Social Networking

The number of Americans using Twitter dropped 8% in October from September, marking the second monthly decline for the social-networking site this year, according to research firm ComScore Inc. Twitter Inc., the No. 3 social-networking site in the U.S., had 19.2 million users in October, ComScore said. The company had growth of less than 1% in September and declined in August. October's number was still up more than 13-fold from the year-earlier period. The month-to-month drop contrasted with a 2% increase for users of Facebook Inc., the most popular social network.

Fox and Twitter have entered into a partnership to promote the broadcaster's programs and help advertisers reach TV audiences as they discuss shows on the social network. Twitter Inc., which has established itself as the water cooler where America dissects the latest developments on NBC's "The Voice" or AMC's "Mad Men," is expected to strike more deals with broadcasters. On Tuesday, ESPN and Twitter plan to announce they are expanding their partnership. Last year the sports network, majority owned by Walt Disney Co., incorporated video highlights directly into Twitter feeds related to its coverage of the BCS championship game.

A study on how people use social networking websites such as Facebook confirms what many of us suspected. Women who post loads of photos of themselves on their sites are conveying some strong personal characteristics, according to new research. These women are more likely to base their self-worth on appearance and use social networking to compete for attention. The study involved 311 men and women with an average age of 23. In order to better understand aspects of social networking behavior, the researchers looked at the amount of time subjects spent managing profiles, the number of photos they shared, the size of their online networks and how promiscuous they were in terms of “friending” behavior.

SACRAMENTO - Social network sites such as Facebook would be required to remove personal information about minors when asked to do so by their parents under a measure approved by state senators Thursday. Separately, the lawmakers voted to allow misdemeanor rather than felony charges in cases of simple possession of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs. The two bills were among several sent to the Assembly for consideration. The Internet measure was approved despite opposition from firms including Google, Facebook, Zynga and Tumblr, which called the proposed rules unnecessary, unworkable and in violation of teenagers' free-speech rights.

SAN FRANCISCO - For teens, it has been an essential rite of passage: They turn 13 and join Facebook. Since she signed up three years ago, friend requests and status updates are as much a part of Meera Kumar's life as homework and exams at Menlo School, the elite private school in leafy Atherton, Calif., where she's a 16-year-old sophomore. But when her kid sister Anika turned 13 last year, she gave Facebook a pass. "I guess I haven't been that interested in it," said Anika, who prefers sharing photos with friends on Instagram via her iPhone or video chatting with them onGoogle+.

What would you pay to meet the love of your life? Twenty dollars a month for an Internet dating site that lets you wade knee-deep into the dating pool and swim with millions of other singles? Or $1,000-plus for a personalized matchmaker who will do the wading, and weeding, for you? Over the last few years, a surprising number of singles have been choosing the latter, despite the declining economy. Turned off by Internet dating sites that offer a vast selection but take a lot of time, they're spending bigger bucks for more service that leaves the date-picking to someone else.

Social networking sites are great for maintaining and renewing relationships. But Facebook and other sites can also lead to shattered relationships. According to a new study, the three most-common negative experiences are: Ignoring or denying "friend" requests Deleting public messages or identification tags Seeing a Top Friends list on which one doesn't appear or is ranked lower than expected Robert S. Tokunaga of the University of Arizona studied 197 college students concerning their social networking experiences.

Social networking has been described as the contemporary way that people interact. While that may be true, an individual's social success in the virtual world doesn't appear to carry over into the real world, according to a new study. Previous studies on how the Internet affects relationships have produced mixed findings. Some research shows that lots of social networking activity has a negative effect on social life while others suggest it enhances one's social circle. The new study, led by Thomas V. Pollet of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, examined 117 people age 18 to 63. They filled out an extensive questionnaire about the time they spend on instant messaging and social network sites, the number of relationships they had overall and the closeness of those relationships.

Social networking mobile app maker Path said Monday that it raised about $30 million from venture capital firms such as Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures and individual investors such as Virgin Group's Richard Branson and DST Global's Yuri Milner. The investment values the San Francisco company at $250 million. Path, which had previously raised $11.2 million, is the brainchild of former senior Facebook executive Dave Morin and Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning. It's riding the new wave of tech companies that are building for mobile, not the Web. Path has been compared to Instagram, which Facebook said last week it would buy for $1 billion.

Google Inc. is getting more social. The Internet giant, which has faltered in its attempts to break into the booming social networking business, is making another bid to counter the growing influence of Silicon Valley rival Facebook Inc. and San Francisco upstart Twitter Inc. Google on Tuesday rolled out a new service dubbed Buzz that it says will make it easier and quicker to share information, photos and videos with friends on its popular Internet...

BOSTON - Lu Lingzi learned Sunday that she had passed a major exam for her studies at Boston University. The next morning, the test and a major project behind her, the 23-year-old Chinese graduate student and two friends headed over to watch the Boston Marathon. They chose spots near the finish line. Hours later, two bombs exploded there. It was midafternoon in Boston, the middle of the night in China. As hours ticked by and Lu still hadn't called, her parents and grandparents grew panicked.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Joe Green, Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, is famous for having turned down an offer to move to Silicon Valley to join Facebook. Instead Green finished his college degree and worked for 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime payday. Now he's reuniting with his college pal on a project that straddles two worlds for which he has great affinity: technology and politics. Green, 29, is the founder and president of Fwd.us., a new political advocacy group funded by Zuckerberg and other prominent Silicon Valley executives to press for immigration reform and other technology industry causes.

Senate Majority Leader Ellen M. Corbett (D-San Leandro) is making a second attempt to regulate social network websites, including Facebook and Twitter, amid privacy concerns. With support from Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Corbett has introduced a bill that would require the websites to remove personal identifying information on minors upon the request of their parents, and allow adults to have their own information taken down. “Unsuspecting children and teenagers are oftentimes prime targets for online predators that use these sites to prey on vulnerable young people," Corbett said in a statement.  A similar but broader bill by Corbett failed to win approval in 2011 after aggressive lobbying against it by a coalition of firms, including Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It's hard not to detect a whiff of desperation in Facebook's new please-don't-go interface, which is determined to keep people within the social network as long as it can. Facebook Home is intended to dominate Android smartphones, making Facebook your first and last port of call as you traverse the wireless wonderland. It will keep Facebook features front and center, rather than require users to use an app. As the company's hoodie-wearer-in-chief, Mark Zuckerberg, said at the unveiling of the software Thursday, "We're building something a whole lot deeper than an ordinary app. " Or as bunny-stewing Glenn Close put it in "Fatal Attraction": "I'm not going to be ignored.

Amazon.com Inc., which got its start as an online bookseller, went on to create the Kindle e-reader and has gotten into book publishing, is now pushing into the social side of reading. The world's largest online retailer said Thursday that it had agreed to buy Goodreads, a popular book recommendations site with more than 16 million members. The purchase of the niche social network is expected to help Amazon sell more physical and digital books. Goodreads was founded six years ago in the Los Angeles living room of Otis Chandler, the grandson of a longtime Los Angeles Times publisher by the same name.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Mobile social networking app Path has settled Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived users by collecting personal information from their mobile address books without their knowledge or permission. The San Francisco company will also pay $800,000 for illegally collecting kids' personal information without parents' consent, the FTC said Friday. Path must also establish a privacy program and obtain independent privacy assessments every other year for the next 20 years, according to the settlement.

Like a lot of kids born in the 21st century, including mine, 8-year-old Zoraver Dhillon loves playing games on the Internet. A couple of months ago, after setting a personal best in Super Crazy Turbo Taxi 4 by 1,000 points, he quickly checked to see if he'd moved up in the rankings. Zoraver was stunned to discover he'd fallen from fourth place to 69th. But his father, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was thrilled. Mandeep Dhillon was so thrilled, in fact, that he and Zoraver got on Skype for a video chat with software engineers working late at Togetherville, a start-up in Palo Alto.

Facebook still has plenty of friends. Even amid last month's firestorm, which forced executives to hastily revamp the site's privacy settings, the social-networking juggernaut has held steady in membership and traffic. Quit Facebook Day, an online campaign May 31, resulted in about 30,000 departures — a negligible percentage of the platform's nearly 500 million active registered users. Yet people do quit Facebook, often without fanfare. Their stories are varied, but there is a shared sense that what started as a personal, close-knit community turned into an alienating experience as the site began adding millions of members and more ways to share content.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook is rolling out a new commerce product: gift cards . The move is an expansion of its Gifts program. The preloaded cards will work with retailers in the real world. Initial launch partners are Jamba Juice, Olive Garden, Sephora and Target. Facebook is targeting a multibillion-dollar business as it tries to regain the confidence of investors who continue to be worried about the company's money-making potential. During a Wednesday call with analysts to review its fourth-quarter financial results, Facebook Chief Executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company is still figuring out its gifts and retail business.

Facebook is already the world's most popular social network. And new research from social media analyst Vincenzo Cosenza suggests it's only getting more popular. Every six months Cosenza puts out a World Map of Social Networks. The map is a deep sea of Facebook blue. Facebook is the ruling social network in 127 of the 137 countries that Cosenza analyzes. Facebook, in its relentless march to global domination, added Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia and Vietnam since June, according to date that Cosenza crunched.