What do the Japanese tsunami, zodiac signs and a giant crocodile have in common? No, they're not the subject of a bad bar joke. They're all on a list of the 40 most shared stories on Facebook in 2011.The world’s largest social network has released the list as a note on its media hub page.Research from earlier this year by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that even though Google may still be the ...

Olla Condoms has launched a new social media marketing campaign, conceptualised by advertising agency Age Isobar. Whether you think it's creepy or innovative, it is definitely one to remember. Looking to create awareness around unplanned pregnancies and its product, Olla -- probably breaking every rule Facebook has regarding marketing on the social network -- “targeted” a number of young men on Facebook, created Facebook profiles and sent them friend requests.The twist to the campaign was that the friend requests ...

When Google was a mere babe among search giants like Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos and WebCrawler, geeks across the world promoted its use thanks to its cleaner interface and the fact that it focussed only on the task at hand. In many ways, Google owes a lot of its success to IT professionals who quickly introduced it to the less IT-savvy as a less cluttered interface to finding the things they were looking for.Times have changed. Google's rise to world ...

Rewind to 1999. Napster, the first major peer-to-peer networks is launched. Its goal? To allow internet users the facility to share and distribute music files freely to hundreds of thousands of network users. It wasn’t long, however, before record companies began to cry foul, citing that the network was aiding piracy and infringing on the copyright of music artists. Napster, or at least its first incarnation, was eventually shutdown in 2001 and overall, online sharing was considered by many corporations ...

Facebook has finally come to an agreement with the United States government over charges of misinformation around users’ privacy agreements.The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), accused the world's largest social network of a series of complaints over its inability to fullfil its agreement with users.The charges were lodged in December 2009 by privacy groups who claimed that Facebook engaged in a deceptive behaviour when changing its privacy settings. The groups are against settings which make aspects of a user’s profile ...

When we think of bloggers, and this is especially true for large corporates, we tend to get the image of a bunny loving computer geek, typing away at their computers to a few followers who hang on their every word. But there is another side to bloggers: A side that lurks below the surface and has been exposed a few times to unwitting companies who have "done them in". Bloggers are business people too.What is the purpose of a blogger?I ...

Samsung has won the latest round in its epic legal war with rival tech giant Apple. An Australian court upheld the South Korean giant’s appeal against a temporary ban on sales of its Galaxy 10.1 tablet device.The ban was put in place after a ruling that Samsung had violated several of Apple’s patents in the manufacture of the device.The war between the two has spanned the globe, with suit following countersuit in Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, and the ...

Facing stalling sales and still recovering from the public relations nightmare which was the global BlackBerry services blackout, beleaguered smartphone manufacturer, Research In Motion (RIM) has announced a new business service which, in a first, will also support rival hardware.BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, a new software platform, is currently in closed beta testing and will -- along with BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets -- allow for the management of Android and iOS phones and tablets.The company promises Mobile Fusion will make ...

One of the world’s foremost blogging platforms and content management systems, WordPress, is now allowing bloggers to make money via online advertising.The programme, called WordAds, has been developed in conjunction with advertising and publishing company, Federated Media.According to a statement by WordPress' parent company Automattic, the company says the decision to introduce WordAds was based, at least partially, on pressure from WordPress.com users.Speaking to Memeburn, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg confirmed this, saying that the main driver behind WordAds ...

A video posted on YouTube of a woman on a packed South London tram spouting off racist and xenophobic statements has, in four days, garnered more than two-million views, and resulted in the arrest of the woman in question. The video was widely shared in the UK, resulting in the top Twitter trending topic #MyTramExperience, has widely been denounced as one of the most deplorable instances of racist attitudes in the UK being captured on camera.The video, seemingly filmed surreptitiously, captures ...