Mark Zuckerberg Is Now Richer Than the Google Guys

How's your summer going? Probably not as good as Mark Zuckerberg's.

The Facebook CEO and cofounder's wealth has spiked in recent months as the company's stock price continues to reach new highs. On Thursday, he reached another milestone: With a fortune worth $33.3 billion, he's now worth more than Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to Blooomberg's Billionaires Index. Page is worth $33.2 billion. Brin's fortune is estimated at $32.9 billion.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Top 8 Reasons Why Men and Women Use Facebook

Facebook turned 10 on Tuesday, and with 1.23 billion monthly active users, 37 offices worldwide and more than 6,000 employees, it's something to celebrate.

But how are Facebook users actually using the social network after a decade?

This article is originally from http://mashable.com/, which state the details on why most of men and women use Facebook.

Read More Add Your Opinion

5 quick steps for using LinkedIn for recruitment

If you’re only using LinkedIn as a glorified business-card collector, an email replacement or some kind of Facebook counterpart for business contacts, you’re missing out on its recruitment potential.

With 200 million users, LinkedIn has been making great strides lately to offer better tools for searching and posting jobs. With that in mind, here are five ways your small business can use LinkedIn to catch the next great candidate.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Privacy snafu as TOPLESS Mark Zuckerberg picture leaks online

A picture of Mark Zuckerberg baring his chest at a party has surfaced online after what seems to be a mistaken overshare by a Facebook employee.

The perils of privacy mistakes

The photo shows a hairy-chested and surprisingly fit Zuckerberg surrounded by similarly topless men (although one is wearing a bow tie) and was taken at the wedding of Facebook product manager Justin Shaffer and Annabel Teal, Gawker reports.

It appears to have leaked online after it was uploaded to Facebook by the director of engineering Andrew Bosworth and (presumably mistakenly) set to allow for public viewing. It was deleted "seconds later," according to the anonymous donor, but not before they had scraped a copy and published it online via Imgur.

From the looks of it Zuckerberg has been taking care of himself, reportedly in part due to the influence of his new wife (and girlfriend since Harvard) Priscilla Chan. Meanwhile, the mystery over quite what induced the male guests to get their kit off is unknown, but it certainly looks like quite a party.

Read More Add Your Opinion

63% of Retweets Are of Male Users

There may be more women on Twitter, but its male users that are dominating in retweets.

Swedish-based Crossing Boarders has developed a tool called Twee-Q — or “Twitter Equality Quotient” — that reveals how many men and women are retweeted by each individual Twitter user. According to the collected results so far, men are significantly leading the retweet race.

Of the more than 11,000 tests conducted via the tool, men make up 63% of all retweets compared to only 37% of women.

Even President Obama’s account — which is run by his campaign team — retweets men (79%) more than women (21%). Rapper Snoop Dogg also favors male retweets (84%).

However, both Lady Gaga and Ellen DeGeneres are equal retweet opportunists, retweeting men and women the same amount.

“We want to change the world by showing how each of us rank women and men when contributing to a conversation,” Twee-Q said on via a translation on its site. “Only when we see how we act, who we choose to listen to and acknowledge, can we take the first steps toward a truly equal society.”

To see if you retweet men or women more, type your Twitter handle into Twee-Q here.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Facebook users not as satisfied as Google+ users

A report from ForeSee shows Google+ at the top of customer satisfaction rankings and Facebook at the bottom.

Facebook's reputation for customer satisfaction continues to tarnish while Google+ pops up on a customer satisfaction index for the first time and makes it to the top of the social network pyramid.

The story's an old one by now. Facebook is the Web's most popular site with hundreds of millions of users, but people still don't like it.

Now Google+, which has been dubbed by some as a ghost town, is gaining some traction with a higher customer satisfaction rating, according to the numbers released from the American Customer Satisfaction Index today. According to the new numbers, Facebook's rating drops 8 percent to 61 on a 100-point scale, while Google+ makes its index debut with a 78, putting it in line with Wikipedia.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Can Facebook change the search paradigm?

In the world of search engine optimization, 2012 has been full of talk about the blurring line between search and social. With Big Brother Google unleashing Panda and Penguin to keep black hats in check, the industry has been forced to take a more holistic approach to SEO. Google’s acolytes are now paying attention to other players in the space, and Facebook is suddenly alone in the spotlight.

A Facebook social search engine, which is becoming more of a reality every day, would completely change the way we approach search. As an SEO specialist at The Search Agency, I’ve been closely monitoring this paradigm shift away from indexing billions of pages.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Yahoo Users Consume More Energy Than Gmail Users [INFOGRAPHIC]

Yahoo Mail-subscribing-households use 11% more electricity per year than Gmail households, a recent study by Opower found. That adds up to nearly a whole extra month of electricity, about an extra $110 per year.

“It’s as if, relative to the average Yahoo household, the average Gmailer is strictly hang-drying their laundry, forgoing high-definition TV, and hand-washing their dishes with cold water for a year,” Opower writes in its’ blog.

So what makes for this drastic disparity in energy usage? Opower — a research company that unpacks and analyzes energy data to present to everyday consumers in an actionable way — found that the problem is one of “correlation not causation.” Meaning that the email domains aren’t driving the issue of energy usage. Instead, discrepancies are related to the core demographics of each site’s users.

“Yahoo subscribers tend to live in suburbs, be in longterm relationships, have a family,” says Barry Fischer, a head writer and a research for Opower. “Those types of lifestyle characteristics carry with them greater energy needs compared to Gmail household. [Gmailers] are found more in urban areas, are younger and are single.”

Ultimately, Opower found that even though Yahoo users live in larger residences than Gmail users, Yahoo subscribers need more electricity per square foot than Gmail users.

Read More Add Your Opinion

What the password leaks mean to you (FAQ)

LastPass has created a site where people can check to see if their password for LinkedIn or eHarmony was among those posted to a hacker forum.(Credit: LastPass)

Three companies have warned users in the last 24 hours that their customers' passwords appear to be floating around on the Internet, including on a Russian forum where hackers boasted about cracking them. I suspect more companies will follow suit.

Curious about what this all means to you? Read on.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Facebook unveils its App Center

AP/AP - This undated handout product image provided by Facebook shows the company's App Center. Facebook is beginning to roll out its App Center to its nearly 1 billion users, so they can find games and other applications with a social component more easily. The App Center will initially feature about 500 Facebook apps, mostly games, that the company has reviewed to meet its quality standards.


Facebook points out that it drives traffic to apps, pushing users to the iOS app store 83 million times in May. In that sense, it’s not proper to think of the App Center as a direct competitor to traditional app stores. With only 600 apps, the App Center is hardly a comprehensive listing of apps — or even of apps that utilize Facebook’s infrastructure in some way. Instead, Facebook is clearly hoping that it can use its strength to increase the popularity of apps that use Facebook in some way, which increases Facebook’s popularity, and so on in a positive feedback loop. To help with that, the company says that it will only recommend “high quality” apps (read: apps that include Facebook in some way, even if only for authentication) and will also recommend apps that users’ friends are using.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Bored Facebook Users: Numbers Suggest Site Is Falling Off

Are you bored with Facebook?

That’s the question on a lot of people’s minds lately, particularly the people over at Reuters, who conducted a pollrecently to ascertain that very thing. Coming on the heels of Facebook’s disastrous IPO and a lawsuit which claims Mark Zuckerberg was involved in some inside trading before the company went public, the poll shows that about 34% of Facebook users are spending less time on the site than before, and the reason they gave is simple: they’re bored with it.

While many laughed off the idea of Facebook being a “flash in the pan” company after Zuckerberg and his people built it into a multi-billion dollar empire, some are now eating their words as they’re realizing what should be common knowledge: people are fickle. And while some are blaming all the changes Facebook has rolled out in an effort to stay current–such as Timeline, which so many users opposed there’s now apage dedicated to getting it removed–others say the answer is much more simple than that.

We’re tired of the same old crap.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Facebook app store launches

The Facebook app store will be available first in the US. Photograph: Facebook

Facebook has launched an app store, similar to that for the Apple iPhone, in a bid to turn the social network into a key entertainment platform online.

The network announced its "App Centre" in a blogpost late on Thursday, confirming its first major move into a booming market of gaming, lifestyle and productivity applications.

The app store will be available only to US users from Friday, opening to each of Facebook's 901 million users in the coming weeks. It will feature 600 apps, including the popular Draw Something and Pinterest, and new games such as Jetpack Joyride and Ghosts of Mistwood.

"The App Centre gives you personalised recommendations, and lets you browse the apps your friends use," said Facebook's Matt Wyndowe inthe blogpost.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Birds eye view with Google Maps

Google hosted a press event June 6 at its offices in San Francisco to unveil several coming new features in Google Maps.

Among those features were 3D enhancements to Google Earth. For starters, the search engine giant has added an additional element to its arsenal of cameras used in Street View.

Up until now, it used cars, trikes, snowmobiles and trolleys to capture the entire world. But now there's Street View Trekker --a camera system that's mounted on a backpack that enables Google to go into those hard to reach areas.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Google warns Gmail users of 'state-sponsored' hacks

Google began warning users today of its Gmail online email services when it suspects they may be targets of "state-sponsored" attacks.

Google has begun putting this warning at the top of its Gmail page if it suspects that the user may have been targeted by what it called "state-sponsored" hackers.

It was the second time in the last two weeks that Google has deployed security-related alerts to a small fraction of those who use its services.

But the company was coy about how it knows whether a specific individual has been targeted by attacks paid for or designed by governments.

"You might ask how we know this activity is state-sponsored," said Eric Grosse, Google's vice president of security engineering, in a Tuesday blog. "We can't go into the details without giving away information that would be helpful to these bad actors."

The new warning states: "We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer." It will appear at the top of the Gmail page if the user has logged in with his or her Google account. The message is not limited to those who use Google's own Chrome, but will pop up in any browser.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Facebook Asks All Users to Vote on Policy Clarifications

Facebook is convening a massive vote for the entirety of its user base. However, it's not as if Facebook is putting this information up front and center on the site itself: No notifications when a user logs in, no posts to every user's wall, and nary a mention of the policy vote on Facebook's official blog.

So what, er, are people voting on?

Two elements: proposed changes to Facebook's official "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities" and the social network's "Data Use Policy," which all sounds like big and important stuff until you read Facebook's disclaimer regarding the second site-wide election in the social network's history.

"The vast majority of the proposed changes represent additional explanations of current practices rather than substantive changes in how we use your data," describes Facebook.

In other words, it's not as if the vote is going to trigger substantial changes to Facebook's policies – or the way the site works – in the near future.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Apple CEO Tim Cook isn't trying to be the next Steve Jobs

In an extended sit-down interview at the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital here on Tuesday, Cook, in one of his first unscripted public appearances since Jobs' death, said Jobs' influence at Apple continues. But he said that influence is spread across the company's executive team. Cook himself, he said, isn't trying to take on Jobs' role as the company's visionary.

"Steve was an original," Cook said, adding that he "never really viewed or felt the weight of trying to be Steve."

"That's not who I am. That's not my goal in life. I am who I am, and I'm focused on that."

In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview, Cook talked about everything from Apple's naming philosophy for its products to its interest in the television market to the potential for returning the manufacturing of Apple products to the United States.

But much of the interview revolved around his predecessor. Cook spoke about how he felt when Jobs died, how Jobs lured him from Compaq 14 years ago and how Jobs continues to influence how the company approaches its business.

Jobs taught the company to focus only on products it can excel at, and to accept only the very best when it comes to those products, Cook said.

"Apple has a cult of excellence that's so unique and so special," he said. "I'm not going to witness or permit the change of it."

That said, Cook was pressed at times to talk about some of the products that at least some analysts and consumers feel have fallen short of expectations. Among them is Apple TV, which Jobs described as a "hobby"; Siri, the voice command system that's central to the iPhone 4S but is frequently unavailable; and Ping, the unpopular social-networking feature that Apple added to iTunes.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Facebook co-founder worried about privacy on Facebook

The Facebook page of company co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who renounced his U.S. citizenship ahead of the social network's hotly anticipate IPO. (Facebook)

Eduardo Saverin, who co-founded the world’s largest social network with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, keeps a low profile on Facebook these days. Why? Even he’s concerned about online privacy.

“I don’t like showing my privacy,” Saverin said in a rare interview with the magazine Veja.

As Facebook nears a billion unique users, the question of privacy has dogged the social network -- and not just users worried about who will see their private photos or have access to the personal information, it seems.

Ironically, Saverin touted the interview on Facebook, describing Veja as “the top magazine in Brazil -- which I used to read when I was young.”

Read More Add Your Opinion

Sophisticated Virus Hits Iranian Computers

Thousands of computers in Iran belonging to government agencies and private companies have been infected with a highly sophisticated virus, dubbed Flame, in the latest cyberstrike against the Islamic Republic, said cybersecurity experts and Iran's telecommunications ministry.

The malware was widely detected across the Middle East in Syria, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as in other parts of the world, but Iran has the largest number of infected computers, experts said.

At least three times since 2010, Iran has been targeted with sophisticated computer viruses such as Stuxnet, Duqu and Wiper. These viruses have disabled centrifuges for enriching uranium, stolen data from nuclear facilities and erased computers at the oil ministry.

The aim of Flame, said experts at Kaspersky Lab, a Russian information-technology security firm that reported the virus on Monday, was espionage, not physical damage or system interruption.

Flame, which Kaspersky said has been in operation since March 2010, was still active as of Monday morning, Alexander Gostev of Kaspersky Lab said. But after Kaspersky reported the existence of the virus publicly, Flame's operators immediately set about shutting the servers, an effort to protect the stolen data and hide the source of the virus. By Tuesday, Flame had become inactive, he said. "They are trying to hide."

Read More Add Your Opinion

What small business can learn from Google

These mantras are at the core of innovation for Google but translate readily to any business to create agility, employee engagement and ultimately, stronger business results. Google's success owes far more to these mantras than the food in the cafes, and even better, they cost no money to implement.

1. Launch and iterate. Even the smartest of the hyper-educated Google leaders cannot predict which products and features will attract a sizable user base. Instead, they urge teams to launch quickly and iterate — in other words, stick with, and perfect, what's working — based on what they learn from their users. Rather than spending time perfecting a product that might not work, get it out there, and let the feedback guide future development.

Read More Add Your Opinion

Facebook reportedly hiring former Apple iPhone engineers for phone project

Facebook is drawing upon former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone and the iPad to develop its own phone, according to a new report.

The New York Times claimed on Sunday that the social networking service has hired "more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone," as well as one engineer that worked on the iPad. The publication cited current Facebook employees who spoke off the record, as well as people who were "briefed" on the company's plans.

One tipster suggested that the current effort is the company's third attempt to build a smartphone. People who reportedly worked on the first attempt told the Times that the project fell apart because it proved to be more difficult than expected. As a result, Facebook is believed to have realized that it needs industry-experienced veterans to develop hardware, specifically Apple alumni.

However, the company may not be content to just develop a phone in-house, as reports have suggested that it is partnering up with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC on a phone as well. A recent rumor from the sometimes-accurate DigiTimes claimed that an HTC/Facebook smartphone could arrive as early as the third quarter of this year.

Read More Add Your Opinion