It remains to be seen whether all social networks can be profitable on advertising alone—and crucially what formats will work best alongside people’s communications with each other—but for now we are at least seeing some big growth in the space.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) executives got a rough ride from a House Of Commons committee on Monday, when they declined to systemically filter law-breaking web pages from search results.

Looks like new CEO Scott Thompson is wasting little time starting to get Yahoo’s house in order: just a few weeks into the new CEO’s tenure, the internet company is pulling support for 10 of its less-popular mobile apps.

Why does Twitter get involved in so many interesting lawsuits? In its short life, the company has kicked up legal hornet nests involving everything from stalking to satire. While technology companies always outgrow the laws that govern them, Twitter’s 140-character message system is proving to be particularly disruptive. At the…

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

Ron Paul’s campaign suffered a setback this week in its effort to identify who uploaded videos that appear to show the presidential candidate bashing a former rival’s ties to China.

For many news sites, Facebook has become one of the biggest sources of referral traffic to its stories, and today the social network revealed some numbers that underscored how it is continuing to build up its cred as a news aggregator: it says it now has “thousands” of journalists using…

Update: Mobile operator O2 says that as of 2pm Wednesday, it has fixed the part of its mobile web browsing service that was reporting mobile phone users’ telephone numbers to websites they visited via O2’s mobile data network.

This morning I spoke with McDonald’s social media director, Rick Wion, about how the company’s own Twitter ad became a viral delight for pot heads and social critics. Here’s a detailed account of how the #McFail debacle went down.

Marketers keep telling brand owners to use social media to engage their customers. But there are times companies must wish they had just bought a print ad instead.

This week saw a number of developments at Twitter and Facebook, two of the world’s biggest social networking sites, that are signs of them looking to capitalize more on their already-hefty user bases by creating services that keep them on their sites for longer.

A day after the SOPA protest on the web, the hacker group Anonymous has taken the blackout theme to a whole new level: in retaliation for the closure of the Megaupload file-sharing site, and for its own SOPA protest, the group has started to systematically take down a number of…

The furor over controversial anti-piracy legislation reached a climax on Wednesday as Republican lawmakers began disavowing the Stop Online Piracy Act and opponents claimed victory. The activity coincided with street protests and popular websites blocking out parts or all or their homepages.

Instead of blacking out for the Jan. 18 SOPA protest, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) instead is using its power—and its most iconic communications tools—to make a difference without denying access to its services.

Wikipedia formally announced Monday night that the site will “go dark” this week to protest proposed anti-piracy legislation. The online encyclopedia also erected a stark black banner across its website.

Russia’s big Mail.ru portal is trying to ape Chinese companies’ microblog boom by launching its own Twitter clone. Futubra launched in beta Monday.

Bowing to the reality of modern technology, Canada today said it is changing a 1938 law that forbids broadcasting election results before polls close. This means no more fines like the one levied in 2000 against a Vancouver man who blogged about election results he obtained by satellite from the…

Twitter looks like it is ramping up its staffing and operations in the UK: today it was announced that the company will be making a new hire, Lewis Wiltshire, who oversees social media for BBC Sport. The loss is a keen one for the BBC: among Wiltshire’s responsibilities, he was…

Twitter and some pundits are crying foul over Google’s decision to exclude certain competitors from its new search and social networking hybrid. But what law says the company has to help its competitors in the first place?