Pepsi 'Pickup' App Has Anger Bubbling

Twitter, Path blamed in privacy controversy

(NEWSER) - Leading smartphone apps are taking a lot more of our information than we realize. If you use Twitter's "Find Friends" feature, the company receives every phone number and email address in your address book—a fact that Twitter hadn't clarified, the Los Angeles Times reports. The company now says it will fix the problem. But it's just one of many companies storing user information with a view toward ultimately using it for advertising. More»

Adds pop-up notifications, photo uploads

(NEWSER) - Google+ has arrived as a free app for your iPhone. Its user interface is similar to Facebook’s, writes Josh Lowensohn at CNET , and it improves upon the mobile-browser version. It provides a way to upload photos from your phone, but it lacks video chat, and “the Circles organizing is just a big list of contacts, versus the drag-and-drop experience you'd get on the desktop.” Head to CNET for Lowensohn’s full review . More»

Facebook ads mining user data like never before

(NEWSER) - After seven years of concentrating on the cool, Facebook is finally ready to cash in. The social networking giant is starting to mine its immense database to match users to advertisers like never before, reports the LA Times . Facebook's ad revenue reportedly doubled last year to $2 billion, and insiders say it should double again in 2011. "If you take a look at the history of media, ad dollars go where the eyeballs are," said one analyst. More»

Tim Berners-Lee blasts those chipping away at its 'egalitarian principles'

(NEWSER) - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British engineer credited with inventing the World Wide Web, has a message for us: Social networking sites, app developers, and other entities, if left unchecked, will ruin his creation—which now belongs to all of us. "The web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles," he writes in Scientific American , but "some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles." His complaints:

• Social networking sites: They are "walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," making each site "a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it."
• Smartphone apps: "It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers," rather than a "closed" smartphone app, he writes, adding that he is especially wary of the iTunes store, which is not an "open marketplace."

But, will users actually click on them?

(NEWSER) - Social media darling Twitter finally has a fancy new business model: a little something the media like to call selling ads. After years of speculation, the micro-blogging site will today launch an advertising platform called 'Promoted Tweets.' Advertisements will now appear at the top of search results, much like they do in Google's search engine. Though the company is valued at $1 billion, it only recently ventured into generating revenue, the Wall Street Journal notes. More»