A number of politicians have found themselves in hot water over the years following inappropriate or even vulgar messages posted to Twitter. Now, thanks to a new service called Poliwoops, politicians in the U.S. will find it even more difficult to hide from their tweets. Created by the Sunlight Foundation, Politweets follows a number of government officials and exposes any tweet they post and then delete, whether it is deleted immediately or even days after being posted. (more…)

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are become focal points of our digital lives, and just as they did with email and other popular digital technologies, spammers are looking to capitalize. According to Mark Risher, chief executive officer of anti-spam software company Impermium, spammers are responsible for creating as much as 40% of the accounts on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. “Social spam can be a lot more effective than e-mail spam,” Risher told Bloomberg Businessweek ...

Twitter’s lead engineer confirmed in a post on the company’s blog on Tuesday that Twitter will not use its patents aggressively. “Patent trolling” is a strategy that has become increasingly popular in recent years. Companies with active product portfolios aim to stifle competition and protect their intellectual property by using patents offensively, and companies without active portfolios purchase patents from inventors and use the patent system as a core means of generating revenue. A...

A joint survey conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post found that Google beat out Apple, Facebook and Twitter to win the title of most popular tech brand. The poll revealed that a whopping 82% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Google, with 53% expressing a “strongly” favorable opinion of the Internet giant. Only 9% of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of the Mountain View-based company. Apple followed closely behind Google with 74%, however 13% of respondents had an unfavorable ...

A proposed amendment to FCC legislation that would have prevented current or potential employers from seeking access to employee Facebook accounts was shot down by the House of Representatives on Wednesday. The amendment was put forth by Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter, and it was defeated 236 to 184 with only one republican voting in favor of the change. “Nothing in this Act or any amendment made by this Act shall be construed to limit or restrict the ability of the Federal Communications Comm...

It isn’t uncommon for companies to scan through the Internet looking for information on potential hires. Young job seekers, however, have found ways to avoid having prying eyes find private data by applying a wide-range of privacy settings to their Facebook accounts. Now, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday that numerous employers are asking potential hires to hand over login credentials to their email accounts, social networking websites and other online services. The ACLU immediately blasted�...

Exactly six years ago Wednesday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey published the first post on his new service Twttr. “Just setting up my twttr,” Dorsey wrote in his brief note. No one knew at the time, but his tweet was the first of trillions of messages that would be posted to the social networking service over the coming six years. Twitter has seen more than 532 million accounts registered in its six years, and the service is used around the world by people in all walks of life. While some still...

A new study suggests that social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter are more difficult to resist than cigarettes or alcohol. A team from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business recently conducted an experiment involving 205 people in Wurtzburg, Germany to analyze the addictive properties of social media and other vices. Participants in the week-long study were polled via BlackBerry smartphones seven times per day and asked to report when they experienced a desire within the p...

President Obama will be hosting his first Google+ hangout tonight at 5:30 p.m. Eastern. In the discussion, the president will be answering questions that were submitted over the past few weeks through YouTube. Google maintains that the White House has had no role in which questions will be selected. Google’s team will instead choose the top-rated questions among those submitted, ensuring there will be several different issues discussed. The event will take place in the Roosevelt Room of the White House ...

Twitter announced recently that it now has the ability to, and will begin to, censor content on the social network by country. “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression,” the company said in a blog post Thursday. “Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there.” Twitter gave France and Germany as examples, two countries that ban pro-Nazi rhetoric from being posted on...

Twitter finally appears to be preparing a new wave of attacks on the malicious spammers that have overrun the popular social network during the past year. Web security firm Dasient on Monday announced that it has been acquired by Twitter. ”Since its inception, Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse,” the firm noted in a blog post. “In 2009, Dasient launched its web anti-malware platform, capable of scanning URLs an...

Twitter on Thursday announced a complete redesign of its twitter.com homepage and its iOS and Android applications. “It’s now easier and faster to see the information that matters most to you,” Twitter explained. “Immediately access your favorite features from the left-hand side. Photos, videos and conversations are embedded directly in Tweets so you can see the whole story at a glance. And now everything in Home will appear consistently across computers, iPhones, and Android mobile phone...

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system is poised to give Apple’s iPad and Android-powered tablets some tough competition according to social chatter following Microsoft’s public unveiling of the OS earlier this month. Social media listening firm Mashwork analyzed Twitter conversations between June 15th and September 22nd of this year, and found that opinions of Microsoft’s next-generation operating system are overwhelmingly positive at this early stage. Read on for more. (more...

We’ve already seen an 11-minute walk-through video comparing a new Windows 8 beta tablet to an iPad 2 running iOS 5, but there are plenty of features Microsoft is cooking up that didn’t make it into the beta release of the OS. In a new video, Microsoft highlights a handful of currently unavailable applications that make use of the oft-praised Metro user interface Windows 8 borrowed from the Windows Phone platform. In the video, Microsoft shows off several apps including Mail, Calendar, People, Me...