International drug syndicates are using social networking site Facebook to recruit young Malaysian women as "drug mules", the deputy foreign minister said Thursday.The government has previously sounded the alarm over the number of Malaysian women becoming caught up in drug trafficking, many of them drawn into the trade by smooth-talking conmen.Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Riot said that men in the syndicates, many from Nigeria and South Africa, "picked up" their unsuspecting victims on Facebook, promising them rewards to carry packages ...

Gowalla on Thursday rolled out a redesign that included letting members of the location-based social network share check-ins at Foursquare, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook Places.The release of Gowalla 3 software, initially only available for iPhones, comes with the soaring popularity of services that let people use smartphones to let friends know where they are and what they are doing.Versions of the Gowalla application crafted for iPad tablet computers along with Blackberry, Android and other smartphones will be released in January."People ...

Zynga, king of online social networking games, is following its fans onto smartphones and other mobile devices with the acquisition on Thursday of rising social play star Newtoy.The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal that brought the Texas-based startup behind the hot "Games With Friends" franchise into Zynga's stable of studios."The 'Games With Friends' franchise is the best social game experience available on mobile today and we are excited to welcome the Newtoy team to the Zynga ...

Customers at DecorMyEyes.com expected to find polite, helpful service when they visited the New York-based online glasses store. What they didn't expect was to be abused and insulted by the owner of the site, Vitaly Borker. But that is exactly what happened, according to a New York Times article.Borker's aggressive and threatening customer service was no random act. It was part of a "sales strategy" purposely designed to fool Google, because both negative and positive comments on his website pushed ...

Controversial ANC Youth League (ANCYL) leader Julius Malema may be negotiating to take over one of the larger fake Twitter accounts registered in his name with the view to making it his official account.Memeburn has been informed that the owner of @julius_s_malema, whose identity remains a mystery, is "in talks" with ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambu.With more than 16 200 followers, @julius_s_malema is the largest of the 25 or so fake Malema Twitter accounts worth mentioning.Malema hit worldwide headlines recently when ...

So what were you expecting? A real-life alien to waltz out onto stage? Pictures of life lived happily on another planet? Intense speculation and wild theorising came to an end after NASA's press conference to announce the discovery of an arsenic-eating bacterium.The space agency had created monumental online buzz with its mysterious announcement of a news conference on Thursday to discuss a scientific finding that relates to the hunt for life beyond the planet Earth. Alien speculators went into ...

Social media has added an entirely new dimension to our lives. It has also complicated our relationships beyond measure. In the past, it may have been possible to stay below the radar; now your friends know about your break-up the moment it happens.Facebook in particular has taken that which was conveniently tacit and brought it into the public realm. It’s this mutual visibility that makes social media so tricky – I know that you know that I know - and ...

South Korea's government is close to adopting a "Cinderella" law to ban youngsters from playing online games past midnight amid growing concerns about internet addiction, officials said Thursday.A bill to be submitted to parliament as early as this month will require South Korean online game companies to cut off services at midnight for users registered as younger than 16, the culture and family ministries said."The thing about online games is, once you are in it, it is extremely hard to ...

2010 has been an exceptional year for Chinese search engine "Baidu". The name means "hundreds of times", and comes from an ancient Chinese verse, and is often cited today to refer to the continuous search for one's dreams.It's a fitting name for a company that dominates Chinese-language Web searches and which has enjoyed a dream year in which it widened its already big lead over US-based Google in the world's largest online market.The year did not start out that way.As ...

The future of paid search advertising lies in quantitative data analysis, coupled with real-time campaign optimisation. There are, however, not many companies which can provide all of this, and the industry may see a natural consolidation in 2011 and beyond.The growing spend in paid search campaigns by international companies does not come without expectations and agencies and specialist companies will have to prove their mettle.The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Unless companies can deliver real returns ...