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Photo app scores 10M new sign-ups in 10 days

(NEWSER) - Instagram signed up 10 million more users—bringing its total to 40 million—in just the past 10 days. The retro-styling, photo-sharing app was the talk of tech after releasing a version for Android and then getting scooped up by Facebook for $1 billion, reports SlashGear . Instagram launched for the iPhone in October 2010, and picked up its first 1 million users in a mere two months. More»

...because 2010 was not 1999

(NEWSER) - With more money pouring into tech funds and some huge valuations for IT companies, there are more and more signs that we're in another tech bubble . But there are also some big differences, notes the New York Times , which compares the tech boom of 1999 with that of 2010. For instance, many more people use the Internet now, around 2 billion, compared to less than 250 million 11 years before. And there isn't such an onslaught of tech IPOs: 308 in 1999, about half of all the IPOs in America that year, compared to just 20 last year. More»

Privacy isn't a concern, say others

(NEWSER) - Facebook’s highly anticipated “Places” feature is here , and the ACLU is not happy about it. It's taken issue with features that allow your friends to check in for you and allow non-friends to see where you are via “Here Now." It declares (bold theirs) "in the world of Facebook Places, 'no' is unfortunately not an option." Are we all in trouble?

• Nah, says Tech Crunch . Facebook is “making a real effort to dial up privacy with Places,” writes Evelyn Rusli, noting that it’s easy to opt out of both those features ( click here for detailed instructions on how to do just that).

Cheap customers spark message about NC restaurant

(NEWSER) - A North Carolina waitress learned about the dangers of social networking the hard way when she lost her job after griping on Facebook about penny-pinching customers. Ashley Johnson served a couple at Brixx Pizza in Charlotte who had a 3-hour lunch—forcing her to work an hour after the end of her shift—and then tipped only $5. "Thanks for eating at Brixx," she later wrote on Facebook, "you cheap piece of ---- camper." More»

Exposure isn't making us better—it's making us phonier

(NEWSER) - There was no defining event—like the fall of the Berlin Wall, with sledge hammers and cement dust—but privacy is gone just as certainly, Peggy Noonan writes, and the glare of exposure hasn't made us better. People are forced to reveal everything about themselves—or have it done for them. "An odd thing is that when privacy is done away with, people don't become more authentic, they become less so. What replaces what used not to be said is something that must be said and is usually a lie." More»