News

• Zynga fires 18 per cent of workforce, vows refocus on mobility

  Social gaming publisher Zynga announced Monday that it will lay off 18% of its total workforce -- more than 500 employees -- in an effort to reduce staff costs and focus on the mobile sector.

• Is your social network built enterprise tough?

  You don't have to look further than the uprisings across the Arab world to recognize the power of social tools, and this transformative power applies to business as well. But for an enterprise social network (ESN) to be genuinely useful, it needs to go beyond the "Facebook for enterprise" model.

• How Facebook aims to reinvent hardware

  Facebook used to be a company just like many others: It would buy servers, racks and other hardware from vendors like HP and Dell and rent out co-location space from vendors like DuPont Fabros and others.

• Facebook 'Trusted Contacts' lets you pester friends to recover account access

  Facebook Thursday said it’s making available globally a feature called "Trusted Contacts" that lets users select three to five friends who can help users recover account access such as if they forget their password.

• Is Twitter broken?

  Twitter, the increasingly popular micro-blogging service, has come under quite a bit of criticism in the past few weeks. Users of the platform, which describes itself as an "information-sharing network" are struggling with what to do about false information being spread around.

• Enterasys boosts productivity with Microsoft SharePoint alternative

  Enterasys Networks, the Salem, N.H., maker of networking and security products, found coordinating collaboration among staff, suppliers and partners was cumbersome using Microsoft's SharePoint so went looking for a simpler way that wound up saving money by boosting efficiency.

• 25 must-have technologies for SMBs

  Running a small business isn't easy. I know. I run one. As a freelance writer, I’ve learned that you need to run your writing career as if you were running a business.

• Report: Facebook and Twitter don’t change the American political status quo

  Social media has yet to show its supposed promise as a great leveler of American democracy, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which found that sharp divisions in political participation among socioeconomic groups persist despite the presence of Facebook and Twitter.

• The next big thing on Twitter: #TwitterChats

  Atul Jha likes to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest in the tech world; after all, that's part of his job as a consultant and technology evangelist for CSS Corp., which is co-headquartered in Silicon Valley and India.

• Businesses need to explore Firefox, Chrome's WebRTC to bolster services and cut costs

  Businesses need to study up now on WebRTC - the browser-based voice and video support included in the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome but that seems destined for all browsers - if they want to jump on opportunities to enhance services and cut costs, according to experts at the Enterprise Connect conference.

• LinkedIn is down, then up, then down again Wednesday morning

  LinkedIn, the professional social media network, is suffering intermittent service disruptions Wednesday morning.

• The five evils of enterprise social

  The history of enterprise collaboration technology is littered with abandoned platforms that were intended to "change everything." But many new social collaboration tools quickly end up on the shelf, collecting dust, unless there are compelling reasons to use it, and dramatic incentives for people to maintain it.

• Nine Australian startups picked for ANZ Innovyz Start accelerator program

  Ten startups have been selected for the three-month Innovyz Start accelerator program, sponsored by ANZ Bank and Innovyz. Nine of the companies are from Australia.

• How Facebook built Graph Search and what it means to social media

  In the summer of 2011 Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg and former Googler Lars Rasmussen, who had joined the company about a year earlier, had a conversation about building a third "pillar" of Facebook.

• Some Facebook users asked for $100 to message Zuckerberg

  Want to send a message directly to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? It might cost you $100, if you don't want it to wind up in his spam folder.