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Twitter teams up with Ping
It's a social network... for music. Get it? Well, now it's sort of two social networks, because Twitter is getting some pretty deep Ping integration. Basically, any of your Ping activity (posts, purchases, likes, reviews) can be tweeted, all it takes is linking your Twitter account to your Ping account from within iTunes. Unfortunately, right now it looks like the Tweets are an all-or-nothing affair (you don't get to choose which aspects of your Ping activity you want broadcast), so get ready for everybody to know you bought that Colbie Caillat album. The good news on the Twitter end is that Ping tweets will include album art and song previews right from the fancy new Twitter UI, along with a purchase link, of course. Can you taste the synergy?
The British Monarchy launches official Facebook fan page
So, everybody has a Facebook page now: your parents, your next door neighbor's cat, and now even the Queen of England... or more specifically, the British Monarchy. Yes, the Crown of England has launched an official fan page for itself on everybody's favorite and most hated social network. Apparently, the page managed to rake in over 40,000 likes in its first hour of operation -- no small feat considering it took Miley Cyrus something like three days to get that many. Regardless, the Queen is posting tons of candid photos and we're hoping to get some videos of her getting crazy with the Cheez Whiz any day now; we'll let you know if / when they appear.
Twitter adding 370,000 new users a day, only half of them weight loss spammers
If you weren't out egging cars all weekend, you may have noticed The New York Times profile of former Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Among other things, the article contains some interesting nuggets of information about the service's user base and rate of growth... and let's just say that it's growing. Fast. According to the Times, Twitter is adding nearly 370,000 users per day to its current (as of the writing) user base of 175 million. Yes, that's heading ever closer to the 200 million mark, a truly huge number. No further information was spilled about where those users are coming from and what their level of engagement is (it's been reported that as much as 55% of users never make a single Tweet and that many of them don't follow anybody at all). However, we're pretty sure of one thing: newcomers to Twitter won't have any trouble fitting in if they just stick to talking about food and drink (or dieting, if you want to fit in with the bots). Hit up the source for the full, riveting portrait.
Facebook starts rolling out high resolution photo sharing to users
Facebook is already a popular way to share photo with your 'friends,' but the quality leaves a little something to be desired, to say the least. Well, that's all about to change, as the company has announced that it'll be rolling out high resolution photo uploading to all of its users over the coming weeks. Users will be able to upload and store photos that are eight times larger than what the service now allows (720 pixels). At the same time, the photo viewer will be upgraded to have a lightbox feel -- black background -- for better viewing. Great news, no doubt, for those of us who just couldn't stand another low res shot of someone's baby doing something silly.
Who should I follow on Twitter? Android edition
Welcome back to 'Who should I follow,' where yours truly stays up late into the wee hours to produce a beautifully crafted, well thought out, themed Twitter list just for your perusal. Today the topic is Android, and there are plenty of people and websites on Twitter if Google is your business. As usual, we always forget a few in our frenzied attempt to get this out the door, so leave your (polite) requests in the comments and we'll update.
Follow Engadget on the new and improved Digg... you know you want to
You may have noticed that Digg got a pretty major overhaul yesterday. One of the nice aspects of the improved site is that it's a little more social than its previous incarnation. So if you're in the market for someone new to follow on Digg... well, you could always hit up Engadget on Digg. You probably won't regret it. You can also follow Engadget on Twitter and Facebook, too!
Facebook mobile app stats shocker: 104 million iPhone users, 12 million Android users
Facebook's recently begun displaying user stats for its mobile apps for several platforms, and the numbers are downright overwhelming. The iPhone takes the largest slice of the cake with (at the time of writing) over 104 million active monthly iOS device users, with BlackBerry users at nearly 60 million, and just over 12 million using the Android client. So what can we take away from these numbers? Well, at last count, Facebook has over 500 million users, so a pretty sizable chunk of them are using mobile apps. Interestingly, the last reported number of iOS users was 100 million; that's the number announced at WWDC, just back in July -- but Facebook lists more than that amount of active monthly users, so we're not sure how these numbers are being calculated. We've reached out to our contacts at Facebook and will update if we get a clearer picture of where the stats are coming from.
Evil teen Bieber finds revenge is a dish best served on Twitter
Saturday night, from the depths of his subterranean cave, teen idol Justin Bieber took revenge on someone (who seems to be a minor so we're not going to bother naming names) who had allegedly hacked the Twitter account of the star's childhood friend. How best to get back at someone who has wronged you in your world 2.0? By Tweeting their phone number to your four and a half million followers, of course! We've seen this nerd fleeing throngs of girls on a Segway in the past -- which made him seem rather cool in our eyes -- but now we must ask ourselves... is Justin Bieber as innocent as he appears to be? Either way, nice burn.
Twitter launching official Tweet buttons this week (update: they're here!)
If you've looked at the internet in the past few years, you've undoubtedly become pretty accustomed to seeing all manner of "Tweet this!" or "Add to Twitter" buttons from services like TweetMeme. Well, Twitter's apparently decided to get in on that action themselves with official buttons, and Mashable's got the confidential document's to prove it. In the slideshow (part of which you see above) the full, simple string of code for the buttons seems to be revealed, as well as their three relatively innocuous and somewhat predictable designs. We've got a feeling you'll be seeing these absolutely everywhere any day now, but hit the source link to see the full deck of slides. Update: Well, that was quick -- Twitter's dropped the official buttons, and announced a partnership with TweetMeme at the same time. You can see the buttons in action on this post right now, and hit up the Coverage link for the official announcement of Twitter's blog.
Who should I follow on Twitter? Seriously into HD edition
Welcome back to this edition of "Who should I follow?," where we at Engadget act as your social media guru to bring you the best and brightest lists of techies by category. We sit up all night culling the gold from the garbage so that you don't have to, and this week, we've got some serious experts for you. That's right, if you're the kind of person who would refuse to watch the series finale of Lost just because it's in SD, then this Twitter list is for you. This week, we've got all your favorite HD luminaries in one place. Special thanks to @EngadgetHD for helping us pull this one together -- read on for our best recommendations.
Who should I follow on Twitter? Women in tech
And we meet again... In this captivating and braincell exploding edition of "Who should I follow?" we bring you all the delightful, intelligent, witty, and nerdy women who make Twitter a better place to Tweet. We don't pretend to know every captivating female on the planet, so if you've got suggestions, add them to the comments and we'll see what we can do. And don't worry: we'll have the male nerd list (headed up by Ashton Kutcher, of course) ready for you soon enough.
100 million Facebook pages leaked to a torrent site, creating the world's least exciting torrent
Hacker Ron Bowes from Skull Security has created a 2.8GB torrent file which contains the Facebook account details of roughly 100 million users. That's about 1 in 5 of the half billion accounts the social networking site has, and the torrent contains URLs for each account, with other personal details contained in the profiles such as phone numbers and email addresses. Bowes created a crawler to troll Facebook's open access directory, where all the information is kept. There's nothing illegal about any of this, of course -- we put our information out there into the public forum that Facebook is, after all -- but there's still something creepy about the idea of someone torrenting our profile. Then again, we have some pretty amazing shots from the Bronx Zoo in there, so we can't really blame them.
Attractive, non-existent woman on internet easily makes inroads in military, intel, and hacker circles
Thomas Ryan of Provide Security's making it public knowledge that social networking sites aren't just annoying: they're also potentially major security threats. Ryan set up a fake Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account for "Robin Sage," a person who doesn't exist and never has -- but we can assure you she's really, really hot. Robin billed herself as a graduate of MIT and a prestigious New Hampshire prep school, and quickly made hundreds of connections across all three sites, without ever offering any proof of her existence or the connections she espoused. Even more stunning, "Robin" was befriending military, government and intel people on Facebook and Linked In (where she dubbed herself a "hacker"), and hackers on Twitter. Ryan's findings state that the military and intel "friends" Robin made freely share information and documents with her, as well as inviting her to various conferences. Interestingly, it turns out the only group that was in anyway resistant to Robin were the MIT-associated people... but we knew they were all whip-smart already. Moral? Next time you accept the request of a beautiful, intelligent hacker who wants to come over and view your secret dossiers, you should probably think twice.
How would you change the TwitterPeek?
It's Christmas day, so we're asking you to go a little easy on Peek here, but we've got a sneaking suspicion that our request will be cutely ignored in comments below. This week's episode of How Would You Change features Peek's latest handheld -- you know, the one that only does Twitter. We didn't find the creature too incredibly useful / valuable during our time with it, but that's not to say it couldn't be molded into a pristine object of desire. Speaking of which, how would you go about tweaking or overhauling the TwitterPeek? Make the screen resolution higher? Change the user interface? Add support for apps, email and calling? Make Peek pay you to use it? Sound off below!
Nokia Messaging for social networks hits beta, brings Twitter, and leaves out the N900
See, this is what we were saying. It's not that we're not excited about Maemo, or that we hate S60, or even that we dislike it when a company like Nokia builds a free messaging app that integrates social networks like Facebook (and now Twitter) into the handset experience. It's just that Nokia has just built an app that only works on the N97, N97 Mini and the 5800, leaving the company's quasi-flagship handset the N900 out in the cold. The new app can upload pictures and videos, integrates with email and the dialer, and pushes Facebook and Twitter updates live to the homescreen. It also serves as a all-too-timely example of how hard it is to support two operating systems at once. Alright, we're done preaching, time to fire up the N97 and tell some people about our day. A video demo is after the break.
MIT-based team wins DARPA's Red Balloon Challenge, demonstrates power of social networks (and cold hard cash)
DARPA would have you believe that it's the brilliance of modern day social networks that led an MIT-based team to win its red balloon challenge this weekend, and while there's no doubt that the presence of the internet assisted in the locating of ten randomly placed floating objects, we're crediting the bright minds at the university for their strategy of soliciting team mates. The challenge was constructed in order to "see whether social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter should be seen as credible sources of information," not to mention investigate new ways to react to various threats that need instant attention. Less than nine hours after the contest began, MIT's team had deflated the hopes of around 4,000 other teams by finding all ten, though it's hard to say exactly how many members were out looking. You see -- MIT established a website that promised hundreds, even thousands of dollars to individuals who sent in the correct coordinates of balloons, noting that the $40,000 in prize money would be graciously distributed should their efforts lead to a win. DARPA may call it a triumph of the information superhighway; we're calling it victory in numbers.
Switched On: How Motorola's CLIQ could start to drag
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. For many celebrities, 2009 continues to be a year of endings, but at least two handset pioneers have pinned their hopes on rebirths this year. Following Palm's return to its roots with a homegrown operating system earlier this year, Motorola has committed to a new smartphone direction with Android and its BLUR social contact architecture. Motorola's first announced Android device, the CLIQ, is less distinctive than Palm's Pre or Pixi, but advances the horizontal keyboard slider form factor that provided a successful launchpad for the T-Mobile G1. With high-volume competitors Samsung and LG also planning to release Android devices and HTC marrying Android to its Sense user interface, though, Motorola has incentive to differentiate with software. All smartphones must decide where they want to integrate and where they want to provide a platform for innovation. RIM, for example, has integrated what is still the best e-mail management application into the BlackBerry (although its lack of HTML email and IMAP support are real drawbacks these days) and Apple has integrated both its own Safari browser as well as services such as Google Maps. But now companies such as Palm and Motorola are integrating social networks, and that could have some downsides.
