farmville

Nokia smartphone users starving for app extras may finally get some new toys for their handsets. App developers who previously stuck to iOS and Android are probably going to branch out, thanks to Nokia's Windows 7 deal.

Forecasting which technologies will succeed is always hazardous, but it proved especially difficult in 2010, a year full of surprises -- and also several disappointments. Facebook blew away even the most optimistic expectations for the year. Google Buzz? Not so much.

According to a recent survey by Miniwatts Marketing Group 517,760,460 million people, or roughly 7% of the world's population, have an account on social networking site, Facebook. New "friends" (dare I say, citizens) are joining daily. The Republic of Facebook? Like all emerging nations, the mega...

Google views Web games as a key part of its strategy to take on Facebook. Instead of confronting its rival head on, Google is assembling building blocks -- such as email, music and games -- now and hoping to connect them later.

Video-game console makers see motion-sensing technology -- playing Madden NFL 11 by running around your living room -- as salvation. Sorry, guys: Games on smartphones, social networks and in the cloud are going to eat your lunch.

Zynga, a popular maker of games used on Facebook, has acquired Chinese social-gaming company XPD Media.

FarmVille, the social networking game that allows players to tend a virtual farm tcomplete with crops and livestock, is a beloved pastime for many Facebook members, but for one fan it turned into a financial fiasco. In just two weeks, a child in England spent $1,375 fixing up his "farm," blowing...

It sounds like a good deal; take a quick quiz and get some free virtual currency or trade your phone number, trade your phone number for your horoscope or even access to "thousands of TV Shows." These are what many users are finding after clicking the ads in mobile games on the iPhone and Android...

Book publishers are keeping tabs on FarmVille, ChatRoulette, Facebook, and video-game companies, turning their sights onto the rapidly changing environment in digital distribution and social networking to keep their industry relevant -- and alive.

For the players of Mafia Wars, Vampires, FarmVille and a handful of other Facebook games, the temptation of earning "virtual currency" by clicking on the various offers that popped up on the page was too much to pass up. Unfortunately, what these gamers didn't realize at the time was that the...