Social Media

Despite all the new ways of learning about someone -- including Facebook and LinkedIn -- Googling others remains a major online activity. A new survey by BrandYourself, an online reputation company, and polling giant Harris Interactive shows that when it comes to voting, business and dating, people place a lot of emphasis on what they find in personal search results.

Here are some excerpts from "Just Google Me":

General -- Almost all online U.S. adults use search engines to look up other people: 86% used a search engine like Google to find more information about another person. … Read more

Figuring out what kind of engagement works on social media is tough. As I wrote in a recent CNET News post, it's hard to predict on Twitter what kind of items resonate online and what kind sink without a trace.

Over on Facebook, it's even more complicated, in part because Facebook keeps changing, er, innovating. Besides, any platform with a billion people is going to be automatically more complicated to figure out than smaller platforms.

Two new efforts to get a handle on Facebook content provide some useful insights.

One of the best minds in digital journalism has … Read more

If you're someone who thinks online dating is a constant slog to find suitable matches, and to avoid feeling like an item in a catalog, The Game could be for you.

Designed to make online dating a little more fun -- and a little less like perusing a catalog -- The Game is an iPhone app built to make meeting potential matches a little less formal and a little more conversational.

The app gets its name from its use of game mechanics. Users download the app and start playing immediately by signing in with their Facebook account, avoiding what … Read more

Adding to a growing number of Zynga executives who have left the social gaming company this year, Zynga Poker General Manager Laurence "Lo" Toney has moved on from the struggling company, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Zynga Poker is the company's first social game and the largest free-to-play online poker game, according to Zynga's site. CNET has contacted a Zynga spokesperson for comment and will update when we hear back.

Toney's departure, first noticed by All Things D, comes as the company faces slowed growth and slumping stock. Its stock closed at $2.43 a … Read more

Zynga is now testing a sequel for "CityVille," the company wrote on its blog today.

The social games creator promises are more "visually rich game" with "CityVille 2," which was released today to specific players for testing.

"It has all the features in CityVille that players love -- from neighbor visits and crews to buildables -- blended with some of the innovations we introduced in CastleVille and FarmVille 2 such a crafting and 3D graphics," according to the post.

The company has said -- and Wall Street seems to agree -- that … Read more

Facebook, a company that has so often seemed as if it flies by the seat of its pants, last week released an ad in which it compared itself to chairs.

Which became quite quickly the butt of humor.

Chairs are rather solitary things. It's hard to see how they bring people together.

It's inevitable, then, that someone has made a parody video, elevating this absurdity by sending it down the toilet.

I am grateful to AllThingsD for being seated when it spotted this homage to Facebook's catatonia.

It seems to have been made by a company called … Read more

Many people believe Facebook's growth is slowing down, but the raw numbers seem to tell a different story.

The world's largest social network recently celebrated a major milestone: 1 billion monthly active users. It took the company eight years -- or more specifically 105 months -- to reach the historic mark.

The milestone made me curious: is Facebook's growth stalling, or does it still have some fight in it left? Could Facebook reach 1.1 billion users early next year? What about 1.5 billion users in four? Two billion users in eight?

In order to better … Read more

One of the things I try to do on this blog is share what I learn about the fast-changing, confusing world of Twitter. In the past, I've posted about the downside of using text alerts for Twitter; the right way and the wrong way to use hashtags on TV; and how to be generous on Twitter.

Today, I want to share some lessons I learned from a single tweet I sent two days ago. While it doesn't unlock all the secrets of successful tweeting, it highlights some of the things that makes some tweets successful and some not … Read more

So you've got your cat ears, your cat suit, and everything else you need to transition to another species. What's missing? A thought-controlled robot tail, of course.

From Neurowear, the makers of Necomimi robot cat ears, comes this concept for a mechanical tail that moves according to the user's emotional state. There's a brainwave-reading sensor, also used in Necomimi, that can be hidden under your hat.

As seen in the ridiculous vid below, your tail will wag when you see a bunch of pretty flowers, or an attractive Frisbee player in the park.

And, no doubt, fresh kitty litter. … Read more