Salesforce.com, the San Francisco based enterprise cloud computing company that develops applications for customer relationship management, this week acquired Radian6 for $340 million.

Radian6 provides a social media monitoring platform that lets companies aggregate what is being said about them online on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums, and engage people in a conversation. Radian6 has helped its clients like Kodak, GE, Dell, and UPS monitor, review and engage hundreds of millions of …

News that the terrorist and mastermind of the 911 attacks in New York and Washington erupted and spread like wildfire in our newly emerging parallel universe of Tweets and Facebook pages.  Scores of exultant young people left movie theaters in L.A. Live yesterday upon finding their cell phones filled with Twitter and Facebook messages about the news that Osama bin Laden was dead.

Twenty-year old Jarrari Johnson expressed a great feeling of relief that Bin Laden had been killed and said Obama …

A new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reveals that 56% of employers use social networking websites in their search for appropriate candidates, and another 20% said they plan to do so in the near future.  The survey from the world’s biggest association of hiring managers shows that LinkedIn currently dominates this space, with 95% of hiring managers who use social networking website reporting that they use LinkedIn to find and evaluate new candidates.

The SHRM …

Researchers at Pennsylvania State have concluded from a study of six months of real time search queries that updates made by users to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other similar social media websites could be worth more than $30 million every day to advertisers.

Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology, explained real time content is especially interesting because it shows what an individual is doing at a particular moment in time. Jansen said the goal of …

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will revamp its sometimes confusing, often mocked color coded terrorism warning system as early as April 27th, replacing the red, yellow, and blue warnings with two tiers: elevated and imminent. The 19 page DHS plan calls for the warnings to be distributed through social media websites like Twitter and Facebook, “when appropriate”.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced in January, “Today, I announce the end of …

Biz Stone, co-founder of micro-blogging website Twitter said that tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking websites help people get smarter and accomplish more although he concedes that with the ever increasing number of ways to stay in touch and plugged in, there is sometimes a feeling of information overload.
 
Thirty-seven year old Stone said several weeks ago he did a little pruning of Facebook friends list, deleting a good many ‘Friends’, that were really not.  …

A new report from comScore shows that the number of people accessing social networking websites at least once from their mobile phones increased 56% in December compared to the same period in 2009, to 58 million.  Facebook accounted for most of this growth, attracting 90% of all social media users in the United States and 85% of those in Europe.  This is a 120% increase over the prior year for both regions.

The comScore report, 2010 Mobile Year in Review, said that checking social-networking …

COG LOG LAB. / Flickr / (CC)

Nestled deep within the iOS 4.3 beta released recently to developers are hints that the next-generation iPhone 5 may get more social features, according to 9to5 Mac.
According to their analysis of the mobile operating system (OS) release, a folder called “Media Stream” is included in the iOS 4.3 beta-release file system wherein a folder named “Photo Stream” resides.
Analysts have noted earlier that Apple may have plans to combat Facebook’s stranglehold …

Facebook launched in just 2004 and its astounding success has made social networking and social media an integral part of our internet vocabulary and even, our every day life, for some.  Social networking websites were not new when Facebook launched but its popularity has eclipsed all of them.  Facebook now boasts about 500 million users, up from 200 million users only 2 years ago, and the data tracker Hitwise said that it is currently the most visited site in the United States.

David …

Facebook and Twitter, the reigning kings of the NewNet, will set the standards for technologies like social media and real time feeds in 2011.  These two young net behemoths, with their growing revenues and technology advances and influence, were two of the biggest impact players last year, and are sure to lead the way this year.

Anyone who has at least used the internet a few times is probably aware of the growing presence of Facebook.  But Facebook, while it is a billion dollar business …