use their real names. With today's increasing concerns on online censorship and freedom of information around the globe, how will this new regulation affect the growth of social networks and services that thrive on user-generated content?

Facebook announced 60 new apps and invites developers to build more on its Open Graph platform.

Facebook is rumored to be announcing the launch of Open Graph applications in a press event. First announced last September, Open Graph applications make sharing "frictionless."

With all the fuss about tomorrow's Apple education-themed event, its easy to forget that the company's next big launch isn't that far off. Reports suggest that the iPad 3's launch profile could match or beat that of the iPad 2 last year, as Apple aims to stay ahead of Samsung.

Google is on the rack this week for ignoring Twitter from its "plus Your World" expanded search feature and over-focusing on its own Google+. We look at the ramifications of that, a ruckus in Africa and see what else happened in the wide world of the company this week.

If your website has the Facebook Comments Box plugin, the plugin will now appear automatically on mobile devices, too.

Eat your heart out, Twitter and Facebook. It seems that brands engaging their audience online might achieve better conversion rates through internet marketing and word-of-mouth efforts than social networks.

If you "like" a page on Facebook, you might also be opening the door to give advertisers access to your Facebook friends. Advertisers can now pay to feature stories you like so that your friends will see them, but users still have some level of control over what gets shared.

Do you have a social media marketing plan for 2012? Will it differ from your 2011 efforts? Results from a recent social media marketing survey show that marketers are planning to invest heavily in social media marketing in 2012, but they are still grappling with getting sufficient resources and ROI.

2011 was the year of the Social Business. We saw employees across all types of organizations using both desktop-bound and mobile social tools to interact with the entire business ecosystem. But, while there's no question about organizations increasingly using these tools to collaborate and communicate, were enterprises truly able to capture their full potential? Let's take a look back at a few highlights from the past year.

The fPrivacy Chrome extension gives users more control by disallowing specific app permissions.