Social Networks

Twitter this week updated its rules to combat online abuse and revenge porn, in the wake of continuing outrage among netizens. The most significant change is a new statement that users may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject's consent. Sounds good, b...

Social media firms should team up with the United States government to work out appropriate responses to extremism on their sites, recommends a Brookings Institution report released last week. The Institution's J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan last year launched a study to define and describe the pop...

Nextdoor on Wednesday announced it has received $110 million in venture capital to grow its neighborhood-based network of residents and vendors. Redpoint Ventures and Insight Venture Partners led the funding round. Nextdoor plans to use the money to develop additional ways for members to benefit fro...

Twitter last week announced actions to further protect users of its network -- but it left them vague. The company is rolling out unspecified improvements to its reporting process for content issues including impersonation, self-harm, and the sharing of private and confidential information, aka "dox...

Facebook this week announced ThreatExchange, an API-based platform for technology companies to share information on security threats. It had been working on the platform for about a year in a joint project with other prominent Internet firms. Facebook layered APIs on top of its existing platform inf...

Facebook on Thursday announced a new feature for members who want to plan for their passing into the digital beyond. Initially rolled out in the United States, the feature allows Facebook members to appoint a "legacy contact" to administer their account when they die. Legacy contacts will, among oth...

Facebook last week announced Place Tips for iPhones, a feature that will give subscribers location-based recommendations at the top of their News Feeds. No mention was made of launching Place Tips for Android or Windows Phone devices. Tapping on Place Tips will call up the information, which will in...

Twitter on Tuesday announced two new offerings that could bolster its efforts to compete with Facebook. The new tools will let users create private groups of up to 20 members; they also will be able to shoot, edit and share video from within Twitter's mobile app. Twitter members already can conduc...

Facebook on Tuesday announced that it has begun a new effort to help find missing children by incorporating Amber Alerts into the news feeds of its 185 million U.S. users. Through the effort, which is part of a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the alerts are...

Instagram recently added some new filters -- the first time it has done so in two years. Each of the filters included in the latest version of Instagram allow users to make subtle mood changes to a photo. "A host of me-too apps have been introduced to the market since Instagram was launched. Filters...