social networking sites

Facebook will go public someday, but not anytime soon: The IPO market has all but dried up, and flush Facebook doesn't need the cash. Thankfully, there are plenty of other means of investing in social networking. Let's go over five ways to play this phenomenon right now.

Facebook has said that all game developers on the social network must start accepting its Facebook Credits as payment, a step towards making the credits the default payment system on the social networking site. Facebook Credits can be used to make purchases such as digital goods for games. You...

Facebook ruled the Internet in 2010. It was both the most-searched term -- accounting for 2.11% of all searches -- and the top-visited website, attracting 8.93% of all U.S. visits, compared to Google's 7.19%.

The deal would be a bid by Disney to increase its presence in social network games. Disney could use Playdom to incorporate some of its iconic brands and characters into social network gaming.

Facebook and other social networking sites have developed an unusual, but perhaps unsurprising, new fan base: divorce attorneys. As more people stray into infidelity via connections made on the Internet, lawyers are profiting from the evidence left behind by all that online over-sharing.

Though promotional saturation can be the kiss of death for social media platforms, marketers can't resist them. And whether they want to admit it or not, social media sites need the marketers. This week, two top sites -- LinkedIn and Twitter -- are putting their days of purity in the past and offering new tools that meet the needs of corporate marketing departments.

Facebook looks like its worth close to $10 billion right now, based on actual transactions in the stock. The social networking site has seen its shares surge on an exchange for private companies, suggesting that the company is perceived to be headed in the right direction. Of course, private...

I wrote a post the other day about how, after talking to loads of Facebook advertisers, the social networking giant appeared to be morphing into a threat to paid search giant Google (GOOG). I recently had a long chat with Facebook's Director of Monetization Tim Kendall. He's one of the key guys in...

Click at your peril. In the past few weeks, more companies have been snooping through the online universe in an effort to bring their workers in line. Virgin Atlantic airline fired 13 employees for what they said on Facebook. The charge: The employees "brought the company into disrepute." The...