SAN FRANCISCO - Google on Friday said it will kill its Buzz social networking tool in favor of young but fast-growing Google+ online community.

"We aspire to build great products that really change people's lives, products they use two or three times a day," Google product vice president Bradley Horowitz said echoing

Yahoo is filing a lawsuit against Facebook claiming infringement of patents covering advertising, privacy controls and social networking, following through on a threat it made last month.

In a court filing , the former web giant - which has been reduced to a shadow of its former self as internal strife and the rise of Facebook have eaten away at its position - said that Facebook, founded in 2004, infringes 10 of its patents.

Yahoo had first threatened the

Nato's most senior military commander has been repeatedly targeted in a Facebook scam thought to have been co-ordinated by cyber-spies in China, the Observer has learned. The spies are suspected of being behind a campaign to glean information about Admiral James Stavridis from his colleagues, friends and family, sources say.

This involved setting up fake Facebook accounts bearing his name in the hope that those close to him would be lured into making contact or answering private messages, potentially

Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, once said: "You have no privacy. Get over it." That was in 2003, and the situation is dramatically worse today.

Even if you try to remain anonymous, companies now track you using cookies (files they store on your hard drive), anonymous identifiers (random character strings to identify you if they can't use cookies), web bugs (invisible pixels on web pages), your IP address (the number provided by your internet service provider) and several

Google provides tools for controlling your personal information, and a handy dashboard for your various accounts. Use the privacy tools page to opt out of tracking.

The dashboard shows your use of most Google services, even if the accounts are under different names. You can edit or remove some information, but the ultimate sanction is to go to account settings and delete everything. At least delete your web browsing history.

Block tracking

While Google's "opt out" cookies are useful,

A co-founder of Twitter has told its 500 million users not to spend hours on the micro-blogging site because it is "unhealthy".

Biz Stone, Twitter's creative director, said users should visit the site for information but leave once they had found it.

At a business conference in Montreal, Canada, Stone, 37, said that using Twitter for hours at a time "sounds unhealthy".

"I like the kind of engagement where you go to the website and you leave because you've

Myspace has said it has added more than 1 million new users in the past 30 days, taking it to 25 million registered users and representing a dramatic turnaround for the social network that Rupert Murdoch abandoned almost eight months ago.

The website claimed that about 40,000 people a day had signed up to Myspace since it introduced new ties with rival social networks, Twitter and Facebook.

"The numbers tell an amazing story of strong momentum and dramatic change

Reuters' blogger Felix Salmon said the sale could be announced as early as Tuesday in a deal worth more than $200m at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas,
The Mashable website was founded by Pete Cashmore as a teenager in his bedroom in Scotland seven years ago. It covers social media, technology, business and entertainment news.
Mashable was not available for comment, Reuters said and CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson told them: "We do not engage

The FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material "scraped" from social networks.

It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up technology".

The bureau has asked contractors to suggest possible solutions including the estimated cost.

Privacy campaigners say they are concerned that the move could have implications for free speech.

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted its "Social Media Application" market research request

The FBI is seeking to develop an early-warning system based on material "scraped" from social networks.

It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up technology".

The bureau has asked contractors to suggest possible solutions including the estimated cost.

Privacy campaigners say they are concerned that the move could have implications for free speech.

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted its "Social Media Application" market research request

Google+ chief Vic Gundotra sat down with Guy Kawasaki, cofounder of Alltop.com and founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures, at this year's SXSW convention. The topic at hand: how Google+ plans to remain afloat in the hotly competitive online social network space.

When Google+ launched over the summer, it quickly picked up millions of followers, but it still struggles to compete against social networking giants such as Facebook and Twitter. Recent data from comScore indicated the average Google+ user

Facebook is rolling out yet another feature to keep members engaged with the site for as long as possible.

Called "Interest Lists," Facebook touts it as a way for users to create their own personalized newspapers with special sections -- or feeds -- on topics that matter the most to them.

How It Will Work

There will be traditional news sections like business, politics, sports or style, along with sector-specific ones such as tech news, NBA players, and art

Facebook introduced a slew of new ad initiatives at its marketing conference, fMC, held in New York on Wednesday.

Most had been leaked to industry publications prior to this first-ever event. Timeline for Pages, for example, was expected. Also expected was a mobile ad play -- Facebook had admitted in its S-1 filing that it was lacking in this area.

However, few had been expecting the preview of a distribution channel called the "Reach Generator." Although key details about

Did you get a message telling you that Facebook is going to change your page design again? I’m sure you did. Many people are finding this new layout to be annoying and restricting, especially with the removal of customized landing tabs. However, I can tell you that the new look has several advantages, especially for serious individuals/companies. Let me explain.

I believe that the good thing about social media is that it’s not yet abused as much as other

While developments such as the Arab Spring show the power of the Internet, there remain news blackouts, harassment of bloggers, and even attempts to shut down social media in several nations. This is one of the key findings of Reporters Without Borders, which released its annual "Enemies of the Internet" report on Monday, listing countries that curtail access to the Web and freedom of expression.

The updated list was released in conjunction with World Day Against Cyber-Censorship.

"The enemies

The new requirement that forces all businesses to switch to Timeline by March 30 changes the game. For a lot of companies that have spent tons of time and money on “like-gating” applications that try to force you to “like” the page before you can interact with them, this update breaks that functionality. Timeline now becomes the default view of any Facebook company page. For those companies that are forward-thinking, they can take the time now to optimize their

That’s something of a misleading question. The question is, where is your audience right now? One suggestion I make all the time is that you take your small-business Rolodex, your customer database, whatever, and pick out the e-mail addresses of your top 1,000 customers and prospects. Load them into a fresh, brand-new Gmail account. Then go to each social network like Twitter, Facebook, etc. and sign up. When it asks you to find your friends using your address book,

Rebecca Aguilera said at last report there are 500 million Facebook users.

The average user has 130 friends, but most have around 300. Some people she knows have thousands, she said.

She also said 48 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds check Facebook when they first wake each morning, and 28 percent do so before they even get out of bed.

Aguilera said she knows people who sleep with their cell phone under their pillow. Never take your cell phone