China’s ruling Communist Party will impose “severe intra-party penalties” on a former property tycoon whose microblogs were closed at the weekend after he criticised government policy, state news agency Xinhua reported. Microblog portals such as Weibo.com and t.qq.com, among China’s most popular, were ordered to shut the accounts of Ren Zhiqiang, a retired top executive from a state-controlled property developer ... Read More »
“FarmVille” creator Zynga Inc named former Electronic Arts Inc executive Frank Gibeau as its chief executive, betting on an industry veteran to help accelerate its transition into a mobile games-focused company. Shares of Zynga, which also said founder Mark Pincus would be executive chairman, were up 8.8 percent in extended trading on Tuesday. Gibeau, who joined Zynga’s board in August ... Read More »
Germany’s cartel office has opened an investigation into Facebook for suspected abuse of market power through breaches of data protection law, it said on Wednesday. The watchdog said Facebook’s terms of service regarding its use of user data may abuse its possibly dominant position in the social network market. “For advertising-financed internet services such as Facebook, user data are hugely ... Read More »
Social media giant Facebook Friday said it is looking to scale up extending “Boost Your Business” programme to villages in India to help entrepreneurs in improving their business prospects. “We are doing a bunch of different initiatives catered specifically to arts and crafts of India that live in villages. The challenge before us now is of scaling this up,” Head ... Read More »
According to the common emoji keyboard, women don’t run. Only men run. See? But that could soon change under a new draft proposal to the Unicode Consortium, the body that develops and maintains software standards for texts and characters. The document outlines a number of changes, including male, female and neutral gender options for many human-looking characters. If adopted, this ... Read More »
LinkedIn said on Wednesday Chief Executive Jeff Weiner will decline his 2016 annual stock compensation in order to pass it on to his employees at the professional social network. The move follows LinkedIn’s disappointing first-quarter revenue and profit forecast that missed Wall Street estimates last month as growth slows in the company’s ads business and its hiring services face pressure ... Read More »
In its bid to save children from online sexual abuse, France’s national police has urged parents to stop posting photos of their children on Facebook and other social media platforms. According to the technology website The Verge, such images can put privacy and security of the kids in danger and, if shared widely, such photos can reach sexual predators. France’s ... Read More »
Facebook Inc. scored a victory in its battle against German privacy regulators who claim they can regulate the social network’s policies. A Hamburg court halted enforcement of an order by the city’s data watchdog who had told Facebook to allow users to sign up to the social network under a pseudonym. German law doesn’t apply to Facebook’s privacy policy, as ... Read More »
Snapchat has raised $175 million (roughly Rs. 1,177 crores) in fresh funding from Fidelity Investments and other investors, according to a source familiar with the matter. The investment is an extension of Snapchat’s Series F financing round, which the company began raising last year, the person told Reuters. Snapchat, which makes a free app for sending messages and videos that ... Read More »
A Pakistani man was sentenced to 13 years in prison Thursday for allegedly posting religiously offensive material on his Facebook page, lawyers in the case said. Rizwan Haider, 25, was convicted in an anti-terrorism court of three charges including promoting sectarian hatred, after he supposedly published a post referring to Prophet Mohammed. “This case… was registered against Haider, who is ... Read More »
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